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Monday, February 12, 2007







Talking
About The Anti-War and Other Social Movements for Change

by Coyote










The Real Problem With The Peace Movement

--- In free_columbians@yahoogroups.com, "XXX"
wrote:
>
> Glavin wants to turn the peace movement to the right. Well in the US
> it already is controlled by the Democrats and the article below shows
> how damaging that is. Is this what we want in Canada?
>
> See http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh02122007.html

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Along with the taming of the left in this country, with the going nowhere, yawn inducing "collaborationist" result we see all about us, especially with this what passes for an NDP opposition in Victoria, headed up by their leader Carol James, Gavin and Beers both as well, in my view, represent now an attempt to further tame, even "neoconize" with support for Israel and US intervention in the Middle East, the anti-war movement and the left, just as the rise of "business trade unionism" in an earlier time tamed and continues to suppress trade union movement audacity and effectiveness, as an instrument of social change. Whether this process has likewise yet been successful or not with the anti-war and nationalist movements in this country as well, or not, we could likely fall to a rather good argument amongst ourselves here. I know with one or two, for sure.

My own view is that indeed, under NDP and official labour leadership influence especially, and possibly the simple weariness of even an aging, previously more radical left as well, virtually all the hereto movements of the citizenry are languishing and devoid of the boldness that such movements need in at least large part to impact the time, and certainly the youth.

I don't know if there is really much that can be done about it right now, though I would certainly like to think so, for there is a distinct universal apathy and narcissistic preoccupation with self that currently effects virtually all levels of society. It is likely this ongoing state of affairs as diverts and sidelines youth and other class strata, and which will have to change first in order to provide some objective basis for re-energizing all aspects of the people's movements. Which does require a certain amount of selflessness, at least, as a precondition for their effective functioning.

As it is, there is a certain inevitability to it all here now, it seems to me, especially for so long as NDPish and collaborationist trade union thinkers continue to hold sway and sit wide-assed atop the pile, largely still, on what passes for the left, working class and broader people's movements in this country. A new time awaits their thorough discreditation yet-, which unfortunately it seems, is proceeding, but going to take its own good sweet-ass time.

Currently constituted "social democracy" as manifest in the NDP and trade union movement leadership especially, and its excessive hold yet upon surviving "left" thinking in this country, is, in my view, the ongoing major source of the languishing. Too much too nice, proper procedural and process thinking, commitment to the norms of "parliamentary" procedure and obsessive importance of the so-called democratic electoral process, and the nicey-nice conventionality that all breeds, is at the heart of the matter.

And though it is easier said than done to change, I appreciate, there is need yet of many more "troublemakers", "irascibles" and "wild", yet untamed elements on the left, prepared to defy all the elements of the dominant tamed conventionality before we can truly get to a place within current capitalism, where any of its major aspects are being seriously challenged-, and that includes by the anti-war movement.

Too much nice is still the order of the day and the path too many are upon. Which creates crashing bores in sex and politics.

Which is why I really got my ass kicked out of Tyee. :-) LOL


3 comments:

Coyote said...

I'll buy that, Bear. I was kicked out because "...they were just a wee bit "green eyed" of your (my) charm." :-)

No bloody doubt. :-) lol

Larry Gambone said...

I wonder how much of the malaise is an Anglo Canada (or even BC thing though? In Quebec, the students kicked the government's ass. You also have Solidaire, which is well to the left of the NDP and more like a European left-socialist grouping. You also have NEFAC, though small is also doing good things. Perhaps people in BC have had such a long time of being beaten down as well as betrayed that a certain level of hopelessness has set in. We need to be victorious in something to get the ball rolling again...

Coyote said...

No doubt Larry, there is nothing that breeds success like success. And such as you describe, especially the betrayal of Operation Solidarity in 1983, for which the trade union leadership of the Fed at the time was much responsible for, and the NDP which likewise worked though their influence over that labour leadership to ensure that their election would be seen as the ONLY real solution over "militant class action", is the larger part of the ongoing problem here. And once the "malaise" settled in immediately afterward, and the route of labour and the left begun, it has not since really been possible to turn it back around. Nor has the trade union movement and its leadership been trusted ever since, indeed are an object of continuing cynicism, within and without. Justifiably, in my view.

So while there are doubtless many layers to the problem today, it is that history of trade union leadership betrayal, further underscored by the most recent teacher's strike, which was the marker laid down that is most responsible for the ongoing malaise of all the social movements of the people. It is the underlying layer of the problem.

Hand in hand with the affliction or social disease of NDPitis of course, which would still rather collaborate with the neocon system than see itself outdone by any form of working class militancy. Rather than seeing it as any part of the sustaining social environment necessary for even themselves, such as might actually help to elect them, they would continue to cut off their nose to spite their face. Ever talking the talk... of course.

If you ever get that piece done on "social democracy', of which you were talking awhile back, I would love to see it.

Regards, brother.