Editorial
The Working Class
and People Must Fight for Their Own Agenda
The election of a minority Conservative government on January 23 is being claimed by Stephen Harper to represent a “mandate” from the Canadian people for real change. However, even ignoring the fact that Harper’s Conservatives received the support of less that 25 percent of registered voters and fell at least 21 seats short of achieving what is normally considered a mandate, the fact of the matter is that nothing changed on January 23. The capitalist ruling class changed its management team from a Liberal minority government to a Conservative minority government. The same anti-social agenda that has been implemented by the Liberals for the past 12 years will now be implemented by the Conservatives.
Despite all of
the election campaign rhetoric, these elections were not held to sort out the
problems facing the Canadian people. On the contrary, they were held to sort
out various contradictions within the capitalist ruling class of
The elections were also held to convince the working class and people that they should not seek solutions outside of the existing parliamentary process. They were bombarded with propaganda that they could achieve an improvement in their living and working conditions by supporting one bourgeois political party over another. In this respect, the head of the Canadian Autoworkers union, Buzz Hargrove, played a particularly nefarious role by embracing Paul Martin and the Liberal Party as the saviours of the Canadian working class, both from the dangers of the Conservatives, as well as from the effects of foreign competition. Jack Layton and the NDP echoed this position, presenting the NDP and Liberals as a progressive bloc united in opposition to the reactionary Conservatives. He openly appealled to Liberal supporters to “lend” the NDP their votes until the Liberal Party can get its house in order.
The illusion is thus created that the Conservatives represent the “right”, while the Liberals and NDP are on the “left”. The trade unions and various non-governmental agencies then work overtime to bind the working class and people hand and foot to the “left” wing of the bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, for the past two decades, both the “right” and “left” wings of the bourgeoisie have been implementing the same anti-social, neo-liberal agenda.
In the 2004 federal elections only 60.9 percent of registered voters cast a ballot. (The percentage of eligible voters would be somewhat lower due to the shoddy registration process now in place.) In this election the participation of registered voters went up slightly to 64.9 percent. This still means that well over one-third of eligible voters did not see fit to vote. The low voter turnout is a symptom of the deep disenchantment of Canadians with the political process and the “choices” presented to them by the ruling class. A very large segment of Canadian society simply does not believe that voting for any of those “choices’ will assist them in solving the problems that confront them in their lives.
So long as the working class and people allow themselves to be diverted into supporting one or another wing of the bourgeoisie no real change will be accomplished. The working class and people must fight for their own, pro-social agenda. Such an agenda would include: the vesting of sovereignty in the people; the renewal of the economy on the basis of self-reliance and trade for mutual benefit; increased spending for social programs; electoral reform that places control of the electoral system in the hands of the electorate rather than in the hands of the political parties; and an end to Canada’s involvement in aggressive military actions against the peoples of other countries.