Shades of Grey -- A Left Chapter look at strategy, tactics and endorsements in the 2015 election

With just under two weeks to go until election day, anti-capitalist leftists are in something of a quandary.

There is, simply put, no anti-capitalist party that has any chance of electing even a single MP in the upcoming election. Even worse, while the NDP has made it perfectly clear that it accepts capitalism as an economic system not just in the short-term but in perpetuity, it has also run the most craven, reactionary, bankrupt and meaningless campaign in its history.

From its terrible "small business" tax cut plan, to its disastrous tactically, absurdly reactionary and backward "balanced budget" pledge, to its leader's praising of Margaret Thatcher, to its plan to increase police funding, to its arbitrary blocking and banning of certain candidates while allowing the candidacies of others to proceed, and on and on and on, the NDP has run a terrible, right-wing campaign even by its own standards and even within its own self-imposed limitations.

While the notion that the Greens are somehow "conservatives with composters" is an absurd NDP hack myth (in fact, by today's standards they have a very progressive platform -- more so than the NDP's) and while Elizabeth May has been the most principled and interesting progressive leader all year (standing up for the repeal of Bill C-51 long before Mulcair for example), the Greens are also, ultimately, at best mildly social democratic.

The Liberals are the Liberals. While it is simply asinine to claim, especially now and especially after a campaign like this one, that the Liberals and Conservatives are "the same", as some dim-witted partisans of the NDP frequently do, they are an inherently Bay St. party and represent simply the socially, and to a very small degree economically, more progressive wing of the bourgeois capitalist elite.

But make no mistake, the Liberals are very different from the Conservatives. On fundamentally important social, justice and foreign policy issues the differences are profound. Again, while some NDP hacks will attempt to point to Ontario as an example of how the Liberals govern like Conservatives, after allegedly running to the "left", due to Wynne's wrong-headed moves to privatize Hydro, they disgracefully leave out the many other profoundly reactionary plans the Conservatives had in store for the province  had they won as well as the vast gulf that separates the parties on social issues.

It is, especially in light of just how reactionary and dangerous the Harper Conservatives are, totally and shamefully wrong to try to paint the Liberals as identical to them. It is not simply delusional. It is stupid and harmful.

Never before has there been less of a difference between the Liberals and the NDP ideologically. Never before has there been more of a difference between them both and the staggeringly right-wing foe they face.

It is not, ultimately that the Liberals have changed that much. But the NDP certainly has. To see it as being anymore likely to run a left government than the Liberals strikes me as both utopian and flying in the face of all evidence and logic.

This leads us to the reality of just how bad the Harper government is. We all know it. It has done great harm over the last four years.

If re-elected it will do a great deal more harm.

So, apologies to Lenin, what is to be done?

To me this needs to be broken down into three categories.

Endorsements of Individual Candidates

There are a handful of candidates who, in my opinion, deserve to be supported irrespective of other considerations to come.

Elizabeth May is needed in Ottawa. Full stop. She is easily the most interesting of the three bourgeois progressive leaders, has been very principled and is, also, the "strategic" choice in her riding as the incumbent. Why would anyone on the left want to see her voice no longer present in parliament?

Dan Harris deserves support in Scarborough Southwest due to his opponent -- the odious former Toronto police chief  Bill Blair. A staunch defender of carding and one of the architects of the G-20 Toronto human rights debacle and outrage, his defeat would be a repudiation of this history. While it is true that, disgracefully, the NDP courted Blair as a potential candidate, the fact remains that only NDP incumbent Harris can defeat Blair and here is hoping that he does.

Jacob Kearey-Moreland, who was disgracefully barred from running for the NDP for the most absurd and Orwellian reasons, deserves support in Simcoe North if only to send a message that the undemocratic practices of the mainstream parties internally are wrong. He also has a terrific set of new and interesting ideas that should be heard and considered.

Vote Strategically

For all of the reasons outlined above in the introduction, if your primary electoral goal is, honestly, to Stop Harper, then there is no logical or moral alternative to strategic voting.

If you genuinely believe that the differences between the tweedle-dees and tweedle-dums of the progressive parties are so significant that you must vote for one of them in any riding no matter what, that is fine. But do not then claim to be trying to stop Harper as you are not.

We all know there are ridings where one of the mainstream progressive parties cannot win.

If stopping Harper is what you want to do, and it is a perfectly understandable and reasonable objective for a leftist of any stripe, then by now you likely know exactly who is the most likely candidate to win between the Liberals, NDP and Greens where you live and you should vote accordingly.

In the many ridings where the races are between two of these progressive parties, vote however you want.

Vote Communist or Conscientiously Abstain

Certainly in any riding where the Conservatives are not going to win I would advocate for a vote for the Communist Party candidate if there is one or a vote for another anti-capitalist candidate or an abstention if there is not.

While I am not a Leninist, the Communist Party has run a terrific campaign with very limited resources and has done so on an excellent platform. Their candidates are dedicated and articulate anti-capitalists and supporting them would send a very clear, very unequivocal message of discontent and opposition to the mainstream capitalist discourse.

They deserve serious consideration.

If you have no Communist Party candidate, if there is another anti-capitalist candidate or an independent worthy of consideration, then by all means vote for them.

But it is also perfectly reasonable to conscientiously abstain from the whole process.

Despite absurd and reductionist arguments to the contrary, if you do not feel represented at the polls, and if you do not want to reward the craven emptiness of the mainstream parties with your vote, not voting is a totally logical response.

It is a rejection of the entire process. Of course, I do not suggest a passive abstention. Let people know exactly why you are staying home.

And be sure to let the candidates of the mainstream progressive parties know as well.

As to ridings where the Conservatives can win, then you have to make a choice. In my riding, for example, the only candidate who can defeat the Conservatives is a Liberal. The NDP and Greens have no chance at all. I personally cannot vote for the Liberals. So it is a choice we then have to personally make in that case and it is not necessarily an easy one.

No matter how, ultimately, you chose to cast -- or not cast -- your ballot, never has the need of a new, actually leftist electoral alternative alliance of anti-capitalists been more clear.

Despite all the obstacles, let us hope that we find a way to work to create one in the aftermath of 2015.

See also: Do we really want to Stop Harper? The year ahead in progressive partisanship

The NDP and the strategic voting narrative

Given the nature of our electoral system in Canada the shadow of "strategic voting" hangs over many provincial elections and basically all federal contests since 1988, including the upcoming one. Voters, genuinely and rightly scared of the possibility of Harper being reelected to a second majority term, will often begin to think in terms of which party is best poised to defeat his government.

There is little doubt that in the event of a minority parliament the Liberals and the New Democrats (along, one would assume, with the Greens) would work together in a more or less formal way to prevent another Harper administration. No amount of partisan silliness from those inclined towards one-or-the-other of these parties will change the fact that Canadians know this to be true and that it factors into their political thinking.

In an ipolitics.ca piece about how Justin Trudeau might govern in a minority situation, Paul Adams outlined why, despite some assertions to the contrary, if necessary it is obvious that Trudeau would be far, far more likely to work with the NDP as opposed to with Harper:

Right now, it seems very unlikely Trudeau could win a majority — so let’s look at the two most likely Liberal minority government scenarios, each of which is likely to produce a different style of government. 

The first scenario is what would happen if the current polls were to hold through election day. The Conservatives would end up with the largest number of seats, but not enough for a majority. In this scenario, the pressure on the opposition parties — all of whom are campaigning on getting rid of Harper — to get together and dump him would be enormous. Whatever Trudeau’s pronouncements before the election on coalescing with the NDP, he would pay a huge political price if he were seen to be propping up the Harper Conservatives. 

In this case, Trudeau would have to make some sort of arrangement with the NDP to take power. And that arrangement would have a progressive cast — on taxes and pensions, perhaps. Take a look at the agreement the Liberals crafted with the NDP in their ill-fated 2008 bid to oust Harper. It was sculpted to address the economic crisis of the time, but it gives us a hint of what a future Lib-NDP pact might look like. (The 2008 bid failed, by the way, not because its progressive policies were unpopular, but because of the frail leadership of Stéphane Dion and its reliance on parliamentary support from the Bloc Québécois.) 

The other scenario sees the Liberals win more seats than the Conservatives, which would allow them to take power without an agreement with any other party. In this situation, Trudeau almost certainly would try to govern with an eye to calling another election before long and making his bid for a majority.

The same, I think it is very safe to say, is true of Tom Mulcair. It is basically impossible, despite the attempts of Liberal partisans to point, somewhat misleadingly, to the 2004 letter that Jack Layton signed with then opposition leader Harper, to see a scenario in which he would prop up a Harper government instead of seeking to work with the Liberals and Greens or, should the NDP win more seats than any other party, doing what Adams suggests Trudeau would do in that circumstance.

These political realities are why so many progressive voters intentions end up being predicated, for-better-or-worse, on the idea that they should seek to "Stop Harper" or vote with an eye to making Election Day "Harper's Last Day".

What is less clear is how and why the NDP and its partisans have allowed the strategic voting narrative to again revert to being seen, essentially, as one that somehow naturally means voting Liberal or as one that would primarily benefit the Liberals.

In the latter case, it should be perfectly clear that any sincere strategic voting campaign would benefit the NDP far more than any other party for the rather obvious reason that they hold significantly more seats in parliament than either the Liberals or Greens. 59 more seats than the Liberals in fact.

It would be simply ludicrous to call for "strategic voting" against incumbents!

Thus, a genuine strategic voting campaign of whatever type would have people voting for a New Democrat in, at a minimum, 95 seats as its starting point. Were such a campaign to succeed, in other words, the NDP would be virtually guaranteed to again win significantly more seats than either the Liberals or Greens.

In the past, the fact that Liberals had far more incumbents in parliament (whether as opposition or while in government) formed the basis of their ability to morph strategic voting and getting people to "hold their nose" and vote for the "lesser-of-evils" into de facto calls to vote Liberal. The logic of the appeal being that they were the clear alternative to the Conservatives (or, for a time, the Reform Party) not so much for ideological reasons as for the reason that they could win in far more ridings.

While no Liberal leader ever did, or would, call for actual strategic voting, (as no leader of a major political party outside of a formal electoral alliance would ever  advocate voting against some their own candidates and nor should they be expected to), they and their partisans were well aware that such calls would be primarily of benefit to them.

On its face, this should now be true for the New Democrats. Yet it is clearly not. Strategic voting still seems to be framed in our discourse as meaning, in most cases, as voting for or benefiting the Liberals.

One might expect New Democrat partisans to, while obviously not technically backing actual strategic voting, seek to make the narrative as one that made Canadians naturally think that it meant voting for the NDP as the Liberals did for themselves in the past.

For the most part, however, New Democrat partisans and commentators oppose strategic voting not with a gentle nudge-and-a-wink but with a ferocity that seems totally self-destructive.

As a personal example, when I wrote a piece recently that not so much favoured strategic voting (as I am actually completely opposed to it) but rather pointed out that it is a necessary tactic if your primary political goal is the defeat of Harper above all other considerations, it was not Liberals who were angry about it, it was overwhelmingly New Democrats.

This would be totally counter-intuitive were it not for the fact that strategic voting remains, in their view, despite the existing reality of parliament, as basically still a call to vote Liberal and as long as they continue to see it as such, and allow it to be framed in the broader consciousness as such, that is what it will be.

It is somewhat understandable why they feel this way. After the 2011 election, and with the death of Jack Layton, the polls slowly but surely shifted, despite the NDP's almost over-the-top efforts to present themselves as mature and "ready to govern", back in the Liberal's favour and their new seeming saviour of a leader, Trudeau, did all that he could to reassert the Liberal brand as the one real "alternative".

Despite the objective reality of what actual strategic voting would mean, again he has and will try to frame voting to "Stop Harper" as meaning "vote Liberal".

However, in fact, believing this to be what it means not only aids in obfuscating the actual composition of parliament but it also capitulates to this view and may actually help to facilitate a Liberal renaissance.

Old political narratives, it seems, die very hard. While New Democrats should be framing strategic voting as not something to be denounced but as in essence meaning a vote for them, it is as if a bizarre combination of truly blind partisanship and an inferiority complex is holding them back. Like they have even themselves never accepted their rise as the new political reality. As if they do not realize that "strategic voting" would mean they start at a base of 95 seats!

If the NDP themselves do not think that they are the "natural" alternative to Harper, as a low key, past Liberal style embrace of strategic voting would imply, why would anyone else?

New Democrats should seek to shift the strategic voting narrative so that it reflects the actually existing present parliamentary situation as opposed to denouncing (and thereby also alienating) its proponents as Liberal "dupes" or with some total nonsense about the Liberals and Tories being the "same" that, frankly, absolutely no one outside of the cult believes anymore.

Otherwise they are accepting the way strategic voting was framed in past elections. If they do not want outcomes like those of 1988  or 1993 they need to stop acting as if the political paradigms of those elections remain true today.

Hack Attack: Online "progressive" idiocy in the era of neo-liberalism

In recent days I have, after at first praising him for saying he would oppose Bill C-51, written a number of critical pieces asking if, in fact, Tom Mulcair's opposition to the bill is as comprehensive and serious as his defenders would have us believe.

My criticisms of Mulcair, in this or in any other case, may or may not be correct. They are, as with basically all of my political pieces, opinion pieces that, while I feel do attempt to and do show they are supported by the evidence, are an opinion! I certainly have no monopoly on the truth and those who disagree with my positions should do so and frequently do do so.

There is one type of "critic", however, who has always been present but who, especially with the explosion of social media and the online comment phenomenon, is raising their ugly head more-and-more often - the online party hack.

Anyone involved in politics or political commentary online has encountered them. They are the rabid, angry, often very insulting people who show up in comment threads or on twitter to defend the party they belong to in any and all instances.

In the case of the pieces related to the NDP and Bill C-51, as a single small personal example, when I wrote the piece praising Mulcair, Liberals and Greens attacked me as a "Dipper" or said it ignored the fact that Elizabeth May had taken a strong stand first (it didn't). When I then critiqued what I see as Mulcair's backtracking, NDPers showed up to say I was "helping Harper", was a Green or a Liberal apologist and much worse (we have a history!).

In the case of Liberals and New Democrats the comments also often insisted that their party was the "only progressive" party that could "defeat Harper". For reasons I have outlined elsewhere, claiming this is beyond silly and is intellectually dishonest for either group.

New Democrats usually also like to throw in a claim that the Liberals are "the same" as Harper or are "Harper Lite"; a claim that, whatever its veracity, is humorous when tossed out by the hacks given the very long history of active parliamentary cooperation between the two parties in the recent modern era (two obvious examples being the Layton-Dion coalition agreement and the support of two Liberal austerity budgets in Ontario by the ONDP that kept the Liberal minority provincial government there in power until last year's election) and the near certainty that if the 2015 election results in a minority situation that they will formally or informally work together to keep Harper out. (An excellent piece on the Liberals recently talks about how this situation is likely to unfold depending on whether it is the Liberals or Tories who have more seats in a minority context.)

Many frame this as if any type of criticism of the NDP is "not helpful" and is aiding in derailing the New Jerusalem! One, refreshingly not abusive, comment recently, as an example,  read "Do you want another four years of Harper or Harper lite? Or do you want real change in Canada? Because if you want real change, then get donating and volunteering for the NDP."

While stirring to the person who put it up no doubt, this is nothing more than a de facto political ad as opposed to a meaningful counterpoint! As a leftist, activist and political commentator it is not my "job" or function to be "helpful" to an extremely well paid political leader like Mulcair who wants to become Prime Minister. It is, actually, the opposite. Leftists should always, in my opinion, be seeking to hold those with power and in leadership roles to account, including. and perhaps especially, those who are perceived to be or who claim to be on the left.

Much of this ludicrous partisan idiocy stems from the terribly counter-productive and false notion, strongly held by many leftists, that a party member or supporter needs to rally around or defend their party in this black-and-white way to show unity, aid the party's electoral ambitions (which is why the hacks are especially vitriolic when an election is nearing or happening) and out of some bizarre sense of solidarity with their "leadership".

The old and nonsensical line that leaders of parties, unions, left organizations, and so on, use that we owe it to them to lend them this solidarity and to express uncritical unity publicly is fundamentally bankrupt and accepting and practicing it explains in large part how we have gotten to a point of so little internal democracy and critical thought within much of these formations.

As I have noted elsewhere, we do not owe our "leaders" solidarity at all. They owe us their solidarity.

It is easy to get why MPs and MPPs are total "my leader and party right-or-wrong" hacks. They get paid incredibly well to stand up and salute when their leader says to and caucus discipline and campaign management these days pretty much forces them. And I get why employees of parties do this. They have little choice.

But I am mystified at the countless unpaid party partisans out there who buy into the obvious idiocy that the party or leader they support is always, or virtually always, right and go through endless mindless "intellectual" contortions to find ways to say this essentially every chance they can no matter the context. I see it in all of the three major "progressive" parties, though sadly especially angrily from New Democrats.

It is stunning that these keyboard warrior partisans cannot see how much this online behaviour, which is usually reductionist, simplistic and expressed in insulting ways. both looks exactly like what it is and alienates further those at whom it is directed.

Anyone who actually feels that the party and leader they support is always right is, frankly, delusional. As this is obviously not literally the case for most of them, I can only think that their willful Orwellian double-think is done as they suppose it serves a greater good.

It does not. Uncritical support for any party  enables and facilitates the very worst in our stunted political culture, it emboldens the centralization of power in the hands of the leader and their clique, it comes off as idiotic to any objective observer, and it actually hurts their own party by doing all of this in a very, very public way.

Give it up and think and speak critically. Any chance at a meaningful political discourse depends on it.

Podcast: In conversation with Paul Chislett on CJAM about Left organizing in Canada

I had a conversation with Windsor activist and radio host Paul Chislett on his Friday show The Shake Up on alternative station CJAM on February 13, 2015.

We talked about the "Stop Harper" narrative, the lack of left political options electorally, left activism and other issues. 

It was in part based on the piece Do we really want to Stop Harper? The year ahead in progressive partisanship.

You can listen to the segment at the link below and check out Paul's show every Friday at 4 p.m.

http://theshakeup.podomatic.com/entry/2015-02-17T13_51_36-08_00

Do we really want to Stop Harper? The year ahead in progressive partisanship

One has to watch, with a certain level of bemusement, the reaction to Gerry Caplan's seemingly surprising piece calling for a potential alliance between the Liberals and the NDP. It has been predictably met with howls of outrage from the usual suspects of New Democratic partisanship.

Given the fact that most, if not all, leftists claim they want to "Stop Harper" as the primary objective of 2015 politically I think this deserves closer inspection.

Caplan, I think correctly, feels that there is no chance of a formal coalition between the two parties. His article implies a support for strategic voting while not directly calling for it. Given that he is a stalwart New Democrat,  this makes more sense then it may at first appear, in that the NDP has significantly more incumbents now than do the Liberals. In fact if, regardless of if you think this will happen, people voted strategically it would benefit the NDP more versus the Liberals given the situation overall polling wise and politically now. In fact it might save many NDP incumbents outside of Quebec. It is pretty hard to claim you are voting strategically against an incumbent. 

I actually think, if New Democrat partisans were not so blind, that that was one of the points of what Caplan was saying whether he realized it or not.

Setting that aside for a moment, taken at face value Caplan's political objective is perfectly logical.

His objective is to prevent the Harper Tories, no matter what, from forming the next government of Canada. If, and note I say if, that is your primary political objective, then there is, in fact, under our present political system no meaningful alternative to what Caplan advocates to achieve this objective.

An acceptance of strategic voting is the only way to "Stop Harper" if your primary goal is to do this. You cannot, either morally or logically, claim that your goal is to Stop Harper while advocating for voting for one of the NDP, Liberals or Greens in every riding in the country

Period. 

For example in my riding, Etobicoke Lakeshore, if your goal is actually to "Stop Harper", voting NDP or Green will not do this. They cannot win in the riding any more than the Socialist Party of Ontario (SPO) that I am a member of and have supported could if it were running a candidate. To suggest otherwise is absurd given the riding's history. This means, in reality, the functional difference of voting for the NDP or Greens or voting for the SPO here (were it running) in stopping Harper is zero.

So, if you are advocating for voting one of the NDP, Liberals or Greens in every riding in Canada your primary objective is not stopping Harper. 

Which is fine as long as that is admitted. 

Obviously the election of a Liberal, Green or NDP majority government would "Stop Harper", but we all know that there are many ridings in the country where the candidate of one of these three parties (or more than one) cannot win. So if you are advocating for voting for them then you believe that the objective of supporting that party and its candidate no matter what trumps the need to Stop Harper for whatever reason.

In other words, you believe that there are enough political, ideological and moral differences between one of these parties and the other two that this precludes you from calling for a strategic vote or alliance and means that you advocate voting for the candidates of this party even in situations where they have no chance of winning. (If you live in a riding where the battle is, say, between the Liberals and the NDP then you personally do not have to make this choice, but what you publicly advocate for others to do matters still.)

If you really, and honestly believe this, then by all means advocate for a universal, in all situations vote for that party, but then you cannot claim that this is the way to "Stop Harper". Because it is not and it is intellectually and ethically dishonest to claim it is.

In reality it is hard to buy into the idea that there is much of a difference fundamentally between these parties anymore and one has to think they are all much closer to each other ideologically than they are to Harper's Tories. In  addition they are also much closer to each other ideologically than they are to any actual anti-capitalist or socialist ideas or thinking, (and yes we must include the NDP in that).

So the argument against a strategic alliance increasingly requires "intellectual" contortions of partisan imbecility that are more and more Orwellian as each year passes.

However, having said that, I think it remains impossible to advocate for strategic voting as a leftist. 

The time is long past for anti-capitalists, socialists, communists and others to work together to build a new anti-capitalist political force in Canada and to reject the defeatist and faulty logic of strategic voting as well as to reject these three parties. Many, myself included, have said this for years now.

The logic of "strategic voting" means there will always be a "greater threat" to use to justify holding one's nose and voting for "the lesser of evils" and there will never, as a result, be a chance for a Canadian Left Front or major anti-capitalist political party as long as we embrace the logic of this and refuse to build one as we are always worried of the immediate potential consequences of this.

In other words, this idea, once it becomes a primary political goal, can never be overcome as, for example, even if we do oust Harper this year, in 2019 there will be another election and another threat from the right that is just as great and, again, this will be used to say that we have to, yet again, hold our noses and vote for one of these bankrupt wings of "progressivism".

Leftists have to, at some point, advocate for setting aside differences as well as rejecting the cynical nature of neo-liberal "mainstream" politics altogether. 

One can do this by rejecting voting and waiting for the revolution or by supposing that mass social movements, on their own, can force changes, but I think that anti-capitalist forces need an electoral vehicle and that the absence of one is having a fundamentally negative impact on Canadian politics, society and on the real life, real world poverty and oppression that millions of Canadians live in and face daily. 

When we abandon fighting against capitalism and rejecting it politically, we also abandon them. 

This is not an intellectual exercise, in other words. There are very real, and very negative consequences for real people in there not being a voice that fights for their interests and for transformative political change. 

Are leftists to seriously support voting Liberal, even though we on a certain level want to see Harper lose and even acknowledging  (as only, frankly, a dimwit would not) that they are definitely a better alternative for the country to Harper?  Voting for them, even if done to Stop Harper, endorses their cynical, bourgeois, phony progressive bullshit and how can we advocate doing that?

Voting NDP endorses Mulcair's and the party's profound cynicism and opportunism and the party's retreat from anything close to an anti-capitalist vision. The Greens, while they have some acceptable candidates and positions, also are a capitalist party and, therefore, are simply a recycled version of capitalism with a blue bin,.

So if your objective is to Stop Harper than by all means vote accordingly. If you are politically represented by one of the three mainstream progressive capitalist parties in a way that makes the other two simply not an option, then by all means vote for them and advocate for voting for them in every riding.

Otherwise I think one has to consider a vote for the Communist Party or a rejection of all the parties. The Communist Party is the only party whose commitment to ending capitalism is clear and their platform is one that speaks strongly for workers and working people. While I think that one can and should question their allegiance to Leninism and their notions of democratic centralism, one has to think it is more important in the immediate context for anti-capitalists to set aside differences in the here-and-now and get moving on building a new vision of an anti-capitalist mass movement and a post-capitalist society.

If one is in a riding without a Communist candidate or any other anti-capitalist candidate, leftists still, in my opinion, have to oppose the "mainstream" neo-liberal narrative and its terrible and devastating, destructive impact on the real lives of real people, and we have to advocate for a conscientious rejection of capitalist politics in Canada today by vocally exposing all of the three "mainstream" progressive parties.

While many will disagree with this and will feel that, as always, we have to focus on the cynical retreat that is the normality of supporting "the lesser of evils", as long as we continue to accept the logic of retreat we will never build a political force that can really change Canada and fight capitalism, austerity, inequality, poverty and injustice.

Without this force, stopping Harper means far less then it may at first appear.