Editorial

The Crisis of the Liberal-Labour Alliance

The experience of the recent strike by CN Rail conductors highlights the fact the Liberal-Labour alliance is in crisis. This alliance, which was forged during and in the aftermath of the Second World War, was an arrangement between the labour aristocracy (the highest paid section of the working class, including much of the trade union leadership) and the monopoly capitalist class in Canada to ensure “labour peace” on the basis of an “equitable division of the pie”. In other words, the working class, or at least that section which was organized into trade unions, would receive a portion of the fruits of their rapidly growing productivity in exchange for keeping their struggles within the bounds established as acceptable by the capitalists. At the heart of this arrangement are two myths: the myth that the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism is neither necessary nor possible in Canada; and the myth that there is a convergence of interests between the working class and the capitalist class.

The Liberal-Labour alliance has historically been closely linked to the adoption of social democracy as the ideology underpinning the Canadian state. With the collapse of social democracy on a global scale during the international economic crises of the 1980s and early 1990s, the Liberal-Labour alliance came under extreme pressure. In particular, the trade unions were no longer to promise their members that if they patiently worked within the system their standards of living and working conditions would gradually improve. The crisis of overproduction, which has been a more or less constant feature of the international capitalist system since the early 1990s, has led to increased competition between the most powerful monopolies for markets and has resulted in a massive restructuring of industry everywhere in the world. At the same time, advances in technology have given rise to an unprecedented mobility of capital, greatly shifting the balance of power in favour of the huge multinationals. These two phenomena – increased competition and increased mobility of capital – are the basis of what has come to be known as globalization.

Since at least the early 1990s a dominant feature of labour relations in Canada has been the demands of the capitalists for concessions from workers in the form of wage rollbacks, deteriorating working conditions and, most importantly ideological concessions; in other words workers should abandon any hope for a better future. If the workers had meekly accepted this demand for concessions without a fight, the Liberal-Labour alliance would have remained intact with the only change being that workers would receive a “smaller piece of the pie”. However, workers have not accepted these demands. They have fought against both concessions and the mentality of concessions advocated by the labour aristocracy and much of the trade union leadership.

The Ontario Days of Action in the mid-1990s were one expression of the resistance of the Canadian working class to the pressures of globalization and neo-liberalism. Since then, strike struggles waged by postal workers, railway workers, health care workers and others have also reflected the determination of the Canadian working class to fight for a better future. In all of these struggles the workers have faced not only the capitalists, but the entire state apparatus, including the trade union apparatus. In some cases, such as the most recent railway strike, the workers have been opposed by even their own trade unions.

Many trade union activists are discouraged by the current crisis of the trade union movement. In many unions discussions are taking place on strategies for renewal. However, these discussions have generally failed to bear fruit because they have been carried within the very perspective that gave rise to the crisis in the first place. In other words, these discussions have centered on how to restore the arrangement which has existed since the Second World War, an arrangement based on the goal of preserving the capitalist system and blocking the development of the revolutionary movement of the working class. So long as these discussions are confined within those limits, no renewal of working class organizations will be possible.

The experience of working people everywhere is that there are no common interests between workers and capitalists. During the past two decades not only have the rich become richer and the poor poorer in relative terms, but also in absolute terms. Living standards in all of the advanced capitalist countries have declined at a time when productivity and profits have hit record levels. In the developing countries, all of the gains of the post-war period have been negated and in many cases people are forced to live in medieval conditions.

This situation is leading to an increasing realization by working people that only a radical rupture with the existing conditions can give rise to a better world. At the same time, they are being bombarded from all sides – by the capitalists and their media, by politicians of all stripes, by trade union leaders by a myriad of NGOs and even by some self-proclaimed revolutionaries – with the message that a better world is still possible without the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.

For communists, the current crisis of the trade union movement is not a source of pessimism and discouragement. On the contrary, it can only be seen as a positive development. This is a crisis of the anti-communist, counter-revolutionary, class collaborationist trade union movement that arose in Canada during the 1940s and 1950s on the basis of the Liberal-Labour alliance. It is a crisis of all that is rotten in the working class movement of this country, of all that is not worth preserving or perpetuating. Out of this crisis a new workers movement and a new trade union movement will emerge that will once again inscribe on their banners the demand for an end to the wages system and that will take up the historic mission of the working class to eliminate capitalism and usher in socialist and communist society.

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