22 January 1999
Canada's Reform Party is on the move. It's seeking major changes in political image, much like Preston Manning's new contact lenses and hairstyle.Dedicated right-wingers, distressed that the party has been unable to make significant headway in industrial Canada, have taken a path that would have them merge with Progressive Conservatives, unaligned free enterprise advocates and sympathizers within the Bloc Quebecois. The move is to put a new political party on the map.
This will be a "confederal" party of sectoral provincial interests putting forward a national program committed to globalization. Try and get your head wrapped around that one!
We are told that the new "movement" is going to be created first, everybody must agree to it, and only then will any program or policies be debated. That alone tells us that the manipulation of this grouping is coming from places other than down at the "public" level.
No policies to be discussed! You know why? Because they've already been decided by a few right-wing bigwigs - cold war warriors in new suits, millenarian Scrooges, the ones who urged us to follow the path of the Asian economic "miracle" before that bubble burst..
What we can reliably guess is that what will be offered will be will be dished out in the language of simplemindedness, a Malthusianism for the masses. You'll recognise the terminology so easily mouthed: welfare bums, Big Labour, lazy government employees, overspending, greedy workers.
"Cut taxes!", they cry. What they really mean is cutting corporate taxes. Socialists understand that taxation is not a working class issue. A tax cut for the working stiff means nothing. What matters is a worker's real wage or salary received, not how much tax is paid.
"Cut the bureaucracy! Less government is good government!", they yell. For laissez-faire cultists they know little about free enterprise. Listen up - there has never been such a thing as capitalism without the state playing an important role. The state, in fact, keeps capitalism alive.
"Small business creates more jobs!", they claim. I'm tired of this argument because jobs created by small business pay less, do not extend benefits to employees, are usually part time, and job security is a sham. Yes, they can create jobs, but more small businesses go under and thus throw workers out of work.
"It's time welfare cheats become accountable!", they froth at the mouth. As if those poor single welfare moms should simply quit being a burden on the rich.
Words can be powerful in what they convey. The very word "reform", a powerful one in itself, conveys images of change. It begs the question though - reform for who?
Can a party with policies that are moribund and a delivery that is reactionary become the signal bearer of reform? Can it induce democratic debate and input when its own structure is no more "democratic" than other mainstream parties? Can it not be tied to "vested interests" when its predominant backers are corporate millionaires?
Can one honestly suggest that a right-wing movement in this country is going to make it any easier for the average person to live? One has only to look at the shambles left in the wake of Reaganism in the U.S. and Thatcherism in England to understand that people are not better off with such madness.
Dished out is an ideological mishmash critical of present day capitalism by promoting an even more competitive, harsher capitalism. They wish to exhume Adam Smith and place ever fervent faith in capitalisms's so-called "invisible hand" while promoting a greater corporate takeover of the economy that leads to a cycle of ever greater boom followed by ever greater bust. I'm sure that Adam Smith would hold his nose in disgust.
Admittedly, the message appeals to those who are frightened of the future - the small business owner whose feet edge over a precipice that will throw them into the abyss of the "proletariat" as free enterprise enters another downward swing. It appeals to those seeking refuge in a born-again moralism, unable to cope with the way the system has itself morally degenerated.
And finally, it appeals to the most backward elements, the meanest elements of society so blinkered by the light of free enterprise mythology that there is no room for those considered "too weak to make it". The Brownshirts and Blackshirts in the 1930s thrived on the same message.
Strong words? Yes, but needed to be said about a "movement" that has its political roots in past movements and parties, quietly to avowedly white, Christian fundamentalist, anti-union, anti-worker, anti-semitic, racist.
It is a "Desert Storm" mentality willing to use us as pawns to create an economic wasteland, a Yeltsinism of shock therapy brought home to Canada.
To echo an old folksong about soldiers under the command of the bloody minded sergeant: "We were knee deep in the Big Muddy and the damned fool said 'March On!' "
This rightist "alternative" is no alternative. It's the same old same old
that workers have nothing to gain from.