Canada is in the midst of a deepening political and economic crisis symptomatic of the general global capitalist crisis. The Canadian corporate power elite are fearful of a united and militant working class. It is a fear that reached frenzied levels with Prime Minster Harper’s coup d'état. Harper’s cowardly parliamentary prorogue was a reaction to the fear of unity within Canadian people by a Coalition government leading to new forms of economic organization and political democracy.
The ruling circles of Canadian financial power could not permit such a sharp political upsurge to penetrate the collective consciousness of Canadian workers. It was urgently necessary for this rising anger and rapid mobilization of workers to be snuffed out. The Governor General Michaëlle Jean was given her marching orders while Harper was lectured by the C.D. Howe Institute, Preston Manning and Tom Flanagan to get his ‘ego’ in check. Flaherty was ridiculed for his inept grasp of the crisis by banks and finance capital that sensed a shift in the rapidly militant political awareness of Canadian workers.
Harper’s parliamentary neo-con ploy was about to bring down the now fully entrenched capital interests of finance, oil and military profiteers. The crass hardened right-wing Reform ideological political aspirations of Prime Minster Harper threatened to expose the secret backroom deals and parasitical crooks of the new emerging power circle around the policies of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE). It endangered a powerful ruling elite who were tasked to administer the nation’s resources in their own interests and along with it access to public funds to keep their Ponzi schemes running.
During this tense period, where it seemed that Harper’s minority Reform Party base would suffer a crushing defeat, the left sat in an almost total state of paralysis and confusion unable to react or mount any minimal form of an offensive while this momentary weakness and disarray gripped Canadian ruling circles.
Instead of mobilizing workers, and quickly responding to the disorientation within ruling circles, the left remained committed to dogmatic slogans and hyper-left sectarian policies of a ‘plague on all your houses’ nonsense. The transitory weakness within the ruling class, as it shook off the remnants of centre-left ‘Dionism’, was met by the Alberta left by dressing up as fairies, elves and smurfs and marching on Mordor.
While this weakness, expressed in calls by a fearful ruling class for ‘cooperation’ and to rally in a less confrontational and less ‘partisan’ manner to address the ‘challenges’ the economic crisis pose to the well being of ‘all’ Canadians, may seem to be fleeting, it is in fact a permanent state of crisis. Within the ruling circles of monopoly capital there are sharp differences of opinion on how to get out of the crisis.
Monopoly capital is far from united. They have manufactured a temporary alliance and truce in the face of rapid rise in workers’ consciousness. Attempts to protect profits and privilege on the backs of a shrinking labour force are being hammered out in secret backroom deals with the newly appointed Economic Advisory Committee of the most powerful business elite in the country.
Conditions that arouse within the December Crisis have not been extinguished, smouldering in the backrooms of finance and industrial monopoly associations and owners. These conflicts will rise again in new forms and crises. Preparing for the next round of crises is essential for Canadian workers. The left must assume a greater role in the development of the ground work.
Parliament may witness a new round of sharp political antagonisms when it returns for the new Flaherty budget in January. These conflicts within capital may emerge in new forms of political alliances and struggle. Or the return may witness a new united right. Either way the left will be called upon to engage in the struggle to defeat Harper in a more militant way.
The economic crisis is revealing the current state of weaknesses and confusion within the left, from communists to social democrats and all variants in-between. It is exposing just how pathetic the left is in its ability to respond to reaction. Canadian workers are suffering a most brutal and protracted attack on their economic well being. Not only are Canadian workers being attacked but the fate of the Canadian state is being challenged. Patriotic Canadians are alarmed at the direction that the reactionary policies of Harper are taking the nation.
It is within this context that a challenge must be launched that exposes, not only the reactionary Harper administration, but hyper-left petty bourgeois sensibilities while at the same time placing before workers programs that can be fought for and united around in their own interests. In reality these forces on the hyper-left are reactionary in nature and in the service of the ruling class.
The economic and material basis of the petty bourgeois does not correspond to that of the working class. Their comfort and privilege is at the expense of workers, and their compensation comes from acting as parasitical agents of the ruling class, some unwittingly, others consciously. This trend is particularly evident within the left intelligentsia centred within the Socialist Project, environmental left and those that garner favour within those circles and seek to be ‘published’. They have a tremendous influence on organized labour and within developing revolutionary youth.
The need to combat this trend is urgent. From the Smoke Pit will be publishing excerpts from an on going and larger study that looks into these trends within the petty bourgeois classes, primarily the phoney eco-socialist movement. The study will address the need for energy as the material basis for Canada’s economic and political development. It will look at the historical development of energy within Canada as guide to action. It will draw heavily from the monumental works of Tim Buck.
It is because of this and a plethora of other environmental nonsense while Canadian workers are in a virtual state of economic siege by the ruling class that has compelled me to take on this on going commentary. The articles will be called ‘Let ‘em Eat Root Vegetables’. This title refers to a particular nasty response and sentiment to an article posted to an Alberta left political discussion bulletin board by someone who is afflicted by this hyper-leftist rubbish. This is where the discussion will begin.
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