It is important for those of us who wish to address the future to have a firm grasp of our past. The answers to the current failure of both the labour movement and social democracy to effectively pose an alternative to capitalism, at this moment in history, is rooted in their origins, actions and goals.

The labour movement in Canada has been divided between those that saw capitalism as the problem and those who saw capitalism as merely 'unfair'. The former were socialists and syndicalists who took as their watchword; "The working class and the employing class have nothing in common"[1];. The latter were 'pure and simple' trade unionists as exemplified by Samuel Gompers and the American Federation of Labor. It was, in many cases, representatives of the later who prevailed in the Canadian labour movement.

It is fitting that the current review process of the relationship of the CLC and the NDP, as well as the NDP's own Federal and provincial renewal processes, began in the year that we celebrated the 75th Anniversary of the Winnipeg General Strike. For it was this forge of class struggle that brought forth both a socialist voice for workers and a social democratic voice.

The former would go through many organizational and directional changes. Creating syndicalism and industrial unionism in Canada; the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the One Big Union (OBU) and creating the Socialist Party of Canada, the Socialist Labour Party of Canada and eventually the Communist Party. These socialist and syndicalist movements of the Canadian working class were opposed by those representing both the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada (TLC) and the American Federation of Labor.

Alberta is a fitting place to review some of this ancient history if only for a moment. Alberta had been from 1919 till the late 1930's part of a unique and radical Western Canadian labour and populist movement.

Representatives of the Alberta Federation of Labour in 1919 were solidly opposed to industrial unionism and syndicalism as much as they were opposed to the Socialist Party of Canada. As an alternative, and this was the situation across the country, the leadership of the Alberta Federation of Labour, Alex Ross, Elmer Roper and Alf Farmilo, helped create the Canadian Labour Party. This party was less radical, than the socialists and syndicalists, since it sought concessions for workers within capitalism rather than capitalism's overthrow by the working class.

Before labour had such a party the traditional method used by the TLC, and the American Federation of Labor, was to use votes to 'reward their friends and punish their enemies'. This resulted in labour candidates running in provincial and federal elections as Conservative-Labour or Liberal-Labour candidates.

Only in B.C. in did the Socialist Party get seats in the provincial legislature at this time. It was this victory of a socialist voice for workers that inspired the creation of an independent labour party.

The Canadian Labour Party won some seats in the Alberta legislature, and at least one seat in Ottawa from 1918 through the 1930's. During the 1930's, as the TLC supported labour parties floundered, the CCF was born. It was based on a farmer-worker alliance, not unlike the United Farmers of Alberta that it supported as its provincial wing along with the Canadian Labour Party, lead by a Methodist social reformer; J. F. Woodsworth.

The CCF, like the CLP, was not opposed to capitalism per se but to how 'unfair' it was to farmers and workers. Their policies wished to reform capitalism through public ownership of various monopolies and control of these through either provincial legislatures or the federal government.

The founders of the CCF, which now included the CLP leadership from Alberta, were adamantly opposed to syndicalism and socialism. Once terrified of the radicalism of the Socialist Party of Canada now they were terrified of the rising popularity of the Communist Party, especially its mass organizing of the unemployed and farmers during the depression.

Labour leaders became labour politicians. A good case in point is the success of CLP/CCF members in Edmonton, who were the executive of the Edmonton Trades and Labour Council, in winning control of the city council in the 1930's. Unfortunately it was in the midst of the depression and they could do little to resolve the crisis of limited relief payments. They were however active not in relieving the crisis of unemployment but, in cooperation with the then UFA government, in opposing the mass demonstrations of the unemployed that had been organized by their political opponents; the Communist Party.

This opposition to the CP would be the hall mark of social democracy in Canada for years to come. It reared its ugly head again during the creation of the CLC when CIO unions organized by CP activists were purged of their 'red leadership' before acceptance into the Congress. Red baiting and McCarthyism in the Canadian labour movement were orchestrated by the CLC's point man David Lewis. A name not unfamiliar to those in the NDP.

The very creation of the NDP in Canada in the early sixties was not just the natural evolution of social democracy. It was also an expression of the victory of the right-wing labour agenda over a smaller and weaker left wing during the cold war.

Labour and the CCF's greatest victories were not won in the House of Commons by CCF MP's. They were boons granted to the Canadian working class by the Liberal government, of Mackenize King. In order to placate an aggressive labour movement that existed in Canada in the late 1940's and early 1950's. An aggressive labour movement that was in many cases led by CP and socialist workers who had built rank and file controlled unions under the auspices of the CIO. A left wing leadership that would be purged once they were no longer needed.

This urge to purge would again raise its ugly head in the NDP, when the Waffle, a left wing caucus in the NDP came into existence in the late sixties. David Lewis the voice of 'fairness', tinged with red baiting, made sure that the Waffle was eliminated as a potential threat to his personal control over the party.

Meanwhile the CLC in the 1970's was confronted by yet another Liberal government, this one that was not giving out old age pensions or unemployment insurance but asking for labour to accept wage and price controls. The CLC leadership called for a General Strike in the early seventies, only to reduce that to a day of protest. The real agenda of the CLC leadership was to accept the governments offer of Tri-partitism, the origins of the social contract.

Labour, Capital and the State working together. This had been the agenda in other European countries with Labour or Social Democratic governments since the end of World War II. Except in those cases the tripartite social contract was rewarded, not just with wage and price controls but, with full employment as in the case of Sweden.

Social democratic governments after W.W.II and during the Cold War moved to the right, attempting to 'legislate' an end to the historic conflict between capital and labour, through appeasement. They were as terrified of the Soviet-bogey man as Canadian labour leaders and social democrats had been of their own socialist and communist worker's organizations.

The NDP in the seventies and eighties won its greatest victories, as the boom economy fluctuated. Provincial governments were in their hands and they had a large opposition in the House of Commons. They offered the ruling Liberals a social democratic alternative to the Tory right wing. The Liberals though also had a social democratic wing, supported by labour leaders and their unions. The only voice not heard in the house was that of the socialist working class. The had been decimated by the red baiting of the cold war, sectarian splits, but still managed to work in coalition building and as an extra-parliamentary opposition to the state.

The seventies saw a rapid boom and bust cycle in capitalism on a global basis. The war in Vietnam ended causing the United States to falter since its post war boom economy was based on military industrial production [2]. The end of that conflict led to an artificial oil crisis, as the giant oil companies took advantage of the industrialized nations in order to maintain their profits. This oil crisis led to a boom for the Alberta economy and the beginnings of a recession in Central Canada. The boom and bust cycle would continue through out the eighties, as falling oil prices brought the Alberta boom to a screeching halt.

Capitalism globally was in a crisis, and even more so in the United States and Canada. In order to maximize profits, the corporate leadership in both countries organized think tanks, the Fraser Institute, and Associations; The Business Council on National Issues (BCNI), and lobby groups; The National Citizens Coalition (NCC), in order to promote free trade, deregulation and the dismantling of the welfare state. The falling rate of profits, that insatiable appetite of capitalism, was being created by increasing competition from other national capitals; Japan, Germany and Europe, as well as rapid advancements in technology. The technology was expensive to produce but once created decreased production costs. How do you make a profit when costs keep falling? You attack worker's wages and the social safety net.

Another way capitalism propped itself up in the eighties was by mergers, leveraged buyouts, junk bonds and real estate. Capitalism shifted from 100 years of growth in manufacturing back to mercantilism and finance capitalism. The profits to be made were not in actual production, but in fiscal fictions, movements of money gaining interest in an artificial market.

The results were the inevitable crash of Wall Street in 1987, massive layoffs, and the closing of productive factories. Enter the expanded free trade deals. In order to offset the losses from this artificial boom, capital now moved to opening up trade markets and deregulation on a massive scale. The only way substantial profits can be made is when capital moves. Not productive capital, not real capital invested in real people and real factories, but fictitious capital; money markets, investment portfolios, loans and interest.

We do not have a deficit or debt crisis we have a crisis in profits. Capitalism is facing falling rates of profits and like a junkie must maintain its maximum profit levels or collapse [3]. We are no longer in the era of manufacturing we have returned to the earlier era of finance capital; only with computers and the infobahn. The crisis is world wide and it is extended. It will last a long period of time and cannot be resolved by any single country or national government whether social democratic or not!

No social democratic government or party can promise labour peace for full employment any longer [4]. The policies of Swedish social democracy, so long the ideal of the members of the Second International, are now dead issues. The labour peace that social democrats and their labour allies brought to the table in the seventies will no longer satisfy the appetites of a voracious capitalism.

The irony of the Rae Government in Ontario calling its attacks on the public sector workers a social contract (which had meant labour peace for full employment in social democratic jargon) shows the end of any solutions social democracy can offer.

In order to govern the NDP, like social democratic parties around the world, has to move to the right. Not the center but the right. It has pragmatically shed its last vestige of left wing ideology; the belief in 'fairness' and must now rule with an iron fist in a velvet glove.

It does not matter who the constituency of the party is, nor its leadership, it is a political party driven to being elected. Not as the voice of working people and the oppressed but being elected to govern. In governing it answers not to labour but to capital. Capital demands a ruthless class war on all that we have achieved in the 75 years since the Winnipeg General Strike.

It is not socialist workers that are floundering with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the cry of 'debt and deficit'. It is the social democrats and their left-wing and labour allies that are in crisis. The solutions of Tommy Douglas and Woodsworth are for naught. They were temporary at best. Some ideologues thought that labour and capitalism had finally come to mutual understanding and appeasement through social contracts and the welfare state. Class war was no longer on labours agenda. Unfortunately for the working class it is front and center the agenda of business it's political parties and governments.

Social Democracy cannot repair capitalism, it cannot make it fairer, because capitalism is not interested in fairness any longer. It is only interested in maximizing its profits at our expense. We need not look to the future for some mythical global economy to understand the business agenda. We need only to look back to last century to see that we are returning once again to the bad old days when labour had to physically fight for every concession it could from capital.

We could discuss how the NDP failed to make Free Trade the issue in the 1988 election. Allowing a lame duck John Turner and the Liberals to fight the election on that issue. Or we could discuss how the NDP and CLC leadership blew it on the Charlottetown Accord [5]. Or we could discuss how in Alberta the NDP were decimated at the last election because of pragmatic voting. Working people saw the Liberals as a potential governing alternative to the Tories and voted for a government rather than an opposition. We could discuss all these pragmatic matters.

We could discuss the fact that NDP support is based on labour leadership support and not the rank and file. We could discuss how Ralph Klein took a page from Bob Rae and did him one better. Instead of calling a 5% rollback a social contract Ralph deferred the cuts to local authorities thus shedding himself of the blame. But hey credit where credit is due Ralph always said he got his idea for rollbacks from Bob Rae.

There could be recriminations back and forth. The fact that a right wing populist party arose in the heartland of the CCF and is now posed to be the official opposition. That the issues the Reform party raised referendum, proportional representation, direct democracy originated in the labour movement this past century but were not embraced by the social democrats in the NDP. Social democrats have abandoned any idea of democratic transformation of the state because becoming elected and governing is more important than changing the system.

All these issues are what have brought us here today. Unfortunately not for the right reasons. Rather for right wing reasons. The drive to renew the party has come because the party was decimated as an opposition party last Federal election. It was decimated in Alberta. It may be decimated in Ontario next election.

This call for renewal is not a klaxon for a socialist alternative to the capitalist assault on the working class. It's a mewling of 'where did we go wrong'. The renewal process has been dictated more by the success of the Reform Party than by the need to ask ourselves; why haven't we been able to offer an alternative to the business agenda.

If there is to be genuine renewal than the party must shed its right wing ideology that it calls social democracy and becomes a socialist party. We must once again equate socialism with the democratic control of our society and institutions for the common good. We must oppose capitalism in the streets, in coalitions and as a party in the legislatures as an opposition. We must offer a new way of governing, not for some pragmatic present but for the future of humanity. We must offer a new way of living, than merely going from crisis to crisis. Certainly the party will lose support. Those who are liberals will move to the right where they belong. The careerists and opportunists will slide away to a party where they can be elected or get a cabinet position. The labour bureaucrats will have less say in policy and direction than the rank and file.

Can the NDP do this? Does it really have a choice? There are no new ideas coming forth. The right wing of the party tenaciously holds power with its social democratic labour allies. The party can continue to rush to the right (claiming it is centrist). To prop up the status quo of legislatures and parliament. It will have failed to hear the voice of Canadians, yes even those misguided enough to vote Reform, for a New Politics a greater Voice, a New Democracy.

Failing to become a socialist party will mean the NDP will survive for a few more years buffeted by the whims and wishes of the business agenda. Until its members finally give up in exasperation and join the Liberals, Tories or Reform party.

Those of us who are socialists will then face the challenge ourselves in building a democratic socialist party. Should we begin now? I think so. Both within the NDP and without.

It is obvious to anyone who cares to look, that without a socialist alternative outside the NDP the NDP moves to the right to embrace the agenda of the Liberals and Reform. As it once was the left to the Liberal party so to does the NDP need a left wing alternative. It is adrift and in need of these renewal meetings because it has no clear socialist program by which to measure itself.

Do we put much hope in this Renewal process? Not really. The agenda was drafted by the right worried about winning elections and gaining power. It was embraced by a labour leadership out of touch with its rank and file. The party as a whole is terrified of the growth in coalitions and the extra parliamentary opposition that seems intent on embracing the party once it does gain power.

To build a socialist party, to provide a new view of democracy and to challenge the business agenda should have been what these meetings were about. To merely carry on in the shell of the old trying to patch it up for a few years, only avoids the inevitable.

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. The bosses know it and are prepared to destroy all working class opposition in their way. When are the CLC leadership and the NDP going to wake up to this new pragmatic reality of capitalism?!

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[1] From the Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) 1905.

[2] During the sixties and seventies the age of American global expansion, the AFL-CIO and its International Free Trade Union campaign is documented to have been agents of US Corporate interests and a front for the CIA. This alignment to the right was for naught. The current reality of FTA and NAFTA has leveled the playing field, so to speak, forcing North American workers into the same dog eat dog competition for jobs and security as our fellow workers have suffered under the yoke of US foreign policy for years. Ironically the North American working class, which was lulled into a false sense of security by the boom economy and capitalist expansion during the sixties and seventies, is now in the same boat as our fellow workers in Mexico, Chile, etc. If NAFTA is good for anything it is for ending the labour movements role as a handmaiden of US and Canadian Corporate interests and moving us towards broader political and social alliances with trade unionists and socialist opposition groups in Central and South America. Not out of charity for the third world but out of economic and political necessity.

[3] A simple example would be that the rush last year by investors, the general public, towards mutual funds rather than GIC's when buying RRSP's. Investors wanted to maximize their interest rates regardless of how or where this money went. Capital writ large moves in the same manner, regardless of whether long term productivity/manufacturing is destroyed for short term gain through higher interest rates for maximum profits.

[4] The Social democratic agenda is still alive and well in the CLC and NDP leadership. The current so called "Alternative Budget" still calls for 'full employment' as the solution to the crisis of capitalism. This ideal is a utopian holdover from the past. The CLC/NDP have failed to provide the Canadian working class with any action plan or analysis that addresses the global and long term crisis of capital and how we must build resistance to it.

[5] It is again interesting to note that the CLC Leadership arbitrarily spoke for its members when it got into bed with the Federal NDP over the Charlottetown Accord. The NDP lost much of it's left wing credibility ( which it had gained by opposing Canada's involvement in the Gulf War) when it too aligned itself to the status quo and supported this badly drafted and flawed accord. In Alberta opposition to the accord was organized by members of the AFL and its affiliated unions. The AFL took a neutral position officially, however members of affiliates organized a grassroots left wing opposition to the Accord. That committee got more press and coverage, and attended more meetings opposing the accord from the left, than the Reform Party did in the province of its birth. The Committee was rewarded by scurrilous red-baiting from the only Federal NDP MP in Alberta; Ross Harvey and by Provincial NDP Leader Ray Martin. Once again proving that when social democrats abandon their principles and are confronted they will resort not to debate but to red baiting, a tradition the NDP has long embraced.

BIOGRAPHY:

Eugene W. Plawiuk is an Executive Member of CUPE Local 474,

Edmonton Public School Board Custodial Workers.

He is Chairperson of the Local's PAC.

He is also a member of the AFL Education Committee, and a contributor to the AFL Labour News.

He is a Labour Historian and Libertarian-Socialist.

The views expressed in this paper are solely his own.

They should not be construed as his speaking for CUPE, Local 474, or the AFL.

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