Commentary

The Manipulation of Public Opinion in the Interest of the Monopolies

During the past few weeks, Canadians have witnessed, once again, a most cynical exercise in manipulation of public opinion posing as “democratic elections”. At the mid-point in the current federal election campaign it appeared that Canada’s ruling elite pulled the plug on the Liberal Party and anointed Stephen Harper as Canada’s next prime minister. The event that began the Liberal slide and Conservative rise in opinion polls was the RCMP announcement that it was investigating a possible leak of Liberal plans concerning investment trusts. While the RCMP spokesperson was careful to add that there was no evidence to implicate Finance Minister Ralph Goodale or anyone in his office, the message was that clear corruption continued to plague the Liberal Party.

The RCMP announcement of its investigation would have been unusual at any time, but is unprecedented during an election campaign. Furthermore, it was followed by two subsequent announcements of other ongoing investigations into potential wrongdoings by the Liberal government. Following each announcement public opinion polls announced dramatic drops in Liberal support and corresponding increases in Conservative support. By the middle of January some opinion polls were predicting a Conservative majority government. Since then they have reported that Conservative support has peaked and is in decline, while the support for the Liberal Party has recovered to some extent. There is some evidence that at least some of these opinion polls exaggerated or deliberately misrepresented their findings in order to create the increased support for the Conservative Party that they were reporting already existed.

Both the unprecedented intervention by the RCMP into the election campaign and the use of opinion polls to generate support for the Conservative Party are indications that the political and economic elite in Canada, or more specifically the Bay Street monopoly capitalists, have decided to drop the Liberal Party in favour of the Conservative Party. Why would they do this, especially in light of the fact that the Martin Liberals have done everything asked of them by the Bay Street monopolies?

The answer lies in the nature of Canada’s parliamentary system which is based on the British model. The British parliamentary system relies on a governing party and an opposition party which can alternate in government. Both parties represent essentially the same economic interests and implement essentially the same policies, whatever ideological differences they may profess with one another. In Canada those parties have traditionally been the Liberal and Conservative parties at the federal level, while the NDP has replaced the Liberal Party in various provinces. When the pro-capitalist policies of one party have discredited it in the eyes of the electorate, the monopoly capitalists simply call on their loyal opposition party to take its place and use their media to manipulate the people into thinking that there has been an actual change.

The collapse of the Progressive Conservative Party in 1993 and the resulting balkanization of the Canadian political scene threw the entire political system into disequilibrium. Neither the ruling nor opposition parties could claim to be truly national and the extreme social conservatism of the Reform/Alliance Party restricted its potential to ever form a national government. This created a dangerous situation for the Canadian bourgeoisie in which people fed up with the ruling Liberal Party had no electoral alternative and might increasingly seek extra-parliamentary alternatives. For the past 12 years the Bay Street elite has been attempting to resolve this disequilibrium. After repeated failures, the Reform/Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties were finally brought together to form the new Conservative Party. However, in the last federal election the Conservatives failed to overcome their right-wing image sufficiently to make major headway in Ontario or Quebec and the result was a minority Liberal government.

Underlying the social conservatism of the Reform/Alliance/Conservative parties are the interests of the oil monopolies. Just about anywhere in the world that there are movements based on the most backward, ignorant religious dogmas, one will find the influence and money of the oil monopolies and Canada is no exception. At the most fundamental level, the disequilibrium in the Canadian political system has reflected the intense contradictions between the western-based oil monopolies and the eastern-based finance and industrial monopolies, each group eager to amass the greatest portion of the profits for itself.

If the Conservatives form the next government as is being predicted, does that mean that the inter-monopoly contradictions have been resolved or that one group has prevailed over the other? There is no evidence either that the eastern monopolies have prevailed over the oil monopolies nor that the super-profits that the oil monopolies have enjoyed over the past couple of years have enabled them to prevail over their eastern rivals. However, the fact that the Harper Conservatives have been taking great pains recently to portray themselves as identical to the Liberals does indicate that some sort of temporary truce has been struck between the competing factions of monopoly capital in order to bring some stability and equilibrium to the Canadian political system. This conclusion is further substantiated by the fact that the eastern monopolies are attempting to stop a Conservative majority from materializing by raising the spectre of Harper’s hidden agenda. Apparently Stephen Harper will have to demonstrate his loyalty to the eastern monopolies before they will trust him with a majority government. Conversely, a minority Conservative government may give the ruling elite an opportunity to revive the credibility of the Liberal Party so that it can once again form a majority government in the next election. Undoubtedly, the extent to which the Quebec sovereignty movement makes headway in this election and in subsequent months will also play a big role in determining whether the Liberals or Conservatives get the nod from the monopolies in the next election.

The bottom line for Canadians is that regardless of which party wins the election and regardless of whether there is a minority or majority government, the resulting government will be a government of the monopolies, just as every previous government has been. This means that the same neo-liberal, anti-social policies will be implemented regardless of which party emerges the victor, because those are the policies that represent the interests of the monopoly capitalist class.

Back to Modern Communism