![James Laxer](http://rabble.ca/sites/rabble/files/imagecache/thumbnail/category_pictures/picture-62_0.jpg "James Laxer is regularly asked to comment on current national and global issues by the Canadian media and frequently writes columns in major newspapers and periodicals.
In 1969, he was one of the founders of the Waffle Group, Canada’s largest New Left political movement. In 1971, at the age of 29, he ran second for the national leadership of the New Democratic Party. In the mid 1970s, James Laxer was a leading crusader against the power of multi national petroleum companies. His books, speeches and television appearances helped lead to the creation of a nationally owned oil company, Petro Canada, established to counter the power of companies like Exxon in Canada.
In 1981, Laxer was appointed research director of the federal New Democratic Party. At the end of his two year term, he wrote a controversial, book length critique of the party’s economic policies, charging that they were seriously dated. The report was front page news in Canada and was debated for months in the national media.
In 1984, the National Film Board of Canada hired Laxer to be host narrator, for a series of documentaries on the changing global economy and Canada’s place in it. In preparing the series, Laxer travelled extensively in Japan, Europe and the United States. The series, entitled Reckoning, was denied broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation because it was seen as too controversial.
Instead it was broadcast by a hook up of all the English language educational networks in the country. The series was also broadcast in the United States, as well, by a large number of PBS stations. The Reckoning series has won awards in both the United States and Canada. One of its films won the blue ribbon, first prize, at the prestigious American Film and Video Festival, for best political documentary. The same film won the Atlantic
Film Festival and national Gemini Awards in Canada for best writing in an information series, awards which went to Laxer and the film’s director as co-authors.
In 1986-87, Laxer spent a year in Europe writing Decline of the Superpowers. From 1978 to 1981, he hosted a public affairs television program on TV Ontario. He regularly went to Europe to conduct interviews with leading European political and intellectual figures. In 1993 his book False God: How the Globalization Myth Has Impoverished Canada, was published by Lester Publishing. In Search of a New Left: Canadian Politics
After the Neo-Conservative Assault was published by Viking in 1996. The Undeclared War: Class Conflict in the Age of Cyber Capitalism, was published by Viking in 1998, and by Penguin Canada in 1999, in a paperback edition. Dalton Camp wrote that the Undeclared War "is an informed and cogent book on the great and growing dilemma of our time: how to preserve a free society in the face of increasing disparity and the creation of a new class society---‘a dominant class and a dominated class.’ This is stuff we need to know." Laxer’s book, Stalking the Elephant: My Discovery of America was on national best seller lists for seven weeks in the autumn of 2000. In his review of the book for the Globe and Mail, David Shribman, Pulitzer prize winning columnist for the Boston Globe, commented: "This is a book by a Canadian that can change the United States." Stalking the Elephant is to be published by The New Press in New York in September 2001. In 2003, his book, The Border: Canada, the U.S. and Dispatches from the 49th Parallel, was published by Doubleday Canada. In 2004, Douglas and McIntyre published his book Red Diaper Baby: A Boyhood in the Age of McCarthyism. This memoir of James Laxer’s childhood was the winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award for best biography/memoir in 2005.
James Laxer is a Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto")
Jack Layton could be forgiven for thinking that leading a federal political party is all about fighting election campaigns and recovering from them. He is about to lead the NDP into its fourth election in just over five years. Over this difficult half decade, Layton has shown himself to be a formidable political leader, improving the standing of his party in each election, and growing in stature with Canadians.
The former Toronto city councilor inherited a party with only 13 seats in the House of Commons and took the NDP to 19, 29 and 37 seats in the three campaigns he has fought. When Layton became leader, the NDP was widely dismissed as a party that didn't matter any more, with little political clout and with ideas that were stuck in the past.
Now no one dismisses the NDP as a force in national politics. The Conservatives heap abuse on it as a socialist rabble with which no respectable party would associate, all the while hoping it takes enough votes from the Liberals to keep Stephen Harper in power. The Liberals fear the NDP as an alternative to which voters could migrate, as they did so massively in Nova Scotia's recent provincial election. While Michael Ignatieff assures business that he is safe, he has to keep a wary eye over his left shoulder to make sure that voters don't start thinking that it's time for a progressive like Jack to be prime minister.
What does the NDP aspire to in the upcoming campaign? More votes and more seats, naturally. The NDP has always been as assiduous in its pursuit of votes as any party. And the federal party prizes each seat it wins as a jewel in the crown. For the last couple of decades, the party has been run by pros who read polls, earn their living working for the party, in its offices or on the Hill. Not surprisingly, they can't stand people they perceive as windbag ideologues who are always harping about socialism. These hard-boiled potatoes (hard-asses is a term I would not use although my dictionary says it's a perfectly respectable label for people who narrow mindedly and meticulously adhere to their agenda) want social democrats to support the party and lay off the verbiage. I agree with one side of that equation. Every social democrat who is able should contribute money, put a sign on the lawn or in the window and canvass a poll in the election this fall.
But let's not forget the other side. Socialism and social democracy did not spring forth from the mouths of ideologues. The reason tens of thousands of Canadians have worked for fundamental changes for the past three quarters of a century is because capitalism is a system that rewards the rich at the expense everyone else.
As we mark the first anniversary of the Great Crash of 2008, that ought to be more clear than ever. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. The neo-liberal socio-economic model on which both the Conservatives and the Liberals have staked their fortunes, has failed.
Social democrats should not be talking about putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. They should be promoting a vision of a new economy, constructed around the needs and aspirations of people, a vision that respects the environment. That's not an ideological need. It's a human requirement. It's why the CCF and later the NDP were founded in the first place.
We got a very good reminder last week about why Canadian social democrats should not remake themselves as American Democrats. Barack Obama is as good a liberal as you will find. But in his speech to Congress, he dismissed the Canadian health care option and tied his vision of reform to the promotion of competition among health care providers. Without a powerful social democratic movement and party, Canadians would never have moved beyond that gully into which American liberals repeatedly fall.
The hard-boiled ones might be surprised to discover that a very large number of Canadians now are ready to consider a fundamental alternative to a failed system.
Links:
[1] http://rabble.ca/taxonomy/term/309
[2] http://rabble.ca/print/blogs/bloggers/james-laxer/2009/09/ndp-eve-campaign#comment-1060549
[3] http://rabble.ca/print/blogs/bloggers/james-laxer/2009/09/ndp-eve-campaign#comment-1060815
[4] http://rabble.ca/user
[5] http://rabble.ca/user/register
We can all learn from each other and Canadian's health care although not perfect is a heck of lot better option than the USA's. And its Big Health Care Insurance that is crying foul to Democratics as saying will shut us down if health care provided and republicians come to the aid of big business. It is going to take baby steps and can you mix the two public vs private or is that like mixing oil and water?
You can't have a healthlty nation if your promoting unhealthy care.
Referring to Obama as a liberal, ESPECIALLY form a candian perspective, is like calling the Liberal Party the Marxist-Lenninist party of Canada.