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".. the solutions being offered by business, the federal government, and many provincial governments are simply more of what got us here: more dependence on markets and unregulated corporations, expanding the FTA into NAFTA, more restraint and cutbacks.
"When we say NO! To them, we're saying: We know these policies won't work. We know they'll make things worse. We're going to resist and fight back because that's the first step - and the only way - to get other alternatives and directions on the public agenda".
At our last collective bargaining and political action convention (May, 1993), we talked about the need to build a protest movement to challenge the direction of our economy and society. As we come to this convention, the movement that we've worked and waited for is finally stirring in Canada. But when we discuss how to strengthen and deepen it, where to take it and what to focus on, two questions keep repeating themselves:
Unless we directly address such questions, we can't continue to strengthen our membership and build and expand our movement. We need to get a handle on our times and come up with - if not complete solutions - at least some clear directions.
1. The Great Divide
"...from 1950-1973 the industrialized countries experienced a historically unprecedented expansion of production and consumption... Since then, the rate of growth in world GDP has halved...[and] unemployment...reached rates which were unthinkable in the preceding period."
- World Unemployment 1995, ILO (United Nations).
Something quite overwhelming has happened to our economy and society since the early seventies. It has changed how we live and what we expect. But we don't seem to have grasped the scale and scope of this change, nor come to grips with what to do about it.
Economists generally divide the half century since the end of the last World War into two contrasting periods. The first twenty-five years or so has been referred to as the "Golden Era"; the second might be called the "Age of Permanent Insecurity". Within a generation, the rate of growth fell to half its previous level, unemployment rates doubled, decent jobs became the exception, real wages stopped growing, budget surpluses turned into chronic deficits, and social programs which were proudly introduced near the end of the first period were dismantled in the second - slowly at first, but then at an accelerating pace.
The Great Divide
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It's not that those earlier years were all that glorious. Management consolidated workplace control after the militancy of the 30's and 40's; the role of women was again narrowed to the home; poverty (especially for seniors) rose through the 50's and into the 60's; the Atlantic provinces often wondered whether the Depression was really over; the nuclear threat had interjected itself into daily life; and the wages and benefits we got weren't just handed to us, but often bitterly fought for.
Yet - in sharp contrast to today - there was a sense in the earlier period that economic and social problems could be alleviated, that tomorrow would be better than today, that sons and daughters would undoubtedly be more secure and better off than their parents. In the second period, that optimism stumbled and then faded.
The stunning thing about these changes is that they happened in the face of other trends which, if common sense ruled, should have left us better rather than worse off:
Why - if we're now working longer hours, working harder, bringing more education to the work we do, and doing it more productively - are things getting worse? Why the contradiction between the potential of our labour and the reality of our limited rewards?
2. The Corporations Get Radical
"The ruling class only wants one thing - everything."
The post-War economic boom emerged out of a number of unique factors: the commercial potential of break-through technologies developed during the War; the reconversion of workplaces to peace-time production; the reconstruction of a physically devastated Europe and Japan; pent-up consumer demand after fifteen years of Depression and war-time restraint; and competition with communism, which included a test over which system could best "deliver the goods" to its population.
In all countries, the patriotism and sacrifices of the War increased general demands for improvements in living conditions, security and equity. A strong and growing labour movement led and articulated these demands, winning concessions from nervous corporations and governments. Those concessions included not just bargaining gains but the development of the "welfare state" - a set of institutions and national programs to guarantee all citizens at least a minimum standard of security and equity.
But these gains for working people lead to a contradiction. Once Europe and Japan had successfully reconstructed their economies, competition amongst the capitalist countries intensified, and this put greater pressure on profits. The corporations naturally tried to protect their profits by transferring that pressure on to workers. Since workers now felt strong and secure enough to resist being squeezed in the workplace, companies turned to workers-as-consumers and increased prices to maintain their profits. Workers reacted by getting matching wage increases, and a cycle of escalating prices followed.
The ever-rising prices impacted negatively on the corporations' international competitiveness. Moreover, the banks - which have always been an especially strong section of the Canadian corporate elite - viewed inflation as the earthly form of the devil. Inflation reduced the value of the money and other assets held by banks, since it meant that such wealth would buy less in the future.
Soon the corporate sector was moving towards a dramatic and radical conclusion - one that would dominate our lives and politics through the end of the present century and, no doubt, well into the twenty-first century. They had concluded that the successful defense and expansion of their profits was no longer compatible with the gains workers had made over the previous decades.
Workers' expectations, backed by the security they had achieved, were limiting the corporations' ability to get their way in the workplace and in society. Something had to give. In this new environment, tinkering would not solve the corporations' concerns. If a choice had to be made between profits and worker/social needs, the corporations knew they had to prepare the ground well and act decisively. They seized the agenda.
An assault began - not just in Canada but across the developed capitalist countries - on the confidence and power of workers and their unions. What emerged varied across countries. The corporate elite, and the politicians who did their bidding, were perhaps more conscious of their agenda in some countries than in others, and the pace differed with both the strength of the corporations and the resistance put up by workers. But everywhere it included not just attacks on past standards of pay, benefits, and working conditions, but attacks on the structures that supported working class defiance - like favourable labour laws and a social safety net that provided a cushion against job loss.
Above all, unemployment levels rose. Unemployment had started to rise "spontaneously" with the economic crisis of the early seventies. But rather than emergency plans to address jobs, national priorities shifted to inflation, and allowed unemployment to grow. The reasoning behind this was straightforward: the main concern of the economic elite (led by the banks) was inflation, while nothing divided, demoralized, and undermined workers more than the constant fear of being denied access to a job.
3. False Promises: The Failure of the New Order
"...it will be a hard pill to swallow - the idea of doing with less so big business can have more..nothing...in modern economic history compares in difficulty with the selling job(s) that must now be done to make people accept the new reality"
The corporations mobilized around a message that combined fear (if you don't buy into this you'll lose, at an even faster rate, what you currently have), resignaton (there is no alternative), and - most important - promisesthat the good life will return down the road (the present pain is the necessary price to pay).
The concrete expression of their ideological offensive focussed around competitiveness and deficit cutting. These were sold as the conditions for success, and played a crucial role in disciplining us to play by their rules. Competitiveness was the instrument for keeping workers in line in the workplace and in bargaining. Deficit cutting was the vehicle for keeping elected governments, who were otherwise vulnerable to popular pressures, from expanding or even just maintaining social programs.
The problem - eventually for them as well as us - was that the corporations' solutions aggravated the problems they allegedly addressed. Their direction left a legacy of on-going stagnation, the upsizing of profits linked to the downsizing of decent jobs, and deficits that rose even as programs were cut (see box pages 9-10). We've now had two decades of the corporate revolution. They've had the chance to implement key pieces of their agenda, promising each time that this particular piece will do the trick. For us it meant wage controls, roll-backs of collective agreements in the public sector, a crusade against inflation, free trade and closer integration with the United States, growing inequality in the marketplace, a bribe for business to do what they should be doing, tax "reform" which took that market inequality a step further, the erosion of legislated trade union rights, privatization of social assets, deregulation of key sectors, and cutbacks in social programs.
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At the end of all of this we can assert, loudly and with justifiable anger, that the solutions of our economic elite have failed us miserably, though their own privileges remain solidly intact. It's time to expose that destructive failure, and to question their credibility. It's time to hold them accountable for the mess we're in, and challenge their leadership role in our economy and society.
4. Missed Opportunities: The Failure of the Left
"...there may be a CEO or two under the mistaken impression that only politicians hold office at the pleasure of the community. A reminder: Capitalism exists by popular consent, and the mindless repetition of efficiency mantras and paeans to ‘enhanced shareholder values' will not prevail should the public decide that the economic system no longer operates in its interest."
- David Olive, editor, "Report on Business Magazine", Globe and Mail, April, 1996.
"A mounting backlash..is threatening [to disrupt] economic activity and social stability in many countries...This can easily turn into revolt...Public opinion will no longer be satisfied with articles of faith about the virtues and future benefits of the global economy. They want action."
- Opening address to the "World Economic Forum" (a key meeting of international business and political leaders) quoted in International Herald Tribune, Feb 1, 1996.
The failure of the corporate sector to "deliver the goods" has left them increasingly vulnerable to criticism. Yet it is social democracy that remains on the defensive. Why haven't we taken advantage of the obvious opportunity? Why have we been so unable to build an effective political counter-movement to the corporate-driven agenda?
No one can any longer deny the potential for a rebellion against what's been happening to us. Unions, their allies, and especially rank-n-file workers confirmed that potential in London, Hamilton, and Kitchener, in the large and on-going protests in Atlantic Canada, in the enthusiastic demonstrations of teachers, in the dignity shown by the OPSEU workers in their first strike, and in numerous struggles across the country. The political mood is changing, and this has left the right a little more hesitant, nervous, and unsure of itself.
What seems missing is political leadership - not in the sense of committed individuals but in the sense of ideas, structures, process, direction. We can't revive our political arm unless we directly confront the "why" of its missed opportunities. Four inter-related aspects of the CCF/NDP's post-war history seem to provide clues to its present predicament:
(1)
Social democracy assumed that capitalism would continue to provide steady growth. The role of the NDP was, therefore, no longer to challenge the system but to moderate it. When the slowdown in the economy became chronic rather than temporary and cyclical, the NDP was caught unprepared. We had no answers on how to deal with economic restructuring or where, given the new norm of large deficits, we would get the money for social programs.
(2)
We were outradicalized. The corporations - as we discussed earlier - had concluded that choices about the future direction of society had become polarized. They organized aggressively to implement the radical agenda that was, from their perspective, necessary. But we continued to tinker in the mushy middle and the predictable result was that, in spite of efforts to avoid it, we were trapped into arguing on their turf.
Social democrats didn't challenge the basic agenda of competitiveness but argued for a naive "progressive competitiveness". When social democrats dealt with the deficit, they questioned neither the basic inequality in society nor the undemocratic power of the banks, but argued for "humane cuts". And so our side was disarmed while their side set the framework for the public debate. We were softened for the eventual pain, they consolidated their plans.
(3)
Social democrats have made bigger government the test of "being left". But to many of our members, governments and state institutions are distant, bureaucratic, intrusive, biased to employers and the rich, responsible for unfair taxes, etc. We can't overcome this cynicism by ignoring the valid elements of workers' experience. The issue isn't more or less government, but what kind of government, playing what role, on whose behalf, with what kind of democratic relationship to us.
Related to this is the issue of what we expect from friendly governments. We don't work to elect NDP governments so they can be "the government of all the people". What we expect is that a social democratic government will join us in the fight to democratize our economy - ie use their office to make the economy serve the interests of working people rather than the economic elite.
(4)
In the understandable focus on electoral politics, we've missed out on the importance of organizing, of building the solid and widespread base that can really change things. We don't have the top-down power and resources of the corporations, so even if elected we find ourselves stymied - unless we've also affected the overall political climate in the country, mobilized people to act between elections, and created structures through which we can fight.
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