Should the federal NDP dissolve itself, so that a better Left party can take its place?

..what unionist said!

..this is from the corbyn thread

A Future in Common

On Monday night Jacobin hosted a rally at The World Transformed conference in Liverpool, addressed by France Insoumise’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The event took place alongside the Labour Party conference, at which the French radical-left leader also met with Jeremy Corbyn.

In an enthusiastically received speech, Mélenchon called for new forms of mobilization able to confront the challenges of environmental disaster, war, and the neoliberal destruction of democracy. Here we present a lightly abridged translation of his talk.

quote:

The first is obviously the possible destruction of the only ecosystem that makes human life possible. If we acknowledge that this is a real threat, then we must admit that there is a general human interest. And if this common interest exists, it must be placed above all other interests that may compromise it. This common interest is profoundly anticapitalist. For capitalism is based on the dynamics of endless predation without repair. It is based on a short-termism which is incompatible with the cycles of nature itself. From this observation we deduce two structural demands.

The first of these is “the green rule“: do not take from nature more than what nature can replenish. We must, with all our strength, delay the date at which we will be in ecological debt to our planet.

The second is ecological planning: the collective organization of processes so that we can transform all the forms of production, trade, and consumption patterns in compliance with the “green rule.”

The second element I would like to present is the form of political organization which corresponds to “the peoples’ era.” We put in place such a form of organization during my presidential campaign in France. And since then it has become what I think we can call by far the largest activist organization in France. We have 420,000 people registered on our online platform and 54,000 active members in 5,000 action groups connected by this platform. Everyone is free to decide the nature and the extent of their commitment to the movement and can change that at any time. We are not a classical political party that leads society, but rather a movement that is itself part of the life of society and totally porous to engagement with society.

The movement is to the people what the party once was to a social class. But it is neither a vanguard or a leadership. Rather, it sheds light on possible paths open to the people and is a detonator that helps people take action on the ground. The movement exists for this objective, and this alone.

Our movement, France Insoumise (often translated as France Unbowed — insoumise literally means “unsubmissive”) is an object in constant evolution. It is a common banner and includes party activists who want to participate, the only condition being that they abide by the movement’s own rules. But the vast majority of participants have no party membership. The movement is inclusive. There are no internal power struggles. Often, we choose decision-makers by lot, by random selection.

What swallow said. And epaulo.

The Better Left Party is an excellent idea. A home for leftists, a magnet for that portion of the populace that subscribes to its policies and a counter to the Max Party.

I am reminded of Oscar Wild: "A cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing".

Perhaps smaller, more focused parties will reduce the number of cynics, cynics who can't abide the deceit and self-interest of the political spectrum at present.

Ken Burch wrote:

R.E.Wood wrote:

[...]

Regarding Unionist's point #3, I wonder if there are any parties anywhere in the world that operate without a leader? It's an interesting thought experiment, but I doubt its practicality. If there are other working examples that can be pointed to I'd be interested to see them.

The German Greens did that for many years, and QS has largely done that-is Manon Masse now considered the "leader"? 

NO - QS has no "leader". Manon Massé is not the "leader". There is no "leader". It's very difficult, isn't it, to overcome that notion.

Quote:

Agreed also with what Unionist added.  Platforms and party leaders are never enough.  First must come a "culture of resistance", as my long-time U.S. activist friend Albert Petrarca describes it, followed by what I'd call a culture of transformation.

I like that. I'll gladly add the "culture" thing to my requirements. Although culture can only arise from people in action and motion. So I would still insist that any new electoral vehicle (if that's what this thread is talking about) must be rooted in real live movements. 

Ken Burch wrote:

And thanks for the clarification of Manon Masse's role-the MSM have treated her as "the leader" in this election cycle, and that's what prompted my confusion.  Did QS win your riding, btw?

You wouldn't believe the maniacal attack by Jean-François Lisée, in the dying days of the campaign, who claimed he had found the "true leader" of QS! Please remind me to tell you that story later. It certainly helped discredit him as the McCarthyite misogynist creep that he is, and contributed to his well-deserved crash and burn.

Sadly no, QS didn't win my riding (I've moved in recent years). Saving grace: QS got 10% more popular vote than the Liberal candidate. I'll take anything I can get!

New parties flourish by means of funding, the same way that stale-dated parties die by lack thereof.

In my opinion, when a younger, technologically competent generation wrests power from the old white guys pretending to be feminists there will be new ways of doing the business of governing including elections.

I cant understand why Canadians are such a weak and ill-informed lot, willing to let the usual suspects make a complete mockery of respect for taxpayer funds. What will it take for the dolts to wake up and take their country back? Principled parties for a start.

I would love to see a more QS type party emerge, either at the national or provincial level (my home province is BC).

The provincial level here in BC has greater prospects for the emergence of a QS type party at the moment. The provincial government is holding another referendum on proportional representation, this one by mail-in ballot, with ballots being mailed out later this month. If the referendum passes and we get proportional representation, opportunities to create a QS type party will increase.

Unfortunately, the BC NDP government has not been doing nearly enough to promote the referendum -- they wouldn't dare engage in the kinds of activist rallies and street theatre that could give it publicity -- and the corporate media has been completely ignoring it. Not to mention that much of the activist left that would form a natural support base for the Yes side in the referendum has been preoccupied with the upcoming municipal elections on October 20 -- working to elect candidates who will actually do something to alleviate the serious housing crisis in the Metro Vancouver part of the province.

No doubt that in 2015 the NDP should have gone Corbyn or Sanders style. I think that Layton would have turned left but it was not to be. It is almost inevidable that Trudeau will get a second term. Best the NDP can do is focus on ways in which Trudeau is failing economically. Start stacking up a hisory for 2023. 

That moving to the centre didn't deliver the hoped for win doesn't mean swinging all the way in the other direction will deliver electoral resuts. Every election campaign is unique in the opponents and the lay of the land. 

I don't expect Singh to be as successful as Trudeau has been but I do believe that the platform will have some important progressive proposals. This is exactly what everyone was lamenting about Trudeau a year before the election. He has no policy and no presence on the public stage everyone was saying. At that time posters were convinced the truth was sinking in and Trudeau was done for. The NDP was on the rise and it was going to stay that way because Trudeau was so useless. 

I can almost guarantee that the Singh will have a platform to be judged. Maybe it will be dreadful but I think it's too soon to say. 

Does it have to be one extreme or the other? The right did not win by sharing their plans ahead of time and convincing voters that the right was ideologically moral therefore should be elected. 

I am sure their a word that describes the following scenario, the bais of locally and nationally environment and assumpition that things are silimar around the globe.  This bais politically very dangerous for the left in canada.  Here people make that assumoption that centre politics winner with good solid reasoning.  A few realize Canada is an out layer in centre politics.  

Then is sort of formula countries that do through economic crisis like Euorpe and US in 2008 and fallout.  Not all of Europe but I thinking what happened in Italy this year and how centrists government was crushed by populist parties.  I beleive Canada will face the its own 2008 crisis.  Here in Canada I really concerned that NDP will support the status quo centrist potitics when the crisis comes.  This will discredit the NDP as party that has no legitatme claim populist left.

I read here some fearful people about the rise of populism because the right is doing a much better job selling there conservativ verison of populism here Canada.   And there reaction to butress the centre, this will prove to be a huge huge mistake when feel the economic downturn.  Anyone standing for the status quo will crushed and politically discreditted.  We have to have the left that speaks lefist populism, not much is happening, although some interesting things are browing in Quebec.  We need figures on the left to talk leftist populism because I am afriad the populsit right wingers will harvest all people that will looking for the answers to troubles in their lives and left will nothing to sell potitically plus be discredit after supporting the old status quo..  That is how see things going at the moment.

Ken Burch wrote:

Geoff wrote:

No one has mentioned the idea of disaffected activists joining (infiltrating?) the Green Party in large numbers and moving it to the left. They have a ready-made brand, so, if the recent successes of that party are any indication, could it not be the vehicle some folks are looking for? Not to downplay QS, as I think the NDP would do well to read its program very carefully and borrow (dare I say it) liberally from it.

Would Elizabeth May allow that, though?  My impression is that she runs the GPC as a personal fiefdom.  Would she even let people on the left JOIN the GPC?  She seems to prefer that the party remain a one-person show, that(at least on the federal level)the party not even try to gain any other seats, and that it remain in its current, cynical arrangement with the federal Liberals-that is, that the LPC won't try to take Saanich and the Gulf Islands in exchange for the Greens never running a serious campaign in any currently Liberal ridings(and in exchange for May echoing LPC talking points against the NDP, such as the discredited canard that the NDP was to blame for Martin losing the no-confidence motion back in '06).  

Maybe "joining" or "infiltrating" was a poor choice of words. What if the Green Party was over-run with disaffected activists from the NDP or from elsewhere on the left? Elizabeth May wouild be hard-pressed to either manage or resist such an influx of socialists of whatever stripe.

In 2006, Elizabeth May nominated Brian Mulroney for the Greenest Prime Minister in Canadian history and then attended the celebration of his win, saying ""For a lot of us in the Mulroney years, we didn't know it, but this was our Valhalla." (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/mulroney-blue-tory-green-l...)

This reflects the right-wing orientation of many Greens that has caused some of its leaders to leave the party in frustration from its early days onwards. Here's a couple of examples. 

Kathryn Cholette is a Canadian left-green, who served as leader of the Green Party of Canada from 1988 to 1990. Just prior to the end of her term as leader, Cholette publicly resigned her post in an article entitled "Why I Left the Green Party". She was the first woman elected to lead a federal political party in Canada, preceding Audrey McLaughlin by a year.

Cholette was a co-coordinator (with Frank Cox and Kel Kelly) of the Tin Wis Coalition in British Columbia. The Tin Wis Coalition brought together First Nations peoples, labour unions and environmental groups to discuss the concerns they held in common, such as forestry issues. She was an early activist in the Green Cities Movement in Vancouver, including the effort to create a sustainable community in Vancouver's South False Creek area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Cholette

Tyson Kelsall was Campaign Chair of the Young Greens of Canada, but ended up quitting the party in frustration with its rightward orientation. 

My hope was to help build and promote a progressive party that was going to stand up to the neoclassical economic structure, bring awareness to stopping pipelines, and put real environmental protection onto Parliament’s agenda. ...

Greens in Canada have often championed the fact that their platform rises above the traditional left-right spectrum, and as long as someone aligns themselves with their six principles, they can be a Green.  These principles: non-violence, sustainability, social justice, ecological wisdom, participatory democracy and respect for diversity, leave room for vagueness and opens their party up to a diverse set of people. This is why a centrist-liberal, like Elizabeth May, someone as politically ambigious as Georges Laraque, and a former NDP MP can all be part of the same party. It’s why former Green Party Leader, Jim Harris, can endorse a conservative in the Toronto mayoral race that featured an actual progressive in Olivia Chow. ... 

Here, arises their greatest shortcoming: the Green Party has no backbone. Their platform subscribes to no ideology, and thus they do not stand for much. The reason they claim to be something different than the other mainstream parties is the very same reason that negates their existence at all.

If Canadians needed any further proof that voting Green is not intrinsically voting progressive, they can look to newly elected Vancouver School Board trustee Janet Fraser who, while holding the balance of power, voted for a right-winged NPA member to be the school board chair, ... Fraser says her decision was “based on Green values”. The NPA is backed by the far right think-tank, the Fraser Institute. Their mayoral candidate openly supported corporate classroom funding from Chevron. It is also known that right-leaning parties tend to be anti-union, which pits them ideologically against the British Columbia Teachers Federation. First, does she think voters would have elected a Green trustee, if they had thought a Green would help bring a Chevron partnership onto the school board’s agenda? Moreover, what does this say about “Green values”? A few days after Fraser cast her vote, BC Green Party Leader Adam Olsen wrote a post called “Left-right politics” where he denounces the left and right spectrum, and says, “Greens are defined by…the quality of decisions we make and our ability to defend those decisions”. This, of course, is dependent on what lens somebody is looking through while examining a decision. To be a Green then, only means being able to rationalize your decision regardless of how just or unjust it is.

One fellow Green explained to me that, “we’re basically running on a 1990s Liberal platform”. Perhaps, these are the citizens who May and the Greens are pandering to, Liberals who care about the environment a little bit more than Justin Trudeau, who has shown support for Keystone XL and previously for Energy East (although that is waning with so much grassroots opposition), but agree with most Liberal Party politics.

The Greens, as they say on their website, are historically rooted in “the counter culture movement [that] launched the first mass rejection of consumer culture”. However, they have sacrificed a lot on their journey from protest party to mainstream Canadian politics. Would a current Green Party of Canada voice claim to be anti-capitalist and against consumer culture?

In haste of gaining more political clout they have abandoned their initial base of staunch environmentalists and progressives. The Green Party movement has perhaps lost any significance it had.

http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/story/green-party-not-necessarily-progress...

I certainly share the malaise of posters regarding the state of the NDP (although the view looks particularly bleak here in Manitoba). I remember watching the NDP blow so many elections that were theirs to win, including BC 2013, Winnipeg City 2010 and 2014, and federally 2015. It was pretty shocking to see NDP commentators praise the election 2015 results even as the party was experiencing its worst ever seat loss in history. Not only that, but many at Daniel Blaikie's victory party were happy to see the Liberals elected even though the numbers for the NDP were terrible. It is ironic that going to the centre was justified under the idea of having to be "professional," while these same centrists said with a straight face that everything was fine and that Mulcair had to stay on. Do professional parties even *debate* whether or not a party leader should stay on after a loss that massive? Locally, I hope Dan Blaikie is re-elected next year, and I may even help him again. But I have a Liberal MP who is likely to be re-elected. It could be a question of who comes in second place. My federal riding contains the area where the Greens almost elected their first MLA, and they will be looking for success federally. Will they come in second place? Should I involve myself with the NDP, try to select a candidate, etc, or would my vote better be served by the Greens?

If I'm understanding the opening post correctly, it is that the federal party is dead, so let's start new. The problem here is that the federal NDP is basically the sum of its provincial parts. There are 3 provincial sections that are far from dead. The BC NDP currently holds the government, and since they started off needing support of the Greens for that to happen, that may make them adept enough to win a second term. The NDP also currently governs Alberta, and looks at a minimum to elect a strong caucus of MLAs from Edmonton, along with a few seats in Calgary that the PCs never won, at a bare minimum. The NDP in Ontario had its best election results in 23 years, second best in its history, and has a legitimate shot of forming the government next time. We also don't know how things in Saskatchewan will go in a couple of years, however there should at the minimum be even a slight uptick. What does dissolving the federal party mean in this context? Will these provincial sections go along with this? What if there isn't a clear consensus on forming a new federal party and efforts at the federal level become divided?

Another obstacle you have to consider is the unions. They are, for the most part, loyal to the NDP above all else. They have an entrenched machine that no matter what the criticism, no matter how many times the NDP fails to deliver for working people, always get a huge chunk of the population to vote NDP. You're going to have to overcome that resistance to have any impact.

The history of the Green Party in Ontario also does not fill with great confidence in it having a leftward approach to politics from Jim Harris until today. 

Encountering Jim Harris, the leader of the Green Party of Canada, can be a bit unsettling. He carefully cultivates a corporate image with his short hair and crisp Tory-blue blazer, and he has a way of speaking that seems far too slick for someone driven by a passion to protect the forests and the creatures living in it. ,,,

At the beginning of his political life, Harris felt at home in the Progressive Conservative Party. It seemed like a natural fit: his father was well-known in Toronto business circles, and he was educated at Lakefield College School, the institution northeast of Toronto attended by Prince Andrew and sons of wealthy Canadians. But his epiphany at Queen’s eventually weaned him from an obsession with the politics of fiscal restraint, and he formally joined the Green Party in 1989. Even so, he still seems more comfortable around men in pinstripes than young people in hiking boots and rain slickers. In fact, Strategic Advantage, the company he runs out of an office a few blocks from his home in Toronto’s east end, is essentially just Harris working as an inspirational corporate speaker. He has written four business books that dwell at length on leadership, and on his firm’s corporate slogan: “We work to change the world by changing ourselves and by helping our clients change.”

His website boasts a long list of clients, including Mobil and US defence contractor Honeywell, both of which have been the target of environmentalists. The workshops he offers don’t often deal with the ecology or the economics of sustainability. Yet Harris says his work as a corporate cheerleader and his leadership of the Green Party are compatible. “It’s all about change,” he insists. “How do organizations change? How do companies change? The Green Party is all about creating a more sustainable society, and to do that we have to change.” ...

The conservative positioning of the party under Harris may also explain its unusual approach to policy development. Members can comment on party policies on a website but those policies are actually determined by the national office. There has been no formal policy convention, nor does the party rely closely on the expertise of environmental organizations. ...

In the process of mainstreaming policy, Harris has driven many traditional Greens from the party, who, from his perspective, would have happily remained on the political fringe rather than abandon their cherished left-wing policies. There are some in the party still opposed to Harris, but many others—especially in Ontario and Alberta—support his eco-capitalist solutions. In the simplest analysis, Harris would end subsidies to polluting industries, such as tax breaks for oil companies, and redirect the money to social programs and initiatives to dramatically increase energy efficiency. Harris rejects the heavy hand of government intervention in the belief that if consumers are given environmentally correct options, they will make decisions that will change corporate behaviour.

https://thewalrus.ca/green-party-blues/

Nor does Mike Schreiner's Green Party website fill me with confidence in his description of himself with regard to left-wing activism. 

A successful entrepreneur and small business owner, Mike is a leading advocate for small businesses.

https://gpo.ca/mike-schreiner-leader/

Jerry, what point are you trying to make? People switch party affiliations all the time. I know people here in Winnipeg who are now active Green Party supporters, after decades of being involved with the NDP. I could probably track down articles written by former NDP supporters who are now active in the Green Party, or even the Liberals for that matter, if I wanted to. The point of this thread is to ask if involvement in the federal NDP is still worthwhile, and if not, then what steps do we take. How is bashing the Green Party relevant to this discussion?

Aristotleded24 wrote:

Jerry, what point are you trying to make? People switch party affiliations all the time. I know people here in Winnipeg who are now active Green Party supporters, after decades of being involved with the NDP. I could probably track down articles written by former NDP supporters who are now active in the Green Party, or even the Liberals for that matter, if I wanted to. The point of this thread is to ask if involvement in the federal NDP is still worthwhile, and if not, then what steps do we take. How is bashing the Green Party relevant to this discussion?

The point is quite simple. Look where you are going before you leap. Look at the criticisms of the Greens above; they are not, for the most part, about personality differences. They mostly concern the failure to live up to left-leaning values in the eyes of the writers. 

The establishment of the Green Party in terms of Elizabeth May, Weaver, Jim Green, etc. has not been friendly to many of the issues you advocate for and its business orientation is not likely to be friendly to re-identifying it as anything different in a major way.

I think what would happen with an attempted takeover of the Greens by left-wingers would be the same kind of frustation, only worse than with the NDP, because much of the leadership has been former Liberals and Conservatives, who put some policies in the window to attract those on the left but would end up doing the classic Liberal move of run to the left and rule to the right.

This would not be like Corbynites taking the party back, because the Greens were never once hard-core leftists. If you truly believe the NDP cannot be reformed, I don't see the Canadian Greens as the answer. They are not the European Greens in their oreintation. 

As Will Travers, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, said in a CBC National broadcast a few years ago, people are going to first focus on paying their mortgage, balancing their own budget, getting into a postsecondary institution or paying their tuition, rather than the long-term impacts of climate change, no matter how serious those impacts are. This is despite the fact that the people living in the San Francisco Bay area are facing more than $100 billion in costs for building levees and other measures to counteract a one metre expected rise in sea levels that would permanently flood the Bay’s business and other districts. The same idea applies with regard to economics. Until a crisis occurs in their lives, most people will ignore the economic problems in our system and muddle along. 

In other words, build your own party, which will mean a lot of hard work and probably poor results initially, until a devastating economic or environmental crisis hits them. That doesn't mean you quit fighting. It means you are realistic about the road ahead. 

Quote:

However, I don't think the plan would be to join the Greens and simply go along with their platform. The party would need to be transformed by the wave of 'newcomers' into Canada's party of the left. It would become a 'red-green' party.

If that's all that needs to be done, why do it to the Greens?  Why not just do it to the NDP?

Ken Burch wrote:

It's becoming an increasingly pressing question. 

As currently constituted, on the watered-down-to-nothing platform and policy book the seemingly unremovable party bureaucracy insists on imposing on the party, the federal NDP represents no one, fights for no one, and is stuck at a useless 15%-17% support base in the polls.  After the 2019 election, it will likely have no seats in Quebec again-a fact which by itself guarantees that the party can't significantly increase its support in the 2023 election-and it will lose many of the seats it currently holds.  It could fall as low as 15 seats nationally.  

Given that this is the case, given that there is next to nothing that can happen between now and the next federal election that could possibly prevent the humiliating outcome I predict above...what is the point of continuing the party in its current form, keeping it in its current space on the political spectrum, just barely to the left of the Liberals if indeed it is to the left of the Liberals at all, indistinguishable from the Liberals and the Conservatives on foreign and military policy, indifferent to the struggles of working people, dismissive of the need to make an aggressive fight against poverty and environmental despoilation, totally submissive to capital on economic issues...why even bother keeping this party alive?  Why try to persuade anyone to vote for it?  Why imagine the NDP, as it is at the moment, as any real reason to exist at all anymore?

Why not just dissolve it and, in its place, build a different party...

A party that actually REJECTS the austerity consensus and balanced budget fetishism.

A party that fights for working people, which means fighting to revive and GROW the labour movement.

A party that fights for the poor, and utterly rejects the lie that poverty is caused by "bad choices", and points out instead that poverty is caused by capitalism, a system which needs poverty and unemployment to "discipline the workforce".

A party that sees war, in the 21st Century, for what it is...a purely reactionary program of organized slaughter that serves no one anymore but the wealth and which cannot free anyone or improve the lives of anyone anywhere.

A party that recognizes that the way things are is not the way things have to be, that we don't have to accept the limits on possibility imposed by the wealthy, and which realizes that nothing progressive or transformative can be done by working within those limits.

Why not just start over again and start speaking truth again?

The NDP is a party doomed to a slow death.  It's hard to imagine that anything could save it, that anything could make it relevant again.  It's time to build a party of a LIVING Left, of a left that believes another world IS possible, that we CAN win the argument on the major issues of the day and that there is nothing to lose and everything to gain from actually trying to do so.

What else is there do to, but to try something new?

 

 

It's almost like you want something like a rebirth of the CCF?? Or in the very least, the NDP return to its CCF roots? Frankly, I tend to agree with the former as I'm finding the NDP becoming borberline irredeemable. They seem to have given up on real working class class/economic issues and headed down the postmodernist/Frankfurt School identity politics rabbit hole. Quite frankly, this is one of the main reasons why there's a rise in populist Right wing parties and the social democratic Left is on the wane in the West. The seeming abandonment of the working class for, at the risk of sounding Marxist, petty-bourgeois ideological pursuits. A party that put class issues first and foremost and really took it to the Right and Centrist neoliberal collabartionist parties on economic issues I believe would get a serious listen out there amongst the electorate.

It looks like Bernier is going after the hard Right vote based on scapegoating of immigrants, utilizing nationalism/militarism a a substitute for "patriotism, while promoting pro market ruling class economics.This will split the Right wing vote in some area's on this country. Why can we not have a Left wing ,working class party that would be a viable alternative to the NDP that has ,for the most part, abandoned these issues?