Taking the Socialist out of the NDP, John Ivison, Nat'l Post, October 7, 2010

http://fwd4.me/POl


Jack Layton used to boast about being a socialist. “I’m proud to call myself a socialist. I prefer it by far to democratic socialist,” he said in an interview seven years ago.

Yet when I posed the same question yesterday, he was less strident. “I’m not into labels, but I prefer the description ‘social democrat’. I am the leader of Canada’s social democratic party and proud of it,” he said.

He sounded like former British Labour leader, Tony Blair, who also preferred the “social democrat” tag.

This is appropriate since Mr. Layton is preparing for his own “Clause Four Moment” — a shift that he hopes will symbolize the metamorphosis of an old 20th century socialist party into a vibrant 21st century social democratic party.

As the NDP prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary at a convention next June, senior staff are busy re-writing the preamble to the party’s constitution — a move that was quietly approved by the rank and file at the last convention in Halifax in 2009.

The preamble currently states the NDP believes in the need “to modify and control the operation of the monopolistic productive and distributive organizations through economic and social planning, … where necessary [through] the principle of social ownership.”

One senior New Democrat strategist said that the move is part of a broader “overhaul” of NDP policy and beliefs. “There’s no more mention of a radical overthrowing of capitalism … Socialism is a word we don’t use,” he said.

The editing of the preamble echoes moves made by Mr. Blair, when he became leader of the Labour Party in the mid-1990s. For 80 years, the Labour Party had committed itself to “common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange,” under its notorious Clause Four. The abandonment of Clause Four by Mr. Blair was seen as a break with the party’s past — the moment Old Labour became New Labour.

The NDP’s move is likely to inflame left-wing rank-and-file members, who already think the party has moved too far toward the centre of the political spectrum.

James Laxer, a political science professor at York University and a former NDP leadership candidate, said the preamble changes reflect a longer term evolution in the party under Mr. Layton.

“The party has moved a long way from any real critical stance about the present economic system and a formal commitment to changing it.

“People say right now ‘what does the NDP stand for?’ It is hard to distinguish between them and the Liberals and some people are asking why we need two parties.”

However, he downplayed the prospect of a merger between the Liberals and the New Democrats. “Organizations have their own culture and part of the NDP culture is that they hate the Liberals,” he said.

A comparative look at the NDP’s 1997 election platform and the raft of policies on the current website reveals just how far the party has moved toward the centre.

Under former leader Alexa McDonough, the party proposed an excess profit tax on financial institutions, which would then finance a National Investment Bank managed by “business, labour, government and the community.” There was much talk of ending privatization and increasing public ownership; of raising corporate tax rates and imposing a “Millionaires’s Tax” on inheritances over $1-million. On foreign policy, the party proposed dissenting from NATO over the use of nuclear weapons.

The image presented today is very different. The “squeeze the rich” rhetoric has been abandoned, in favour of moderate language that tries to reconcile equality and economic well-being. “These goals….are not in conflict, rather they depend on each other. This is likely to be the tenor of the new preamble being written by Mr. Layton’s office.

“This is not the wild, wooly 1970s, when we had to own everything,” said the senior NDP strategist. “We know we need to create wealth and growth in order to allow the Treasury to intervene when it’s prudent and responsible.”

The message is clear — today’s NDP is not your Daddy’s Caddy.

Mousavi's "movement" is a hodge-podge of student-mandarins & borgeois soap opera addicts pining for the Pax Americana

by: Andrew Taylor

Mousavi is a 'holy fool' and a demagogue, that is, a politician who woos power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears and expectations of the people via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda using populist themes. If he prevails...you won't need to hold your breath long waiting for US imperialist penetration. Think again.

If anyone thinks the Iranian struggle is headed for woman's emancipation, democracy, or socialism, they ought to think seriously about how middle and even working class mass movements are co-opted into US satellite status. I was in the Parti Communiste du Quebec during the "Solidarity" struggles in Poland in mid-late 80s. The Trotskyists said over and over again at that time that the Polish revolution was headed for socialism. I pointed out that given the counter-revolutionary tide in E Europe and the so-called "Third World" - it was much more likely that Poland was headed for full incorporation into the imperialist camp and a perilous decline in living standards for the Working Class.

If there is one lesson I have learned on the left over decades, it is that the ultra-left is detached from the mass movements and yet misleads many in proportion to its numbers. Mass marchers do not of necessity equal a left turn. The EU electorate has just swung right. Think again about the social-location of populist 'reformers' before assenting to an illusory "mass line". Why is Mousavi both 'favored' and shunned by the US and Israeli governments? It is because he is a dupe, a toy, who usefully demonizes Iranian anti-imperialism, while remaining garbage in the estimate of Imperialist ambitions. If he prevails in Iran, he will assent to the US Script or be trashed for a real imperial puppet.

It is Iran's anti-imperialist foreign policy that is and will remain the enemy of Israel and the US and EU. Mousavi is a useful strutting puppet character in their drama - whether or not his subjective intentions are patriotic or egoistical.

Advocacy of the victory of the October Socialist Revolution remains defining point separating the Communist Parties from Capitalist Parties

With the triumph of Great October in Russia, the foundations of capitalism were assaulted by militant people's power. For the first time, with the exception of the brief period of the Paris Commune of 1871, the working class was taking political power and creating a new social order. Under the leadership of Lenin and the Party of Bolsheviks, the October Revolution incepted the revolutionary struggle of the working class for socialism, the movement of the Russian people for peace, the struggle of the peasantry for land and the national liberation struggle of all the the subjugated peoples of Russia.

For the first time in history, the majority ruled, and created a new type of state, the Socialist state. The Soviets were in the form of worker power, which transferred ruling power to the workers, soldiers and farmers, creating a concrete, real democracy hitherto unknown; a democracy radically different from the high-sounding, purely formal bourgeois democracy; a democracy of the majority which began to participate in the state administration to shape the new society .

Those Parties which side with the cause of the Russian Revolution of 1917 are Communists, those parties which decry and condemn the October Revolution are - whether knowingly or unknowingly, advocates for the reign of capitalist power, in one or another form: clericalist-authoritarian regimes, fascists, Tories, Whigs, bourgeois democrats, social-democrats, etc.

While coalitions of many progressive groups are indispensable in broad left democratic struggles, utter sublimation of the Communist viewpoint within any broad left coalition is a counsel of despair that ends in destruction of the Party.