Remembering the Regina Manifesto out loud
August 10, 2008 - 6:55am
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A group of us in Ottawa are holding a public meeting August 18 to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Regina Manifesto, the socialist programme adopted in 1933 by the CCF, forerunner of the NDP. We intend to read the manifesto out loud section by section and then discuss it. Our purpose is to show respect for the courage and the ideas of our political ancestors and to seek some inspiration from their example. The meeting is sponsored by Friends of the Manifesto and by the executive of the Ottawa Centre federal NDP constituency association. What other events, if any, are happening to mark this anniversary?
I understand Jack Layton will be traveling to Saskatchewan to bury it under a marker that reads: 1933 - 2005. Succumbed to electoral politics.
quote:Originally posted by John Smart:
What other events, if any, are happening to mark this anniversary?
Well, FM has mentioned one.
How about a Facebook group to change the name from NDP back to CCF?
quote:Ottawa historian and archivist John Smart and his wife, noted literary critic Patricia Smart are inviting people to a public reading of the Manifesto at the Glebe Community Centre in Ottawa August 18.rabble.ca
Mr. Smart, notwithstanding my flippant earlier comment, I appreciate your initiative.
Perhaps, rather than transform it into an inspirational scriptural text honoured more in the breach than in the observance, someone might be inspired to update the Manifesto for our times, without doing violence to the original analysis and goal?
The best commemoration is implementation.
Preparation for which would require some serious thought, development of ideas with today's "working (middle) class" in mind, the growing impact of the need for catastrophic shifts in strategy within the context of a Globalized world that has to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
So, let the work begin. We know all about the failures of democratic socialism, I mean the kind of work needed to convince the great unread that we have the answers. Which repeated appeals for the development of which have come to nought( was that a sentence?) It'll have to do. [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img]
[ 10 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
And we don't want any third way social democracy!!! I mean, one glance at those economically competitive Nordic countries with spartan natural resource wealth, well-funded social programs etc, and we must conclude that it just wouldn't work in this Northern Puerto Rico with a few polar bears and private liquor stores dotting the Alberta scape. We can't overburden Exxon and Encana with a new natural resource tax regime as the very corrupt KGB government in Russia has done, because Yanqui imperialists have us over a barrel as it is. Thank god we have the new-old Libranos teeming with political integrity and real leadership potential to look forward to.
The CCF was founded in Calgary in 1932 according to Wikipedia followed by a convention in Regina the following year which drafted the Manifesto. It dedicated itself to eradicating capitalism in Canada. The Manifesto was dropped later was the CCF watered down its policies and tone in order to win elections. What's to celebrate?
What's to celebrate?
Some people are being driven to read history - if only having an imperfect grasp of the last century or so! [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]
For purposes of ready reference: here's a link to the Regina Manifesto text:
http://economics.uwaterloo.ca/needhdata/Regina_Manifesto.html
quote:Originally posted by pipedream:
The CCF was founded in Calgary in 1932 according to Wikipedia followed by a convention in Regina the following year which drafted the Manifesto. It dedicated itself to eradicating capitalism in Canada. The Manifesto was dropped later was the CCF watered down its policies and tone in order to win elections. What's to celebrate?
[img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img] Good golly.
The fascinating thing is that if you actually read the document in question you'd understand there's a lot more to it the the call to "eradicate capitalism". The Manifesto, by and large, avoided empty rhetoric and focussed on drafting an ambitious roadmap for Canada's future.
What's most interesting is how many of the original goals put forward in the Manifesto have actually been achieved. It wasn't just a bunch of empty rhetoric but a blueprint that Canada followed - if only halfway:
- Section 98 of the Criminal Code has been repealed and, while imperfect, Canada now has a Charter of Rights that ensures some measure of equality before the law.
- While banking and financial services haven't been nationalized Canada's capitalists were forced to create a Central Bank - the Bank of Canada which played a siginifcant role in the subsequent creation of Canada's welfare state.
- Co-operatives and credit unions have not taken the leading economic role envisioned by the CCF but they have expanded dramatically since 19933.
- Socialized medical care is now the norm.
- Taxation has shifted largely to a progressive income tax system (though bizarrely some progressives want to turn back the clock to more consumption taxes).
[ 15 August 2008: Message edited by: Mercy ]
quote:Originally posted by pipedream:
The Manifesto was dropped later was the CCF watered down its policies and tone in order to win elections. What's to celebrate?
Consequently, the capitalists made some pretty significant concessions to workers in Canada and U.S. after the manfesto was drafted, and gradually over time after the collapse of laissez-faire capitalism in the U.S. and Canada. The manifesto had to be re-written decades later to reflect the new mixed market economies and developing of social welfare state in Canada - as well as in response to marauding international capital. In other words, the CCF-NDP didn't knuckle under to capitalism so much as capitalism had to adopt several socialist policies in order to remain viable.
And now the new Liberal capitalism is on the wane with deregulation distaster after disaster and bubble economies as far as the eye can see. Deregulation and globalization of laissez-faire capitalism made new again as "neoliberal capitalism", isn't working today as much as it didn't work from 1929-33.
quote:Originally posted by Mercy:
- Taxation has shifted largely to a progressive income tax system (though bizarrely some progressives want to turn back the clock to more consumption taxes).
I think it depends on who is calling for consumption taxes. Social Democrats have made consumption taxes work for the common good in countries like Sweden and Denmark.
Political Liberals here would grab the revenue from their flip-flops on GST and give it to bankster friends or pals in the fossil fuel industry while strangling social spending and create huge infrastructure deficits in paving the way for more useless rightwing ideology. And conservatives would likely spend it military as well as corporate welfare.
[ 15 August 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]
Ten days after the event, John...how did it go?
I'm curious about this as well.
Are there any plans to update the Manifesto?
Maybe we could try to do so on babble...y'know, articulate with one voice the goals of the Canadian Socialist Left.