Further apropos this thread: I had an exchange the other day with a politically active Marxist FB friend concerning my participation in the NDP, and I would apply the same reasoning to participation in the Democratic Party were I in Washington state directly across the Strait of Juan De Fuca from where I now live in Victoria. Perhaps with with more conviction given the vitality of the Sanders campaign in the DP and the lack of any similar movement at the base in the NDP. Anyone who says there is a fundamental difference between the NDP and DP in terms of social composition, leadership, program, and direction - that the latter is “bourgeois” and the former in some way “working class” - hasn’t had much experience in either. Both are pro-capitalist left-centre parties, and today there are no mass socialist parties to the left of them.
My friend, who wasn’t around when I was first active in the NDP left, wrote that he was opposed to political work in the NDP on grounds “that this party is not the same party as in the ‘60s-‘80s. Back in those days, the party had an actual presence in the workplaces and communities where working people live. Outside a union HQ, where does the NDP have such a presence today? Voting and election campaigns are entirely separated from people’s everyday struggles and affairs, and that is especially true if you go to where there is truly no hope--the native reserves, the urban slums, etc. Developing co-operative relations today with the oppressed may have meant being involved with the NDP in decades past. That is simply not the case today.” My reply: "he NDP didn't have much of a presence in urban slums or on native reserves back then either. It was focused as now on electoral politics and largely separated from everyday struggles. It didn’t encourage contact between its members and “radicals” outside the party who could infect them. The Waffle and other left factions in the NDP were a response to the party absenting itself from mass struggles. "Nevertheless, most active trade unionists still supported the NDP during provincial and federal elections and the same is still true today, perhaps to a slightly lesser extent. As is the support it draws from activists in the various social movements. In any case, it matters little to me whether Canadian leftists choose to participate in the party or not. It’s not politically imperative at this stage that they do so. “I rejoined after a long absence, a) in the hope that I might find some questioning and stirring in the base as in the Democratic and Labour parties (not evident so far), b) because it provides the opportunity to meet more working class people (including natives and anti-poverty activists) than in the tiny, disorganized, mainly student-based, far left groups, and c) if nothing else, it contributes to my making more informed judgements about the NDP, a subject which is hotly debated in our small circles, as well as assessing first-hand the popular mood and level of consciousness. Bottom line is that I don’t see any contradiction going to NDP meetings as well as going to meetings of the local Jacobin group which I coordinate and other meetings and actions where Marxists congregate. As I indicated earlier, what makes most sense to me is “on s’engage et puts on voit.”, or as Zhou said in the same vein, “the way to cross the river is by feeling for the stones”. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
