The need for a renewed Left opposition (Simon Black)
From Rabble.ca August 18, 2006
The upcoming federal NDP convention will be a time for debate, reflection and strategizing amongst party members. New Democrats will put forward resolutions designed to change or reinforce party policy. Yet most of these resolutions will never appear in a campaign platform or be espoused at a party news conference.
For the NDP is split. On one hand there are a group of party officials, bureaucrats and the caucus (what I call the official NDP) whose unstated but implicit goal is to successfully sell the party to the electorate as a product is sold to a consumer: with persuasion, media savvy and ambiguous assertions about the nature of Canadian society and the direction in which the party would take it.
On the other hand is the party base: active in riding associations, furiously passing resolutions in time for convention, mobilizing diligently at election time and participating in a wide range of social movements. Convention brings the two NDP factions together.
But as discussion and debate make way for keynote speakers and various entertainment acts, convention is bled of its democratic importance and turned into a spectacle intended more for the consumption of the media and the voting public at large than for the party’s grassroots activists.
The quiet transition of the NDP from mass party to electoral machine must be traced, at least in recent history, to the defeat and subsequent decline of the New Politics Initiative (NPI). Designed to renew the Left and democratize both the party and politics as a whole, the NPI made the official NDP shudder while challenging the party’s base to rethink the brand of social democracy it had come to embrace in the 1990s.
As the NPI fades from memory, the lessons of its challenge appear to be lost on the official NDP. Since the Liberal sponsorship scandal, the NDP’s stark opportunism and electoral strategy has resigned much of the Left to once again look outside the party for vehicles of effective social change.
The official NDP has successfully alienated the activists mobilized by the NPI and those who put their bets on Jack Layton during the leadership race. They quickly learned that an increased media presence was the sum result of his victory, and not the reconstruction of the party into a social movement as Layton supporters had hoped for.
This state of affairs must bring the Left to mobilize and challenge the direction of the party once again. In these efforts, there are a number of developments and political facts that should be brought to the attention of the party base. The following eight points are to merely outline the party’s current conjuncture and the context in which the party’s Left must be renewed:
* The official NDP is in no position to claim success for their electioneering, narrow vision of the party. After running its most right-wing campaign in recent memory — and with the Liberal Party arguably at one of the most vulnerable points in its history — the NDP gained only two per cent more of the popular vote in 2006 than in the federal election of 2004. The official NDP calls this a victory as the party's seats in the House of Commons have increased.
Yet their criterion for success has always been the percentage of the popular vote. This is understandable given the party's commitment to proportional representation and the cruel logic (particularly to the NDP) of the first-past-the-post electoral system. When reduced to a low number of seats, New Democrats could point to the popular vote as an indicator of its relevance. Apparently with more MPs, the party's standards for success have changed.
* The NDP has made little effort to mobilize the 40 per cent of the electorate who don't vote (many of whom are poor and working class). The official NDP seems resigned to the strategy of the Democratic Party in the U.S.: as election turnouts decline, the party continually shifts to the centre in search of support from unaligned voters. The NDP's downplaying of redistributive policies at the expense of appeals to typically middle class issues is further evidence that the official NDP is in no mood to engage the disenfranchised and dispossessed.
* The process of converting party policy into an electoral platform isn't transparent. The secretive and unaccountable Election Planning Committee wields undue influence within the party's structure.
* The NDP's increasing reliance on focus groups to determine party policy is undemocratic and ignores the fact that throughout history, successful parties of the Left have been tools for popular education and not simply reflections of public opinion and the majoritarian thinking of their time. Parties of the Left aim to change public opinion, not simply act as its mirror.
* In his remarks to the final meeting of the NPI, Jack Layton pledged to reach out to social movements and establish a constructive dialogue between the party and the movements. Apart from some small steps in this direction, the party's relationship to social movements has not changed significantly and was severely damaged by the official NDP's push for an early election.
* The party's bureaucracy, leadership and membership are not reflective of a multiethnic Canadian society and severely limits the NDP's ability to make inroads with new Canadians and the increasingly multicultural urban working class. On this point, the official NDP has put forward some positive initiatives, but whether they will be adequately funded and carried through remains to be seen.
* It is necessary, following on the examples of the Latin American and European Left, that the party becomes open to the establishment of official political tendencies within its ranks, understanding that debate contributes to party democracy and stimulates new ideas.
* Prior to the 2004 and 2006 federal elections, the official NDP sought out some of the brightest minds in progressive Canadian economics. Poised to review the party's economic and industrial policy (or lack thereof), this work was abruptly halted as an election appeared imminent.
Instead, the NDP took the economic thought of a Bay Street economist, and relatively new party member, Paul Summerville, as its guiding vision. His speech at the Ottawa election kick-off — seen by many as an official statement by the party — represented an emaciated vision of social democracy which could have been penned by any first year political science student with minimal knowledge of Left politics.
A renewed Left must remind the party that it’s a means to an end, and not an end in itself. The NPI has been laid to rest. The timing of its death is a matter for reflection as most of the party’s Left flank collapsed its resources and support into Jack Layton’s project. For those of us concerned with social justice and a democratic socialist vision of Canada, it’s imperative that we find our voice and once again stake a claim on the future of the NDP.
Simon J. Black was a member of the NPI and NDP candidate in the 2004 federal election. He is a PhD student in political science at York University and writes the Politics As Usual column for Canada’s number one urban magazine, POUND.