1. The Tories have won a majority government with 53.4% of votes cast. The increase from the 44% the Tories won in 2011 was more a matter of NDP unpopularity than enthusiasm for Pallister. What's most noticeable is the huge decline in the NDP's vote, from 46% in 2011 to 25.6%. The Liberal vote rose from 7.5% in 2011 to 14.2%.
2. During the election campaign the Tories didn't openly proclaim their intention to bring in far-reaching austerity. Yet that's almost certainly what the new government is going to do, probably justifying its actions as necessary because of a supposed "deficit crisis" inherited from the NDP. 3. A lot of people will be surprised by what the new government does. Even more will be upset and opposed to its attacks, including people who voted Tory in both urban and rural areas. This discontent can be tapped to build active opposition to the austerity agenda. 4. If active opposition isn't built, most people who don't like the new government's actions will conclude that nothing can be done except vote to defeat the Tories in the 2020 election. Experience in other provinces tells us that this is dangerous. It means that there won't be much of a fight to stop harmful government measures or a strong challenge to the idea that "There Is No Alternative" to neoliberalism. Such a political climate will help the Tories' chances of winning again in 2020. If the NDP wins in 2020 in such a climate, it's very unlikely to reverse much of what the Tories have done while in office (remember that after the NDP won office in 1999 they didn't reverse the privatization of MTS or repeal the Tories' balanced budget legislation, and that what the Tories are going to try to do this time will probably be much worse than what they did under Filmon in the 1990s). 4. Efforts to build active opposition to austerity will be starting from the very low level of activism that exists in Manitoba today. But they won't be starting from nothing: pockets of activism in union locals and on campuses, the ongoing indigenous resurgence and efforts that bring low-income people together in some Winnipeg neighbourhoods can all be seeds from which protest and resistance can grow. 5. One-off demonstrations are important. But they won't be enough to stop attacks by this government. What's needed is grassroots organizing in communities and workplaces that tries to build a movement against austerity. The best strategy for fighting austerity is working to build a movement powerful enough to do in Manitoba what students and others did in Quebec in 2011-12: organize against unpopular government policies, mobilize broadly and create a political crisis that forces an election and the defeat of the government. That's a goal we should aspire to. It seems like racism is in the news every day. In January 2015 Maclean's ran a cover story that called Winnipeg the most racist city in Canada, pointing to the treatment of indigenous people here. In the federal election campaign, "Stephen Harper and the Conservative party peddled hatred of Muslims, fear of refugees, disregard for First Nations communities," as Toronto journalist Desmond Cole aptly put it. Bilan Arte, national chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students, was clear: during the campaign "Time and again we witnessed the people running to represent our country pander to blatant racism." Racism was "harnessed and manipulated as a political tool." It's possible that we'll see something similar happen in the 2016 Manitoba election. South of the border, Donald Trump is skillfully using blatantly racist signals about people of colour as part of his maverick campaign to be the Republican candidate for president. Trump has called Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers. He has also pledged to keep Muslims from entering the US and claimed that in Jersey City thousands of people cheered when the World Trade Centre was hit on September 11, 2001. Meanwhile, as US journalist Paul Waldman points out, "his opponents tiptoe around the issue, unwilling to criticize him too severely." Across Europe we're seeing a rise in racist words and deeds directed against Muslims. Repressive "national security" measures are spreading. France is just one example. In the wake of the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, the Socialist Party (France's NDP) government proposed to strip dual citizens convicted of terrorism of their French citizenship -- a policy long advocated by the extreme right-wing National Front party, which is enjoying unprecedented support (the Harper government's Bill C-24 allows the Canadian government to do the same thing). The French prime minister has said in a speech that migrants "put the concept of Europe in great danger." The government is also pledging to maintain its repressive state of emergency measures until Islamic State has been defeated. So what's going on? Racism isn't new. Although it hasn't always existed, it's been part of European society and countries founded by European settlers for several hundred years. In Canada and the US, one reason that racism has been getting more attention recently is that indigenous people and people of colour have been shining a spotlight on it and demanding change. It's people organizing against violence and harassment against indigenous women and people of colour that deserve credit, not journalists or governments that respond to their courageous efforts. But it's not just that everyday racism is getting more attention. Around the world, racism is being used as a political tool more frequently. In Canada, Muslims and indigenous people in particular have been targeted, though African-Canadians and other people of colour have been too. Some politicians and pundits use racist scapegoating of certain groups of people to win votes and divert attention away from the many harmful things that governments and corporations are doing. They fan the flames of racism. However, they don't create it. Racism can be used as a political tool because racist beliefs already exist. Those beliefs aren't part of human nature. Racist attitudes exist because of how our society is set up. They're perpetuated by racist realities. Certain groups of people who are seen as inherently and unchangeably different are oppressed on that basis. They're subjected to a specific kind of systemic harm -- that's what racism is. They have less money, less power and worse jobs. They have worse health and are more likely to be jailed. It's objective realities like these that racist ideas pretend to explain. After all, the racist thinker says, if so many "of those people" are poor or in jail it must be their own fault, right? This kind of blame-the-victim thinking would have little appeal if those it targets weren't oppressed. Who gains from racism? Although well-meaning people often say that racism hurts everyone and benefits no one, this isn't true. In our racist society, all white people have some advantages relative to people who face racism. Better access to jobs, better treatment by landlords, business owners, the police and the courts -- these and other advantages are white privilege. Yet racism benefits some people much more than others. Employers reap higher profits because racism divides and weakens workers, and bosses can make divided workers work harder. Workers who face racism are often forced to work for lower wages and in worse conditions. Also, governments have an easier time keeping people in line and implementing policies that hurt most people when indigenous people and people of colour are blamed for problems like unemployment, bad jobs and inadequate public services that are caused by capitalism. That's why white privilege isn't in the interest of white workers -- it's poison bait. Bob Dylan's 1964 song "Only a Pawn in Their Game" put it this way: “But the poor white man’s used in the hands of them all like a tool Winnipeg today isn’t segregated Mississippi, to be sure. But what Dylan sang about racist workers in the Jim Crow South still applies to working people who buy into racism today.
Review of Emma Battell Lowman and Adam J Barker, Settler: Identity and Colonialism in 21st Century Canada (Fernwood Publishing 2015).
By David Camfield Canada is a colonial-settler state. This society was built by Europeans and their descendents on land taken from the indigenous peoples of Northern North America. As Emma Battell Lowman and Adam Barker put it in their new book, Settler, "Canada was forged by settler colonialism, and as a contemporary settler state maintains legal, political, and economic systems rooted in the settler colonial usurpation of Indigenous lands and the dispossession and disappearance of Indigenous peoples." This reality is still ignored or denied by most non-indigenous people, including people on the Left. Fortunately, though, growing numbers are beginning to recognize this truth about Canada. The brisk sales of books like Thomas King's The Inconvenient Indian reflect the growing desire to understand the history of indigenous peoples and how they have been treated by governments, churches, schools and other institutions. More than ever before, some non-indigenous people accept that colonialism is a present-day reality, not just something in the past, and are grappling seriously with what it means to live in a colonial society. If you don't agree with this view of Canada, Settler isn't for you (but you should read King's book and others like Howard Adams' Prison of Grass and James Daschuk's Clearing the Plains). However, people who do agree that Canada's foundations are settler-colonial can learn a lot from this book. Settler is a study of "the Settler identity in Canada, an identity shared by many but claimed by few." Insights There are lots of insights in the book's discussions of how colonialism is perpetuated by cultural appropriation, institutional and interpersonal racism and national myths like "multiculturalism, peacekeeping, socially progressive politics, and hard-earned prosperity" which "attract newcomers and assure Canadians of our moral righteousness on the world stage and at home." Battell Lowman and Barker's point about the difference between the relationships that indigenous peoples have "with the land" and the relationships "to the land" of the rest of us is one that stands out in my mind. The book’s discussion of treaties is also helpful. For example, the authors point out that "treaty has been used as a strategy to extinguish Indigenous peoples' claims to land in order to extend the sovereign control of the Settler state." They also have perceptive things to say about how "newcomer or newly accepted communities" are encouraged to "buy into and reinforce" colonialism. They thoughtfully analyze the fear and efforts to comfort ourselves with which non-indigenous people often respond when challenged to face up to colonialism. When it comes to the struggle to change society, they argue that it's important to shed the belief that "discomfort means that we are doing something wrong." They add that accepting discomfort "is not the same as engaging in active struggle against colonialism." Both ideas need to be taken to heart by non-indigenous people who want to help end colonialism. So should their emphasis on what we actually do and the relationships we build with indigenous people, and their caution against "seeking special status as a Settler ally." Settler Identity Politics Battell Lowman and Barker rightly argue that "we need to create a critical mass of people... willing to commit to doing something" about colonialism. Unfortunately, the book's focus on identity makes it less useful tool than it could be in explaining how this can be accomplished through decolonization politics. The book’s academic writing style is also a flaw. The book's focus risks treating "Settler identity" as something that exists separate from the social relation between indigenous and non-indigenous people. People's identities are just one dimension of the fundamental social relationships between groups of people that structure society. Identity isn't a thing and it doesn't do anything (only people act). A more serious political problem is Settler’s claim that most people consciously and deliberately choose to perpetuate settler-colonialism. This overestimates most people’s understanding about what's happening. It also exaggerates how much power most individuals have to influence the shape of society. The book has a weak analysis of what the material and psychological advantages (privilege) of colonialism are for non-indigenous people. Most importantly, it doesn't note how the capitalist class has a vastly greater stake in colonialism than anyone else or that colonial privilege is contradictory for the working class [1]. Decolonization and Class Struggle Although the authors write that "it is impossible to discuss capitalist exploitation, racial oppression, or settler colonialism separately from each other," the book's discussion of decolonization doesn't take into account how deeply colonialism is interwoven with capitalism in Canada [2]. Class is treated as more a matter of how much money people have than about where people fit into the capitalist system for producing goods and services. The relationship between the struggle against colonialism and class struggle isn't raised. The book is vague about what kind of social change would be required to end colonialism (at one point the authors even write that decolonization is not "a goal to be achieved"). It seems to suggest that decolonization would involve struggle but could happen gradually. The question of whether colonialism could be ended in a capitalist Canada is never asked. The authors are right that "anti-capitalism is not the same as anti-colonialism." But capitalism is not, as they claim, a tool developed for the sake of colonialism (European colonialism was originally a response to the crisis of feudalism, but settler-colonialism was a product of the development of capitalism). Unfortunately, their brief discussion of socialism wrongly assumes that the USSR and similar societies were in some sense socialist (these bureaucratic dictatorships were profoundly anti-socialist, in spite of their leaders' words). My last concern about Settler has to do with language. I'm not convinced that calling non-indigenous people "settlers" and encouraging us to identify this way is helpful for the difficult task of building support for decolonization when anti-colonial politics are so marginal. Settler offers a mixture of insight and unhelpful ideas, and doesn't address some vital issues. Still, people who oppose colonialism should read this book. David Camfield is one of the editors of New Socialist Webzine. [1] See my "Colonialism and the Working Class in Canada." [2] The book also doesn't consider that the Canadian state is a multi-national political entity made up of Canada (the dominant nation), Quebec (colonial in relation to indigenous peoples but subordinate to Canada) and indigenous nations. by David Camfield
originally published in Canadian Dimension, Vol. 50, Issue 1, Winter 2016 Racism kills. This is obvious in the police killings that have sparked the important Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, and in blatantly racist attacks such as the murders in a historic African- American church in Charleston, S.C., in June 2015. But racism also kills in more subtle ways. Lives are cut short by health problems brought on by living in poverty, toiling in hard and often insecure jobs and in various ways being treated as less valuable human beings. Even when it doesn’t lead to premature death, racism scars the lives of people who are forced to shoulder its burden. Racism is a gift to right-wing political forces that thrive on scapegoating and fear of “terrorist” threats, both of which they often stir up. They channel fear and blame into support for their efforts to boost spending on the military, police and “security” (including surveillance of the population), restrict the ability of migrants to become citizens and impose a more conservative definition of what it means to be Canadian (or Québécois). Whether “home grown” or foreign, the face of today’s terrorist threat depicted by politicians and the mainstream media is usually non-white. Muslim-Canadians are often treated as collectively responsible for this threat. Racism is also a boon for employers, since it’s a barrier to solidarity among workers and lowers wage levels. So confronting racism must matter a lot to anyone who wants to change the world. This makes it worth pausing to examine what racism is, and what a solid understanding of it can do for anti-racism. The most common way of thinking about racism sees it as negative or hateful attitudes that individuals have about groups of people who are different from them in some way (usually skin colour). This is seen as the result of ignorance. The solution is education to improve “race relations.” But if we consider the full scope of what’s involved, this liberal notion of race relations doesn’t do justice to the reality of racism. In Canada, people of colour and Indigenous peoples have, on average, lower incomes and less wealth than white people. They are underrepresented in higher-level positions in government and other state institutions as well as in businesses. They are more likely to have bad jobs and to live in poverty. They are more likely to be harassed by police, convicted of a criminal offence and serve time in prison. People of colour who are immigrants tend to be worse off than those born in Canada, but being born here doesn’t level the playing field. And being born in Canada doesn’t keep people of colour from often being seen by white people as being from somewhere else, as not “really” Canadian. Because Canada is a capitalist society, wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a tiny ruling class. That class is disproportionately white. In the rest of the population, the unequal distribution of income, wealth and power is slanted in favour of white men. Clearly a lot more is going on than negative attitudes and poor “race relations.” As U.S. sociologist Stephen Steinberg puts it, “How is it that we apply such benign language to such a malignant problem? It is rather like diagnosing a melanoma as a skin rash, and prescribing a topical salve.” Racism as a form of oppression It is much more helpful to think of racism as a form of oppression (other forms include sexism and heterosexism). Oppression exists where systemic harm is inflicted on a group of people by another group. Racism, like other kinds of oppression, is a social relation, a pattern of interaction that’s part of how society is organized. Steinberg puts it well: “Unlike ‘race relations,’ ‘racial oppression’ conveys a clear sense of the nature, magnitude, and sources of the problem. Whereas the race relations model assumes that racial prejudice arises out of a natural antipathy between groups on the basis of difference, ‘racial oppression’ locates the source of the problem within the structure of society. Whereas ‘race relations’ elides the issue of power, reducing racism down to the level of attitudes, ‘racial oppression’ makes clear from the outset that we are dealing here with a system of domination, one that entails major political and economic institutions, including the state itself. Whereas ‘race relations’ implies mutuality, ‘racial oppression’ clearly distinguishes between the oppressor and the oppressed.” To be precise, racism is the oppression of a multigender group of people on the basis of differences (not limited to those related to sexuality or disability) that are treated as inherited and unchangeable. The differences singled out as relevant are often connected in some way to people’s bodies (skin colour, hair texture and so on). But they can also be cultural differences, when people are seen as defined by a supposedly unalterable culture. Today we see this in how Muslims in the West are considered inherently angry, irrational and violent. Contrary to common belief, racial oppression hasn’t always existed. Religious persecution and the domination of conquered groups have been around for thousands of years. In these kinds of oppression, the oppressed aren’t treated as fundamentally different in ways that are both passed down to their descendants and unchangeable. For example, in medieval Europe Christians persecuted and sometimes killed Jews but religious conversion offered an escape route. Racial oppression is qualitatively different. It didn’t exist for most of human history and is a relatively recent development. Capitalist colonialism was fundamental to forging racial oppression and spreading it around the world. Comparing anti-Jewish racism to religious persecution highlights what’s different about racial oppression: religious belief isn’t the issue, but rather the allegedly inherent differences that supposedly distinguish Jews from other humans (so-called “Jewish blood”). The Nazis didn’t care whether the people they identified as Jews and set out to exterminate were religious believers or atheists. What people of colour and Indigenous people experience in Canada is racism. Although the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and human rights codes proclaim the equality of all citizens (which does little for the migrant wo rkers — mostly non-white — whose numbers continue to grow rapidly thanks to the federal government’s tilt towards admitting people on temporary work visas rather than as permanent residents), legal equality doesn’t produce social equality. Official multiculturalism policies encourage us to think about cultural diversity instead of inequalities of wealth and power. Within the framework of official multiculturalism, people considered as belonging to “visible minorities” (visible to whom?) remain “targets for either assimilation or toleration.” This affects all who suffer from racial oppression even though class divisions, sexism and heterosexism mean that the material conditions and lived experiences of racially oppressed people vary enormously. At the same time as they face racism, Indigenous people are also burdened with another kind of oppression: colonialism. This is because Canadian society was built by European settlers who dispossessed the original inhabitants from the land, marginalized them and attempted to eliminate them as culturally distinct peoples. Thinking about racism as oppression also helps us to grasp that racism is a structural feature of the society in which we live. Once we do that, we can start to think about where we’re positioned in relation to racism. This helps to dispel the pernicious ideas that many white people have about “reverse racism.” Once we accept that racism is a form of oppression, it doesn’t take much effort to see that white people as a group aren’t systemically harmed as a consequence of being white. Recognizing that racial oppression exists also opens the door to coming to grips with the fact that it has a flip-side: the advantages that people in dominant racial groups get from their position. Privilege is an obstacle to understanding There are many problems with the way the concept of privilege is commonly used today. The word often refers to any situation in which someone is better off than someone else (for example, calling the pay and benefits of unionized workers “privileges”). This leads to infinite fragmentation — there’s always someone worse off. Thinking this way also hides the huge gulf of wealth and power between the ruling class and the working-class majority. Inequality among workingclass people is real, and some aspects of it are growing. But this is dwarfed by the enormous gap between classes. In the case of racial privilege, white people frequently get preferential access to information about job openings and treatment in competition for jobs. Thanks to racism, we tend to get better pay and conditions at work and better treatment by landlords, service providers, business owners, police and the courts. There’s also some psychological consolation that comes from being white in a society that treats white people as “normal” or “unhyphenated” Canadians or Québécois. The magnitude of white privilege in Canada and Québec isn’t as big as it once was — and some white folks are given more of it than others — but it’s still very real. White privilege isn’t something that’s chosen, though sometimes white people actively try to preserve or even enlarge it. Nor is it something that anti-racist whites can simply discard; privilege comes from being part of a dominant group whether one wants to be part of that group or not. What makes racial privilege more complicated than many anti-racists realize is that it’s contradictory. It involves real advantages, however limited and relative. At the same time, racism divides, weakens and economically harms the working class as a whole, including white workers. The more intense racism is, the weaker unions and other working-class organization tend to be. The weaker the working-class movement, the less able workers are to defend and improve their working and living conditions in the face of efforts by employers and governments that put profit before human needs. This means that white privilege isn’t in the interests of white workers. It’s “poison bait.” Unfortunately, racial privilege is an obstacle to white workers understanding that their interests lie in anti-racist working-class solidarity. As U.S. socialist Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor has argued, it “complicates the fight against racism because it convinces white workers that they have something to lose by not being white — which, of course, is true. If they did not get some advantage — and with it, the illusion that the system works for them — then racism would not be effective in dividing . . . workers.” Why does racism persist? Everyday racism is perpetuated in countless ways, consciously and unconsciously, in every sphere of life. But why does it persist? It’s not a hangover from a past when the “white race” was widely seen as naturally superior. There are three deeply-rooted and intertwined features of how society is organized today that explain the persistence of racism. The first is imperialism. Capitalism has developed unevenly, resulting in world domination by a small number of countries in which capitalist development is most advanced. This imperialism has been and continues to be interwoven with racism. People in parts of the globe oppressed by imperialism or descended from them are marked as different in ways that are supposedly inherited and unalterable. The second is that racism is profitable. A divided workforce is less able to resist management control. This allows employers to make workers work harder. Competition between workers in the labour market leads to workers with a lower status in their society’s racial hierarchy being willing to work for less pay and in worse conditions than those above them. Racism’s weakening of the power of the working class in society also enhances capital’s profits. Finally, racism persists because of the efforts that members of dominant racial groups make to preserve or expand racial privilege. Campaigns against affirmative action in the United States and employment equity in Canada are examples of this. So too are policies which reaffirm national culture as white and European, or which bar some Muslims from certain kinds of employment and access to some services in the name of secularism and human rights. Oppression remains embedded despite equal rights Malcolm X was right: “You can’t have capitalism without racism.” Anti-racists should think seriously about the significance of this insight. Anti-racist action should also be guided by the understanding that racism is a form of oppression that remains embedded in the structures of our society even though legal equality exists. It would require major changes to really weaken racism in Canada. Reforms that would have a big impact include tough employment equity laws covering both private- and public-sector employers, the creation of significant numbers of good public-sector jobs and non-profit housing units, the unionization of many more workers of colour and permanent-resident status for all migrants. To uproot racial oppression would require revolutionary social transformation that was both anti-capitalist and anti-racist. SIDEBAR: There’s no basis in biology for dividing people into “races”: “the genetic variation found in the human species is not grouped in discrete, genetically distinct units scientists can identify as races.” The groupings we think of as races were created as a consequence of racism; “racism is not the product of race.” — Dorothy Robert The Manitoba NDP has been in office since 1999. This means that many people don't realize what a Tory win in the April provincial election will mean.
The workers' movement in Canada and Quebec is in a state of disarray, unable to deal with ongoing attacks on the diverse working class. Whether unionized, non-unionized, temporary, racialized, women or indigenous workers, the weakness or absence of workers' organization reveals a movement in need of reinvention. What follows is an introductory piece meant to open discussion on the state of the workers' movement today.
It's good news that in a number of cities people "are meeting together in growing numbers to explore what it means - and doesn't mean - to stand in solidarity with Indigenous peoples within Canada," as journalist Meg Mittelstedt wrote recently.
by David Camfield
originally shared as a Facebook Note. May, 2014 In his recent wide-ranging political article on the radical left today [1], Alex Callinicos chose to devote space to a critique of aspects of an academic journal article of mine [2]. Callinicos responds to my claim that forms of oppression such as racism, sexism and heterosexism cannot “simply be explained through class” by reiterating his view that form of oppression should be explained “in terms of the prevailing forces and relations of production.” In a 1990 article of his quoted in my article he presents this arrogantly as “the Marxist claim” – as if there could be only one Marxist approach to explaining oppression -- and in his recent article he calls it “the Marxist approach attacked by Camfield.” Nothing Callinicos wrote changes my belief that, as I argue in my article, his approach to explaining forms of oppression can never be adequate. Analysis of specific forces and relations of production can indeed explain much about oppression, including, as I mention in my article, the origins of gender and racial oppression. It can also explain a great deal about the reproduction of forms of oppression. For example, my article argues (quoting Sue Ferguson and David McNally) that capital is “dependent on socio-historically located ‘biological processes specific to women – pregnancy, childbirth, lactation’, which ‘induces capital and its state to control and regulate female reproduction and … to reinforce a male-dominant gender order.’” This is because capitalism relies on the production of the indispensable commodity of labour power in households, mainly by women. When it comes to explaining the persistence of racism today, I think that capitalist imperialism and the ways in which racism is profitable for capital go a long way. But my contention is that features of a society’s forces and relations of production can never fully explain why forms of oppression are reproduced. This is because forms of oppression generate properties that contribute to their own persistence. These are found in the advantages relative to the conditions of an oppressed group that are conferred on members of a dominant group by how they are positioned by oppression, which we can call privilege [3]. Callinicos ignores my argument that “male privilege gives those who have it a material interest (mediated by class relations, which make this interest much greater for ruling-class men than working-class men, given the magnitude of the former’s stake in capitalism) in maintaining gender oppression.” Racism operates in a similar way for people socially categorized as white. Privilege “necessarily complicates the fight against racism because it convinces white workers that they have something to lose by not being white – which, of course, is true. If they did not get some advantage – and with it, the illusion that the system works for them – then racism would not be effective in dividing… workers.”[4] There is no shortage of examples of how racism is perpetuated by efforts to defend or expand privilege. For example, it is common for white workers to respond to competition for jobs in ways that harm racially-oppressed workers. This kind of response is rooted in the material differentials of privilege and the absence of a compelling practical alternative based on anti-racist working-class solidarity.[5] Campaigns to roll back affirmative action in the US and employment equity in Canada are, in part, defences of racial privilege. Mobilizations against multiculturalism policies and the presence of Muslims in the public sphere are also, among other things, moves to defend or enhance privilege (the racial advantages at stake here are often tiny or nonexistent in material terms, no matter how meaningful they are to some white people, although policies in European countries that prohibit the wearing of “ostentatious” religious items bar many Muslims from some jobs, which in terms of racial privilege mainly serves to advantage white workers). Of course, the relative advantages given to members of dominant groups corrode working-class solidarity. They are contrary to the class interests of all workers. That’s why privilege is contradictory for the working class. It’s poison bait, to use a phrase of Theodore Allen’s. In short, to convincingly explain forms of oppression historical materialists need to go beyond Callinicos’s approach. This is one reason why we need to develop historical materialism by taking up important theoretical insights developed by others directly involved in or influenced by movements against oppression, which is the heart of what my article argues. Callinicos calls this “merely an adaptation to some of the poststructuralist and postcolonial ideologies prevailing in the academy.” I’ll resist the temptation to suggest what political considerations influence his dogmatic defence of his classical Marxist approach to explaining oppression. ----- [1] “Thunder on the Left” in International Socialism143 [2] “Theoretical Foundations of an Anti-Racist Queer Feminist Historical Materialism,” in Critical Sociology [3] I believe that a carefully-specified concept of privilege has a place in historical materialism. This can be used in the analysis of concrete situations to provide dialectical understandings of contradictory realities of oppression. But it must be distinguished from other uses of the concept of privilege, which today is unfortunately often used in place of the concepts of exploitation and oppression. For an excellent critique of thinking about class in terms of privilege rather than exploitation, see Steve Darcy, “’Exploitation’ Versus ‘Privilege’ in Class Analysis”. “Privilege” is used by people with very different theoretical and political views. This means that it is a mistake to lump all of them together into something called “privilege theory” that can then be denounced. This is what Esme Choonara and Yuri Prasad do in “What’s Wrong With Privilege Theory?” in International Socialism 142 (which Callinicos cites favourably). [4] Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, “Making Sense of Society In Order to Change It” in socialistworker.org. [5] Robert Brenner and Johanna Brenner’s article “Reagan, the Right and the Working Class” in Against the Current 2 (1981) identifies the logic behind what they call “attempts by stronger sections of the working class to defend their positions at the expense of weaker sections.” This article was first published by Canadian Dimension as part of a series of online viewpoints about challenges and prospects for the left. Derrick O’Keefe recently wrote in a piece on the Canadian Dimension magazine website that “beyond some very marginal formations and small publications, the left is missing. It’s just not there, organizationally.”
I agree with Derrick that “this absence is part of a long-term trend.” We are indeed in a “somewhat dismal context.” This is an important truth that needs to be acknowledged and seriously taken into account when thinking about how to strengthen the left in Canada and Quebec (in Quebec the situation isn’t as dire). A social movement revival is the most likely road to a much stronger left so we should direct our efforts accordingly, in my view. Both social movements and political organizations/parties are needed. I think there is lots of evidence that new left-wing political organizations are most likely to be built when the experience of powerful social movement mobilization has radicalized many people and given them inspiration, commitment, skills, and confidence. That’s what growing numbers of people were gaining in the years 2000-2002 because of the global justice movement. We should think strategically, with a long-term perspective, and recognize that there are no short cuts. The best hope for strengthening forces that want to do much more than put the NDP – whose leadership’s endorsement of neoliberalism has never been clearer — in office lies in patient grassroots organizing in workplaces, in communities, and on campuses that aims to plant the seeds of future mass movements. In most places what we find today aren’t movements but — at best — small groups of organizers who aim to build movements. But there is potential for movement building in today’s climate justice organizing, indigenous peoples’ defence of their lands and efforts by non-indigenous people to build solidarity, anti-austerity campaigns including the fight to save door-to-door delivery by Canada Post, and other workplace and community struggles. Some will no doubt accuse me (and Derrick) of pessimism. Of course, a mistakenly bleak outlook – “radical change is impossible” or “civilization is doomed so stop working for a better society and start preparing for the collapse” – is very unhelpful. But it’s vital to analyze our context as intelligently and seriously as we can even if the result isn’t uplifting. The temptation to minimize problems for fear that others (or we ourselves) will succumb to demoralization and give up on the fight for a better world must be resisted. An upbeat but wrongheaded outlook – “there’s never been a better time to be a socialist,” “society is on a knife’s edge and any little spark could be the ignition point that sets the struggle alight,” “things are getting so bad that people will inevitably rise up like they did in (pick a country)” – can motivate some people to be frantic activists for a time. Some may cling to that outlook in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. Most people will eventually realize it’s wrong, but sadly they’re more likely to throw in the towel than to develop a better basis for staying in the struggle. An outlook with feeble foundations won’t help build anything with staying power. Fortunately, two books that will soon be published offer much firmer foundations for the left: Alan Sears’ The Next New Left: A History of the Future and Richard Seymour’s Against Austerity: How We Can Fix the Crisis They Made I hope many people will read and discuss these (and other) efforts to think seriously about the problems we face and how to move forward. The left in Canada is not likely to become dramatically stronger in the short term. What Sears calls the “infrastructure of dissent” is very weak (though in Quebec it’s not quite as weak). It will take a movement revival to change that. In these circumstances, we should make movement-building efforts our priority. Political education is also needed (ideas are too important to be left to academia), and radicals should look for new opportunities to collaborate politically (Solidarity Halifax is one positive example). David Camfield lives in Winnipeg. He is one of the editors of New Socialist Webzine and the author of Canadian Labour in Crisis: Reinventing the Workers’ Movement. |
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