EDITORIAL After the federal election

he federal election is over and there is little to cheer party in the US. about. Our situation threatens to go from bad to What about the NDP? From a Left and activist perspec- worse, and many worry that the worst is yet to come tive there was nothing to cheer about in the Jack Layton Tunder the Tories. Things will not change for the better campaign and its appeals to “working families.” The direction unless large numbers of people recognize the danger signals of the federal NDP has become crystal clear — it is moving and mobilize to defend their rights and interests. to the right. The NDP differentiated itself a little by oppos- The Liberals faithfully served corporate interests, while ing corporate tax cuts, privatization of health and the Bush cynically promising reforms that were never delivered. Martin agenda. But it called for a balanced budget, promised no new helped paved the way for the Tories through huge cuts in corporate taxes, offered its version of “get tough on crime” federal program spending and transfers to the provinces, and refused to challenge the Canadian military’s role in increased military spending and Canadian intervention in warlike occupations. Afghanistan and Haiti. The NDP may sometimes try and act as a parliamentary A clear majority of people voted against the Tories, so the brake on the Tories. But Layton’s talk about cooperating to Tory minority government does not signify strong support “make parliament work” makes it plain that the NDP wants for a right turn or social conservatism. And as a minority to avoid bringing down the Tory minority government, for government, the Tories face constraints on what they can fear that voters who buy into the reactionary “we don’t want achieve. another election” sentiment would punish the NDP at the However, the last thing social movements and the Left polls. should do is sigh, say it could have been worse and go back The Conservatives will only be defeated if they are chal- to sleep. We should not make the mistake of underestimating lenged in society at large by visible and vocal opposition our enemies. The Tory campaign showed that Harper was not organizing itself and taking to the streets. Many do not want a bungler but a man on a mission. to take the Harper agenda lying down. New Socialist calls for The Tories may decide to bide their time and strike a rela- people to not to give the new government a chance. tively moderate pose, except on issues such as a crime where Renewed mobilization by unions, anti-poverty groups, the right-wing tide is running high. However, no one should students and a strengthened anti-war & anti-intervention be fooled. If they succeed in obtaining a majority in the next movement are our weapons to defeat Harper. There is a election they will ruthlessly implement an anti-worker, anti- crying need for a new women’s movement to defend the exist- woman, anti-queer, anti-environmental, racist and militarist ing hard-won right to choose and to win universal quality agenda. public child care services. People who have experienced the right-wing Campbell and It has been a decade since the last major pan-Canadian Harris governments in BC and Ontario know what this mobilization against the federal government around domestic means. Big tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy have issues: the 1996 women’s march against poverty organized by inevitable consequences, gutting badly-needed public services unions and the women’s movement. This of activism and the and increasing privatization in areas such as health care. timid conservatism of the Canadian Labour Congress leader- In the absence of rising, outwardly-engaged movements ship means that for now mobilization against the Tories will and radical ideas, this election seemed isolated and marginal. probably be on a small scale unless they miscalculate and try But this need not be a permanent state of affairs. The current to push through a particularly unpopular measure. situation is dangerous but also holds opportunities. Nevertheless, it is essential to be involved in the rebirth of opposition and struggle. This is the best way to block Tory HOW CAN THE TORY AGENDA BE DEFEATED? plans and make the next government less likely to launch a Some will look to elect the Liberals as the lesser evil. This new round of attacks. election CAW President Buzz Hargrove go so far as to ally Only a new wave of protest and resistance can create hope himself with Paul Martin, abandoning any notion of and new possibilities for positive political initiatives on the working-class political action independent of the parties of Left, just as the global justice movement did in 2000-2001. the ruling class. This is the road to nowhere. The last thing New Socialist looks forward to being a forum for discussing we need is a Liberal-labour alliance akin to the Democratic how we can best fight back and win.

new 2 SOCIALIST Box 167, 253 College St. new Toronto, ON M5T 1R5 (416) 955-1581 [email protected] SOCIALIST www.newsocialist.org Issue #55: February-March 2006 NEW SOCIALIST offers radical analysis of politics, social movements and culture in the Canadian state and internationally. Our magazine is a forum for people HOMEFRONT who want to strengthen today’s activism and for those who wish to Disability rights and immigration ...... Ravi Malhotra 4 replace global capitalism with a Lessons from the BC teachers strike ...... Harold Lavender 8 genuinely democratic socialism. We believe that the liberation of the (Re)imagining Canadian nationalism ...... Harsha Walia 12 working class and oppressed peoples can be won only through their own struggles. For more information RESISTING IMPERIALISM about the publisher of this magazine, the New Socialist Group, please see The legacies of national liberation ...... David Finkel 15 the inside back cover. Indigenous resurgence and the new warrior ...... Taiaiake Alfred 18 EDITORS Todd Gordon The de-commodification of water ...... Susan Spronk 22 Sebastian Lamb Will Evo Morales change Bolivia? ...... Jeffery R. Webber 25 Harold Lavender Jeff Webber France: Shock waves of a popular revolt ...... Murray Smith 28

EDITORIAL INTERNS Western intervention in Yugoslavia ...... Rade Zinaic 30 Dave Brophy Clarice Kuhling Feminist struggle in Bolivia: An interview ...... Jeffery R. Webber 32 Keith O’Regan

EDITORIAL ASSOCIATES Richard Banner REVIEWS Neil Braganza Jackie Esmonde Da Vinci’s City Hall ...... Susan Ferguson 35 Susan Ferguson Denise Hammond The Island ...... Clarice Kuhling 35 Alex Levant Canada in Haiti ...... Harold Lavender 38 Morgan MacLeod David McNally Rebels, Reds, Radicals ...... Jim Naylor 41 Sandra Sarner Hamid Sodeifi Tony Tracy TIME TO ORGANIZE ...... 43 DESIGN & COVERS Greg Sharzer (Front/back covers) Sandra Sarner (Design/Layout). Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the Editors or members of the New Socialist Group.

New Socialist is a member of the CMPA. Printed at JT Printing, a union shop

new SOCIALIST 3 Disability rights and immigration

BY RAVI MALHOTRA

n recent years, activist organizations such as “No One is Illegal” and One issue that has been almost entirely ignored by Left I“Justicia for Migrant Workers” have played an important role in raising organizations and activists is the virtual exclusion of publicity and solidarity about the serious and systemic problems that many undoc- people with disabilities as potential immigrants. umented immigrants and refugees experi- ence in the Canadian immigration system as well as their exploitation in informal labour markets. In light of the skimming the most desirable immigrants barrier is the widespread and pernicious nationalist politics that still dominate that will benefit Canadian capital and attitudes that regard people with disabili- much of the English Canadian Left and corporations through their labour, while ties as incompetent, pathetic, asexual and its marked tendency to regard the rejecting those who are deemed to have fundamentally “inauthentic workers” to Canadian state as a bastion of progress no marketable value. use a phrase coined by legal scholar Vicki and enlightenment untouched by the Schultz. People with disabilities remain blemishes of racism or vicious class THE SOCIAL MODEL OF DISABLEMENT far more likely to be impoverished, exploitation, this solidarity work has been unemployed and have lower levels of extraordinarily important in exposing an Before one can fully appreciate the education than the average Canadian, yet uglier and strategically crucial side of how issue, it is important to begin with a solid the issue barely registers on the radar of capitalism really operates. However, one appreciation of disability discrimination, most of the political Left. issue that has been almost entirely an awareness often lacking across all Challenging all of these barriers is the ignored by left organizations and segments of the Left. Disability is best project of the young but growing and activists, time and again, is the virtual understood as a political issue that impli- increasingly vibrant disability rights exclusion of people with disabilities as cates the structural barriers that handicap movement. These activists embrace a potential immigrants under the people with disabilities, whether they be philosophy known as the social model of Canadian Immigration and Refugee mobility, sensory, intellectual or mental disablement, which can be regarded as Protection Act. Also ignored are the efforts health disabilities. While there are differ- complimentary to feminist theories of by disability rights activists to challenge ent theories of disablement that vary patriarchy or queer theories of heterosex- these exclusions. slightly in their details, the overwhelming ism. The social model of disablement The failure of activists to take up the focus is on the barriers rather than the contrasts with the medical model that rights of disabled immigrants reveals two physiological impairment in the disabled focuses on the disabled person’s physio- major social problems with profound person’s body. These include a lack of logical impairment as the basis for public implications for the Left: (i) the contin- wheelchair access in every conceivable policy. ued marginalization of issues affecting type of public space ranging from univer- Despite the explosion of literature on people with disabilities and their theoret- sities to bookstores to restaurants and new social movements in the last three ical analysis on the activist Left; and (ii) a nightclubs. One glimpse at a campus decades, a genuine appreciation of missed opportunity for better appreciat- such as the University of Toronto or disability oppression is surprisingly scarce ing how, despite liberal fantasies about Queen’s will make this point very evident on the Canadian Left where disabilities multiculturalism, the immigration to even the most casual observer. are most commonly regarded as personal system fundamentally is about cream Other barriers include a massive failure medical problems rather than political to provide materials required for work, issues. At the same time, awareness in school or recreation in formats accessible society has increased because of both Ravi Malhotra is a disability rights activist to blind and visually impaired people in a in Ottawa and a member of the New grassroots mobilization and conscious- timely manner. A most significant social Democratic Party. ness raising by disability rights advocates new 4 SOCIALIST and because of publicity and real, if very role in this policy, it also signifies the fact limited and contradictory, legal gains that that families of certain classes of immi- NEW SOCIALIST welcomes people with disabilities have won by the grant workers were regarded as economi- letters and other contributions. inclusion of disability discrimination in cally inefficient and therefore irrelevant the various provincial and federal human for the needs of Canadian capital accu- Please write to us at rights codes and in the equality provision mulation. [email protected] of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Similarly, people with disabilities have Freedoms. In the case of the Charter, a historically been excluded as inadmissible document that has achieved almost because the explicit point of immigration legendary status on the nationalist and other Western countries became Canadian Left, disability discrimination almost a scientific norm that was gener- was only prohibited after mobilization by ally accepted as sound public policy. disability rights activists to have the orig- Disability is best Eugenics was a dysfunctional attempt inal exclusionary version of the docu- to improve society through a misuse of ment amended. understood as a political science by weeding out, through segrega- tion or sterilization, those elements that JUSTIFYING THE EXCLUSION OF were regarded as inferior. While people MIGRANTS WITH DISABILITIES issue that implicates the with mental and physical disabilities were With this background in mind, it always a prime target of proponents of becomes much easier to appreciate the structural barriers that eugenics, this philosophy was also deeply poor treatment of people with disabilities imbued with racist, sexist and classist under provisions in both the original handicap people with ideas from start to finish. Indeed, eugen- Immigration Act and the Immigration and ics thinking was so widely accepted that Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) that was such unlikely and otherwise progressive enacted to replace it in 2002. Canada’s disabilities, whether they figures as the suffragette Nellie McClung system of immigration has always been and J.S. Woodsworth, the first leader of about bringing the most economically be mobility, sensory, the social democratic Cooperative desirable workers into the country Commonwealth Federation (CCF), regardless of the implications for the intellectual or mental endorsed the concept. Relying on the immigrants’ quality of life. principles of eugenics, nearly three thou- While it is true that family reunifica- sand Albertans and a smaller number of tion has often been touted as a major health disabilities. British Columbians who were deemed to policy goal, at least in the sense of the have “mental defects”, in particular heterosexual nuclear family, this has only women, teenagers and indigenous been selectively applied. For instance, peoples, were sterilized. The Alberta Chinese men who were granted immigra- policy has always been to have the most Eugenics Board was not abolished until tion status to build the Canadian railway efficient and productive pool of immi- 1972 and compensation payments to system were notoriously prevented from grants possible. With the rise of the sterilized adults were not made in most bringing their families with them and eugenics movement, very prominent in cases until the late 1990s. such discriminatory policies regarding the late nineteenth and early twentieth Canadian legislation prohibiting the the landing of Asian immigrants contin- centuries until it was discredited in the entry of immigrants with disabilities may ued into the 1950s. While there is no aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust, exclud- in fact be traced back to the 1850s, prior doubt that racism played a significant ing people with disabilities in Canada to Confederation. There was always a particular fear of admitting people with mental health or intellectual disabilities. What is remarkable, and perhaps indi- cates how immigration policy was affected by the eugenics paradigm, is the fact that prior to amendments to the Immigration Act in 1927 people with disabilities who were able to demonstrate that their families would permanently provide financial support were admitted. Only after 1927 were people with disabil- ities entirely prohibited. Canada was not Welcome? Not alone in creating such policies, and for those with particularly poignant are anecdotes of US disabilities immigration officials who would write

new SOCIALIST 5 letters in chalk on the backs of prospec- tive immigrants who had disembarked by ship to indicate various disabilities that could potentially be grounds for deporta- tion or exclusion. In fact, Canadian legis- lation in this era fined ship operators for transporting passengers with disabilities. EXCESSIVE BURDENS Although eugenics has been justifiably marginalized in the post-war period, the basis for excluding people with disabili- ties has simply shifted from overt biolog- ical inferiority to concerns that people with disabilities cannot make valuable contributions to the economy and/or constitute an excessive burden on health or social services. This type of language was codified in amendments to the Immigration Act in 1976. Unfortunately, despite the growth of a disability rights movement in the last thirty years and especially since the mid- 1980s, the immigration system has proven to be a staunch bastion of discrimination against people with disabilities and plays, at a time of neo- liberal cutbacks, on public perceptions of a health care system that faces ruin at the hands of costly foreigners with complex medical issues. This is ironic because hostility to immigrants with disabilities clearly long predates the establishment of Medicare. Until very recently, prohibi- tions on immigration applied not simply to working-age immigrants but even to grants, even though physicians simply are family class. Despite the fact that she was dependent spouses and children as well not in any position to accurately assess a very highly educated woman, immigra- because of fears that they would impose how a specific physiological impairment tion authorities had concluded that she an excessive demand on health or social will interact with the social environment was not eligible to immigrate merely services. to create a particular economic outcome. because it was believed her disability would cause an excessive demand on The discredited “medical model” of DISABILITY RIGHTS ACTIVISTS disability is at the core of this system. FIGHT BACK health and social services. She was Physicians have the power to make deci- permitted to enter Canada with a There have been attempts to challenge sions about the admissibility of immi- “Minister’s Permit”, hardly an appropri- this blatant discrimination in Canadian ate resolution as this permit only bestows courts. In Chesters v. Canada, a plaintiff a precarious status in Canada for a challenged the constitutionality of a temporary period during which she was provision of the old Immigration Act that not entitled to work or receive social deemed individuals to be inadmissible for benefits. immigration if there were reasonable In 2002, the Federal Court (Trial grounds to believe the prospective immi- Division) dismissed her case. Basing its grant would place an excessive demand reasoning on the long history of back- on health or social services. ward legal precedents that state that no The case concerned a German citizen person has a “right” to entry to Canada, who was diagnosed with multiple sclero- the Federal Court bizarrely ruled that her sis and used a wheelchair. She had legal challenge was not about equality married a Canadian citizen and applied rights for people with disabilities but for permanent residence as part of the merely about challenging the provision

new 6 SOCIALIST Why should advocates of social justice accept the law, ought to be valued by their labour power as determined by the marketplace? This is a crass form of commodification concept that immigrants with disabilities ought to that has to be challenged by both immi- grants and non-immigrants. be valued by their labour power as determined by In a powerful piece that appeared recently in the American socialist journal the marketplace? This is a crass form of Monthly Review, American disability rights activist and painter Sunny Taylor has eloquently made the case for not commodification that has to be challenged by both valuing the lives of people with disabili- ties by their ability to work in the capital- immigrants and non-immigrants. ist marketplace. Instead, any genuine movement for social justice would encompass a broader notion of human constraining immigrants who would burden on social services.” This decision flourishing that did not tie human worth place excessive demands on Canadian is helpful in that it undermines what to the capacity to perform wage labour. health or social services. This circular would otherwise be the wholesale exclu- Disability rights activism on immigration mode of specious reasoning completely sion of people with disabilities. Its issues only underscores this point as well ignores the fact that medical inadmissi- impact, however, will likely only be as showing the main focus of the immi- bility criteria only screen potential immi- enjoyed by wealthier immigrants, such as gration system is toward facilitating prof- grants on the basis of health conditions those who have already been accepted in itability. (and not other potentially costly lifestyle the “Investor” and “Self-Employed” cate- Disability rights activism on immigra- conditions) and the fact that people with gories, and can therefore provide reason- tion issues also opens up the possibility disabilities can make important contribu- able evidence of resources and supports for a more multiracial disability rights tions to the economy. to persuade immigration authorities that activism that has until recently been very One small ray of hope in all this is the the family is able to absorb any potential white. The last conference of the Society fact that the much criticized Immigration social costs of their children’s disabilities. for Disability Studies, which is one of the and Refugee Protection Act that has main centres of disability scholarship and replaced the old Immigration Act no VALUING THE LIVES OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES activism in the United States and beyond, longer prohibits immigrants with disabil- experienced a critique and mobilization ities who are: (a) being sponsored by a There nevertheless remains a major from and by disabled people of colour Canadian spouse; (b) being sponsored by problem. Despite these positive changes, who have felt marginalized by a disability a Canadian parent in the case of depend- the vast majority of potential immigrants rights movement that has often ignored ent children; or (c) individuals who have with disabilities, such as independent their concerns. Immigration activism on been granted refugee status in Canada. applicants or sponsored immigrants who disability issues provides the basis for These three categories of immigrants are are neither spouses nor children, are still greater solidarity across disparate now permitted to become landed immi- subjected to demeaning testing to deter- constituencies in the hope of building grants in Canada regardless of any impact mine whether their disabilities cause an another world of social justice. on the health care system or social serv- excessive demand on health or social serv- ices. For all its many flaws that have ices. Such an approach appears attracted justified criticism from the Left, completely devoid of any true under- this particular feature of the new Act is a standing of the social model of disable- RECOMMENDED READINGS positive reform. ment and regards disability in an entirely Also positive news is the very recent negative light, detached from the social Marta Russell, Beyond Ramps: decision by the Supreme Court of environment that handicaps and discrim- Disability at the End of the Social Canada in Hilewitz v. Canada. In that inates against people with disabilities. Contract (Common Courage Press). case, the Supreme Court has instructed The reality is that many immigrants with immigration authorities to look at the disabilities have talents and gifts that can Barrie Boone, “The Left and family circumstances of disabled children make a contribution to Canadian society. Disability” in Against the Current of immigrants, including financial There is also a deeper dilemma for #115 (March/April 2005). resources and community supports. In advocates of social justice as well as other words, immigrants who would disability rights activists. Why should Michael Oliver, The Politics of normally be excluded because of their advocates of social justice accept the Disablement (Macmillan). disabled children, can now come to concept that immigrants with disabilities, Canada if they can show they have finan- regardless of their classification in the Sunny Taylor, “The Right Not to cial and other resources to support their hideously complex bureaucracy that is Work: Power and Disability” in children without posing an “excessive contemporary Canadian immigration Monthly Review (March 2004).

new SOCIALIST 7 Lessons from the BC teachers strike

BY HAROLD LAVENDER

our hundred thousand BC teachers staged an illegal two-week strike in FOctober 2005, in defiance of the BC Liberal government. What lessons can be learned to advance workers’ struggles in BC? In November, Left Turn organized a panel of four union activists, Lisa Descary of the BC Teachers’ Federation, Will Offley of the BC Nurses’ Union, Gretchen Dulmage of the Hospital

Employees’ Union, and Laurence Boxall DESCARY LISA of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union. Will Offley described the outcome of the teachers strike as “a tie but what a tie.” He noted the teachers had seized the right BC Fed rally in support of teachers, October 2005. to strike, saying, “you are not given the right to strike. You take the right to strike. “If you asked me at the beginning of teachers it was victory because they were And in so doing the BCTF has September whether my staff would go in a “morally justified struggle” to defend profoundly transformed the political situ- out on an illegal strike with no strike pay public education. ation in BC.” and be totally solid, I would have said not Part of the reason for the BCTF’s The Liberals were unable to crush the on your life.” The situation, she said, was achievement, Lisa mentioned, has to do BCTF. Instead, in December 2005 they repeated across the province. with the democratic nature of the BCTF. announced a U-turn in public sector Indeed, a lot of teachers made surpris- Since 1978, a Left caucus in the BCTF bargaining tactics. ingly leaps during the strike, she noted. A called Teacher’s Viewpoint has sought to Finance Minister Carole Taylor middle-aged female teacher, a first-gener- make the BCTF a grassroots federation announced there was a $6 billion pot for ation Canadian married to a business- that listens to the voice of individual public sector wage increases. Ninety per man, told Lisa after 48 hours, “What we teachers in local unions. “I believe we are cent of public sector contracts in BC really need is a general strike. That would pretty much that way today,” Lisa said. expire March 31, 2006. Taylor offered solve the problem.” Another teacher who She pointed out that a pre-strike vote substantial bonuses for signing early and grew up in Shaughnessy (a very wealthy allowed teachers to vote on whether to for signing contracts that don’t expire area of Vancouver) confided, “We need to return to work and not allow the execu- until 2010 (after the Olympics). stay out three months. That would do it.” tive to make that decision. According to Lisa, the teachers went on “We expect that type of democracy. A TEACHERS WON A PARTIAL VICTORY strike for three things. This included (1) lot of us were shocked when we joined the Lisa Descary, a teacher in Richmond, is staffing levels and working conditions BC Federation of Labour. Delegates are her school staff union rep and was elected stripped away by the Liberals; (2) bound at convention and can’t vote their as a BCTF delegate to the convention of bargaining rights (teachers had been conscience. And there is not the kind of the BC Federation of Labour. Why, she declared an essential service by the BC free and open debate we have come to asked, was the BCTF able to pull off at Liberals); and (3) a fair salary hike. expect. The BCTF has democratic culture least a partial victory when other unions “We didn’t really win any of those and in keeping with that culture we have not? things. Initially, some of us didn’t think elected a leader [BCTF President Ginnie this was a victory,” Lisa admitted. But Sims] who is very focused on democracy... “What made the strike really positive was She could not just go ahead and sell us Harold Lavender is a member of the New out – not that she would. Some people Socialist editorial board. the unity of the teachers.” For a lot of

new 8 SOCIALIST were expecting Ginnie Sims would be Those of us who are active in our unions need to look at the forced to make a backroom deal. She transformation of each of our unions as a necessary step by which actually said to me, ‘It was difficult to the Fed begins to change. Will Offley stand up to the pressure.’” What is next? In the spring, the teach- The most exciting incidence of class war I have ever experienced ers’ CUPE colleagues (non-teaching inside Canada or South Africa. Laurence Boxall school employees, who refused to cross teachers’ picket lines) could be out again. Lisa says she believes teachers will honour BCTF members for standing firm. It of a clique at the top but “a social layer, CUPE pickets, even though the strike shows you can push a little further.” tightly interconnected, aware of and cost them $2,000 to $3,000 last time Gretchen emphasized that “the only defensive of its own interests... Those of with no concrete gains. weapon workers have to win their us who are active in our unions need to look at the transformation of each of our HEALTH WORKERS EXEC CUT A DEAL demands is the strike, and if unions forget that, we are in deep trouble.” unions as a necessary step by which the Gretchen Dulmage, vice-chair of the CEP union member Laurence Boxall Fed begins to change.” Health Employees’ Union local at described the teachers strike as “the most What accounted for the difference in Women’s and Children’s Hospital and a exciting incidence of class war I have ever the outcome of the teachers’ and HEU member of Solidarity Caucus, compared experienced inside Canada or South strikes, and the difference in the morale her experiences in the 2004 HEU strike. Africa.” Teachers told him, “I don’t like in the labour movement after the strikes? 43,000 health care workers were legis- to do stuff that is illegal. But I have no Will pointed to the unity of the teach- lated back to work after four days of pick- choice. I owe it to my students.” ers, which catalyzed an immense degree eting, but continued to strike until the This time, the role of the labour lead- of support among the population as a union executive cut a deal [under pres- ership was “transparent.” BC Fed presi- whole and among other unionists. sure from the BC Fed leaders], which dent Jim Sinclair went on the media He also said it was a “textbook case” of was, Gretchen says, “way worse than the talking about a teachers’ pact to return to a union being transformed in two weeks deal we had rejected a year earlier.” work before the BCTF had even heard of struggle, with members’ consciousness The union avoided putting the deal to about it. being permanently changed. a vote of the membership saying it was What needs to be done? According to For Will, “the strike was a just cause.” not a contract negotiation or a strike, but Laurence, “We need to build to build a He said the teachers’ demands in terms of an illegal protest and negotiations with rank and file movement... We need to working conditions and maintenance of the government over legislation. change both the structure and leadership public education made it possible to win She asked, “Why did they settle for a of the BC Fed” and heal the rift between the support of the majority of the popu- deal that was so bad?” Labour leaders union and community from the betrayal lation of BC. “Teachers were not seen as were not ready for the BC Liberals’ no- of Solidarity in 1983, as well as fight greedy public sector workers holding the holds-barred efforts to break the power of privatization at all levels. Stressing that public to ransom but as defenders of our unions, and the public sector unions in the power of solidarity is the main tool of children and our future.” particular, she said. This, “after we had struggle, he called on unions to join put ourselves on the line, said we were He said, “We need to find a way to fuse March 18 protests against the war in our demands of working conditions, ready to go to jail and lose out jobs.” Iraq. Today, Gretchen sees something more benefits and wages with the need to heartening. “I saw something different TRANSFORMING THE UNION deliver the public services that the popu- with the teachers. Ginnie Sims stayed out MOVEMENT lation of BC needs.” He added, “We saw for far longer under [the government’s] Will Offley said he was speaking for the unity that came from the democratic pressure than our leaders. She insisted himself not the BCNU, although he hopes organizing of the BCTF and democratic there was going to be a vote, and the to convince the union of his positions. control of the membership.” membership – and nobody else – “The process of transforming the Fed and Will pointed to the role of grassroots decides.” ending the string of betrayals that have activists. In Victoria, the Community The HEU contract is up on March 31. taken place over the last number of years is Solidarity Coalition shut down much of Gretchen feels that members are quite an organic process.” the city to support teachers. “They were determined. “We are really indebted to Will argued it was not just a problem the ones who knew the work sites, the shift times, the entrances. The Fed had to ask them for information. The Fed didn’t We expect that type of democracy. The BCTF has democratic culture know how to do it. They were the back- bone of the action. We need to take this and we elected a president who is very focused on democracy. into account in our organizing, whether Lisa Descary we are union members or not.” We are really indebted to BCTF members for standing firm. It shows you can push a little further. Gretchen Dulmage

new SOCIALIST 9 (Re)imagining Canadian nationalism BY HARSHA WALIA

This article is a continuation of New Socialist’s ongoing the narrow perspective that looks at discussion of Canada and Empire. The next issue will feature Canada mainly in relation to the US a contribution from Canadian Dimension editor Cy Gonick. instead of placing Canada in relation to Other contributions to the discussion are welcome. the entire global system, we can appreci- ate how Canadian capitalists and govern- ments are globally dominant, not domi- he various articles in the New white South Africa. After all, the legisla- nated.” Socialist special issue on “Canada tion to keep blacks down in South Africa and Empire” offer a powerful was modeled upon legislation drafted and NATIONALISM OF THE OPPRESSOR, T NATIONALISM OF THE OPPRESSED critique of Canadian left-nationalism and used in Canada against Indigenous the ways in which it serves as a shield Peoples.” These articles offer a nuanced under- against examining Canada’s own policies Slavery has historically been practiced standing of Canadian nationalism by of oppression both within and beyond its in Canada and its present-day manifesta- implicitly distinguishing the “oppressor borders. tion continues with an apartheid system nationalism” of Canada from the Canada is thought to be a peaceful and of labour in which migrants are legislated “nationalisms of the oppressed.” The compassionate society. Internationally, into vulnerability and invisibility in order nationalism of the oppressed has often Canada is seen as the peacekeeper. Most to provide a hyper-exploitable pool of been characterized as “anti-statist nation- Canadians perceive the US as the greatest labour without rights of settlement or alism” as it embodies the shared identity threat to and oppressor of the dependent social/political enfranchisement. On the and collective feelings, thought and and helpless Canadian nation. For global stage, while the US is perceived as behaviour of a community often without example, the Council of Canadians over having been the sole imperialist hege- geographic, economic or political bound- the past few years has used the slogan of monic power over the past six decades, aries. As Alfredo M. Bonanno writes, “Canada: Country or Colony?” to point Canada has lent its support to imperial- “Nationality is not a principle; it is a to military, border and trade integration ism – through complicity and overt legitimate fact, just as individuality is. agreements, suggesting that Canada is in support – in Vietnam, East Timor, Every nationality, great or small, has the a colonial relationship with the US. The Afghanistan, Haiti, Palestine and Iraq. incontestable right to be itself, to live myth of Canadian benevolence and the Finally, contrary to popular Left senti- according to its own nature. This right is veneer of Canadian multiculturalism has ment, Canada is no less favorable to simply the corollary of the general princi- further perpetuated the illusion of being corporate rule than the US. The better pal of freedom.” the Northern underdog and served to social benefits such as public healthcare Such nationalist movements express a cast Canada as a liberal counterpoint to enjoyed in Canada as compared with popular anti-colonial sentiment and US imperialism. those in the US are not due to the good- provide a platform for oppressed peoples However, as the various articles in the will of any progressive Canadian govern- to organize against imperialism, as last issue of New Socialist reveal, the very ment; in reality, they are a product of past witnessed by historical national liberation foundation of Canada is built on the working-class struggles. struggles across the Third World. blood and holocaust of indigenous This reality of Canadian capitalism, Although nationalist movements have peoples. Cree lawyer Sharon Venne has colonialism and imperialism is well artic- historically imitated and led to statist written, “Canada, the great peacekeeping ulated throughout the articles in the last forms of organization – for example, the nation, must maintain its international issue of New Socialist. As David McNally partition of India and Pakistan has image because its treatment of writes, “This is the ugly face of a middle manufactured a patriotic and fundamen- Indigenous Peoples makes its human level imperialist power that pretends that, talist defense of these arbitrarily defined rights record as black as the record of because it lacks the aggressive capacity of states – other nationalist trajectories of US imperialism, it has no imperialist self-determination are possible as interests of its own.” Sebastian Lamb witnessed through the Zapatista struc- Harsha Walia is a writer and activist further writes on this blind spot of the tures of governance in Chiapas. currently residing in Vancouver, BC. Canadian Left: “when we break out of This nationalism of the oppressed is

new 10 SOCIALIST quite unlike Canadian statist national- Canadian nationalist discourse, the Canadian nationalism ism, which is itself predicated on the arbi- Canadian state is perceived as a bulwark trary existence of the Canadian state – a of necessary protection, and the illusion must mean autonomy, legal and political community and of the state as a place of safety is main- socially-constructed identity established tained through bureaucratic organiza- popular sovereignty and by deliberate action. State formation has tions – such as the military, federal intel- historically served to displace the free ligence and immigration apparatus – full self-determination confederations of tribes and communi- which produce the sense that “The for all those who occupy ties, and the Canadian state has Enemy” is outside the realm of “us.” attempted to create a cultural nation of Catherine Dauvergne has written, “one the Canada. its own by denying the nationhood of reason why the concept of ‘national inter- indigenous peoples that constitutes it. est’ is so vital to immigration law is because of the role this law plays in CANADIAN NATIONALISM legislation granting intelligence and law AND BORDER CONTROLS constituting the nation.” Immigration law determines who becomes part of the enforcement agencies much broader “All borders are acts of state violence Canadian community. The impetus powers of intrusion into people’s private inscribed in landscape. Every wall and towards cracking down on migration lives, pervasive government and media fence, checkpoint and pillbox, is a sundering therefore demonstrates Canada asserting censorship of information, the silencing of the integrity of nature and the rights of its sovereignty and control. of dissent and the widespread racial man. The very existence of exclusionary The ongoing use of the dichotomous profiling and criminalization of Muslim, borders, as all great radical thinkers have rhetoric of “us and them” – particularly Arab and South Asian communities. understood, constitutes a permanent crisis of after the events of 9/11 – is rooted in the Security certificates have been used to human liberty.” colonial legacy that makes racially- arbitrarily detain five Muslim men on Mike Davis & Alessandra Moctezuma oppressed communities “The Enemy” secret evidence in complete defiance of that can then only exist outside of the their basic civil rights. Legislation such as Canadian nationalism emphasizes the nation. For example, during World War the Immigration and Refugee Protection nation as a contained entity threatened Two, Japanese Canadians were desig- Act and the Anti-Terrorism Act has by outside forces wishing to destroy it nated as “enemy aliens” and over 22,000 strengthened the association between and its members. Borders have been were relocated or interned. Similarly, terrorism and immigration. presented as a site through which crimi- despite the fact that Canada is home to Therefore Canadian nationalism nality is able to seep into the state. As many of Arab origin, because the racial- cannot simply mean sovereignty from the Margaret Beare put it, “the imagery is ized image of “The Enemy” after 9/11 United States. As Samir Hussain has often of floodgates giving way in front of includes all Arabs, the notion of the written, “simply ‘being better’ than the a sea of criminals, as waves of immigrants Canadian nation must necessarily exclude United States of America (or ‘American enter the country.” This state-building Arab-Canadians. This then justifies their citizens’) is hardly a cause for celebration exercise requires ways to legitimize the treatment as hyphenated citizens – a – indeed, this is not a difficult achieve- global apartheid system of regulating citi- group excluded from, and in opposition ment.” It must also mean autonomy, zenship. One way this is done is to create to, the Canadian nation. By comparison, popular sovereignty and full self-determi- a public consciousness about the “unde- after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing nation for all those who occupy the terri- sirable migrant”: a welfare bum, a crimi- by far right white supremacists there was tories of Canada, particularly indigenous nal, a terrorist. no profiling or registration system of peoples and racialized migrants. Yet the reality of migration is one that white men aged 18-45. Sakej Henderson argues that “the more reveals the asymmetrical relations This normalization of whiteness within people become aware of the conditional- between “rich” and “poor,” between the Canadian state allows for the unfet- ity of a context, the more likely they are North and South, where the effects of tered and unchallenged consequences of able to effect meaningful change to that colonialism and corporate globalization the “War on Terrorism”. This includes context.” Rather than awkwardly have created political economies that massive arrests and the interrogation of embracing a Canadian nationalism that compel people to move. Still, within the immigrants and refugees, the passing of emphasizes the state’s absolute and hier- archical authority, we must articulate and defend the importance of maintaining We must articulate and defend the free, equal and reciprocal relations between all human beings and the land. importance of maintaining free, equal Such relationships, along with a more global and comprehensive analysis of and reciprocal relations between all colonialism, capitalism and racism create the battleground for building a broad and human beings and the land. powerful revolutionary grassroots move- ment.

new SOCIALIST 11 The legacies of national liberation

BY DAVID FINKEL

To grasp the changes that the national liberation move- ments of the 1960s and 70s produced, suppose first that you were looking at a world atlas circa 1960. On the continent of Africa alone, you’d find countries with names like Tanganyika, Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, South West Africa, French Equatorial Guinea, Belgian Congo and the like. The transformation from that map to Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, etc. far transcends the names on paper – it marked practically a new epoch, a change every bit as profound as the collapse of Stalinism and the 1990s transition from the Cold War to corporate globalization. Some aspects of the transformation were not anticipated by Colonial southern Africa classical Marxist theories of imperialism, which had devel- oped in the wake of the late 19th century carving up of the and had dragged civilization into two world wars. Sometimes world into colonial empires. For decades thereafter it was the colonial power ceded sovereignty to local elites more or assumed that what Lenin called “the highest stage of capital- less peacefully, in other cases after years of violent struggle, ism” required colonial empire, whether for the looting of raw but in general without social or even political revolution in materials or the export of capital from the metropolitan the imperial power. center. Based on this understanding, it appeared that those Algeria was just achieving independence from France after competing colonial empires would be dismantled only under years of insurgency and bloody repression. The British the impact of international socialist revolution. protectorate in Iraq had been overthrown shortly before We should state at the outset that for Marxists, the right of (1958). What remained of French as well as British imperial nations to self-determination is important for several reasons. rule in the Middle East had pretty well disintegrated (except First, it is a legitimate democratic right, valid in and of itself the remnant of British-controlled Aden) when the US whether or not it has direct revolutionary implications. Eisenhower administration forced them to abandon their Second, it is often a necessary condition for independent joint conquest, with Israel, of the Suez Canal (1956). class politics, because the working class in an oppressed or Back in Africa, at the southern tip of your 1960 map you’d colonized nation tends to see itself having interests in find the “Union of South Africa.” It was about to separate common with “its own” native capitalist class. Third, the from the British Commonwealth and rename itself a struggle for national liberation may indeed bring revolution- “Republic” in defiance of worldwide condemnation of ary possibilities to the fore both in the oppressed nation and apartheid. In appearance, South Africa was globally isolated; in the oppressor state. In any case, as Marx noted long ago in in reality, investment was pouring in as international capital the case of Britain and Ireland, no working class can free itself saw “stability” following apartheid’s greatest success, the while it is a participant in subjugating another people. Sharpeville massacre. By 1960, in any case, the process of decolonization was The last of the more-or-less intact colonial dominions in underway – dismantling the European empires that had Africa was that of the “Portuguese overseas provinces” carved up much of the globe at the end of the 19th century Angola, Mozambique and Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau) as well as the Cape Verde Islands, Macao, Sao Tome and David Finkel is an editor of the journal Against the Current, Principe Islands, and East Timor. While claiming these sponsored by the US socialist group Solidarity. colonies as “provinces,” Portugal was among the worst of the new 12 SOCIALIST European powers in exploiting its possessions for raw materi- some important cases of what is sometimes called “internal als while doing nothing to build an infrastructure, economic colonialism” – the Basque nation in Spain, for example – and development or civil service for independent nations to the question of “settler-colonial” societies such as inherit. Only Belgium, with its unspeakable history of geno- Israel/Palestine, about which I have previously written for cide and pillage in the Congo, might claim a more vicious New Socialist. In addition, I won’t touch upon one crucially record. important national independence movement in our own Portugal’s tenacity in holding its African possessions – as continent of North America – Quebec – for the obvious one Portuguese revolutionary socialist would call it, “the last reason that New Socialist has access to much more expert to leave” – was closely related to the reality of its condition as analysis of this long struggle.) the most backward of the remaining colonial powers. The First, the Black community in North America drew liberation struggles of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea- profound inspiration from the attainment of independence Bissau would feed back into the revolutionary upheaval that of the new African states. It’s noteworthy that Malcolm X, would shake Portugal itself – and for one hopeful moment, after his separation from the Nation of Islam, called his new would even threaten the stability of capital in Western organization the Organization of Afro-American Unity Europe – in 1974-75. That runs a little ahead of our story, (OAAU), a name drawn from the Organization of African however. Unity formed by the African states (OAU, recently renamed If backward Portugal was an the African Union). anachronism as classic colonialism It was important at least symboli- was declining, a new paradigm had The liberation struggles of cally that the United Nations ceased emerged, centered in the world’s to be strictly a rich countries’ club most powerful imperialist state, the Angola, Mozambique and and began to look like the composi- United States of America. US impe- tion of the world’s peoples. Nina rialism had pretty well perfected the Guinea-Bissau would feed back Simone, in “Backlash Blues,” culmi- new science of global exploitation nated her lecture to “Mr. Backlash” without formal colonies. The USA into the revolutionary upheaval (i.e. white racism) with the classic of course had its own colonies, that would shake Portugal itself line “The world is full of folks like notably Puerto Rico, but its domin- me/ Who are Black, Red, Yellow ion, in Latin America above all, – and for one hopeful moment, and Brown/ Mr. Backlash, I’m could now be exercised through gonna leave with the backlash officially independent but bought- would even threaten the stability blues.” and-paid-for client regimes. This The Civil Rights Movement in was in general a highly effective of capital in Western Europe. the American South developed strategy, in which massive profits for many of its tactics from the mass metropolitan capital were guaran- defiance campaigns of South Africa, teed by local legal and repressive client machineries – with and from an interpretation of Gandhian nonviolent resist- the power of the US army, navy and Marines well over the ance in India against British colonialism. As the radical wing horizon to be employed only as the last resort. of this movement moved toward Black Power and Black It was a successful model, especially at the height of the Liberation, including the right of armed self-defense (from long postwar capitalist boom, but not without its own diffi- Robert F. Williams and the Deacons for Defense to the Black culties. In our very “backyard” the Cuban revolution of Panther Party), additional sources of inspiration were found 1959, initially encouraged by Washington on the assumption in the Cuban and Chinese revolutions as well as armed that an incompetent dictatorship would be replaced by a reli- African liberation struggles. able capitalist coalition government, by 1960 was looking To be sure, each of these models carried their own contra- like an unwelcome development. And in another part of the dictions. An absolute insistence on nonviolence, which made world about which few Americans knew much of anything, a lot of tactical sense in the struggle under conditions of state “Indochina,” the United States had taken over the manage- and Ku Klux Klan terror in the US South, could become a ment of a country from which French colonialism had been fetish and even alienate part of the movement – as was seen recently expelled – Vietnam. in the angry rejection by many African Americans in the North to Martin Luther King’s statement, “If blood must NATIONAL LIBERATION AND THE LEFT flow, let it be ours.” Let’s shift from a global perspective to a few critical strug- But armed struggle could become a fetish too, and not gles which dramatically shaped the thinking of the 1960s and only in the US. An element of armed self-defense for popu- 1970s left, keeping in mind that terms like “national libera- lations under severe repression and terror – African tion,” “national independence” and even “Third World liber- Americans, indigenous peoples in the United States or ation” were used more or less interchangeably. Canada, the Nationalist (Catholic) community in Northern (To focus the discussion, I am going to mostly leave aside Ireland, or the Palestinian people under occupation in their new SOCIALIST 13 homeland and severe oppression in refugee camps in Jordan, tary power in Vietnam from 1964 on, and the bombing of Lebanon etc. – was precisely that: a necessary defensive South Vietnam that preceded it, were carried out not by component in a larger political struggle. today’s right-wing Republicans but by the liberal Democratic Tragically, this dynamic bred the illusion that liberation administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. itself could be achieved by an armed vanguard that would RACE, CLASS AND WAR. The United States in Vietnam free Black people, drive Britain out of the north of Ireland, fielded an army of hundreds of thousands of conscripts, defeat Zionism, etc. The results of this expectation of armed drafted from the working class, Black and Latino populations revolutionary victory were often incredibly destructive (think who did not have college student deferments or other escape of the fate of the Black Panther Party, for example, or in the routes from the draft. context of the Canadian state the tragedy of the FLQ. When POLITICS OF NATIONALISM. With the Tet offensive of Spring white New Leftists with no social base adopted the notion of 1968, it became clear to the US public and to political elites “picking up the gun,” the outcome was even more hideous). that the war could not be “won,” not only because the The larger point here, however, is that the US Black conscript army was disintegrating on the ground but because community has always been more internationalist in its of the power of nationalism: The population of South thinking than the population as a whole. The 1960s revival Vietnam had unified in support of the National Liberation of the US left began with the inspiration drawn from Civil Front (NLF) against the US occupation, whether or not they Rights and Black Liberation, movements that already saw supported the Communist Party that controlled the NLF. themselves as part of an international struggle. And since the MASS STRUGGLE. Students for a Democratic Society called Black struggle itself is very much that of an oppressed nation the first national demonstration for immediate withdrawal, (or nationality, if you prefer that in 1965, and shortly found itself at language) within the US, one can the forefront of the radical wing of say that a national liberation a mass antiwar movement. The struggle at the heart of US society The activists of the 1960s learned fear and loathing of the draft was central to the recomposition powerful lessons about the created a huge draft resistance of the 1960s and 70s left. struggle on the campuses and Beyond this, of course, one imperialist character of liberalism antiwar coffeehouses, and by the struggle above all others domi- late 1960s strong antiwar senti- nated the movements of the and the Democratic Party – ment had surfaced within the decade 1965-’75: Vietnam. Here, active duty military ranks. All this in contrast to its own postcolonial realities that are harder for a newer coincided with the Black urban paradigm, US imperialism had generation to comprehend when uprisings and the rise of Women’s taken over management of the Liberation – and stirrings of rank country after the French were today’s atrocities-in-the-name-of- and file discontent in the unions. defeated and now attempted to What did all this mean for a Left suppress Vietnamese aspirations ”freedom” are perpetrated by that was just reviving? Many for unity and independence by lessons were learned in an incredi- the direct application of over- far-right Republicans. bly short time, some positive and whelming military force. The others deeply contradictory. To list results of this failure would a few: prevent a repetition for almost thirty years – until the (i) First and foremost, it was incredibly liberating to learn messianic-imperial presidential administration of George W. that the overwhelming power of the American empire could Bush decided that conquering Iraq would begin a transfor- be challenged – and defeated! Nothing in our immediate mation of the Middle East…but again, we’re getting ahead. experience had prepared us for this: There had been the Bay of Pigs in 1961**, of course, but for the US military itself to WHAT VIETNAM TAUGHT US be defeated in direct battle with a small nation fighting for its It’s difficult to convey a full sense of the transformative role independence was unprecedented and awesome. of the Vietnam War, but some of the critical dimensions can (ii) American public opinion itself was not monolithic: be briefly described. People could be moved by a combination of moral argumen- THE CONTEXT OF THE COLD WAR. The frozen polarization tation and the impact of the human and economic costs of of the 1950s between the East and West blocs was thawing in military adventure. Tens of thousands of soldiers returning in the wake of the Sino-Soviet split* and the “normalizing” of body bags mattered, of course, as well as the onset of war- US-Soviet rivalry after the October 1962 Cuban missile induced inflation; but so did the My Lai massacre of crisis, but in US domestic politics the discourse of the Vietnamese villagers by US troops and the image of the Communist Menace still loomed even larger than today’s young girl fleeing with her clothes burned off by napalm. debate-choking threat of Global Terrorism. The Vietnam war brought down two US administrations, The Role of Liberalism. The massive escalation of US mili- that of Lyndon Johnson and ultimately Richard Nixon as new 14 SOCIALIST Protests by students and other activists in the US and internationally were instrumental in bringing about an end to the American war in Vietnam. well. The Watergate crimes that destroyed Nixon were the direct result, after all, of the “Plumbers Unit” created within the bowels of Nixon’s regime to stop the leak of unfavorable information about an unpopular war. Any resemblance to the recently revealed antics of the George W. Bush gang are strictly uncoincidental. (iii) The antiwar and left activists of the 1960s learned powerful lessons about the imperialist character of liberalism and the Democratic Party – realities that are harder for a newer generation to comprehend when today’s atrocities-in- the-name-of-”freedom” are perpetrated by far-right Republicans. That’s one reason it’s important to study the 1960s: Today’s John Kerry, Hilary Clinton and Joe Lieberman Democrats who oppose the struggle for immedi- ate withdrawal from Iraq are very much in continuity with their party’s history, even if they are out of touch with their own antiwar voting base. (iv) In dealing with the question of Communism, the Left began to successfully challenge the national consensus that any country or movement, external or internal, that might be (v) The successful Vietnamese war against the imperialist run by Communists was deserving of destruction at the occupation generated both a certain worship of guerrilla war hands of US power. Indeed, for the whole US population, as THE strategy for revolutionary victory (here again, the the Cold War myth that “losing” Vietnam would cause Vietnamese and Chinese experiences were absurdly “falling dominoes” all over Asia suffered huge blows in this conflated), and a world view sometimes called “Third struggle. This experience was also contradictory for the Left, Worldism,” according to which the revolutionary masses of however. the Third World would surround and overwhelm the rich Most regrettably, much of the left itself became suffused countries with their “bought-off and privileged” working with the notion that Stalinist parties, like the Vietnamese classes. (It must be said here that the Vietnamese Communist Party, were vehicles for liberation – not just Communists themselves didn’t make any such argument, national liberation but even “socialism.” This notion not only although the Maoist regime in China pretended to believe separated the radical Left from most of the US working class something of the sort, for the benefit of its foreign admirers. population, but was enormously disorienting. For example, it But in essence this was a homegrown delusion.) was common to assume that the North Vietnamese and (vi) The Third-Worldist illusion fed back into the US Left’s Chinese Communist regimes were fighting shoulder to attempts to come to grips with the most important question shoulder in an “anti-imperialist, anti-revisionist front.” In the confronting us – understanding and changing our own real world, by 1966-67 these two regimes and parties hated society. As noted above, a wing of the Civil Rights movement each other, especially as Beijing blocked Soviet aid from had evolved to Black Power and toward revolutionary poli- reaching Vietnam (to say nothing of how the lunatic tics; and anger in northern Black communities over police factional warfare of the Cultural Revolution was seen by brutality, economic apartheid and the Vietnam war produced Vietnamese Communists). a wave of ghetto rebellions. It was entirely correct to see in Further, taking the Vietnamese leadership as a political these developments a potential social insurgency, one which model attracted much of the anti-imperialist Left to Stalinist could draw in sectors of militant Black workers as a vanguard methods. For example, the NLF in southern Vietnam of the overall US working class. presented itself as a broadly representative national move- It was disastrously mistaken, however, for either white or ment. On paper that’s what it was, and its official program African American revolutionaries to see this as the actual promised to preserve southern autonomy and political beginning of a revolution in which the (mythical) Black revo- pluralism following the victory. Real power, however, rested lutionary masses represented the extension of the (mythical) in a Communist Party that was fiercely committed to uniting Third World revolution into a corrupted and decadent Vietnam under its own single-party rule. Some on the US American society. Implicitly or explicitly, the idea arose that Left who understood these realities drew the conclusion that the revolution would be carried through by a minority, aided this kind of manipulation was the way to do politics, with by the enlightened revolutionary elite who allied themselves disastrous results. with the Third World, against the wishes and interests of the new SOCIALIST 15 reactionary (basically, white working class) majority. and sisters fleeing from death squads – a movement in which Based on this illusion, much of the 1960s Left passed thousands of ordinary citizens told the US government: Your rapidly into extreme social isolation followed by self-destruc- laws and your war are crimes against humanity, and you can tion, utter demoralization or an astoundingly rapid relapse shove them. into liberalism. Obviously this compresses and simplifies a Critical lessons came out of these years of activism. First, complex and important history, but in a nutshell this was the while defending the right of oppressed people to engage in rise and tragic failure of the New Left. armed struggle is an important principle, the level of solidar- ity with Central America surpassed by far anything that FROM VIETNAM TO CENTRAL AMERICA could have been built to support military struggle alone. Second, more than in previous movements, we began to see America’s war in Vietnam was essentially lost by spring the importance of US immigrant communities (Salvadoran 1968, yet the carnage continued till the “fall of Saigon” in and Guatemalan in this case) playing a vital role in struggle 1975. Indeed more Vietnamese probably died between 1969 both for their homelands and inside the US. Third, as inspir- and 1975 than in the preceding six years – a cautionary ing as they were, these movements could not ultimately lesson for the struggle to end the Iraq war today. triumph against overwhelming US-financed-and-organized The end of the Vietnam era, however, brought a new wave repression and mass murder, without US society forcing of liberation struggles and solidarity movements. Portugal significant changes on government policy. was the strongest example of a genuine organic alliance The experience of the Central American revolutions and between liberation movements in solidarity movements were a vast the colonies and revolutionary improvement on the militarist militants in the colonial country, “Third Worldism” that arose in in which the victory of the former The struggle for national liberation the course of the Vietnam-era Left set in motion a process that very may bring revolutionary (and the wave of guerillaist enthu- nearly culminated in a workers’ siasm inspired by Che Guevara in revolution in Portugal itself. possibilities to the fore both in the the same general period). For the North American Left, Certainly, the memory remained however, the next truly formative oppressed nation and in the of the victory of Vietnam against experience of national liberation the full might of US imperialism. and solidarity came with the oppressor state. As Marx noted But that had not been ultimately a Nicaraguan upheaval of 1977-79 long ago, no working class can free victory of guerrilla war in itself; and the Sandinista triumph of the NLF had been backed up by July 19, 1979. This opened the itself while it is a participant in the powerful conventional army of wave of Central American North Vietnam, which finally popular revolutionary struggles subjugating another people. won the war, and this in turn (El Salvador and Guatemala espe- could count on open-ended cially), which produced the best support (whatever you thought of solidarity organizing in this writer’s experience in the US the politics) from the Soviet Union. Left. The fact that the Sandinista National Liberation Front NATIONAL LIBERATION TODAY: AFRICA TO IRAQ (FSLN) today, after fifteen years of defeat, has become a thor- Finally, then, the end of the Cold War and final collapse of oughly cynical political party in a corrupt partnership with the Soviet Union changed – among many other things -- the the right wing must not blind us to the enormous hope that context in which today’s liberation struggles must operate. the FSLN’s victory had opened up. Indeed the fact that the Some on the Left regard this change as an unmitigated disas- Sandinista social base, against all odds and practically ter, but the actual record is mixed. In fact, the disappearance without leadership, continues the struggle for social justice, of “the Communist menace” meant that US imperialism no in itself confirms the enduring power of that revolutionary longer had a stake in defending to the bitter end, for impulse. example, apartheid in South Africa, Mobutu’s kleptocracy in The Central American revolutionary movements at their Zaire or the Suharto gangster dictatorship in Indonesia. At best combined the necessary military struggle against death the same time, particularly after 9/11, US imperialism has squads and client governments of US imperialism with engaged in a level of aggression in the name of the “Global powerful social mobilizations of workers’, peasants’, indige- War on Terror” which was practically unimaginable in the nous, women’s and community organizations. Powerful soli- decades of relatively stable “superpower rivalry.” darity linkages were built between Central and North To end this overly hasty overview, I would point to three American communities, whether through churches, labor crucial aspects of today’s realities pertaining to the legacies groups or solidarity committees. A strong Sanctuary move- and the future of national liberation struggles. These should ment arose in US and Canadian cities to shield our brothers not be seen as finished conclusions, but as bare sketches

new 16 SOCIALIST pointing to important new discussions. to shut that space down. History remains full of surprises. (1) First, we need to understand that the right of national (3) Finally, we come to the Bush gang’s rampage through self-determination remains as valid as ever in the new global Afghanistan and Iraq. Seizing upon the opportunity afforded capitalism – but it is not synonymous with socialism. Indeed, by 9/11, this administration assigned itself a messianic national independence by itself doesn’t resolve fundamental mandate: to “make the Middle East what Latin America used issues that can only be addressed on the basis of working class to be, a big American lake” as my friend Sam Farber aptly power. As John Saul puts it in his important and thoughtful put it. The plan, of course, was a whole banquet of “regime new book, The Next Liberation Struggle (2005), examining change” with Afghanistan as the appetizer, Iraq the soup, the legacies of Africa’s liberation struggles: “We also know Iran the main course and then Syria for dessert. As we now that the liberation of Southern Africa has fulfilled little of the know, it’s all gone down the windpipe the wrong way. promise of negating the counter-developmental hegemony of The lesson so far is catastrophic all around. Far from global capitalism that revolutionary nationalism in the ex- demonstrating unlimited power, US imperialism is choking Portuguese colonies and Zimbabwe and a working-class- on Iraq. But the picture is not pretty for “our side” either. driven transformation in South Africa seemed possibly to The traditional forces of national liberation – the left, the portend.” labor movement, progressive Arab nationalism – are virtually South Africa is indeed a case in point here. The African prostrate in Iraq and the Arab world generally. This has left National Congress has been the democratically elected the field of resistance mainly to Baathist, Islamist or reli- government for a decade and more now; yet the majority of gious-totalitarian fanatic forces. Black South Africans are poorer than before under the The dynamic of the “global war on terror” has best been impact of neoliberal privatization schemes embraced by the described by the Marxist author Gilbert Achcar as a symbi- ANC at the dictates of international capital. otic “clash of barbarisms,” in which the “counter-barbarism” In Zimbabwe, obviously, the picture is unimaginably of religious-fanatic terrorism feeds on the catastrophic worse. Nothing could more graphically illustrate the disas- trous consequences of the single-party state and one-man destruction of small nations and the world’s poor by uncon- rule than the degeneration of ZANU-PF from the liberation trolled imperial military and corporate domination. movement of the 1970s to today’s fascist gangster cult. In some bizarre sense, we seem to have come full circle. In Robert Mugabe, who should have been his country’s Nelson an age where classic colonial conquest had become an Mandela, has instead become its Papa Doc*** – something anachronism, the imperial state that virtually invented and especially painful for those of us who engaged in political perfected “neocolonialism” has brutally reminded us that solidarity and fundraising for ZANU during the liberation naked military conquest and looting of resources (for the war. natives’ good, of course, not our own greed) remains on the (2) Today’s struggles of nations in “the global South” obvi- agenda. ously have everything to do with the issues of “Free Trade” With old questions of self-determination still unresolved and corporate globalization. By their very nature, these strug- and so many new ones from “free trade” to catastrophic gles cannot be fought by individual nations on their own. climate change on the agenda, the new century promises to They absolutely require alliances and blocs of nations on the be as turbulent as the last. sharp end of the “Free Trade” stick, and they require linkages with the global justice movements that have erupted since the Seattle events of 1999. ENDNOTES With some important exceptions such as the above- * The Sino-Soviet split, beginning around 1959-’60, was the mentioned Puerto Rico, classic colonies are mainly a thing of breakup of the alliance between the Communist parties of the the past. What we see today is the onset of a promising anti- Soviet Union and China. Ostensibly the Chinese CP adoped a neoliberal revolt. Whether or not they fit into the standard strongly left and “anti-revisionist” stance; but by the 1970s China’s definition of “national liberation struggles,” we must look to rulers demonstrated their trajectory toward allying with the United the Bolivian indigenous people’s revolt against water privati- States. zation, Guatemala’s indigenous resistance to the ravages of ** The Bay of Pigs, on the Cuban coast, was the site of a 1961 the (Canadian-based) Glamis gold mining corporation, and CIA-organized landing by an armed expeditionary force of Cuban the “Bolivarian Revolution” of Venezuela under president exiles intending to create a counterrevolutionary insurrection. The Hugo Chavez, as expressions of the growing resistance. effort collapsed when it received no popular support and the In no way, incidentally, do I mean here to identify Chavez’s Kennedy administration retreated from its promise to provide air government with socialism-from-below (least of all is it based support. The debacle was an enormous embarrassment for U.S. on structures of working class power!). It is important to imperialism. recognize, however, that what initially appeared as a kind of *** “Papa Doc,” Francois Duvalier, was the kleptocratic and retro-populist caudillo politics has gone much further in murderous ruler of Haiti from 1957-71, when he was succeeded opening space for popular mobilization – ironically, at the by his son Jean-Claude “Baby Doc.” The Duvalier family was same time that the Workers Party government in Brazil, notorious for its lavish living at the expense of the poorest nation elected on the strength of labor and social movements, is trying in the western hemisphere. new SOCIALIST 17 WASÁSE BY TAIAIAKE ALFRED Indigenous resurgence and the new warrior

t is time for our people to live again. Taiaiake Alfred has been called by my indigenous collaborators in Winnipeg a true This writing is a journey on the path “pan-indigenous leader.” Firmly rooted in his own Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) heritage, made for us by those who have I his recent writings and orations also appeal to all indigenous peoples and their non- found a way to live as Onkwehonwe, orig- indigenous allies on the Left to build a radical alternative to this society divided by inal people. The journey is a living race, class and gender. This is the task of the warrior described in his recently commitment to meaningful change in published book Wasáse: Indigenous Paths of Action and Freedom. As Alfred put it in a our lives and to transforming society by recent lecture at the University of Manitoba, “Given the reality we face in the recreating our existences, regenerating communities, how could you not want to be a warrior?” our cultures, and surging against the forces that keep us bound to our colonial It is no coincidence that the cover image for Wasáse closely parallels the poster of past. It is the path of struggle laid out by Malcolm X titled “By Any Means Necessary.” Alfred follows in the footsteps of those who have come before us; now it is Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon and Howard Adams, while at the same time aiming to our turn, we who choose to turn away develop a collectivized strategy for resurgence that is rooted in the contemporary from the legacies of colonialism and take experiences of aboriginal communities. on the challenge of creating a new reality Alfred’s own history has been one of intensive experiential learning, informed by for ourselves and for our people. elders whose formative political experience was the Red Power movement of the The journey and this warrior’s path is a 1970s; by his experience as a Marine in Honduras; by his participation in the kind of Wasáse, a ceremony of unity, Kanien’kehaka movement to achieve economic self-sufficiency through extra-legal strength, and commitment to action. means; by the rebellion at Oka Quebec in 1990; and by his subsequent involvement Wasáse is an ancient Rotinoshonni in self-government negotiations. Each of his publications has marked significant (Iroquois Confederacy) war ritual, the evolution of his thinking in dialogue with other indigenous activists in Canada and Thunder Dance. The new warrior’s path, beyond about the nature of self-determination, as well as an expanded understanding the spirit of Wasáse, this Onkwehonwe of the crucial role that aboriginal youth will play in leading the movements for attitude, this courageous way of being in change. the world – all come together to form a In a recent note about his contribution to this magazine, Alfred wrote of his hope that new politics in which many identities and “some day soon our shared commitments and views and values will form the basis of strategies for making change are fused a new movement to displace the collaborationists and capitalists that have become together in a movement to challenge our ‘leaders.’” The protests against the recent First Ministers Meeting on Aboriginal white society’s control over Onkwehonwe Affairs were an indicator that such a movement can be built; now is the time for and our lands. socialists to deepen our understanding of aboriginal oppression in Canada in order to Wasáse, as I am speaking of it here, is build solidarity in fighting it. symbolic of the social and cultural force Deborah Simmons alive among Onkwehonwe dedicated to altering the balance of political and do what we must to force the Settlers to is the same: regaining freedom and economic power to recreate some social acknowledge our existence and the becoming self-sufficient by confronting and physical space for freedom to re- integrity of our connection to the land. the disconnection and fear at the core of emerge. Wasáse is an ethical and political There are many differences among the our existences under colonial dominion. vision, the real demonstration of our peoples that are indigenous to this land, We are separated from the sources of our resolve to survive as Onkwehonwe and to yet the challenge facing all Onkwehonwe goodness and power: from each other, our cultures, and our lands. These Taiaiake Alfred teaches in the Indigenous Governance Program at University of Victoria. connections must be restored. Deborah Simmons teaches Native Studies at University of Manitoba, and is a member of the Governmental power is founded on fear, New Socialist Group. Abridged and adapted with permission from “First Words,” in Wasáse: which is used to control and manipulate Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2005. The full us in many ways; so, the strategy must be text of this chapter as well as other articles by Alfred and discussions about his ideas can be to confront fear and display the courage found at http://www.taiaiake.com/.

new 18 SOCIALIST rearranging the forces and is a potential for making change, for that shape our lives. engaging with the adversary without Politics is a force that deference to emotional attachments to channels social, cultural, colonial symbols or to the compromised and economic powers logic of colonial approaches. They are and makes them immi- both philosophically defensible, but are nent in our lives. they both equally valid approaches to Abstaining from politics making change, given the realities of our is like turning your back situations and our goals? on a beast when it is We need a confident position on the angry and intent on question as to what is the right strategy. ripping your guts out. Both armed resistance and non-violent It is the kind of politics contention are unique disciplines that we practise that makes require commitments that rule out over- the crucial distinction lapping allegiances between the two between the possibility of approaches. They are diverging and a regenerative struggle distinctive ways of making change, and and what we are doing the choice between the two paths is the now. Conventional and most important decision the next genera- acceptable approaches to tion of Onkwehonwe will collectively making change are make. leading us nowhere. This is the political formula of the Submission and coopera- strategy of armed resistance: facing a situ- tion, which define poli- ation of untenable politics, Onkwehonwe tics as practised by the could conceivably move toward practis- current generation of ing a punishing kind of aggression, a Onkwehonwe politi- raging resistance invoking hostile and to act against and defeat the state’s power. cians, are, I contend, morally, culturally, irredentist negative political visions The first question that arises when this and politically indefensible and should be seeking to engender and escalate the idea is applied in a practical way to the dismissed scornfully by any right-think- conflict so as to eventually demoralize the situations facing Onkwehonwe in real life ing person and certainly by any Settler society and defeat the colonial is this: How can we regenerate ourselves Onkwehonwe who still has dignity. state. culturally and achieve freedom and polit- I pay little attention to the conven- Contrast this with the strategic vision ical independence when the legacies of tional aspects of the politics of pity, such of non-violent contention: Onkwehonwe disconnection, dependency, and dispos- as self-government processes, land claims face the untenable politics and unaccept- session have such a strong hold on us? agreements, and aboriginal rights court able conditions in their communities and Undeniably, we face a difficult situation. cases, because building on what we have confront the situation with determined The political and social institutions that achieved up until now in our efforts to govern us have been shaped and organ- decolonize society is insufficient and ized to serve white power and they truly unacceptable as the end-state of a Fundamentally different conform to the interests of the states challenge to colonialism. The job is far relationships between founded on that objective. These state from finished. Fundamentally different and Settler-serving institutions are useless relationships between Onkwehonwe and Onkwehonwe and Settlers to the cause of our survival, and if we are Settlers will emerge not from negotia- will emerge not from to free ourselves from the grip of colo- tions in state-sponsored and government- nialism, we must reconfigure our politics regulated processes, but only after negotiations in state- and replace all of the strategies, institu- successful Onkwehonwe resurgences sponsored and government- tions, and leaders in place today. against white society’s entrenched privi- The transformation will begin inside leges and the unreformed structure of the regulated processes, but only each one of us as personal change, but colonial state. after successful decolonization will become a reality only As Onkwehonwe committed to the when we collectively both commit to a reclamation of our dignity and strength, Onkwehonwe resurgences movement based on an ethical and politi- there are, theoretically, two viable against white society’s cal vision and consciously reject the colo- approaches to engaging the colonial nial postures of weak submission, power that is thoroughly embedded in entrenched privileges and victimry, and raging violence. It is a polit- the state and in societal structures: armed the unreformed structure of ical vision and solution that will be resistance and non-violent contention. capable of altering power relations and Each has a heritage among our peoples the colonial state. new SOCIALIST 19 yet restrained action, coherent and absolute failure of institutional and legal- peoples respond to oppression: “One can creative contention supplemented with a ist strategies to protect our lands and our be reconciled to every situation, and the positive political vision based on re-estab- rights, as well as in their failure to moti- colonized can wait a long time to live. lishing respect for the original covenants vate younger generations of But, regardless of how soon or how and ancient treaties that reflect the Onkwehonwe to action. violently the colonized rejects his situa- founding principles of the Onkwehonwe- In the face of the strong renewed push tion, he will one day begin to overthrow Settler relationship. This would be a by the state for the legal and political his unliveable existence with the whole movement sure to engender conflict, but assimilation of our peoples, as well as a force of his oppressed personality.” The it would be conflict for a positive purpose rising tide of consumerist materialism question facing us is this one: For us and with the hope of recreating the making its way into our communities, today, here in this land, how will the conditions of coexistence. Rather than the last remaining remnants of distinctive overthrow of our unliveable existence enter the arena of armed resistance, we Onkwehonwe values and culture are come about? would choose to perform rites of resur- being wiped out. The situation is urgent The colonizers stand on guard for their gence. and calls for even more intensive and ill-gotten privileges using highly These forms of resurgence have already profound resurgences on even more advanced techniques, mainly co-opta- begun. There are people in all communi- levels, certainly not moderation. Many tion, division, and, when required, phys- ties who understand that a true decolo- people are paralyzed by fear or idled by ical repression. The weak people in the nization movement can emerge only complacency and will sit passively and power equation help the colonizers too, when we shift our politics from articulat- watch destruction consume our people. with their self-doubts, laziness, and ing grievances to pursuing an organized But I am writing for those of us who unfortunate insistence on their own and political battle for the cause of our prefer a dangerous dignity to safe self- disorganization! freedom. These new warriors understand preservation. Challenging all of this means even the need to refuse any further disconnec- People have always faced these chal- redefining the terminology of our exis- tion from their heritage and the need to lenges. None of what I am saying is new, tence. Take the word, “colonization,” reconnect with the spiritual bases of their either to people’s experiences in the world which is actually a way of seeing and existences as Onkwehonwe. There is a or to political philosophy. What is emerg- explaining what has happened to us. We solid theory of change in this concept of ing in our communities is a renewed cannot allow that word to be the story of an indigenous peoples’ movement. The respect for indigenous knowledge and our lives, because it is a narrative that in theory of change is the lived experience of Onkwehonwe ways of thinking. its use privileges the colonizer’s power our warriors. Their lives are a dynamic of Onkwehonwe are linked in spirit and and inherently limits our freedom, logi- power generated by creative energy strategy with other indigenous peoples cally and mentally imposing a perpetual flowing from their heritage through their confronting empire throughout the colonized victim way of life and view on courageous and unwavering determina- world. When we look into the heart of the world. tion to recreate themselves and act our own communities, we can relate to Onkwehonwe are faced not with the together to meet the challenges of their the struggles of peoples in Africa or Asia same adversary their ancestors day. and appreciate the North African scholar confronted, but with a colonization that Despite the visible and public victories Albert Memmi’s thoughts in his book has recently morphed into a kind of post- in court cases and casino profits, neither The Colonizer and the Colonized on how, modern imperialism that is more difficult of these strategies generates the transfor- in the language of his day, colonized to target than the previous and more mative experience that recreates people obvious impositions of force and control like spiritual-cultural resurgences can do. over the structures of government within The truly revolutionary goal is to trans- their communities. The challenge is to form disconnection and fear into connec- reframe revolt. tion and to transcend colonial culture To remain true to a struggle conceived and institutions. Onkwehonwe have been within Onkwehonwe values, the end goal successful on personal and collective of our Wasáse – our warrior’s dance – levels by rejecting extremism on both must be formulated as a spiritual revolu- ends of the spectrum between the tion, a culturally rooted social movement reformist urgings of tame legalists and the that transforms the whole of society and unfocused rage of armed insurgents. a political action that seeks to remake the The experience of resurgence and entire landscape of power and relation- regeneration in Onkwehonwe communi- ship to truly reflect a liberated post-impe- ties thus far proves that change cannot be rial vision. made from within the colonial structure. Wasáse is spiritual revolution and Institutions and ideas that are the contention. It is not a path of violence. creation of the colonial relationship are And yet, this commitment to non-violence not capable of ensuring our survival; this is not pacifism either. This is an important has been amply proven as well by the Symbol of the Native Youth Movement point to make clear: I believe there is a new 20 SOCIALIST need for morally grounded defiance and Some people may find it shocking or absurd for me non-violent agitation combined with the development of a collective capacity for to suggest that an Onkwehonwe community is a self-defence, so as to generate within the Settler society a reason and incentive to kind of war zone. But anyone who has actually lived negotiate constructively in the interest of achieving a respectful coexistence. on a reserve will agree with this tragic analogy on Following an awakening among the some level ... There is no post-colonial situation; the people and cultural redefinition, after social agitation, after engaging in a poli- invaders our ancestors fought against are still here ... tics of contention, after creative confrontation, we will be free to deter- mine our own existences. Wasáse, strug- gle in all of its forms, truly defines an authentic existence. This is why I speak of design an appropriate strategy, use fresh slow methods. warriors. To be Onkwehonwe, to be fully tactics, and acquire new skills. Some people may find it shocking or human, is to be living the ethic of If non-indigenous readers are capable absurd for me to suggest that an courage and to be involved in a struggle of listening, they will learn from these Onkwehonwe community is a kind of for personal transformation and freedom words, and they will discover that while war zone. But anyone who has actually from the dominance of imperial ideas we are envisioning a new relationship lived on a reserve will agree with this and powers – especially facing the chal- between Onkwehonwe and the land, we tragic analogy on some level. Make no lenges in our lives today. Any other path are at the same time offering a decolo- mistake about it, Brothers and Sisters: the or posture is surrender or complicity. nized alternative to the Settler by inviting war is on. There is no post-colonial situ- Some people believe in the promise of them to share our vision of respect and ation; the invaders our ancestors fought what they call “traditional government” peaceful coexistence. against are still here, for they have not yet as the ultimate solution to our problems, The time to change direction is now. rooted themselves and been transformed as if just getting rid of the imposed Signs of defeat have been showing on the into real people of this homeland. corrupt band or tribal governments and faces of our people for too long. Young Onkwehonwe must find a way to resurrecting old laws and structures people, those who have not yet learned to triumph over notions of history that rele- would solve everything. I used to believe accommodate to the fact that they are gate our existence to the past by preserv- that myself. But there is a problem with expected to accept their lesser status ing ourselves in this hostile and disinte- this way of thinking, too. The traditional quietly, are especially hard hit by grating environment. To do so, we must governments and laws we hold out as the defeatism and alienation. Youth in our regenerate ourselves through action pure good alternatives to the imposed communities and in urban centres are because living the white man’s vision of colonial systems were developed at a time suffering. Suicide, alcohol and drug an Indian or an aboriginal will just not do when people were different than we are abuse, cultural confusion, sexual it for us. now; they were people who were confi- violence, obesity: they suffer these We are each facing modernity’s attempt dently rooted in their culture, bodily and scourges worse than anyone else. to conquer our souls. The conquest is spiritually strong, and capable of surviv- It is not because they lack money or happening as weak, cowardly, stupid, ing independently in their natural envi- jobs in the mainstream society (we petty, and greedy ways worm themselves ronments. Regretfully, the levels of shouldn’t forget that our people have into our lives and take the place of the participation in social and political life, always been “poor” as consumers in beauty, sharing, and harmony that the physical fitness, and the cultural skills comparison to white people). It is defined life in our communities for previ- these models require are far beyond our because their identities, their cultures, ous generations. Territorial losses and weakened and dispirited people right and their rights are under attack by a political disempowerment are secondary now. racist government. The wounds suffered conquests compared to that first, spiritual And though I am speaking non- by young Onkwehonwe people in battle cause of discontent. The challenge is to violently of a creative reinterpretation of are given little succour by their own find a way to regenerate ourselves and what it is to be a warrior, I am doing so leaders, and they find only scorn or take back our dignity. Then, meaningful in full reverence and honour of the condescension in the larger world. These change will be possible, and it will be a essence of the ancient warrior spirit, young people are fighting raging battles new existence, one of possibility, where because a warrior makes a stand facing for their own survival every day, and Onkwehonwe will have the ability to danger with courage and integrity. The when they become convinced that to make the kinds of choices we need to warrior spirit is the strong medicine we fight is futile and the battle likely to be make concerning the quality of our lives need to cure the European disease. But, lost, they retreat. Yet they have pride, and and begin to recover a truly human way drawing on the old spirit, we need to rather than submit to the enemy, they of life. create something new for ourselves and sacrifice themselves, sometimes using think through the reality of the present to mercifully quick and sometimes painfully new SOCIALIST 21 REVERSING THE TIDE OF PRIVATIZATION Local and global struggles for the de-commodification of water

BY SUSAN SPRONK

n March 2006 global water barons will assemble in Monterrey, Mexico Ifor their fourth international meeting to deliberate on how to make a profit from the world’s water. Sponsored by the World Water Council, an interest group formed by some of the world’s largest corporations, the World Water Forum (WWF) exposes the intimate links between neoliberal globalization, transnational corporations and privatiza- tion. Predictably, the Forum has also PHOTO: SUSAN SPRONK become a stage for a growing civil society resistance movement. Anti-privatization activists in Mexico and around the world are counter-organizing, hoping to inter- rupt the corporate agenda, if only for a In choosing its roadside billboards, the French transnational water corporation seems brief moment, claiming to fight the oblivious to the fact that over 60 percent of the Bolivian population is indigenous. growing “commodification” of water. These struggles against the “commodi- commodity: water. In England and precious resource. The World Bank has fication” of water provide the basis for a Wales, the private corporations made off gone so far as to say that privatization is potentially radical agenda. Much with “windfall profits”, while consumers the quick-fix solution to prevent an depends, however, on what is meant by faced higher prices. The transnational impending ecological crisis. This argu- the term and what kinds of links are water corporations were chomping at the ment found its most eloquent expression made between commodification and bit to enter what one bank president in the ominous words of a former World other oppressive social processes. called “the last infrastructure frontier for Bank Vice-President, who warned that THE ROOT OF WATER PRIVATIZATION: private investors.” Playing its role as the next century’s wars will not be about COMMODIFICATION global manager of capitalism, the World oil, but water. Bank started to force heavily indebted This neoliberal discourse of water The recent drive to privatize water Third World countries to privatize public scarcity must be exposed as a myth. began in the early 1990s, when the services in exchange for new loans. Notions of “scarcity” are used to justify World Bank decided to endorse the The World Bank hoped that water privatization lest the poor die of thirst, privatization of everything as the new privatization would work as well else- while the rich fill their swimming pools. dogma of public policy. Their decision where as it had in Europe, insisting that In most cases, it is not because there is was heavily influenced by transnational governments everywhere introduce “full not enough water that the poor do not water companies. After the “success” of cost recovery” policies in the delivery of have access to it. Rather, scarcity is water privatization in England and Wales public services. Neoliberals argued that it socially produced by capitalist develop- under Magaret Thatcher, these compa- was necessary to charge customers the ment. The precursor for privatization is nies saw a brilliant opportunity to profit “right” price for water. As the story goes, commodification, the process by which from what they saw as the ultimate if people do not pay the true cost of all natural resources are fenced off, or water, they will waste it. Indeed, the poor “enclosed”, and assigned private property Susan Spronk is a PhD candidate in must be disciplined by market impera- rights, so that workers are separated from political science at York University. tives to conserve what is portrayed as a the means of subsistence. This way, the new 22 SOCIALIST compulsion of economic forces ensures World Bank even owned a portion of its feed their industrial machines and have that workers leave their houses everyday shares through its private sector lending left Bolivians without gas for their to sell the only commodity they have left arm, the International Financial homes. After centuries of looting by – labour-power – so that they can pay for Corporation. Despite its net profits of foreigners and complicit local elites, things they need to live, like water. US$12 million over seven years, the Bolivians are thus organizing to reclaim The water privatization project has not company ironically complained that the control over their natural resources. In turned out as well as the World Bank residents of El Alto did not consume repeated protests organized by the local hoped. After an initial boom in private enough water so it couldn’t make all the association of neighborhood councils investment in the water sector in the early new connections that it promised. There (FEJUVE-El Alto), the predominantly 1990s, there was a steep decline. Some were rumors that the company wanted to indigenous residents of El Alto have corporations started to lose interest after leave. The government caved in, allowed made it clear that no one should be able some bad experiences. Suez, for one, was the company to raise the fees, and said it to profit from their water. Suez, the same burned by currency devaluations in did not have to bring water to the poor. company that built Britain’s canal Manila in 1997 and Argentina in 2001. These decisions left about 200,000 between the Mediterranean and the Red Others have been thrown out by protests people, a fifth of the slum’s population, Sea in the 1860s, is no longer welcome in as in Tucumán and Santa Fe, Argentina, without access to clean water. Bolivia. and Cochabamba, Bolivia. People across By the beginning of 2005, the people SOUTH AFRICA the globe are saying “NO!” to the privati- of El Alto, a predominantly indigenous zation of water. city perched on the border of La Paz, had Case studies from South Africa Organizations as diverse as the Anti- decided that they had had enough. demonstrate how struggles for the de- Privatization Forum in South Africa, Inspired by the struggle in Cochabamba, commodification of water are also inter- which has a socialist orientation, and the where a broad-based coalition threw out twined with the liberation struggle. Council of Canadians, which is thor- American construction giant Bechtel five Similar to Bolivia, there is no denying oughly social democratic, have joined years before, and building on the that there is a direct correlation between forces calling for the “de-commodifica- momentum from the valiant struggle to colour of skin and economic position in tion” of water. These organizations do nationalize precious natural resources South Africa. What is lesser known, not necessary mean the same thing by that peaked in the “Gas War” of 2003, however, is that since the end of formal “de-commodification.” As David thousands of people took to the streets in apartheid, this racial-class divide has McDonald and Greg Ruiters argue in January demanding, “The water is ours, actually deepened as South Africa goes their book, Age of Commodity (2005), dammit!” The government promised to through its difficult transition from many of the activists that use this term do cancel the contract so that the protestors apartheid to fully-fledged neoliberal capi- not refer to its more radical meaning – would go home. But, it has since changed talism. The liberation struggle has thus the transformation of capitalist relations its tune hoping that if it plays nice it can taken on new class dimensions. – but simply that water should be purchase the company’s shares. So far, When the African National Congress provided for free. As they further note, Suez is clearly winning the game thanks was first elected to government, it made however, “to call for the ‘decommodifica- to the help of its friends, including the the right to water a constitutional right. tion’ of water … is to call for nothing less development banks, which have made At the same time, however, it imple- than the rupturing of the social relations their position in the conflict clear. They mented neoliberal policies, including the that contributed to its commodification do not want to see their privatization privatization of public services and full in the first place”. The call for the de- project sink in the mud and have threat- cost recovery. This move has further commodification of water can therefore ened to withhold international aid if the entrenched the inequalities inherited be the beginning of a potentially more utility returns to public control. The from apartheid. Many of the formerly radical agenda. World Bank even told former Bolivian predominantly white municipalities Three recent examples of struggles over President Carlos Mesa in March that if he doubled in size as the black townships water privatization – in Bolivia, South canceled the contract with Suez, it were incorporated into their districts, Africa, and the United States – suggest wanted its shares paid back immediately. that the struggle against the “commodifi- The thirst for justice runs deep in El Organizations as diverse as the cation” of water is potentially part of an Alto. Locals see their struggle for demo- Anti-Privatization Forum in South anti-capitalist politics, and clearly cratic control over water resources as connected to struggles against imperial- linked to the broader struggle to re-assert Africa, which has a socialist ism and racism. national sovereignty. A succession of imperialist powers have benefited from orientation, and the Council of EL ALTO, BOLIVIA Bolivia’s plentiful natural resources. In Canadians, which is thoroughly The private contract held by Suez in La the sixteenth century, the Spanish forced Paz-El Alto was formerly billed as a flag- indian slaves down the mines of Potosí to social democratic, have joined ship of “pro-poor” water privatization. strip the silver. This century, the forces calling for the “de- The company was financed by generous Americans and Brazilians have piped the loans from development banks. The natural gas from the eastern provinces to commodification” of water.

new SOCIALIST 23 right to water. Thanks to the protests, thousands were reconnected. A SOCIALIST AGENDA? The privatization of water has met with fierce resistance at the local level. Indeed, the privatization of water has been more consistently controversial than the privatization of other natural resources, such as oil and gas, mainly because the issue strikes an emotional cord. Water has cultural and symbolic meaning because it is the essence of life. Also, it does not require complicated technology to bring it to users. Since water falls from the sky, we are much more inclined to argue that it is “ours.” Few of today’s movements that call for de-commodification of water services,

PHOTO: SUSAN SPRONK PHOTO: however, connect their struggle to a Women are the most affected by the privatization of water. These women in El Alto more radical project. While it is are washing in water rejected by a water purification plant. common to hear that it is “immoral” to make profits from water, it is difficult to many of which had bad or no water serv- DETROIT, MICHIGAN, USA imagine hearing the same passionate ices. Facing budgetary crises, many Multi-dimensional struggles for water rhetoric about food. Promisingly, municipal governments turned to the have also sprouted in the heart of the activists from the “Water for All private sector. As noted by activist Empire. Detroit, like many cities in Campaign” of Public Citizen have made Richard Makolos of South Africa’s Crisis America, has crumbling infrastructure a positive move in this direction. Water Committee, the ANC’s neoliberal and enormous debts. In 2004, the munic- Recently, they formed a new policies have entrenched a new form of ipal council decided to hire Thames autonomous organization called “Food inequality: “Apartheid separated whites Water to balance the utility’s budget by and Water Watch”, which aims to fight and Blacks. Privatization separates the punishing the poor. In 2004, the Detroit the increasing corporate control not only rich from the poor.” Water and Sewerage Department shut off over water but the production of food. After the worst cholera outbreak in water service to 40,000 households in the Connections can and are being made. South Africa´s history, facing water cut-offs middle of the winter. Unable to meet In places like Bolivia, where ideas of and skyrocketing service fees, people are their basic water needs, the elderly and socialism have dominated the imagina- frustrated with the ANC’s embrace of poor were also denied steam heat. tion of the Left, the term de-commodifi- neoliberalism. In We are the Poors (2002), In this struggle, anti-poverty activists cation retains its more radical meaning. scholar-activist Ashwin Desai describes made links with local ecological organiza- As Oscar Olivera, former trade union how a local movement for public services tions in their fight against the local water leader and anti-privatization activist, has linked up with community and labour utility. Situated in the Great Lakes Basin, states in his book on the Cochabamba struggles in other parts of the country, local residents had also been involved in a Water War, “The true opposite of privati- which came together in massive anti- fight against global corporation, Nestlé, zation is the social re-appropriation of government protests during the UN World who owned a facility that was pumping wealth by working-class society itself – Conference Against Racism in 2001. enormous volumes of water out of the self-organized in communal structures of Bolstered by their experience in collec- local aquifer for a bottling plant. To management, in neighborhood associa- tive struggle, many residents have taken organize large-scale protests to take on tions, and in the rank and file”. matters into their own hands, making the city, the Michigan Welfare Rights The global activists who will interrupt “self-reconnection” part of a broader Organization joined forces with the the water baron’s party in Mexico this political movement to reclaim the Sweetwater Alliance, a coalition that aims spring may only being using the term commons. As Desai describes, “In Cape to keep essential resources out of corpo- “decommodification” to mean “water for Town, Durban, and Johannesburg, the rate control. These organizations were all”. Nonetheless there are signs that the reconnection of water and electricity by able to expose the perverse relationship struggles against the privatization of the community movements has reached between poverty and plenty. While world’s water supplies can provide a ‘epidemic’ proportions, reappropriating Nestlé was shipping away Michigan’s common ground upon which to build an basic needs and creating no-go zones of water for enormous profits, poor even more progressive and ambitious decommodification.” community residents, primarily black agenda. women, were denied their basic human new 24 SOCIALIST the entire period of neoliberalism (1985- Will Evo Morales 2000), with its rampant privatization, growing inequity and ongoing poverty. The Water War was followed by three weeks of mobilization and road blockades change Bolivia? by the Aymara peasantry in the altiplano (high plateau region) in September- October 2000. The heights of the revolu- tionary cycle, however, came during the October 2003 Gas War that forced Y EFFERY EBBER B J R. W neoliberal president Gonzalo (Goni) Sánchez de Lozada to flee the country, and in May-June 2005 when Goni’s successor Carlos Mesa was forced to he results of the December 18 Morales’ party, resign due to his refusal to break with the elections in Bolivia were surpris- neoliberal economic model. Ting to everyone, including to Evo Movement Towards What do we know of the MAS during Morales himself, the leader of the this period? The MAS grew out of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) Socialism (MAS) has coca-growing, indigenous peasant resist- party. Morales won 54% of the vote, moved away from ance in the Chapare region of the almost double the 29% for the nearest country. During the late 1980s and contender, right-wing Jorge “Tuto” mass struggle and 1990s the cocaleros (coca growers) were Quiroga. A record 85% of eligible voters the most important force on the indige- cast ballots, despite reports of widespread towards electoral nous-Left. They combined the revolu- disqualification of mostly indigenous politics. tionary Marxist traditions of ex-miners peasant supporters of Morales for techni- forced to move to the Chapare region due calities. Since the return of electoral to the privatization of the tin mines with democracy to Bolivia in 1982, no presi- with a more sceptical view of the new traditions of indigenous peasant resist- dential candidate has come close to Bolivian government, such as the long- ance. Facing brutal repression under the achieving an absolute majority (over time socialist researcher on Latin America US-led “War on Drugs,” the cocaleros 50%). This makes Morales’ victory all the James Petras or journalists Luís A. Gómez developed an anti-imperialist and anti- more remarkable. and Jean Friedsky of Narconews, are neoliberal ideology directed primarily The majority of Bolivians identify as frequently dismissed as ultra-leftists, against the US. indigenous people, and it is also notable sectarians, dogmatists, etc. For the first few years of its life, in the that Morales is the first indigenous presi- Although it is too early to pronounce late 1990s, the MAS maintained organic dent in South American history. MAS confidently on the character of the new ties with the cocaleros’ peasant unions. won a majority in the lower house, a near Bolivian government, the recent history Evo Morales, of mixed Aymara-Quechua majority in the Senate, and three of nine of the MAS and its relationship to the descent, was among the most important governorships. There are, therefore, no wave of popular insurrection that began union leaders and would emerge as the institutional obstacles to blame if MAS in 2000 and peaked in October 2003 and front person of the MAS. The MAS fails to carry through the hopes of the May-June 2005 supports the view of the initially focused on extra-parliamentary exploited and oppressed popular classes sceptics. The optimistic view is based on activism and base-level democracy, but and indigenous nations who voted it into a superficial understanding of the especially since the 2002 elections has office. Bolivian situation. moved away from mass struggle and The electoral results in Bolivia were towards electoral politics. greeted with widespread euphoria across THE MAS AND In the 2002 elections, Evo Morales POPULAR-INDIGENOUS STRUGGLE both the NGO (non-governmental came second to Sánchez de Lozada in the organization) Left and large sections of Bolivia entered a revolutionary cycle of presidential race by less than 2%. This the radical Left internationally. near-constant popular insurrection in unexpectedly good result, following on Important socialist intellectuals in other 2000, starting with the “Water War” of the heels of inflammatory pre-election parts of Latin America, such as Atilio 2000 in the city of Cochabamba and its threats against Bolivians by the US Borón in Argentina and Heinz Dieterich surrounding countryside. That popular ambassador, gave the party a sense that in Mexico, see anti-capitalist, revolution- revolt against the privatization of water they could win electorally. The MAS ary potential in Morales’s victory. People also signified popular condemnation of began to shift away from street mobiliza- tions and towards courting the “middle Jeffery R. Webber is an editor of New Socialist and a PhD candidate in Political Science at class.” the University of Toronto. He was in Bolivia most recently from January-September, 2005. The leading sectors of the popular-

new SOCIALIST 25 indigenous mobilizations of September- Morales is the first nous people. This is a democratic gain. October 2003 radicalized and brought At the same time, however, the MAS has into the streets hundreds of thousands of indigenous president taken steps against the “next liberation people despite MAS attempts to contain struggle” for socialist transformation, just and soften their demands. The party’s in South American as the African National Congress did in vision was to win the scheduled 2007 South Africa after the defeat of apartheid. elections and they would not let a revolu- history Across Latin America, one of the tion get in their way! Evo Morales central paradoxes of the 1990s has been supported the constitutional exit from the emergence of neoliberal multicultur- the crisis in 2003, allowing Goni’s vice- alism. In reaction to massive indigenous president Carlos Mesa to come to power. instructive national liberation struggles of mobilizations, states began to react to Morales and the MAS were instrumental southern Africa. contain the radical potential of these in supporting Mesa’s neoliberal govern- In his book The Next Liberation movements through official “recogni- ment well into 2005. Struggle (2005), John Saul points out that tion” of cultural diversity, indigenous During May-June 2005 the MAS did the first series of national liberation languages, and so on. At the same time, participate in a way they hadn’t in struggles in southern Africa, from 1960 while the cultures of indigenous peoples October 2003, leading a march from to 1990, were fought against European are being “recognized” by neoliberal Caracollo to La Paz to demand a colonial occupation and white minority states, the living conditions of indigenous Constituent Assembly. Nonetheless, the rule, and for Black majority rule. peoples are deteriorating! party emphasized the need for a constitu- Winning Black majority rule is to be cele- In a recent interview with an tional exit to the revolutionary situation brated, but Saul’s book correctly calls for Uruguayan radio station Petras pointed and the supremacy of electoral politics. a new struggle in southern Africa, or “the out that for a president to say “I’m At a massive rally in the central plaza of next liberation struggle”: a revolutionary indigenous, or I come from humble La Paz during the height of the May-June transition to socialism, because Black origins” does not guarantee anything. We insurrection, I listened to a whole series majority rule has not meant an end to need only look at the deplorable exam- of leaders of popular organizations calling capitalist exploitation in southern Africa. ples of Víctor Hugo Cárdenas who served for the nationalization of natural gas. Similarly, in Bolivia gains by indige- as Bolivia’s vice-president from 1993- Meanwhile, huge sections of the crowd nous peoples in Congress in 2002 and 1997, President Toledo in Peru (who chanted “Nationalization! Morales’ victory in December 2005 are claims indigenous descent and wore a Nationalization!” Morales was the only important steps towards bringing an end poncho in his first presidential electoral speaker to call instead for 50% taxes for to white-mestizo (mixed race) minority race) or Gutiérrez in Ecuador. All three transnational gas corporations exploiting control of the state in a country where were indigenous – or indigenous-backed natural gas resources in Bolivia. the majority of the population is indige- – leaders who did not break with neolib- In the early stages of the electoral campaign, before Álvaro García Linera became the party’s vice-presidential candidate, the MAS attempted to form a broad alliance with the Movement without Fear municipal party, led by neoliberal La Paz mayor Juan del Granado. James Petras is absolutely correct when he writes of October and May-June: “Morales succeeded in taking the peoples’ struggle out of the street and dismantling the nascent popular councils and chan- nelling them into established bourgeois institutions. In both crises, Evo favored a neo-liberal replacement in opposition to the peoples’ demands for a new popularly controlled national assembly.” THE FIRST INDIGENOUS PRESIDENT Much has been made of the fact that Evo Morales is the first indigenous presi- dent in South American history. To understand the significance of this, let’s look at the very different but nonetheless Miners line the stage of a MAS election rally.

new 26 SOCIALIST New Bolivian mobilize against the MAS government if president, it does not meet popular expectations. Evo Morales Oscar Olivera of La Coordinadora recently told Green Left Weekly, “we are minister stated bluntly: “There will be also conscious of the fact that it does not certain changes to the rules of the depend on the capacity of manoeuvring, game… but I told him that companies nor does it depend on the political capac- need a stable and trustworthy environ- ity of the government, whoever it might ment in which to invest and I think he is be, to take us to our objective. It depends conscious of that.” This corresponds with fundamentally on continuing to develop the fact that while occasionally using the and better the capacity of unity, of organ- word “nationalization,” the MAS leader- isation, of proposals and of mobilisations ship has been nothing but ambiguous as of the social movements in front of the to what they mean by nationalization. next government. I believe that is funda- Vice-president García Linera has mental, and I reiterate that the elections famously denounced a transition to are simply a space for the accumulation socialism in Bolivia as impossible for at of forces.” least 50 to 100 years. Instead, he argues The second meeting was organized by for “Andean-Amazonian capitalism,” the Bolivian Workers Central (COB), the which through greater state intervention Regional Workers Central of El Alto will supposedly be supportive of indige- (COR-El Alto), and the central miners’ eralism and did not forge the path toward nous peoples. We should remember that union (FSTMB). While this meeting the next liberation struggle. the ANC’s black capitalism has been produced much fiery rhetoric, attendance anything but good for South Africa’s was low. THE NEW ADMINISTRATION AND black working class. The organizations that took part in SOCIAL MOVEMENTS If the MAS radicalizes during its first these meetings seem to be remaining Since their victory, the MAS leadership months in office, it will not be a conse- independent from the MAS government. has been playing to their different bases quence of the benevolent leadership of Most recently, Olivera was apparently of support. Morales quickly made visits Morales or García Linera. It will come offered a place in government by García to Cuba and Venezuela, suggesting a from pressure from below, from the same Linera. He has shown no interest. It is united fight against “neoliberalism and sort of mass self-organization that we also unlikely that the mostly Aymara imperialism.” At the same time, however, witnessed in Cochabamba in 2000, and peasantry of the altiplano – a key force in Morales and García Linera were quick to throughout the country in October 2003 October 2003 and May-June 2005 – will visit the most reactionary sections of the and May-June 2005. The chances of succumb to cooptation through petty Bolivian capitalist class in Santa Cruz, in success for mass struggle will probably be handouts from the MAS. They are likely particular the far right Civic Committee better in the first year of the MAS admin- to play a key role in mobilizations that of Santa Cruz. This meeting was to reas- istration, before the Right has time to take on the MAS if the party does not sure these capitalists that their interests regroup and rebuild counterrevolution- fulfill basic expectations. would be protected under the new ary forces. At the same time, the warnings of Luís administration. There are some signs of optimism in Gómez and Jean Friedsky, writing just Early visits were also made to Brazil the social movements. Two popular meet- prior to the elections, need to be taken and Spain. Not coincidentally, the ings were held in El Alto in early seriously: “The possibility of an Evo pres- Brazilian state-owned multinational December, just before the elections. The idency makes many nervous, including Petrobras and the Spanish oil and gas first was the Congress of the National us. Our fear is not that Evo’s broad bases giant Repsol are the biggest investors in Front for the Defence of Water and Basic will revolt should he not satisfy expecta- Bolivia’s natural gas industry. As the Services and Life. Neighbourhood coun- tions, but that they won’t. In recent years, Spanish newspaper El País reported cils from Oruro and Santa Cruz, Evo’s primary constituency (the recently, “Bolivian President-elect Evo FEJUVE-El Alto, and the La cocaleros) and the more radical sectors Morales softened his tone… over plans to Coordinadora (the principal social move- (the Aymara of El Alto and the surround- nationalize his country’s gas industry as ment organization in the Cochabamba ing highland provinces) have risen up he met with Spanish officials and busi- Water War of 2000) held a rather success- simultaneously when their interests ness leaders in Madrid.” ful meeting calling for a social-political overlap. But what happens if one group’s The newspaper reports that according front outside of the MAS to foster the allegiance to an elected official overrides to Spanish Industry Minister José self-organization of the masses on the their desire to protest?” Montilla, Morales has adopted a Cochabamba model regardless of what We can only hope that mobilization “prudent” line with regard to the nation- party is in government. This movement from below continues, beginning the alization of natural gas resources. The may prove to have some capacity to next liberation struggle.

new SOCIALIST 27 Explosions of FRANCE protests have erupted throughout France’s poor suburban Shock waves neighbourhoods over the past two months.

BY of a popular revolt MURRAY of a popular revolt SMITH

t is nearly two months now since emerged. Around 3000 young people tion can be discerned which would France’s poor suburban neighbour- were arrested during those three weeks, accredit the thesis of a generalised and Ihoods exploded. For three weeks they half of them under 18. Several hundred organised uprising” – each group of were shaken by nightly riots, in fact a have now been given prison sentences, youth in each neighbourhood acted revolt by youth, overwhelmingly of Arab but the statistics that emerged from the autonomously. Specifically, Islamic and African origin. The primary tactic court proceedings showed that 75-80 per fundamentalists played “no role in the was to burn cars, thousands of which cent of them had no previous criminal unleashing of violence or in its spread- went up in smoke. They also attacked record. ing.” The RG added that in fact Muslims anything that symbolised authority or As for what happened being a revolt – had “every interest in a rapid return to wealth – schools, supermarkets, car show- it’s official. There exists in France a rather calm to avoid amalgams.” And in fact the rooms, warehouses and of course police peculiar institution called “General only intervention that came from stations. Information” (RG). The role of the RG is mosques and Muslim associations during Now that the dust has settled, we can to keep the government informed as to the events was to appeal for calm. begin to see the effects of this revolt. At what is happening in the country, specif- The RG also noted that the far Left the time the media referred to “the riots”. ically anything likely to pose a threat to “didn’t see anything coming and is The hard-line right-wing Minster of the law and bourgeois order. Its agents spend fuming at not having been at the origin Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, referred to the a fair amount of their time snooping of such a movement.” The far Left is young men concerned as “scum” and around left-wing and trade union move- hardly “fuming.” But it had nothing to “rabble” and talked of “cleaning out” the ments to gather information. But their do with what happened for the simple estates where they live. He also said that role is to do precisely that – gather reli- reason that, like most of the rest of the 75 per cent of those concerned had been able information, not engage in populist French Left, it is largely absent from in trouble with the police and that the rhetoric. those poor housing estates – described by riots had “nothing spontaneous” about In a report dated November 23rd, they the RG as “urban ghettos of an ethnic them but were “perfectly organised” by had this to say: “France has experienced a character” – which were the centre of the “gangs of yobbos” or “fundamentalists.” form of unorganised insurrection, with revolt. This sort of talk by Sarkozy and his the emergence (…) of a popular revolt The report concluded that the strong imitators was widely echoed in the (…) without leaders and without propos- identity felt by the young people who media. ing a programme.” Just in case that wasn’t revolted “was not only based on their But already quite a different reality has clear enough, they added: “no manipula- ethnic or geographical origins, but on their social condition as those excluded Murray Smith is an active member of the Revolutionary Communist League, the French from French society.” They “feel section of the Fourth International. penalised by their poverty, the colour of

new 28 SOCIALIST their skin and their names” and that they The Left is very much schools. In various ways, including inside have an “absence of prospects” particu- the Socialist Party, the question of the larly in relation to work. absent from the areas non-representation of France’s non-white It is important to understand the two citizens in its political institutions is interlinked aspects of this revolt. It is on where the revolt broke being posed. Sarkozy had to cancel a the one hand a social revolt, an outburst planned visit to France’s departments in of anger and frustration against their the Caribbean in the face of widespread present life in the grim and impoverished out, which are often protests. housing estates around France’s towns All this raises many debates. The self- and cities, and against their future described as a organisation of the oppressed is not part prospects, or the lack of them. But these of French political culture, not even, and young people are not just suffering the “political desert”. This perhaps especially not, on the Left. The social consequences of neoliberalism. idea of any specific consciousness, other They are suffering these consequences in is misleading. There than a common social and political a way that is magnified by the racism they consciousness, is seen as divisive, even by suffer, a racism that is endemic in French are in fact many some of the victims of racism. An article society. This racism is expressed on a in Le Monde spoke of them being torn social level – by discrimination in associations active in “between a desire for integration and a housing and employment, and in access demand for recognition of their speci- to leisure activity. It is of course illegal but ficity”. It did not seem to occur to the it happens anyway. It is expressed by daily these quarters, journalist that the recognition of a contact with the police who constantly specific identity, a specific history or a harass them. sometimes of a specific oppression might be the pre- The revolt was an expression of all that. condition for real integration. No doubt as a form of struggle, burning religious character, The Left is very much absent from the cars and schools leaves a lot to be desired. areas where the revolt broke out, which But these young people have propelled sometimes not. are often described as a “political desert.” the issue of their situation into the fore- This is misleading. There are in fact front of French society. Now the discrim- many associations active in these quar- how many Muslims there are in France, inations they suffer from are admitted by ters, sometimes of a religious character, or how many Black people, or how many politicians and the media. And beyond sometimes not. But there is little contact second- and third generation immigrants. that their revolt has acted as a catalyst for with the French Left, and some mutual This is because the government refuses to something that was already under way suspicion. This has to be overcome. A collect statistics based or religion or before – the raising of the “race question” polarisation is taking place in French national origin. But it is perfectly clear in France. society. On the one hand racist and reac- that although all French people are equal, This is something very difficult for tionary ideas have real support, as is seen some are more equal than others. And it’s French society to deal with, even on the by the renewed activity of the far Right a question not just of class, but also of Left. In France, you see, everyone is since the revolt and widespread support race. France’s immigrant populations are supposed to be equal – the idea of equal- for Sarkozy’s positions. This has to be still paying the price of the racism that ity is deeply rooted in society. This has a countered and it cannot be countered was born with the slave trade and colo- positive side in the radical egalitarian without building an alliance between the nialism. consciousness that helps to explain the still largely white Left and those who are Coming to terms with this did not regular outbursts of revolt that have on the receiving end of racism. There are start with the revolt of this autumn, but punctuated recent history. But it can also some positive signs. There have been it has sped things up. A Representative have a negative side by refusing to see demonstrations against the state of emer- Council of Black Organisations (CRAN) really existing inequality. In particular, gency, supported by the Revolutionary has been set up, to encourage “the emer- the idea of any separate identity is quite Communist League (LCR), sections of gence of a black consciousness.” On the contrary to the ideology of the Republic. the Communist party and many associa- bicentenary of Napoleon’s victory at The French bourgeois republic was built tions. The campaign against the law on Austerlitz, a collective of citizens of in a centralised, monolithic way, includ- “positive colonialism” is supported by a France’s overseas departments denounced ing the suppression of minority national- front that, almost uniquely, goes from the the fact that the Emperor had restored ities and languages. Everyone is French, right wing of the Socialist Party, via the slavery, which had been abolished by the full stop. Communist Party and the Greens, to Revolution. At the moment a broad One rather ironic result of this mental- Workers’ Struggle (LO) and the LCR. alliance is campaigning for the repeal of a ity is that whereas the press is full of the But much more needs to be done and the law voted by Parliament last February, threat of Islamic fundamentalism and radical Left has a particular responsibility which stipulates that the “positive role” of now these violent young people in the to close the gap between itself and the French colonialism should be taught in suburbs, no one actually knows exactly non-white population in France.

new SOCIALIST 29 ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A COUNTRY ... A retrospective look at western intervention in Yugoslavia

BY RADE ZINAIC

This is the first part of a two-part relives his hatred for Nazis, fascist THE WESTERN MAINSTREAM VIEW article on the break-up of the Croatians and other collaborators — but Interestingly, this interpretation was now that hatred is directed to Croatians former Yugoslavia. also the dominant view in Western and Muslims. The world changes but his accounts of the conflict. In the early sense, real or perceived, of being under nineties, there were many high-falutin siege remains. journalistic surveys of Balkan history n his masterful yet controversial Many denounced Underground as pro- with each author claiming to reveal the 1995 film Underground, the prize- Milosevic propaganda because it failed to true causes of the ethnic strife. The most Iwinning Bosnian director Emir challenge Serbian ethnic chauvinism by glaring and unfortunate example was Kusturica chronicles the birth, develop- not blaming the Serbs for the destruction Robert D. Kaplan’s immensely popular ment and death of post-World War II of Yugoslavia. Popular intellectual Slavoj Balkan Ghosts (1993). This tome, a Yugoslavia. Focusing on a white-collar Zizek interpreted the film, with its rhyth- Clinton administration favourite, intellectual and a working class gangster, mic dance of sexism, song and sacrifice, described Balkan peoples as natural Kusturica’s deceptively simple story iden- as an expression of the fantasies held by haters who were culturally stunted by tifies what he believes to be the primary ethnic cleansers who tormented Bosnia half a millennia of Eastern decadence and social forces responsible for the creation, from 1992-1995. Others viewed it as a empire, and who thus were in dire need corruption, and eventual degeneration of courageous attempt to represent the of Western enlightenment and moral the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia demonized Serbs as people capable of rehabilitation. This poisonously racist (FRY). Marko, a member of the Serbian humour, love and humanity. What critics and paternalistic sentiment, one which pre-war intellectual elite, joins the on both sides failed to see, however, was managed to seep its way into conven- Communist Party at the dawn of the the film’s untruthful depiction of the fall tional opinion, caricatures the Balkan Nazi bombing of Belgrade, taking with of Yugoslavia as the result of a primarily region as a land inhabited by childish and him his life-long friend, an electrician internal conflict, a tragic and bloody sadistic people who are easily manipu- and revolutionary named Blacky. struggle that was somehow predestined to lated by charismatic personalities. From Kusturica’s film portrays with great happen. The “underground” served as a this perspective, the conflict occurred poignancy and depth how historical metaphor for a collective irrational when the surrogate Western parents were forces shape and complicate interper- violence and betrayal that exploded into unable to effectively deal with murderous sonal relationships. Marko eventually history as though from nowhere. Balkan tantrums. turns into a party bureaucrat, content to The mainstream media’s take on the enjoy the fruits of power and privilege Like any superficial fragmentation of Yugoslavia portrayed while duping Blacky into fighting a Slobodan Milosevic as a Balkan sorcerer never-ending revolutionary war. Blacky, reading of this tragic war, — an opportunistic politician who oblivious to the intrigues of wartime managed to stir up an aggressive nation- politics, is wounded and forced to live in the mainstream view that alism among the Serbs of Kosovo in June a surreal underground cellar with other of 1989. The Albanian majority of this proletarians and peasants. For forty-six this was a conflict autonomous province within Serbia years, his wartime politics fester. When became a scapegoat for all Serb historical he emerges from underground in 1992 in between organic evil and grievances. Milosevic’s populist act the midst of the Bosnian civil war, he ushered in a period of federal turbulence naive good conceals as as each republic in the FRY vied for polit- Rade Zinaic is a PhD candidate in Social ical and financial independence. Croatia and Political Thought at York University much as it reveals. and Serbia, the two largest republics, and a member of CUPE 3903. under the leadership of Franjo Tudjman

new 30 SOCIALIST and Milosevic respectively, became War, massacre and taxed as a means to maintain federal embroiled in a bitter contest to partition spending and pan-Yugoslav propaganda. multi-ethnic Bosnia. The Western social suffering are When federal budgets were wanting, the response to this Balkan power play was republics had to ante up for their main- confused and piecemeal, a patch-work of not natural to tenance. This led to political tensions pathetic ceasefires and hollow condemna- within the federation that prided itself tions of violence. Indeed, the popular regions but fall out on being founded on the ideal of broth- media portrayed Western forces as unin- erhood and unity. terested, bumbling and ill-focused until from economic and Susan Woodward argues that this public opinion helped end the ethnic fragile relationship between two levels of slaughter by forcing a NATO-led so- political forces. government was not based primarily on called humanitarian intervention in ethnic tensions among the six republics, 1995. The 1995 Dayton Peace Accord, but rather revolved around shifts in signed by all three belligerents (Serbia, economic policy priorities. The OPEC Croatia and Albania), ushered in a oil crisis, and the related advent of mountains of Bosnia. This ability to Western-sanctioned period of relative chronic stagflation (high inflation, low organize effective resistance was immor- stability. consumer demand and high unemploy- talized in first-hand historical accounts The problem with this account is ment), forced the federal government by Fitzroy MacLean and Milovan Djilas. twofold. First, it over-emphasizes the role into implementing austere anti-inflation The eventual success of the Yugoslavians of individual actors in the break-up of policies. After 1975, repayment of debt to create and cultivate a unique society Yugoslavia — nations are caricatured as was hampered by the West’s lack of inter- based on a mixed economy and aspects of individuals. And, second, the West is est in Yugoslav goods, and trade with oil worker self-management earned them presented as only externally related to the countries trumped other economic kudos from liberals in the West. conflict, the Keystone cops arriving belat- exchanges. The republics were in need of Yugoslavia was one of the inaugural edly on the scene. Like any superficial federally-procured World Bank funds in members of the United Nations, posi- reading of this tragic war, the mainstream order to service their debts. tioned rather insecurely between the view that this was a conflict between This created fears of recentralization United States and the Soviet Union, once organic evil and naive good conceals as among the republics, which were other- Tito fell out of favour with Stalin in much as it reveals. Glossed over are the wise appeased politically with the 1948. Despite dependence upon US processes that set the conditions for the modern era’s possibly most generous loans, the Yugoslavian economy achieved emergence of virulent ethnic nation- (and longest) constitution. The 1974 unprecedented economic and social alisms. The purpose of this two-part Yugoslav constitution all but devolved growth from 1950-1971, a time when article is to explain that war, massacre and every last vestige of political and cultural social welfare amongst modern industri- social suffering are not natural to groups authority to the republics, delivering a alized nations was on the rise. and/or regions, but fall out from the structural blow to any sense of pan- Yugoslavia’s “market socialist” interplay of various economic and politi- Yugoslav identity. The economic central- economy, dependent as it was on US cal forces. Indeed, a structural explana- ization and politico-cultural decentral- loans in order to maintain its non-aligned tion of the 1991-1995 Yugoslavian civil ization of the 1970s occurred against the position during the Cold War, was war is possible — an explanation which all-too-obvious reality of uneven susceptible to erratic shifts in inflation. grants the people their humanity and economic development. The richer This frequently required the institution experience. This should be a prerequisite republics, Slovenia and Croatia, were far of macro-economic stabilization policies for any serious debate about the region closer to the standard of living exhibited which limited the funds required for the and a touchstone for any social-activist in Western Europe compared with maintenance of a stable standard of endeavour within it. Macedonia, Bosnia, and the Albanian- living. Yugoslavia was a loose confedera- populated province of Kosovo. FROM OCCUPATION TO SELF- tion of six autonomous republics (Serbia, International trade tended to favour the MANAGEMENT Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, more developed republics, increasing Macedonia, Slovenia, and Montenegro) Josip Broz Tito, the Moscow-educated economic tensions among them. son of Croat-Slovene descent, was the with its centre in Belgrade, Serbia. leader of the FRY from 1945 until his Belgrade, accordingly, oversaw trade and internationally-mourned passing in monetary issues, but apart from this held In the next issue of New 1981. Tito was the Kremlin-supported little power to control such things as Socialist, Rade Zinaic will head of the small but well-organized education, agriculture and manufactur- Communist Party of Yugoslavia, a party ing. The various republics were entrusted continue by looking at the role of which, in its guerrilla days during the with these different areas of control as a the US and the IMF, and the bloody Nazi occupation of 1941-1945, way of securing and catering to their escalation of the crisis and ethnic managed to tie down several German formal political autonomy. Even so, some divisions in and around the rugged of the revenue from the republics was cleansing in the Balkans.

new SOCIALIST 31 INTERVIEW WITH JULIETA OJEDA AND FLORENTINA ALEGRE Mujeres Creando Feminist struggle in Bolivia

BY JEFFERY R. WEBBER TRANSLATED BY JEFFERY R. WEBBER AND SHEILA WILMOT

Mujeres Creando, or Women Creating, is a small group of anarcha- iation. The peasant union organization feminist women fighting for social change in Bolivia. Two of its leading was supposedly parallel with the men’s figures are among only a few openly lesbian activists in the country. The and women’s union organization, but within the women’s one, we were in group embraces a diversity of struggles, as Julieta Ojeda pointed out in a reality subjugated to the male leadership separate 2002 interview: “So with our starting point as women and our of the other one. I didn’t like it much, identities as women, we can assert our own struggles and fight against they didn’t let us breathe, they didn’t let oppressions in society. We also recognized that we come from a us organize autonomously. particular social class, that we have our own ethnic origins, that we are JRW: And how did MC get started? What different ages, and that we are part of society. In this sense, we don’t only is the group’s history? struggle for women’s rights or issues that affect women, but against all JO: MC was founded and developed types of oppression.” Jeffery R. Webber caught up with two activists in the more or less in 1992, by 3 Leftist Mujeres Creando Café/House/Cultural Centre in downtown La Paz on comrades who brought with them a whole critique of the Left, of women’s June 29, 2005. roles within our traditional Left groups, JRW: I am here with Julieta Ojeda and with the group. So, I did and have been for example, the fact that we tend to have Florentina Alegre. To start off, can you active now for 12 years. only secondary roles to carry out, as secretaries, serving tea, or putting up describe some important aspects of your JRW: And you? personal life that led you to become activists posters, generally doing the jobs that we FA: My name is Florentina Alegre, I in this organization? always do. The other issue is that women come from the countryside but I have function as sexual booty on the Left. JO: So, how did we become involved in been coming into the city since I was So, the group’s founders themselves the group, right? I have been active in quite young, not to live here, but because had had to leave the country for political Mujeres Creando (MC) for more than 12 I was a peasant union leader. I would go (including sexual) reasons, and when they years and one thing that stood out for me back and forth between the city and the came back more or less 5 years later, they was the creative way that women were country. In 1980, the union founded an founded MC because they felt the need brought together in this period [when I internal women’s peasant organization to organize as women, to create some- was first introduced to the group]. Three called Bartolina Sisa*, and this is where I thing new, not something that would comrades (compañeras) had started the started to try to organize other women, as replace the revolutionary subject – who is group and were doing murals and other well as to do my own political develop- supposed to be the working class, accord- activities within the university. I got close ment, from 1980 to 1990. Since 1995 I ing to Leftist groups. Instead, the group to the group because while I had been have been a leader at various levels: in my wanted to constitute itself as a vehicle for looking for a left-wing group to get own community, as well as at the provin- change, one that would contribute to involved in, I hadn’t found one previously cial, departmental [state], and federal social change working with others, but that met my expectations. But MC really levels. from a feminist perspective. Since then knew how to make me question and Joining MC 6 or 7 years ago was a we’ve been going through a series of think through if I wanted to be involved result of men’s discrimination and humil- stages and steps to arrive at this point 14 years later. Jeffery R. Webber is an editor of New Socialist and a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Toronto. JRW: Right, and who were these founding

new 32 SOCIALIST ical formation. So, that is the heterogene- ity that we recognize first off. We believe that this strengthens our analysis of social reality while permitting us to attack the system from different sides. For example, various times when we’ve talked about land or indigenous territory, Florentina will raise issues, will have proposals relating to that theme, or, when we’re talking about a problem of racism, or these kinds of things. We have diver- sity within the group that allows us to raise various issues. We don’t limit ourselves to 3 or 4 themes like they do in the international organizations [NGOs concerned with gender, the United Nations work on gender and so on]. International organizations tell you if you want to be a feminist, or work with other Mujeres Creando Graffiti in La Paz: “Theres nothing more like a Right-wing macho women, you have to work on 3 or 4 than a Left-wing macho.” themes, such as reproductive rights, abor- tion, and maybe one more little theme, women? autonomy as an organizing form that is right? But we as women believe that we JO: They were Maria Galindo, Julieta going to allow us to grow and foster the are capable of engaging with reality and Paredes and Mónica Mendoza, three development of our organization, in a have our opinion and our position with comrades who had been active in Leftist way in which our ideas and selves are not respect to whatever theme that rises to groups. subordinated to a male leader’s political the national agenda! control or the leader’s or party’s control of Then, there is the theme of uniting JRW: So, now, and during the period since money. Therefore, autonomy is impor- manual and intellectual work. In some its foundation, what have been the politics tant, and even more so in the case of ways this has allowed us to maintain our and ideology of MC? women’s organizations. political autonomy because we are not JO: MC has various axes: the issue of There is also the idea of heterogeneity. economically dependent [on NGOs, autonomy, heterogeneity, union of what We don’t believe in organizing between international organizations, or the is considered manual and intellectual women in one sector, or only with estab- government.] We have received concrete work, and the use of creativity as a tool lishing certain academic affinities. No, help for certain little things, but we do for struggle. because we believe in uniting different not live off international aid, we live off On the one hand, with regard to the women: Aymara** women, peasant our work and this house [café, cultural issue of autonomy, as feminists we put women, students, young women, older centre in La Paz], for example, sustaining forward that we are autonomous from women, professional women, women ourselves with the work that we do. any hegemonic centre of power in our who only recently have begun their polit- Then, there is creativity. We occupy society, whether it’s the State, political public space. Public space is occupied by parties or non-governmental organiza- society here: the use of the streets, like tions (NGOs), because we believe that venders selling goods, lovers in the autonomy is what is going to allow We believe in uniting streets, people passing time being in the organizations to move forward much streets, resting in the street. So, for us, it better. different women: Aymara is the optimal place to do politics, to Having made this criticism, we can just occupy the street. We have occupied look at what happened in October [2003, women, peasant women, space through our graffiti and through mass mobilization – “Gas War” – that creative, direct collective actions. I don’t ousted president Gonzalo Sánchez de students, young women, know if you’ve had the opportunity to see Lozada] and May and June [2005, any of these. [Julieta continues this another mass mobilization that ousted older women, professional section with a biting critique of the president Carlos Mesa]. In this later era, “gender technocracy” that NGOs social movements are in fact starting to women, women who only promote while pretending to represent question themselves about the issue of the “women’s movement” as a whole.] political parties and the role of the politi- recently have begun their FA: Another part of this is that in our cal system in our society. We’ve done that society, everything is coordinated so that for a number of years. So we believe in political formation. women are supposed to always be new SOCIALIST 33 submissive. Or, if women have demands those demands are always appropriated [by NGOs, the state, etc.]. However, in MC we have our own voice. This is the most important thing. We act with our own voice. For example, we demand land rights for women, zero interests for peasant women in debt, security for the women prostitutes working at night, among others. We direct these demands, these proposals, at the State, at the “Neither government. And so this is very impor- God, nor tant to us, this other form of doing poli- master, nor tics. Within MC, and also within the husband, nor feminist movement, we practice solidar- party.” ity and honesty, a solidarity and honesty that is lacking in many of the Bolivian social movements. utives…. reforms, with a certain rhetoric of gender. Often this is why there is division Against this, we argue that transforma- between leaders, fights around personal JRW: Do you see the struggle against capi- tion, that dramatic social change is possi- interests, people always seeking more talism as being a part of your struggle as ble. We develop our own forms, our own power. In MC there is no leader, no one well? strategies and our own objectives. who heads the group. We all decide JO: Yes, because we believe in social We have concrete objectives for equally. There is no comrade who leads change…. It’s like our position on the concrete change that arise from the us. Each comrade is like all the others, international organizations around demands of social movements, ones that everyone equal and capable of deciding. women. They have a technocratic vision. want to coordinate their struggles with So we don’t have a structure like the They believe that change can be fostered ours, that want to build on the struggles social movements with leaders, with exec- within the system by making certain that we have put forward. But, in the longer term, we also believe in the transformation of the society. And we try to live the utopia that we want, that we dream of, that we think through. We try to put it in practice everyday here. Obviously, it’s a daily struggle, it’s not as though we’ve done it. It’s a daily struggle for solidarity, reciprocity, like how we manage this space [the café and cultural centre] as a cooperative, including the idea that there are no hierarchies among us, that there is respect, no racism, no classism. And something that I think is truly anti-capitalist is the concept of reciproc- ity. This is a way of attacking the system, the capitalist system. None of us receive a salary. We all work in this space because of conviction. Obviously, we generate a little money by selling things [coffee, desserts, magazines and books] to main- tain the house, but that’s basic right? We say that we are against capitalism, and obviously we are against capitalism. ENDNOTES * Bartolina Sisa was the consort or partner of Túpaj Katari, a central figure in the anti-colo- nial insurrection of 1780-81. ** The “Aymara” people make up the second largest indigenous group in Bolivia. new 34 SOCIALIST TV REVIEW: DA VINCI’S CITY HALL Sidling up to the ambiguities of power

DA VINCI’S CITY HALL CBC TV SERIES

REVIEWED BY SUSAN FERGUSON

he CBC web site for Da Vinci’s City Hall announces “From the Nicholas Tlow track to the fast lane, from the Campbell plays back alleys to the corridors of power, join fictional Dominic Da Vinci as he takes you Vancouver mayor, behind the closed doors where the deals Dominic Da Vinci that shape the city are made and broken.” Well, yes, Da Vinci is mayor of on CBC’s Da Canada’s third largest city, Vancouver. Vinci’s City Hall. And yes, he has left behind his cluttered, glass-walled digs (where he resided for six Colombo-like persona. This goes a long seasons as Vancouver coroner on Da He’s going to have to way toward establishing him as an Vinci’s Inquest) for a lush red leather chair make a few deals with outsider among the slicker, more politi- in a spacious wood-paneled office. cally “pragmatic” types he now runs with. In so doing, not only has Da Vinci, a the devil to get what But it doesn’t take long – in fact, it former cop with left-leaning sympathies took only about 15 minutes into the first and bad hair (played by actor Nicholas he wants. episode – before we see signs that he’s Campbell), lost the transparency and going to have to make a few deals with accessibility those glass walls symbolized, perks and problems of public office, the the devil to get what he wants. but he’s no longer in a position to push show’s creators have brought the dilemma And, appropriately enough for a show up against the power structure from the of social democracy – that is, the attempt about municipal politics, his first outside. Rather, he is planted firmly to reform the system from within – to the Beelzebub comes in the form of a wealthy within it – and it’s a whole new ball small screen. developer. Determined to save a threat- game. City Hall, thus, offers an even deeper ened racetrack (and the jobs it delivers), appreciation than Inquest did of who’s BACK ALLEYS OF POWER the new mayor starts to cozy up to the ultimately pulling the strings – and the developer, a man even his handlers don’t But in another sense, not all that much complex web through which that power entirely trust. Over the next few episodes, has changed. Indeed, the chief genius of is brokered. Many of you won’t be Da Vinci becomes increasingly indebted both Inquest and City Hall lies in showing surprised to hear that the council and to him, setting the stage perhaps for a us that the back alleys and corridors of councilors whom we typically associate more major capitulation. power are just two sides of the same coin. with municipal politics (that is, the And in relieving Da Vinci of his supposed life and blood of representative COUNTLESS STORYLINES coroner duties and saddling him with the democracy) hardly ever appear on the But the power of the wealthy is not the show. only pressure the new mayor must learn As mayor, Da Vinci maintains his do- Susan Ferguson is an editorial associate for to live with. Police Chief Bill Jacobs New Socialist. goodist sensibilities and blunt, crumpled (Brian Markinson), an arrogant tightwad

new SOCIALIST 35 with no love for the former coroner, The squat in the abandoned glamour-gal look, she was simply a great flexes his muscles by, among other things, Woodward’s department store is inspira- female character. Her City Hall parallel, refusing to effectively police Da Vinci’s tion for a storyline about the homeless Da Vinci’s chauffeur, may have some of pet project, a legal red light district. and anti-poverty activists. In another, a those qualities, but she hasn’t clinched it Meanwhile, Da Vinci’s plans to replace teenaged girl is accused of being the ring for me yet. Jacobs backfire when the chief’s key aide leader of a gay bashing, an incident that Having dropped Helen, in fact, the helps to orchestrate a police union back- evokes the beating and murder of 14- new series highlights a weakness in its lash over the mayor’s plan to cross-train year-old Reena Virk by a group of her portrayal of women more generally: while cops and firefighters. This particular tug schoolmates. the men run the gamut of body sizes, of war is fascinating for the way in which looks and ages, the women all fit the same it is played out entirely through rumours RACE, CLASS AND GENDER mold – pretty, thin 20- or 30-somethings, IN THE FOREFRONT and backroom negotiations. usually with well coiffed hair cascading Those are just two of the countless Both Inquest and City Hall are known over their shoulders. (Although she sports storylines – seven were introduced in the for their social realism. Along with char- shorter hair, the lesbian cop is particularly first episode alone. While there’s less of acters that allow for ambiguity, nuance attractive.) the street in City Hall than there was in and serpentine, multilayered and some- And the dialogue has changed ever so Inquest (and fewer dead bodies), a times unresolved plots, that approach has slightly. While it still is eons ahead of the number of the stories stem from Da placed issues of class, race and gender in stuff you get almost anywhere else on TV Vinci’s old stomping ground, Vancouver’s the forefront. for its laidback, imperfect cadence and impoverished Downtown Eastside. Both series showcase probably the most phrasing, it has nonetheless inched up a Only now, Nick (played by Ian diverse casts on TV, with oppressed notch in slickness. There aren’t as many Tracey), the Inquest cop who lived for a groups represented both inside and pauses, ums and such. There’s not nearly while out of his truck, is the new coroner outside the system in equal measure. But as much to-and-fro banter as the charac- while the prime homicide team is made more than that, the shows’ plots are often ters work through a dilemma, rehearsing, up Nick’s former partner Angela (Venus built around those unequal social rela- for example, just exactly how a body Terzo), and Joe (Patrick Gallagher). tions. For instance, Nick is now on the ended up in a sewer. The dialogue is more And, as with the previous series, which trail of another city developer, whom he assertive, less communicative – just a tad. for example built one of its main stories suspects is implicated in a sex scandal The treatment of class, however, is around Vancouver’s missing prostitutes, involving aboriginal boys. particularly interesting in City Hall City Hall draws heavily on actual crime Still, there are a number of things I because of Da Vinci’s decidedly more and political intrigue. (The concept for miss about the old show. I miss Helen, ambiguous class loyalties. Sidling up with the series, in fact, draws from the “real Da Vinci’s former secretary in the the rich and famous is something the life” coroner, Larry Campbell, who was coroner’s office (played by Sarah Strange). coroner did very rarely. The mayor, Vancouver’s mayor from 2002 to 2005.) Smart, wry and lacking the usual TV however, does so regularly. And it is to the credit of the show’s creators that he seems to enjoy it, without apology, including literally getting into bed with capital as he sleeps with the city’s major AIDS bene- factress (apparently a one-night stand). NOTHING INNOCENT Moreover, there’s nothing innocent about such encounters as they’re often a way to deploy a deeper appreciation of class issues. The scene of a high society AIDS benefit is inter-cut with a scene of the cops raiding the squat and beating up the homeless (unbeknownst to, and against the express wishes of, the mayor). As we see Zack, the retired cop Da Vinci has sent down to keep an eye on things, being bashed with a nightstick, Da Vinci and his hostess slip out onto the balcony of her swanky condo for a few moments in private – clearly setting up an overarching theme of City Hall: just how seductive wealth and power prove to be to the new mayor.

new 36 SOCIALIST MOVIE REVIEW: THE ISLAND The commodification of bodies

THE ISLAND echoes the distress many workers in our society feel about the lack of control in IRECTED BY ICHAEL AY D M B the workplace, that the conditions under which we labour, as well as what and how REVIEWED BY we produce and distribute, are never CLARICE KUHLING democratically controlled. The boat in Lincoln’s nightmares, The Renovatio (Latin for “rebirth”), as well as the butterfly (an ancient symbol for “awakening”) which he finds one day, both foreshadow his shift in conscious- he Island is an action-packed ness and serve as plot devices which science-fiction flick about the enable him to awaken to the real night- commodification (the produc- mare about his horrifying role in life. He Ting of something to be bought and sold and all of his peers are actually clones, on the market) of bodies and labour. It is “grown” as a type of insurance policy for also a story of resisting this commodifica- their “sponsor” for the sole purpose of tion and of self-liberation. Its central providing wealthy elites with the neces- themes prompt us to explore our own sary organs, skin and tissue to extend social practices and reexamine funda- their lives a half century longer. In other mental questions: how do we identify instances, the female clones are created to and transform the types and sites of serve as living, walking wombs, for those commodification in our own lives? How sexual behaviour by limiting the amount wealthy women who cannot, or do not do those who are unfree become capable of time and extent of physical contact wish to, bear children themselves. In of self-liberation and begin to free them- with others. Many of the designated jobs every case, however, once their role as selves? consist of the mundane yet mysterious surrogate mother or organ donor is The two main protagonists, task of “feeding the nutrient lines”. In complete, all clones are eliminated and LincolnSixEcho played by Ewan their leisure time they fraternize at the discarded, like any other used “product”. McGregor and JordanTwoDelta played local “bar” – all to the backdrop of attrac- For in this version of the future, keeping by Scarlett Johansson are residents of a tive servers, unusual drinks, vibrant such a clone alive after her/his “use” has futuristic “community” which has osten- coloured lights, music and exotic settings expired, is an extraneous and inefficient sibly survived a massive contamination. projected onto the walls. One of the high- cost that any “reasonable” shareholder or Everyday life here is rigidly regimented. lights of their lives is “The Lottery”, where investor would seek to eliminate. Sleeping habits, nutrition, health and the winner is sent to The Island (“nature’s Ultimately, Lincoln discovers ‘The behaviour are routinely monitored by last pathogen free zone”), an apparently Lottery’ is nothing but a cynical ruse, one of the many surveillance devices beautiful and exciting escape from the designed to placate the clones into positioned throughout the complex. mundanity of daily routines. accepting the present state of affairs “Remember, be polite, pleasant, peaceful. Yet the alluring settings and occasional (“giving them hope and purpose” as Dr. A healthy person is a happy person” an Lottery cannot erase the recurring night- Merrick, CEO of Merrick BioTech later anonymous female voice breathes huskily mares that Lincoln starts having. He asks admits), while they live out their lives over the loudspeaker. Everyone is allo- his friends at work the question, “Where hidden in a discarded military bunker cated the same attire, and different foods do these tubes go, anyways?” and of his underground (the hidden abode of are dispensed to each individual so as to doctor, “Tuesday night is tofu night and production and reproduction?) - until maximize physical well-being. Sleeping who decides we have tofu, and what is such time that the organs are required to quarters are segregated on the basis of tofu anyway? Who cleans my laundry and fill this new niche market “need”. gender. “Rules of proximity” govern folds it, who is this person? I want to In the fictitious world depicted in this know answers and I wish there was more. film, we see the eternalizing, expansion- Clarice Kuhling is an editorial intern with More than just waiting to go to The ary logic of capital expressed through the New Socialist. Island!” Indeed, Lincoln’s distress at work imperial ambitions of the rich in their new SOCIALIST 37 efforts to extend their lives and their would have us forget: that an economic reach into the future. Here we have a system cannot possibly circumscribe and kind of reformulated(cannibalistic?) contain all resistance and activity. In this “service”economy: rather than goods and way, the slogan “never lose hope”, which services produced for human consump- is used at the beginning of the movie to tion, here we have humans produced induce obedience, is at the end of the literally for “consumption” by other movie subverted and recuperated to serve humans. Indeed, the Marxist insight that the goal of social transformation. capital devours the bodies and sucks the We can also criticize the film for repro- life out of workers is given literal expres- ducing once again the misguided notion sion in this film. Here, the living wealthy that a small cadre (our two protagonists) elites feed off the flesh (or harvested of enlightened leaders can and should organs) of the soon-to-be dead (the transform society. However, Jordan’s walking undead haunted by the daily exclamation near the end of the movie, spectre of death?). Or, inversely, we have “The island is real, it’s us!” perhaps should the seemingly boundless appetite of Harvesting organs for the rich. be read not only as an assertion of their (dead) capital devouring the living (like own agency as actors in making social vampires? zombies?) to ensure its contin- change rather than as spectators, but as an ual profits. our ability to formulate a critical reading affirmation of the necessity of collective, Furthermore, Lincoln and his friends’ of the film – a reading which understands mass, democratic action of exploitation is twofold. In the first the capitalist market as a realm character- working/oppressed people in making instance, they labour for free unknow- ized more by domination and coercion social change ourselves (ie. the island is all ingly helping to (re)produce other clones than by freedom and choice. of us). And Jordan and Lincoln, acting on and thereby enriching the profits for For Lincoln, the knowledge that he is John Donne’s observation that “no man Merrick BioTech. Here, their labour is a nothing but a vessel of organs and tissue (sic) is an island” return home to prevent means to serve the larger ends of produc- to be harvested, is a “profane illumina- their peers from dying at the hands of Dr. ing more “product” and profit for the tion” – an experience of shocking revela- Merrick, even when they could have company, and for producing a longer life tion which jolts him into seeing and taken over their sponsor’s lives and never for those who can pay. But in addition, acting in the world in a fundamentally returned. Unlike Merrick, they choose they serve as an end in itself, a commod- new way. “There is no island!” he cries, class solidarity and unity over individual ity and object to be harvested, literally upon learning that his role in life means salvation and self-aggrandizement, chopped up, disassembled and sold. certain death. His exposure to the previ- despite the personal risks. If Lincoln and While we may dismiss the world ously unseen social forces and relations in Jordan embody the slogan “an injury to depicted in this film as having no correla- which he is enmeshed enables him to one is an injury to all”, then Merrick is tion to our present circumstances, we begin acquiring a more comprehensive, the embodiment of individualism and must ask ourselves if there is any corre- illuminating account of his world and its hyper rationality upon which the formu- spondence between the two. While workings. It is unfortunate that Lincoln’s lation of white male western identity is examples such as the commodification of self-consciousness and awareness is founded. Echoing capital’s insistence that our air, water, forests, land and other largely attributed to biological origins (a it gives birth to itself, that it creates itself natural resources readily come to mind, synaptic scan reveals that memories are out of itself and it alone (not human other forms such as biopiracy (patenting growing in his brain, memories which are bodies) produces its own wealth, Merrick of life forms), the international sex trade, actually his sponsor’s), rather than under- hubristically (and ironically) makes global sweatshops, migrant labour (often stood as a social phenomenon, acquired similar claims: “I brought you into this affecting women of colour most through our activity in the world. world and I can take you out of it!” he adversely) are sometimes less obvious Nevertheless, the film shows that as seethes, right before he dies. forms. The social process by which Lincoln begins asking questions, others When finally they all emerge from the human labour power is reduced to a start questioning their existence too. As a bunker into the light of day for the first thing to be purchased is much less under- metaphor for awareness/self-conscious- time after their insurgency from below is stood and discussed. With routine casual- ness, then, Lincoln’s process of remem- victorious, we are amazed and joyful at ness we accept a set of social and bering can be read as a challenge to how far they’ve journeyed and what economic practices which attach a price capital’s attempts to extend the exchange they’ve accomplished. Even if we are to our skills and capacities. And despite principle into every pore and crevice of aware that the project of self-liberation is the indisputable irony of a film which human life, its assertion that there is always unfinished, this film reminds us engages in an enormous amount of nothing beyond or outside of the that there are always forces of and possi- product placement at the same time as it commodity form and its efforts to posi- bilities for social transformation inherent critiques the exploitation of humans as tion people as commodities. Lincoln’s act in any system, no matter how seemingly products (note the presence of Puma, of remembering, then, is a challenge and circumscribed these possibilities might at MSN, Nokia etc.), this does not erode a threat to what the capitalist system first seem. new 38 SOCIALIST BOOK REVIEW: CANADA AND EMPIRE Waging war on Haiti’s poor majority

WAGING WAR ON THE POOR MAJORITY: CANADA IN HAITI BY YVES ENGLER AND ANTHONY FENTON

REVIEW BY HAROLD LAVENDER

“In both their writing and activism, Yves Engler and Anthony Fenton have done some of the most important work in exposing Canada’s shameful role in Haiti,” writes Naomi Klein about Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority, co-authored by Fenton and Engler. This pointed 120-page book is essential reading for those who wish to hold the Liberal government accountable for its anti-democratic, imperialist intervention in Haiti. In the wake of an invasion by heavily armed paramilitaries, former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide says he was kidnapped and removed from Haiti by US forces on February 29, 2004. Supporting both the coup and the repressive new regime were Canada’s Liberal government and NGOs cooperating with anti-Aristide forces. In challenging Canada’s so-called “peacekeeper” role, Canada in Haiti reveals how the Liberal government propped up and provided legitimacy to the anti-democratic Haitian regime currently engaged in massive human rights violations.

LIBERATION THWARTED However, Haitian generals overthrew in Haiti. In 2003, Fenton and Engler Fenton and Engler begin by acknowl- Aristide in 1991, using paramilitaries to write, “Denis Paradis, Canada’s Secretary edging the Haitian people who created institute a reign of terror. Widespread of State for Latin America and La the First Nation of Free People in the international opposition prompted US Francophonie, played host to a high-level Americas in a slave rebellion (1791 to President Clinton to restore Aristide, roundtable meeting dubbed the ‘Ottawa 1804). The great powers sought to place although with many strings attached Initiative on Haiti.’ In a manner that an embargo on that regime. Eventually, (including those from international would foreshadow future meetings the US occupied Haiti (1915 to 1934) lending agencies). hosted by the Canadian government, no and left in place the modern Haitian George W. Bush barred more than representatives of Haiti’s elected govern- army. The Haitian army installed the $500 million in aid and loans to the ment were invited.” L’Actualité reported Duvalier dictatorship in 1957. In 1986, elected Haitian government and his that same year that Paradis and the mass protests forced his son “Baby Doc” administration launched a destabilization French Minister of the Francophonie Duvalier (who had taken over when campaign. However, when the US discussed a potential trusteeship over “Papa Doc” died in 1971) into exile. The became embroiled in Iraq, Washington Haiti and the return of Haiti’s military. people finally appeared to have their say was happy to let Canada take a leading Paradis would later deny the report, when they elected Aristide president in role in Haiti. Canada, with its cleaner, saying the issue fell under the 1990. supposedly democratic international “Responsibility to Protect.” reputation, was better able to pull the THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT Harold Lavender is a member of the wool over people’s eyes. Vancouver New Socialists and an editor of But Canada is no force for democracy According to this Canadian doctrine, New Socialist Magazine. new SOCIALIST 39 when a state fails to protect its people, the effective force of repression. The authors sweatshop game, particularly through world community and the UN have a note that 500 former soldiers have already Montreal-based Gildan Activewear, a responsibility to step in. But the question been incorporated into the HNP, with large supplier of T-shirts. Gildan plans to is: who is being protected from whom? plans for 500 to 1,000 more to be hired. employ up to 5,000 people in Port-au- Canada in Haiti demonstrates that the Meanwhile, aid has been flowing to the Prince, including work subcontracted to Haitian crisis was manufactured by elite new regime. The US lifted a 13-year arms Andy Apaid, the leader of the G-184 domestic opposition forces, working in embargo against Haiti and, in June 2005, opposition. Two Canadian mining concert with foreign governments, inter- the US and Canada officially presented companies, KWG Resources and St. national financial institutions, the inter- the HNP with over $2 million worth of Guinevere Resources, are planning to national press and NGOs. Canada was equipment. mine copper and gold on very favourable deeply implicated in the destabilization Canada also trains and assists the police. terms. campaign that ultimately led to the Some 100 Canadian officers are currently Aristide’s efforts to mobilize the poor failure of the Haitian economy and state. in Haiti as part of a UN civilian police majority were threatening to elite inter- USING NGOS TO DESTROY force led by David Beer of the RCMP. ests. In response, the Haitian elite want a DEMOCRACY Beer previously served in Iraq assisting strong military to protect their interests. counter-insurgency efforts. So do Washington and Ottawa. The book reveals the US imperialist One might think that UN peacekeep- The authors point out Canada is being strategy of using funding from the ing forces would attempt to control police increasingly economically and militarily National Endowment for Democracy excesses, but this is not the case. Instead integrated with the US. For them, it is no (NED) to openly support groups that they have protected the HNP and joined accident that Ottawa’s Initiative on Haiti had once been covertly funded by the in armed attacks on poor areas that are took place at the same time the govern- CIA, and to undermine any initiative that hotbeds of support for ousted President ment was deciding not to send troops to could even vaguely threaten US power. Aristide. Residents of a poor Port-au- Iraq. Some division of labour among But the authors stress the Canadian Prince neighbourhood reported finding imperialists must take place. But Haiti government is no exception. They docu- 23 bodies after a July 6 UN force raid to shows how much Canada is a partner in ment and attack the role of CIDA kill “gang leader” Dread Wilme. the global war on the poor. (Canadian International Development A recent report circulated by Haiti soli- Agency) in Haiti: “It appears that in the darity activists reports UN forces entered POSSIBLE TO RESIST eyes of the Canadian government, ‘civil the teeming Cité du Soleil neighbourhood The authors believe something can be society’ was in effect equated with oppo- of 300,000 people, killing 15 and wound- done. Opposition is mounting in sition to Haiti’s elected government.... ing dozens. communities and countries with large Civil society groups supportive of Lavalas The book asks why the Canadian black communities. The Caribbean [Aristide’s followers] simply did not government is so directly implicated. Community (CARICOM) refuses to receive development money.” Haiti, unlike Iraq, doesn’t have vast recognize Gerard Latortue as prime The authors also slam the record of strategic resources. But the authors say minister of Haiti. So do the African some supposedly progressive Canadian that those who stand to gain from slavery, Union, Cuba and Venezuela. Sixty-nine NGOs, which are heavily dependent on racism and colonialism, imperialism and countries are demanding a UN investiga- government funding. A report by Rights today’s neo-liberalism have sought to tion into the circumstances surrounding and Democracy, formerly headed by the undermine Haiti as an example and block Aristide’s departure. The US NDP’s Ed Broadbent, for example, calls the promise of its independence. And in Congressional Black Caucus denounced the opposition G-184 “grassroots” and a 2004 they believed they could get away the 2004 coup and highlighted post-coup “promising civil society movement.” But with it again. human rights violations. G-184 was financed by the International The authors do not idolize Aristide or In Canada, the initial response was Republican Institute and headed by the the record of Lavalas, the pro-Aristide tiny, primarily centered within the country’s leading sweatshop owner and party. However, they make a case that the Haitian community in Montreal. But the right-winger, Andy Apaid. regime (despite lack of funds and IMF number of people willing to speak out WORKING AS REPRESSORS strings) served the poor majority better and demonstrate is growing. There are Five hundred Canadian soldiers joined than previous dictatorships or the new now Haiti solidarity groups in 11 cities the occupation of Haiti in 2004, before regime. They argue Aristide did not able to co-ordinate actions. Haiti being replaced by a multinational United kowtow sufficiently to the neo-liberal Solidarity BC has increased its activities Nations force, MINUSTAH. They did agenda. His removal has led to attempts to and works in close alliance with little to disarm the right-wing paramili- fast-track a drastic program of privatiza- Vancouver Stop The War. Opposition to taries who had helped oust Aristide. tion. the coup against Aristide is widening into Although their initial goal focused on So-called future economic development other sectors, including the labour move- rebuilding the Haitian National Police in Haiti will be based on sweatshops ment. (HNP), the US, French and Canadian utilizing the cheapest labour in the hemi- The work of a dedicated few is slowly goal is to restore the Haitian army as an sphere. Canada is a player in this global having an effect.

new 40 SOCIALIST BOOK REVIEW Thinking about Left history

REBELS, REDS, RADICALS: RETHINKING CANADA’S LEFT HISTORY BY IAN MCKAY PUBLISHED BY:BETWEEN THE LINES (2005).

REVIEW BY JIM NAYLOR I’m sympathetic to McKay’s concerns. Radical history, even the best, is a mine- field for the uninitiated. The language leftists use to describe themselves and ocialists are deeply conscious of their milieu: revolutionaries, reformists, character of this writing. Although we history. As Ian McKay argues in communists, social democrats, anar- may quibble about the epithets, it would his engaging and thought-provok- chists, syndicalists, Trotskyists, Stalinists, be hard not to concede his point. Overtly S or not, histories have been written as ing Rebels, Reds, Radicals, leftists are by and so on, are far from self-evident terms. definition “non-contemporaneous.” And they are often used in an ahistorical, polemical tools, to demonstrate that one’s They are profoundly aware of living timeless sense. Far too many books, own political tendency is not only right within history, struggling to understand popular and academic, discuss the great now, but was right in the past. Although the patterns and lessons of the past, and twentieth-century struggle between social often full of insight, the result is at best hoping to use this knowledge to guide its democrats and Communists (or in the two-dimensional. Even academic litera- future course. The social world is Canadian context, the Co-operative ture tends to look at the past through the malleable; capitalism has a history and Commonwealth Federation/New eyes of a single political tendency, and therefore, can have an end. More than Democratic Party versus the Communist often reduce that tendency to a political this, socialists are conscious of living Party of Canada/Labour Progressive strategy and program. And much radical within a radical tradition. There is a Party) as if each of these traditions were history is written in a heroic genre, cele- shared sense of comradeship with those frozen in time, unchanging decade after brating the role of individuals or organi- who have gone before and a feeling that decade, unaffected by the changing mate- zations to build struggles and resist co- the challenges that radicals have faced in rial and intellectual worlds around them. optation. the past speak directly to us. Or they are allowed one shift, usually a How do we write a more historical, and The problem, McKay suggests, is that great betrayal, such as the Stalinization of a more useful, history? The first step is to leftists have not been particularly good the Communist Party in the 1920s, or recognize the otherness of the past. historians, at least when it comes to the abandonment of the ideals of the Effective history recognizes that people in exploring what we need to comprehend Regina Manifesto by the CCF in the the past thought and acted differently about Canada’s radical past. The stories of 1950s as it morphed into the NDP. than today. They lived in different past struggles have been recounted in These processes, of course, happened. worlds, read different books, and talked books and pamphlets written by activists But they are often presented in a manner about ideas differently. And they came to and academics of all stripes. But are they that minimizes the great creativity of the their socialist conclusions differently. helpful in building twenty-first century left, and its great challenges. Besides While McKay recognizes the validity of socialisms or, as he suggests, do they act targeting the intellectual carelessness studying specific organizations or politi- as fetters on our understanding by uncrit- reflected in assumptions that political cal currents, he urges us to write more ically replicating old labels and assump- labels carry timeless meaning, McKay generally, examining the paths that have tions? decries the sectarian and sentimental been travelled by a very broadly defined “Left.” The liberal order, as Marxists would expect, has been challenged at the Jim Naylor teaches history at Brandon University and is currently writing a history of the point of capitalist production, although non-Stalinist Left in Canada in the 1930s and 1940s. class-based, workplace struggles account

new SOCIALIST 41 “Matrix-events” such as the emergence of cized national movement in Quebec, for instance, reflected a willingness to under- stand how other oppressions undermined monopoly capitalism, or wars and depressions, liberal capitalism. McKay is particularly keen on focusing on Quebec as key to or the rise of the women’s movement, this formation. Interestingly, McKay identifies socialist feminism as a separate, challenge fundamental questions about the fifth formation, reflecting a new way of thinking about socialism which explored social order creating new frameworks for the relationship between the “public” and the “personal” in ways that no earlier understanding the world. formation had done. Each formation, then, lived within its own intellectual, social and political for only part of the story. Others became ity revolved not so much around what we universe, although they overlapped and socialists through the fight against may consider either revolutionary or interacted with each other. These earlier Tsarism in the Russian Empire, or reformist politics, but around propa- formations each had its own set of because the “liberal order” perpetuated ganda and education. Mastering the notions about what socialism was, and the national oppression of Quebecois or science of social evolution would result in how to act politically. McKay judges the First Nations in Canada. Some came to fundamental change. effectiveness of these formations on their reject capitalism because it came to The success of the Russian Revolution ability to act as a counterhegemonic force conflict with their religious beliefs or challenged a second wave of socialists to to the existing liberal order, to have their because they drew socialist conclusions develop a more activist idea of politics as ideas, assumptions and hopes shared from their struggles for gender liberation. well as new notions of the party. A third beyond their own, relatively small, Still others came to socialism through formation emerged in the 1930s, the numbers. He counterposes this to the international solidarity or simply because product of both the Great Depression “scorecard” radical history which meas- the irrationality of capitalism offended and Soviet industrialization. The role of ures individuals and organizations in the their notion of the possibilities of a better the state, and of centralized planning by past by what they got “right,” versus their social order. Clearly, we are talking of experts, took on a centrality that had “errors” according to our definition. The broad, yet also historically specific, move- been earlier lacking. These were features point is well taken, although it is difficult ments which shaped Canadian Leftisms. shared by the CCF and the Communist to see how we can avoid recognizing that “Matrix-events” such as the emergence of Party who, as much as they slagged each some organizations were more insightful monopoly capitalism, or wars and other, spoke a language each could than others, and that their programmatic depressions, or the rise of the women’s understand. This became all the more the or theoretical developments can continue movement, challenge fundamental ques- case as the language of comprehensive to serve us. There are several other obser- tions about the social order creating new state planning and a Canadian national- vations or statements that New Socialist frameworks for understanding the world. ism supplanted an earlier language of readers may take exception to in this McKay undertakes what he calls a class struggle for both tendencies. The book, particularly around questions of strategy of “reconnaissance,” attempting breakthrough victory of the CCF in political incorporation and organization. to probe each of these Left formations on Saskatchewan and the strength of both At times McKay seems to underplay the their own terms, seeing what made them the Communists and the CCF in the power of the hegemonic liberalism he tick. By formations, he means something rapidly blossoming union movement, describes so well. He celebrates the influ- much broader than an organization or a McKay suggests, marked the entry of the ence that socialists have had on public single tradition, but rather what we left into hegemonic politics. policy and culture but has to acknowl- might think of as an entire radical gener- The rise of a new left in the 1960s and edge that “every major leftism in ation which would share assumptions 1970s represents a fourth formation, Canadian history has ultimately been about the world and about socialism. For rooted in a response to the cold war and digested by the liberal order.” McKay’s instance, early twentieth-century social- an identification with decolonization promised three volume reconnaissance of ists drawing not just on Marx, but on the movements around the world. It explic- the Canadian Left, of which this volume political economist Henry George, the itly rejected the old left’s assumptions, is a kind of theoretical introduction, will anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan and strategies and language. It was critical of allow socialists to understand the particularly the hugely influential sociol- the bureaucratization inherent in the processes that created and undermined ogy of Herbert Spencer, shared a social third formation’s “planism” and thought the Lefts of the past. The result will be evolutionary view of the world. Although more broadly about potential revolution- new insights and, undoubtedly, new socialists had differences, debates drew ary agents and the meaning of radical disagreements and new debate. The Left on a shared language, and political activ- democracy. The rise of a highly politi- can only benefit. new 42 SOCIALIST TIME TO ORGANIZE Branches and members of the New Socialist Group are active in a number of cities. 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FOR ALL OTHER AREAS [email protected] (416) 955-1581 Box 167 253 College St Toronto Ontario M5T 1R5 www.newsocialist.org THE NEW SOCIALIST GROUP is an organization of activists working to renew socialism from below as part of today’s struggles. Our socialism is revolutionary and The NSG works with the Québec democratic, committed to working-class self- organization GAUCHE SOCIALISTE emancipation, internationalism and opposition to all forms of oppression. We reject bureaucratic and MONTRÉAL [email protected] authoritarian notions of socialism and look instead to QUÉBEC CITY [email protected] the radical tradition of socialism from below, which and the OUTAOUAIS [email protected] believes that liberation can only be achieved through the activity and mobilization of the oppressed GAUCHE SOCIALISTE themselves. Ideas need to be put into action. So if you CP 52131, Succ, St-Fidele, Québec, G1L 5A4 like what you read, get in touch with us. www.lagauche.com new SOCIALIST 43