presentation by Barry Weisleder to Socialism 2005

Sisters and brothers, comrades and friends:

As millions celebrate May Day around the world, let's consider the health and stability of capitalist rule.

The US dollar is in crisis. US debt is staggering. Its annual deficit is unprecedented. Washington may have scored some points with the bogus election in Iraq. But U.S. war casualties mount, US war resistors multiply. America's Iraqi collaborators seem unable to form a government, three months after the election. The "coalition of the willing" continues to shrink. Italy is the latest to quit as right wing P.M. Berlusconi lost regional elections, resigned from office, and has now cobbled together another right wing coalition. Blair in Britain, seeking re-election, faces a similar problem - he was caught lying for George Bush. Will he be forgiven by Pope Rotweiler, if not by the British voters?

On March 19 the global anti-war movement proved it is alive. Hundreds of thousands marched, including tens of thousands across Canada who also called for the removal of our troops from Afghanistan and Haiti.

Latin America is in turmoil. Protests against resource sell-outs and neo-liberal austerity measures have shaken several governments, and sent some leaders packing. As Brazil's Lula moves to the right, causing a rift in the PT, Hugo Chavez and Venezuela move decisively to the left. The Bolivarian revolution is redistributing wealth on a grand scale, and arming workers to repel any foreign intervention. Chavez declared for socialism, acknowledging the process underway. A new socialist revolution in the Americas is now on the agenda. The Cuba-Venezuela strategic alliance is a fist in the face of the Empire. It is a beacon for the oppressed of Latin America, and the world.

Back at home, the discreet charm of the Canadian bourgeoisie is wearing a little thin when it comes to papering over the cracks. The Gomery inquiry shows that the federal state is held together by lies, bribes and cheating Quebec sovereigntists. Is there any doubt that Paul Martin's Liberal minority government will soon fall? The real question is: can the ruling class maintain even one credible federalist party in Quebec?

A weakened capitalist state will make it more difficult for the rulers to impose their agenda on working people. Similarly, the threat of Liberal collapse, starting in Quebec, makes it cogent for the NDP's Jack Layton to demand that Martin remove billions in corporate tax cuts from the budget and spend the money on social needs - if the Martin government wants to live to see summer or fall.

Of course the budget is only the tip of the bosses' iceberg. Decades of social cuts, shrinking services, deregulated standards, the loss of decent jobs, stagnant wages, eroding benefits, rising unemployment, stolen EI benefits, environmental decay, military waste, to say nothing of corruption, have taken a heavy toll on the standard of living of millions. Workers are losing ground. Every economic study shows it. Of course, we expect employers to try to squeeze employees. The problem is that an important part of the resistence is missing. Unions exist supposedly to fight back. But union officials are increasingly integrated into the mental framework of management and the state. While bosses squeeze workers, union bureaucrats put the squeeze on union democracy.

A year ago, B.C. hospital workers were betrayed when a developing general strike to protect jobs and wages was derailed by BC Federation of Labour and HEU bureaucrats. No vote was allowed on the sell-out deal. Quebec labour protests against Jean Charest's attacks on union liberties and public services were suspended last year, without consulting the ranks. But Quebec students didn't take a dive. They fought back. Over 200,000 college and university students went on strike and scored a major victory. Not only did they force Premier Charest to restore funding. They proved that it is possible to win - if you fight back.

UFCW members at Loblaws were saddled with a two-tier wage structure and didn't even get to vote on it. Air Canada workers gave wage concessions. The CAW urges the government to allow foreign capital to purchase the airline, rather than fight for public ownership. Postal workers gave up severance pay to get a long term contract with a low wage raise. Hotel workers in Toronto have to press their union officials to support grievances over health and safety issues and over the harassment of linguistic and cultural minorities. Toronto substitute teachers in OSSTF are still fighting to restore local democracy, following a lengthy and vicious trusteeship. Top officials conducted a political purge, gutted the collective agreement, and installed conservative retirees who conduct most union business in secrecy.

You can see the urgency of the fight for democracy in the unions, for a class struggle programme, and for new union leadership. Because that's what we need in order to stop the subordination of workers to management, much less to make any headway.

That's why we are encouraged to see the emergence and growth of rank and file union opposition groups. The BC Workers' Fight Back Caucus. The Members for Democracy in the UFCW. The UNITE-HERE Members for a Fighting Union. The Substitute Teachers' Action Caucus. The CAW Left Opposition. We are encouraged to see such groups, joined by individual steelworkers, SEIU, ONA and CUPE members, sheet metal workers, OCAP, the Peterborough Flying Squad, and others who united last Fall to launch the Workers' Solidarity and Union Democracy Coalition.

The Workers' Solidarity Caucus will make its debut at the CLC Convention in Montreal in mid-June where we hope to build a cross-country movement for a Workers' Agenda. Whether you are a delegate, a union member, or neither, we invite you to join us there to aid this effort.

After all, we are confronting a global bosses' agenda that aims to dismantle all the past gains of the class struggle. It aims to rachet up private profits at the expense of workers' wages, job security, decent living conditions and the environment. The bosses are obliged to do this, not just out of greed, but to sustain their anarchic, crisis-wracked capitalist system. We, however, are not obliged to accept it. We are not obliged to accept their trade deals which make public ownership a crime, and make Capital a god. We are not obliged to accept homelessness, poverty, disease, ignorance and strike breaking as inevitable features of human nature and human society - which they are not.

As OCAP says, now is not the time to look for excuses, but to take to the streets.

Now is also the time to link militancy to a political strategy for fundamental change. Activism is inspiring. But activism is not a strategy. A change of government does not necessarily put the interests of the majority first. One has only to think of Dalton McGuinty to know what I say is true. Activism will not replace the bosses' government with a workers' government. And nothing less than a workers' government will stop exploitation and oppression, and save this planet from the polluters and war makers.

To achieve a workers' government at least two things are necessary: (1) the majority of the working class must break from the parties of big business, and (2) large sections of the class must come together into a political organization that fights for a Workers' Agenda.

One big obstacle to a Workers' Agenda is the conservative bureaucracy that dominates our unions and the NDP. The bureaucrats' embrace of capitalism prevents them from fighting to abolish the FTAA. Their commitment to class peace causes them to stifle protest. They killed the Ontario Days of Action and the 1997 teachers' strike, and they propped up an NDP leadership on the road to oblivion.

Under these distressing circumstances it is easy for activists to make a very big error. That error is to confuse the present leadership with the mass membership of the workers' organizations. That error is to confuse the union brass and NDP tops with the thousands of union and NDP members who walk picket lines and march in anti-war demonstrations. That error is to think that a new class struggle workers' movement is going to emerge largely outside the existing workers' organizations, especially the unions and the NDP. Socialism without the working class is impossible. The socialist left which is outside the unions and the NDP is not a decisive force. It can give tactical leadership on specific issues, but it is separated from the masses it needs to become a majority, to become capable of transforming capitalist society.

Fighting to become a majority does not mean catering to the prejudices of prevailing opinion. But it does mean working within the rank and file, setting a militant example in the mainstream organizations, and advancing the ideas that can help working people to emancipate ourselves. The Socialist Caucus of the NDP stands on a class struggle programme - the Manifesto for a Socialist Canada - and it intervenes in a mass labour-based party. The Socialist Caucus believes that the NDP belongs to the workers and farmers who launched the CCF in the 1930s, and built the NDP in the 1960s as a political movement independent of the Liberals and Tories, independent of the banks, big business, and the media barons. The NDP belongs to the millions who built this country, whose toil and intelligence make this country run. It is not a private club for the current leaders, but a political party of the class that must come to terms with the anachronism known as capitalist rule.

That is how we must approach the problem, the problem of power. Capitalism must go. But it won't go quietly. We must force the issue, or we'll continue to live like slaves. To free ourselves and humanity, we must break the majority from ideological slavery to the system and the big business political parties.

The NDP represents a partial break, an organizational break from the parties of Capital. The next step is to deepen that break politically, and to base it on a programme for working class emancipation. That is the direction that the Socialist Caucus proposes. Over the years, thousands of NDP members have voted for SC resolutions, for SC candidates for leader, party executive and at local candidate nomination meetings.

The New Politics Initiative, with its call for grass roots democracy, shook up the NDP in 2001. Unfortunately, it backed away from the fight and dissolved. A socialist programme and a working class base must be forged through organized struggle inside the unions and the NDP. Unfortunately, there's no short cut to workers' liberation.

Socialist Action strives to forge a leadership, a socialist cadre, which can make an indispensable contribution to this process. That contribution will be the living memory of our class, the vision of a socialist future, and a strategy to get from here to there. That contribution will be unbending loyalty to workers' interests, and unyielding opposition to capitalist rule. That contribution will be for socialist democracy, for women's and gay/lesbian liberation, for ecology, political pluralism, internationalism, and the construction of a cooperative commonwealth.

If you share those goals, if you believe in those principles, you should join Socialist Action / Ligue pour L'action socialiste tonight.

Together we can fulfill the promise of May Day. We can create a future worthy of humanity. For that we need a revolutionary workers' organization. So join us. There is nothing to lose, and a world to win.

Long live international workers' day!
Long live the struggle for freedom, social justice, and workers power!