Rethinking the Canadian Left

[bibliogramma]

Rebels, Reds, Radicals: Rethinking Canada's Left History by Ian MacKay.

This is actually an introductory volume to a planned multi-volume history of the Left in Canada, and as a good introductory volume to any scholarly work of considerable scope, it's part discussion of the author's intended methodology, and part overview of what he plans to explore in greater detail in the volumes to come.

What makes me look forward with considerable anticipation to the planned history is the author's broad and hopeful definition of what the Left is:

To be a leftist - a,k,a, socialist, anarchist, radical, global justice activist, communist, socialist-feminist, Marxist, Green, revolutionary - means believing, at a gut level, "It doesn't have to be this way." Vivre autremont - Live otherwise! Live in another way! - was a slogan used by one Quebec radical group in the 1970s. Reasoning Otherwise was the slogan of William Irvine, the legendary Prairie socialist. Words like this are inscribed on the heart of every leftist.

Taking as his range, then, the history of Canadians who have looked at poverty, injustice, oppression, inequity throughout our history and said "It doesn't have to be this way." MacKay has identified what he refers to as "five major left formations, " some of which overlap in time to some extent, that make up the history of the Canadian left movement:

1. 1890-1919, a period of focus on social evolution, where not only Marx but Bellamy and Spencer and the Christian socialists were the major theorists and socialism "was defined as the applied science of social evolution"

2. 1917-1939, the period where the Comintern had its greatest influence on the Left in Canada and socialism became "more tightly defined as revolutionary seizure of power by a working class under the leadership of a vanguard party" - a Marxist-Leninist party

3. 1935-1970, a time of radical planners, parliamentary politics, the establishment of the leftist political parties (the CCF, then the NDP), in which socialism was defined as a movement "aiming at national economic and social management executed by a bureaucratic planning state answerable to parliament"

4. 1965-1980, the infusion of the New Left into Canadian social movements, which resulted in varied grassroots liberation movements focused around not only class but race and gender, which brought about the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, and which brought the concept of individual liberation to the socialist message

5. 1967-1990, a feminist-socialist movement that addressed women's liberation from oppression as a primary, if not the primary oppression and developed social critiques of the family and gender roles

According to MacKay, development of a sixth formation is underway, consisting of "Canadian participation in a global social justice movement the resists the planetary hegemony of capitalism and argues for locally controlled societies and economies consistent with the survival of humanity on Earth."

Despite the heavy dose of theory in this volume, it is in itself a good overview of the story of the left in Canada, and it's a good read if you enjoy political history and theory. There are nuggets of interesting information and pertinent quotations scattered throughout, to enliven the theory, for instance, this comment concerning the Regina Manifesto, presented at the founding convention of the CFF: "It may well be the only manifesto in the world socialist tradition that demands both the eradication of capitalism and the provision of railway level crossings."

One of the quotations I found most pertinent to today's situation, especially as regards the muscle-bound Christianity we are seeing more and more of in the U.S., is a comment by Eugene Forsey:

Until Christians learn to understand and apply the lessons of Marxism they cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven - nor, probably, can any one else.