quote:
I think Hister's inability to appreciate the importance of a democratic process should also be deconstructed.Furthermore, I think the heart of socialism for Hister is simply something which could never be sold to the population of this country. It would be an economic disaster, for one thing.
Layton is a democratic politician having substantial success at making progressive arguments in a difficult context.
Hister will have none of it. He wants his precooked agenda foisted on everyone. This needs to be deconstructed.
Well, I guess this statement takes us to the heart of the matter. Since you feel it would be undemocratic and, now, a "disaster" (presumably even if it were adopted and implemented in a democratic manner satisfactory to you), it is clear that your starting point (your "precooked agenda"?) excludes the idea of real public ownership and democratic control by workers/citizens/consumers.
As I said previously, my take on what you call "Hister's inability to appreciate the importance of a democratic process" is that it is really just deep skepticism about the particular approach to democratic process espoused by Layton, many of his supporters, and by the NDP traditionally.
It is still not clear to me what is so fundamentally different about Layton -- and more importantly about the NDP under Layton -- that should make this skepticism go away. The NDP, after all, has a record in office, a profile, a strategy, a culture -- a "precooked agenda", if you will -- that you cannot simply wish away in an exchange such as this.
True, the organized radical Left (which I don't know if Hister is part of; I don't think so) also has its history, profile and so on. Lurking behind JH's posts is not only the basic idea that the radical Left is not only undemocratic and disconnected from the true needs and aspirations of people in this country, but that we also have a double standard: willing to criticize savagely the NDP, unwilling to look at our own weaknesses and failings. For what it's worth -- and even though this is a largely NDP board, in which I would get swamped -- I am prepared to participate in a thread "deconstructing" and dissecting the radical Left's past and present. But that was not the subject of Hister's piece or, initially at least, of this thread.
Finally, I will grant that Layton has indeed made progressive arguments -- particularly around Star Wars II, military spending, debt payments and corporate taxes, and in relation to the sovereignist Left in Quebec -- in a difficult domestic and international context. But he has also made overtures to longtime Chrйtienites and talked about supporting a Liberal minority government; and even positioned the NDP as an heir of "true" progressive Liberalism and progressive Conservatism.
I have always acknowledged that the Layton "phenomenon" is a contradictory one, and that many of the people I view as "comrades" in the grand scheme of things (ie. many of the people I worked with in the defunct NPI) are now strong Layton supporters. (Indeed, after looking at the people running in my riding, it is more than likely that I will be voting for the NDP candidate.)
I guess I just disagree with the choice many have made to bury themselves virtually uncritically in the NDP. Though they are far from unimportant, let's leave aside for now the programmatic or "ideological" disagreements that have come up in this thread. I feel that the period or "political cycle" we have recently come out of offered the possibility of creating an organized framework -- a space -- to debate some of the issues that have come up here and to forge over time a dynamic and radical organizational and strategic project for the Left.
I now wonder if I was dreadfully wrong about it, but that's how I saw the NPI. Whatever one may say about Layton personally or politically, it strikes me as abundantly clear that the NDP as an organization has not and will not (cannot?) become such a framework. It is a largely inactive electoralist outfit, with fairly tight limits placed on what can be debated and done.
In part, this too is a function of the "difficult context" we are in. But only in part. What I like about Hister's piece is that it suggests there is something else going on here -- with the very nature of the NDP and its project and, perhaps even, with the direction Layton and many of his supporters want to take the party.
There is a political disagreement on the Left, and I'm glad that Hister (and this thread) has made it a bit more transparent.
[ 04 April 2004: Message edited by: elixir ]