Just a quick update on the Canadian federal election: the folks at the Political Compass (that try to popularize charting political identity on a two-dimensional chart instead of the single-dimension left-right axis) have completed a chart plotting the overall positions of the major parties in this election (including the Tories, Liberals, NDP, Green, and Bloc).

I’ve always found this way of looking at political identity to be very interesting, and although it is not without its flaws, I think it largely deals with most of the issues of identity. It’s interesting to note that between the 2008 chart and the 2005 chart (technically should be 2006, since the voting day was in January 2006):

• The NDP have become slightly more left-wing and slightly more authoritarian;
• The Bloc have become slightly more libertarian;
• The Liberals have become significantly more authoritarian, but have had their former position essentially occupied by their informal partners, the Greens;
• The Tories have become both significantly more right-wing and significantly more authoritarian.
• The Communists are so far to the left they aren’t even on the chart (just kidding).

Although it is important to note that individual candidates in these parties probably vary quite a bit; the Greens, for example, probably have the most variation on the left-right axis of all the parties, and the Liberals probably have most variation on the libertarian-authoritarian axis (from anti-choice, anti-gay wedding, anti-fun assholes to those useless shits otherwise known as ‘left-liberals’).

It appears the Canadian government has fallen – although, unfortunately, not in a guerilla-marxist coup. The PM Stephen Harper decided to pull the plug on what has apparently been Canada’s longest-running minority government. There will be a federal election on October 14th, and since the parties were more-or-less expecting this to happen, I’ve already received about 15 e-mails from my former political home, the NDP.

Note that I listed the NDP as former; this election actually presents a unique situation for me. It will be the first election (provincial or federal) ‘after the break’, as it were. When I decided a little over a year ago to leave the NDP, it was on the tails of the 2007 provincial election. I had volunteered for the NDP during the campaign, although admittedly kind of half-heartedly. I decided shortly thereafter that my energy was far better spent outside of the party; volunteerng to fundraise for Gary Doer’s NDP is hardly going to effect radical change in the world!

The situation is complicated as I have been a member of the New Socialist Group for about a year now, who I became acquainted with during the spring and summer following the last provincial election. NS is currently discussing what our role during a federal election should be, and while I hope that we can have some positive effect beyond simply telling people to hold their nose and vote for a particular party, I think it is more effective for ourselves to only think of an election as an interlude between opportunities for real organizing.

There are two reasons for an ‘external’ group to become involved in an election:

1. to assist a political party be elected, in the hope that they help fulfill some part of the external group’s goals;
2. to assist the external group itself, such as in building capacity, recruiting, or reputation/influence.

There is, in my personal opinion, little use in a small socialist organization attempting to actually influence an election; I’m sure the parties we would critically support don’t particularily want or need our support, and thus, the first reason listed above cannot be reasonably fulfilled. As for the second point (involvement with the intention of building the organization/movement), that depends on a host of external and internal factors, including:

• The political networks in place: what political and personal relationships can the group rely on? A strong anti-sectarian network of those on the left is the best guarantor for advancing left politics. This is certainly improving in my hometown, but no where near what would be needed to effectively organize outside of official party structures.
• The willingness of the public to be politically active and militant: can we expect any genuine militancy or political action to be generated because of our actions? The neoliberal offensive over the past three decades or so has almost successfully crushed all belief in the power of collective action. Again, in my hometown, political energy is at a low ebb, and (somewhat counter-intuitively) is even lower during an election: after all, a campaign is no time to discuss serious issues.
• The organizational strength of the group: do we have sufficient organizational know-how and capacity within the group? Experience on the ground is far more useful in these particular circumstances than intellectual strength.

For these reasons, it seems clear to me that the role of a modern socialist organization in the Canadian Federal election is not to endorse a party (as the benefits to this are so minimal as to not be worth it), nor to organize an independent election campaign (which can be useful in some limited circumstances that do not currently exist in Canada as a whole†). The options above (endorsing a party or running a candidate for office) will not, in my opinion, be a satisfactory political option during this election; if I want to participate, an alternative must be found.

I do not know what that alternative should be. I do, however, think there are a few goals/criteria that any alternative should respect. Whatever actions or activities a socialist undertakes during the election, they should:

• be geared towards making a genuine impact;
• clearly represent the socialist political beliefs of the participatns, without making that represenation the overwhelming focus;
• support issues and organizations that are being ignored or are routinely marginalized by the various political machines;
• work towards an eventual goal of continued political work after the election;
• incorporate both a political theory and practice rooted in socialist politics;
• be wary of co-optation by existing mainstream poltical machines.

I plan to return to this topic again; certainly, the debate on this topic within my local NSG branch and the organization in general will inform my views, and I hope to direct my thinking towards some other questions, such as the value of abstention campaigns.

† One possible exception could be Quebec Solidaire, a genuinely left-wing political party in Quebec. However, they do not contest federal elections, and only operate in la belle province anyways.

As the headline states, the DNC protests have continued the fine tradition of left-wing organizations splintering into factionalism, in this case caused by the usual liberal-’left’ sellouts. For those of you who have missed it (it certainly isn’t getting much in the way of media attention-surprise surprise), the protests, originally organized under the (rather clever, I have to say) Recreate ‘68 banner. What the organizers are referring to with ‘recreate’ is the protests against the Vietnam War at the 1968 DNC, and presumably, the broader history of left activity in 1968.

Of course, nothing like this could go on without some splintering. In this instance, we had the reformist wing of the protest organizers branch off into a new grouping, Alliance for Real Democracy. According to this article on Dissident Voice, the split centred around the groups approach to the Democrats and their response to police violence;

While the Alliance for Real Democracy consists largely of white liberals who are trying to influence the hopelessly corporate run Democrat Party, Recreate ‘68 is made up primarily of minorities, socialists, anarchists, communists, and other radicals who have fewer illusions in reforming the Democrat Party and who instead want to organize the power of the people.

Glen Spagnuelo, spokesperson of Recreate ‘68, says he’s not bothered by the formation of the Alliance for Real Democracy, because both groups oppose the war in Iraq and neither is advocating a violent protest.

Yet, the Alliance for Real Democracy has gotten extensive coverage in the corporate media of Colorado for their violence baiting Recreate ‘68. The stand of Recreate ‘68 is, however, one where they simply explain that they are not planning violence, but if the police attack them, they do not disavow the right of protesters to self-defense.

The article also contains the full text of (the Green’s presidential candidate) Cynthia McKinney’s clarification on her involvement in the R68 events. She essentially takes apart the Colorado Green party (part of ARD) for their attempt to use McKinney to screw over R68 – some stuff about McKinney makes me pretty wary, but she’s really pretty good for a U.S. Green, and it’s good to see her do the right thing.

Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which has been at the centre of several controversies within the U.S. labour movement in the past few years (Change to Win Coalition, SEIU vs California Nurses Union, et cetera), has been accused of abusing the trust of some student volunteer organizers on several U.S. university campuses. Jack Stripling wrote an article about the students concerns for Inside Higher Ed that’s pretty interesting; I would encourage you to check it out. The students, who had been helping SEIU organize service workers (mostly food services + janitorial), feel SEIU has treated them as ‘pawns’. They have released an open letter detailing their problems with SEIU at several campuses and listing a series of demands for SEIU to do: improving internal union democracy, fight for better contracts with Aramark, stop using students and campus workers as pawns in corporate campaigns.

The worst part is the accusation that the SEIU/UNITE HERE collaboration, Service Workers United (SWU), has signed a secret agreement with two of the ‘Big 3′ companies in the industry, namely Sodexho and Compass, and currently negotiating with Aramark to include them as well. This agreement essentially has Sodexho and Compass offer ‘neutrality’ during organizing drives for the union agreeing to (among other things) not conduct public awareness campaigns, hold any kind of picket (informational or otherwise), go on strike, and to allow the company to choose what locations are to be organized! If this is true, it is a staggeringly disgusting sellout of labour principles, and needs to be immediately repudiated and denounced by every labour organization.

It will be interesting to see what effect this has on the SEIU’s organizer recruitment down the road; SEIU has placed a lot of emphasis on recruiting recent university graduates with organizing experience to work for SEIU, and a large part of their draw has been giving these students a chance to get paid to work for the labour movement; sellout agreements like these will almost certainly tarnish this. Up here in Canada, where SEIU is not nearly as large, I don’t think this will have much effect (since most of our campus workers are not organized through SEIU). However, this agreement did very much remind me of the CAW-Magna agreement recently negotiated, where Magna would allow CAW to organize its plants in exchange for killing the union by removing its ability to go on strike.

The question, of course, is whether these national agreements make unions like SEIU and UNITE HERE ‘company unions’, essentially unions in name only that are beholden or even controlled by the company. You don’t have to be a Marxist to see that workers and owners have seperate interests, nor to understand that having an agreement that removes the right to strike and even the right to choose where to organize will destroy whatever chance the union has of genuinely improving the rights and working conditions of workers.

This is, in my opinion, a very, very depressing road for the labour movement to be going down. Capitulation, while it might achieve some short-term goals, will never lead the labour movement out of its current stagnation.

In lieu of a proper update, I offer unto the masses this:

Courtesy of what might be the best-named blog ever – Drink-soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for WAR.

In today’s episode of LL, we have a pamphlet on the Spanish Civil War about how the NKVD framed the POUM , a post on the so-called ‘Open Source Boob Project’, and a Business Week article on the the personal dimension of offshoring a New York factory. Enjoy!

How the NKVD framed the POUM by Jesús Hernández (What Next Journal): Hernández was a major figure in the Spanish Communist Party during the Civil War; he was a minister in the Popular Front governments of both Caballero and Negrín, and was privy to some of the nasty crap the NKVD pulled on the Spanish POUM. As the preface to the piece states, there are some good reasons not to put Hernández up on a pedastal for his admissions, and there are some doutbful parts of his accusations, but on the whole it is an interesting and illuminating exposé on the activities of the Stalinist state police in foreign countries during that period.

Open Source Male Assholes by springheel_jack: Another first for the blog – LiveJournal post! At a recent techy Con, some folks decided they would merge (what they considered) the core beliefs of the Open Source philosophy with groping women – and, oddly enough, people got really, really mad at them when they started what they called the ‘Open Source Boob Project’. Feministing.com also has a good article on the whole fiasco.

Seriously, people, I’m all for liberatory sexual relations, but how hard is it to recognize something involving buttons signifying whether one’s breasts are ‘open season’, so to speak, is not liberatory?

How I Helped Move a Factory to Mexico by Nick Leiber (BusinessWeek Online): A rather fascinating inside look at being hired as a temp worker – to offshore a factory to Mexico. Fairly lucent analysis of the situation, considering the source magazine. The writing is actually quite good:

My job, he explained, would be to assemble data on auto parts the factory produced and send it to somewhere in Mexico. As he started to speed through the details, I interrupted him, asking, “Can I ask you why I’ll be doing this? You must already have this data in your database.”

He nodded. “That is true,” he said. “The reason is so customs can see what’s coming in and we can see what’s going out.”

I interrupted again. “I’m registering this stuff so that it can be made elsewhere? So I’m helping to get all of these people fired?”

He nodded again.

“I’m sorry that’s the case,” I said. “I didn’t know I was coming in to help get rid of all these people. I hope there isn’t ill will toward me. I just want you to know I’m not proud to be putting people put of work—I didn’t know that’s what I was here for.”

He tried to put a kinder face on the situation. “No one’s going to blame you—I certainly don’t blame you, but I appreciate you said that to me and you understand what the situation is. No one is going to dislike you—it’s not your fault they’re closing the factory.”

While the author is obviously not the one to suffer from the outsourcing of this factory (at least not directly), his emotional reaction is interesting to note, as it gives a perspective of insight into the inner mechanics of capitalism’s hard edge, and how the economic system makes humans do inhuman things:

As the factory’s closing date neared, the number of last-day events—parties is the wrong word—increased. These events weren’t catered. Workers made the food themselves and brought it in: salads, rice and beans, fried fish. I could see the solidarity and kindness in the interactions of the people, mostly Hispanic women who had been there for decades.

…

I’m not one of the workers who has been making distributor cap components in a factory basement for the past 25 years. I don’t have to go look for another job. I took the temp job knowing it would come to an end and I’d move on. The job got me involved with a company dealing with globalization. It allowed me to get an unfamiliar taste of what happens when a factory moves to Mexico. I’m not proud of it.

Arise ye workers from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We’ll change henceforth the old tradition
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we’ll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They’ll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We’ll shoot the generals on our own side.

No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E’er the thieves will out with their booty
And give to all a happier lot.
Each at the forge must do their duty
And we’ll strike while the iron is hot.

(Courtesy of our friends at OCAP)

Just completed an online survey and got asked a couple of rather peculiar questions that need sharing. I’ve answered questions on ‘who would you vote for in the next federal election’ and ‘which party leader do you think would make the best Prime Minster’ before – a bit limiting to the definition of politics, but I understand why. However, in this recently-completed survey, I was asked which national party leader would I prefer to (and this is somewhat paraphrased):

• Who would you want to take care of your house for a week?
• If you had a flat on your car, which one would be most likely to stop and help?

I think we have reached a new level of political inanity here, folks.

In today’s episode, we have articles on the outcome of suburbanization on food accessibility, the crackdown of dissent at the University of Ottawa, and the sad and long-reaching effects of the Iraq Occupation on American soldiers. Enjoy!

Grocery shopping hard for poor, study says (Canwest): A new study by Gilliland and Larson, from the University of Western Ontario, shows the effect suburbanization has had on poor and working-class inner-city communities.

Gilliland and his co-author, Kristian Larsen, used computerized mapping to plot the location of London [Ontario]’s supermarkets in 1961 and 2005. Then, using census data, city maps and bus schedules, they calculated each neighbourhood’s access to grocery stores using real-life criteria such as a 1,000-metre walk (10 to 15 minutes) or a 10-minute bus ride with a short walk on each end.

Not only is access in many areas worse now, they found, but the poorest neighbourhoods are the most stranded.

“If you think about a single mother with limited income without a vehicle — if you can’t hop in your car and drive to a supermarket, you must shop locally,” Gilliland says. “You’re going to be buying your groceries at local convenience stores.”

That forces people to pay an average of 1.6 times more for a groceries, he says, perpetuating a financial “downward spiral” for those already in a precarious position.

This is what happens when we leave major decisions like the distribution of food up to the market; cheap building lots and abundant parking space, not to mention the fact that suburban people are more profitable shoppers for grocery stores, leads to these ‘food deserts’ in the city core. Of course, while I appreciate the excellent research, I don’t necessarily agree with the researcher’s solutions:

Cities need to find ways to boost the population density of city centres to draw more retailers in, Gilliland says, and they can offer tax breaks or development fee reductions to further entice them. It’s a complex issue, he says, because people want to live where there are grocery stores and grocery stores want to open where there are people.

Let’s stop fiddling with ‘incentives’ to make the market function as we want it to, and start demanding people-centered food distribution!

U of O proposes student code of conduct by Pauline Tam (Ottawa Citizen): The U of Ottawa, like many other universities across Canada, are in the process of creating/revising their internal student disciplinary processes. The U of O, like some other schools, want to include a ’student code of conduct’ which would regulate the non-academic activities of students. There is certainly a place for academic juries, wherein allegations of cheating, plagarism, and general academic dishonesty can be fairly heard and dealt with; however, the proclivity of University administrations to want to create enclaves or mini-cities (including taking over the regular functions of the police) is a bad move, and needs to be resisted.

The problem, of course, is that the duplication of criminal juries for minor petty crimes (usually property crimes) rarely include the same basic protections that the already-flawed criminal justice system does. The appeals process is often biased in favour of the university, with signifigant barriers or dangers (such as the risk of an increased penalty!) facing students who wish to appeal a ‘conviction’.

And, as is the case at U of O, they are often used to stifle dissent on campus. Whereas the Administration is much less likely to ‘press charges’† and have students arrested due to the negative publicity that would cause (and the increased likelihood for further protests!), the ability to issue penalties (suspensions, notations on the students transcript, even expulsion) for ‘uncivil disobedience’ and dissent would allow a much more effective crackdown on students.

At the same time, [a UofO vice-president] acknowledged that recent clashes [i.e. student dierect action] had played a role. Mr. Feldthusen cited a meeting of the university’s academic governing body last week, which dozens of students tried to disrupt by banging on windows from outside the conference room.

A similar protest occurred a week earlier during a meeting of the university’s board of governors….

During the past two years on a campus not normally known for rowdy protests, students have mobilized over everything from high tuition fees to language rights and campus safety.

More recently, the clashes have been over the growing presence of corporations on campus. Students have also launched a sustained campaign to restore a controversial course on social activism taught by physics professor Denis Rancourt until it was cancelled last year.

While this trend towards more robust campus judicial systems seems fairly nation-wide (at least in Anglo Canada), it also seems very clear that the recent upsurge in student mobilizations is a large part in it at UO as well.

† Although in Canada it is up to the police, not the individual, to decide whether to do ‘press charges’, in most circumstances the police force is willing to accede to the request of the harmed party, especially in circumstances where large, politically-powerful institutions like Univeristies are concerned.

Nearly 1 in 5 vets reports mental problems by Pauline Jelinek (AP): A recent study by the American RAND Corporation, a normally-military friendly think tank set up the US Government in the mid 1940s, indicates that almost 20% of American veterans are suffering from either depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, and/or from brain injuries, as a result of their involvement in the Afghanistan and Iraq occupations. Only half of them have sought treatment for their condition.

It brings to mind the stereotype, which was not unfounded, of returned Vietnam veterans with severe mental health problems that often resulted in violence back home. We’ve already see the effect war has on domestic violence. America can expect to reap what it has sown – a generation of damaged young men and women, soon to be forgotten by it’s government.

Unionism from above and unionism from below. These are the two incompatible “souls” of the labour movement. The latter is a deeply democratic and radical strategy for working-class self-emancipation, the former is antithetical to emancipation: it’s simply bureaucratic and conservative. A comrade sadly informed me of the disturbingly reactionary tactics used by SEIU members and staffers at the Labor Notes Conference held in Dearborn, Michigan. The SEIUers’ violent behaviour is no more than acts of desperation of the old, dilapidated model of contractual unionism…

Over 1,100 labour activists from North America and beyond converged in Dearborn for the annual Labor Notes Conference to discuss about how to revitalise the labour movement. New ideas were shared with the goal of building an infrastructure of radically democratic unionism and a new union consciousness. But the winds of reaction came blowing into Dearborn April 12th as several bus loads of SEIU loyalists (yeah, those who supposedly make “loyalty-oaths”; check out ) disrupted workshops and the banquet Saturday night. The confrontation became violent and SEIUers actually sent an activist to the hospital. How petty of them! That’s just what the labour movement needs. But now, historical context is of order here.

The calls for genuine rank-and-file control of unions, as well as solidarity among workers paid and unpaid, are gaining ground as the old top-down, legalistic and bureaucratic post-WWII industrial unionism is dying a slow and painful death. Traditional trade unions have not been successful in fighting capital’s major restructuring also known as neoliberalism. Instead of reaching out across industry and community lines, and broadening the struggle beyond the shop floor, they continue operating within the straightjacket labour regime that capitalists have abandoned since, oh, about the mid-1970s. The leadership of these traditional trade unions are stuck in another era. The composition of the working class has changed, therefore the form of struggle (strategies and tactics) must also change. New forms of struggle like community unionism have emerged since the 1960s and are becoming more popular.

The Vice-President of SEIU has condoned the attacks in Dearborn (see ). The leadership, along with its loyalists, wants to see an end to a movement from below growing within the SEIU. The SEIU Member Activists for Reform Today (SMART) is attempting to democratise the SEIU seeing as the leadership, including President Andy Sterns, use authoritarian methods of organising, and remove elected local leaders only to appoint groomed loyalists or trustees. I don’t know about you, but this form of organising is kinda like Stalinism!

Back to the two “souls”. The analogy is drawn from the famous pamphlet called “The Two Souls of Socialism” written by the American socialist, Hal Draper (you can read it on ). He beautifully summarises the two traditions of socialism: the top-down, statist, undemocratic and alienated “socialism from above” (see Stalinism and Social Democracy), and the radical, anti-statist, robustly democratic “socialism from below” (see the glimpses of bottom-up, revolutionary socialism throughout the last 150 years). These two “souls” clashed in Dearborn, and they will continue to clash. Before a revolution in the mode of production can occur, a revolution within the existing labour movement must occur.

I’m saddened and disgusted by the SEIU leadership. But its reactionary behaviour is a tell-tale sign of desperation. There is reason for optimism because unionism from below is once again becoming a credible threat to union autocrats everywhere. The spectre of unionism from below is haunting the majestic and palatial boardrooms of all the major trade unions. It is time to ask ourselves the question famously spelled out by Hal Draper: Who’s side are you on?

Ernest V. Schumann