![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")
For three quarters of a century Canadian social democrats have been working to make their movement and party into a major political force in Canada, a force that can actually compete effectively for power in Ottawa.
Never have the conditions for the NDP to move to major party status been more favourable than they are today. (Don't quote polls to me. They've been all over the place, and pre-election polls aren't worth a pitcher of warm spit.)
The Harper government is wretchedly unpopular with a majority of Canadians. It is hanging on to its right-wing base, but cannot grow beyond that. The Liberals are led by a man whose instinctual response to every issue is to turn to the right. A believer in the benign character of the American Empire, he's done this for years on Afghanistan. He did it on the coalition when he walked away from the chance to install a progressive government last January with himself at the helm. And over the past year, he's repeatedly failed to come up with sweeping new ideas to cope with the economic crisis and to offer a platform that addresses the needs of Canadians. When he walked away from the coalition and supported the Harper government in return for the issuing of a few report cards, Ignatieff made it evident that he offers Canadians nothing new.
Meanwhile, over the past year, Jack Layton grew in political stature. His role in launching the coalition was masterful. It was Ignatieff who abandoned this progressive initiative not Jack Layton. As the months went by the NDP was making itself the real alternative to Stephen Harper. It was the right approach and it was working. (It's true that a much more public assault on the failed economics of neo-liberalism would have helped.)
The move this week to vote confidence in the government was wrong-headed. The NDP has abandoned the high ground to the Liberals on the central question of who is leading the fight against the Harper government. From now on, the Liberals will vote against the government at every turn in parliament, and the NDP will have to prop up the Conservatives until the changes to EI it favours are passed into law. (Gilles Duceppe has announced that the Conservatives won't be able to count on him for future votes.)
By the time the next opportunity to defeat the government comes along in the winter or spring, the Ignatieff Liberals will be rhetorically entrenched on the high ground -- substantively they offer nothing -- while the NDP is reduced to a minor player whose job is to sustain the Harperites who loath social democrats.
The coming months are going to be difficult ones for Canadian families and communities as the rate of unemployment rises and the bite of the economic crisis is more deeply felt.
The Harper government is set to lose the next election. Had the NDP stuck to its role as the unwavering opponent of the Conservatives, the party could have gained enormously. More important, the party could have offered the country the prospect of real change.
Links:
[1] http://rabble.ca/taxonomy/term/309
[2] http://rabble.ca/print/blogs/bloggers/james-laxer/2009/09/why-did-ndp-concede-high-ground-liberals#comment-1063465
[3] http://rabble.ca/print/blogs/bloggers/james-laxer/2009/09/why-did-ndp-concede-high-ground-liberals#comment-1063483
[4] http://rabble.ca/print/blogs/bloggers/james-laxer/2009/09/why-did-ndp-concede-high-ground-liberals#comment-1063526
[5] http://rabble.ca/print/blogs/bloggers/james-laxer/2009/09/why-did-ndp-concede-high-ground-liberals#comment-1063659
[6] http://rabble.ca/print/blogs/bloggers/james-laxer/2009/09/why-did-ndp-concede-high-ground-liberals#comment-1063937
[7] http://rabble.ca/print/blogs/bloggers/james-laxer/2009/09/why-did-ndp-concede-high-ground-liberals#comment-1065009
[8] http://rabble.ca/print/blogs/bloggers/james-laxer/2009/09/why-did-ndp-concede-high-ground-liberals#comment-1078772
[9] http://rabble.ca/user
[10] http://rabble.ca/user/register
For me it was the convention they took ten steps back and turned their back on the future. We could of shown Canada that the party was evolving but Nooo! A bunch of old stalwarts had to hold on to the "good old days" the good old days were just that the olde days. So they have chosen to stay frozen in time and espouse the tired old lines of days gone by, I for one am not going to stay and help rearrange the deck chairs on this sinking ship.
Change the Leader and I'll stay and at the next convention move the unions to the back of the hall, didn't really need to see CUPE BC or Judy Darcy in front of the stage they are not democratic in any way.
On second thought backing the Cons the Convention et al, I'm out of here! Vote for offer one free independent vote up for grabs. Can't vote for the Bloc out here (BC) back to the Liberals just to get rid of Harper and then check out the Independent voices for future political action.
What Laxer doesn't seem to understand is that the Liberals are in such disarray right now that a snap election would likely lead to either an even stronger Conservative minority government or possibly even a majority. There is no point forcing a snap election unless there are WINNING CONDITIONS for an election.
For the last three years the NDP has shouted from every rooftop that we were the only real opposition to Harper. We screamed and yelled that the Liberals voted confidence in Harper 79 times while the NDP voted against him - and the reaction of Canadians was a collective yawn. No one ever gave the NDP any credit for that. In fact people like Jim Laxer mostly just dismissed the NDP's tactics as being just "parliamentary games" to make the Liberals look bad (perish the thought)
NDP = No Difference Party
I admire Prof Laxer's work, but he's been smoking something. The polls are not "all over the place" unless you consider movement between 14 and 17% to be all over the place. The NDP is nowhere near becoming the serious opposition to the Tories.
The Federal NDP lost me when they brought down the Paul Martin government. We were close to a child care program and the ratification of the Kelowna accords. Now we've had almost four years of Harper governing as if he has a majority. But no apologies from the NDP--they're so happy they got ten more MPs, regardless of what it did to Canada.
I loved the idea of the Coalition, but I also saw how deeply unpopular it was. It's dead. Since electoral reform is also dead, I will vote strategically, and here in Vancouver Centre, that means Liberal. The NDP needs a new face; it is lost in dull lefty rhetoric. I recommend Libby Davies--she's smart, she's warm, and, unlike Jack, she comes across as real, committed, and flexible.
Paul Martin had no confidence in his own government and announced he was going to the polls. The NDP had nothing to do with stealing and corruption within the Liberal Party. The NDP also had nothing to do with how Paul Martin positioned his government from MAJORITY to MINORITY. He did that on his own too. He could have used his Majority to bring in child care, but choose to have an election. That failed attempt for power, led to a minority government at first propped up by the Conservatives. The NDP did not have enough seats to Prop up the Liberal Government no matter what myths the Liberal Party wishes to generate.
As for this article. The few points of contention I have is with interpretation of polling data. The NDP is ranging anywhere from 12% to 19% and the CPC is very much close to a Majority government, and looking at the current poll data, the Liberals are between 29% and 33% and would have fallen like a ROCK if an election was called. This could well have been the election to punish the opposition in a rush to the polls.
I never believed it was good politics for the Liberals to Support every bill 100% of the time, and for the NDP to oppose every bill 100% of the time.
What is possibly the worst move for the Liberals is that they have gotten out of the front seat and moved to the back. Opposing everything will accomplish everything the NDP accomplished in the past year. NOTHING. Moral high ground or not, you have to bring something back to the people. That was another failing of the Liberals in supporting the government. They never asked for a single thing. Nor did they read the fine print in what they supported, or if they did, shame on them. Either way its incompetent.
My view is that the CPC would have exploited the Liberal desire for election and won a majority. The NDP would become a non factor regardless of whether they won more seats or lost seats if the CPC won a majority. Harper set free is something Canadians should not experience.
The NDP has a chance to work with the government and as the Harper Government shows little desire to work with anyone. Expect an election.
The NDP, needs to be able to say, "We gave it a try" before going to the polls.
I haven't always accepted James Laxer criticisms of the NDp before, but on this one he's absolutely correct. The NDP is now letting the Liberals look the "real opposition" again and run to their left, and will lose one of their most important appeals come the next election if they keep this up. (not to mention the fct that Harper will never come through on the few crumbs he's offering when it comes down to it -its just not his way) Only winner --Harper.
Always hoping that certain politicians and parties will become what they aren't isn't terribly constructive, even if it's understandable. You're spinning your wheels trying to make that plan work, James. I'm all for pressuring, democratically, elected officials to do the right thing - when there's a reasonable expectation that's it's not a fruitless endeavor and when it's reasonable period. Otherwise, I think our energy is better spent trying to change the electoral system - in it's entirety. That would include making the creation of new parties much, much easier. Everyone hates the status quo that they love to complain about endlessly, evidently. Maybe that's why no one talks, honestly and rationally, about ending it.
I did like the post on the meanness and shortsightedness of Toronto's movers and shakers though. I think that there's a lot of truth to what you lay out there. You can't make people care. But you don't necessarily do nothing. It may not be helpful, but I feel it's a lost cause - for cities, countries, this godless world. (Making enough people care so that 'mankind' can fix things will not happen.) Individuals are another matter.
If you can't move wayward people, at least witness to them. Read their record to them and make them squirm. If they aren't clear about how their shortsighted behavior is destructive, enlighten them. Shame them. Those who care, who are also paying the negative consequences of decisions made by the powerful, have the right to do that.
Our courageous, fearless 'leaders' need to be outed, if nothing else - for now. They don't pull together with the rest of us to make a system that works for everyone precisely because they don't want to share power and lose the ability to guarantee outcomes - in a complex world in which they hate rules, love their freedom (free trade and liberalized everything and law and order governments to both put the people in their place and placate their political base) and love experimenting (Chicago School economics) even while they see experiment after experiment lead to more and more social and environmental destruction, so that it is now at the point, a threshold, where they've set the planet on a course of destruction and have no ability, let alone wisdom, to turn that around. Yes indeed, There's another job they should all get big bonuses for.