tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35190655621135288032024-03-13T08:17:22.015-07:00BOYCOTTONS LES ÉLECTIONS / BOYCOTT THE ELECTIONS 2011LE POUVOIR EST DANS LA RUE! / VOTE WITH YOUR FEET!PRAChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12798016485549515484noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-57627713840230471412011-05-07T08:32:00.000-07:002011-05-07T08:35:00.807-07:00[FR] <span style="font-size:130%;"><b style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Le 2 mai, une victoire prévisible pour la bourgeoisie </b></span> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>Article paru dans le deuxième numéro du journal <a href="http://ledrapeaurouge.ca/partisan">Partisan</a>:</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Au moment de mettre sous presse, la campagne électorale fédérale vivait ses derniers jours. Malgré l’embellie rapportée par les médias bourgeois pour le Nouveau parti démocratique (NPD), il est à peu près acquis que le Parti conservateur formera le prochain gouvernement. De toute manière, peu importe le résultat final, on sait déjà qu’il n’en sortira rien de bon pour les travailleuses et les travailleurs. La seule inconnue, s’il en est, c’est de savoir si la chute spectaculaire du taux de participation à laquelle on assiste depuis une vingtaine d’années se poursuivra ou si la campagne de propagande menée par les partis et les médias bourgeois aura réussi à l’endiguer.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Comme à l’habitude, à part quelques promesses dont on sait ce qu’elles valent (rien!), la campagne électorale a surtout pris la forme d’un concours de popularité où un peu comme dans une émission de télé-réalité, les électeurs et électrices sont appelés à choisir celui ou celle qui leur semble le plus sympathique. Il y a longtemps que la forme a remplacé le fond dans ce système qu’on nous vante pourtant comme le plus «démocratique» qui soit.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">L’élément le plus nouveau de cette élection, et certainement celui qui représente le plus d’espoir pour les travailleurs et les travailleuses, c’est la campagne de boycott que les supporters de ce journal ont appuyée. Organisée à l’initiative du Parti communiste révolutionnaire, cette campagne a rassemblé des militantes et militants du Québec, de l’Ontario et du Nouveau-Brunswick. Pour la première fois, le mot d’ordre de boycott des élections a retenti à l’échelle pancanadienne.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Contrairement à ce qu’ont prétendu ceux et celles qui l’ont dénigrée, cette campagne fut tout sauf une manifestation d’apathie par rapport à la manière dont les choses sont organisées dans la société canadienne. En s’abstenant massivement de participer au scrutin, les millions de travailleurs et travailleuses, de jeunes et de membres des Premières nations expriment, chacun à leur façon, leur rejet d’un système qui n’en a que pour les riches et dont ils et elles sont exclu<span style="font-variant:small-caps">e</span>s. La campagne de boycott que nous avons menée visait notamment à transformer ce boycott passif en un boycott actif, en favorisant l’expression de notre volonté de vivre dans une société où le pouvoir sera exercé par la majorité laborieuse.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Cette campagne a suscité des réactions opposées et parfois vives dans certains milieux. Sur la rue, dans les lieux de travail et les écoles où elle s’est déroulée, elle n’a laissé personne indifférent. Des centaines, voire des milliers de commentaires ont circulé sur Internet, allant d’un soutien enthousiaste jusqu’à une condamnation pure et simple: certains ont même ouvertement souhaité nous faire taire, au nom du respect des «valeurs démocratiques» (sic), ce qui en dit long sur ce qu’elles sont réellement.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;">À Toronto, le Comité prolétarien d’action révolutionnaire <i>(Proletarian Revolutionary Action Committee - PRAC) </i></span><span style="color:black;">a fait connaître la campagne de boycott en distribuant des tracts et en posant des affiches dans plusieurs quartiers populaires. Le comité a également organisé trois événements publics, dont deux à l’Université de Toronto les 19 mars et 27 avril et l’autre à la librairie Accents le 30 avril, et ses porte-parole ont donné quelques entrevues dans les médias. Cela a permis aux militantes et militants de base d’en savoir plus sur la campagne, d’émettre leurs critiques et suggestions et de discuter de leur implication dans la campagne elle-même et dans la lutte à plus long terme pour l’organisation d’une démocratie directe.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;">Les gens qui vivent et travaillent dans les quartiers prolétariens où nous avons fait campagne ont exprimé à maintes reprises leur insatisfaction à l’égard du système en place. Les discussions ont été vives et nombreuses quant à la nécessité d’une démocratie populaire réelle et d’un autre type de gouvernement, qui ne mettrait plus l’accent sur les profits d’une poignée au détriment du bien-être de la majorité.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;">Il en est ressorti que loin d’être apathique, la classe ouvrière est mécontente d’un système qui représente les intérêts des riches et n’offre rien de mieux que quelques miettes. Plusieurs personnes ont exprimé leur colère par rapport au discours pour «la loi et l’ordre», repris désormais par la totalité des partis. On nous aussi a parlé avec véhémence de la brutalité policière vécue quotidiennement dans certaines communautés et du fait qu’il est virtuellement impossible de se tenir dans un endroit public sans être harcelé par la police.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Bien des gens ont exprimé leur dégoût quant au fait qu’aucun des principaux partis ne soit prêt à réaffecter les sommes prévues pour les dépenses militaires à des projets susceptibles d’aider la communauté. Les réductions d’impôt supplémentaires consenties aux capitalistes suscitent clairement la colère, d’autant que rien n’est prévu par les divers partis pour offrir des jobs aux travailleurs et travailleuses actuellement sous-employés et marginalisés; de fait, c’est comme si tous ces bonzes n’avaient aucune considération pour le désarroi qui anime les masses, qui rêvent d’un avenir meilleur pour leurs enfants. Plusieurs personnes ont encouragé les militantes et militants du PRAC à continuer le combat, sachant qu’il n’y a pas d’avenir dans ce système failli et corrompu.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;">À Ottawa, nos camarades ont là aussi fait activement campagne en faveur du boycott. Après avoir organisé un lancement le 6 avril, les militantes et militants se sont littéralement répandus dans les rues et endroits publics. Les quartiers prolétariens et les terminaux où transitent les travailleurs et travailleuses ont été ciblés afin rejoindre le plus grand nombre de gens durant la courte période de temps qu’a duré la campagne.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;">La réponse des travailleurs, des travailleuses et des membres de la communauté a été positive; plusieurs nous ont affirmé n’avoir jamais voté et n’avoir surtout pas l’intention de commencer à le faire! Ces gens-là comprenaient très bien le message véhiculé par la campagne.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;">Interrogé sur la réceptivité des personnes rencontrées, un militant nous a rapporté que «<i>la plupart des gens étaient très favorables</i></span><span style="color:black;">» au boycott. «<i>Bien sûr, il y en a qui s’y opposaient, mais cela changeait radicalement dès qu’on quittait les campus et les quartiers plus aisés; la classe ouvrière comprend vraiment qu’il n’y a pas d’avenir, pour elle, dans le système bourgeois. La réceptivité des masses vis-à-vis la campagne m’incite à penser que nous avons adopté une ligne correcte. Nous souhaitons utiliser la campagne comme tremplin pour construire une plus grande présence dans les secteurs ouvriers d’Ottawa et des environs.</i></span><span style="color:black;">»</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">À noter qu’il est arrivé fréquemment que spontanément, lorsqu’on les abordait, les gens nous répondaient ne vouloir rien savoir des élections. Puis, lorsqu’on leur précisait qu’il s’agissait de les <i>boycotter</i><span style="font-style:normal">, ils se retournaient et tendaient la main en disant: «</span><i>OK alors, je vais en prendre un!</i><span style="font-style:normal">» Une réaction significative, s’il en est.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Au Québec, où l’identification au gouvernement fédéral est moins forte que dans les autres provinces, la campagne de boycott a généralement été bien reçue. Dans la vieille capitale, les militantes et militants qui ont diffusé le premier numéro de <i>Partisan</i><span style="font-style:normal"> ont rapidement écoulé les quelque 500 exemplaires qui leur avaient été confiés. Ils et elles nous ont rapporté que la réception fut particulièrement bonne parmi la jeunesse prolétarienne. Il faut croire que les appels à la mobilisation faits par l’humoriste Rick Mercer n’ont pas vraiment eu d’impact dans ce coin de pays…</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">À Montréal, en plus de la diffusion de <i>Partisan</i><span style="font-style:normal">, du journal </span><i>Le Drapeau rouge</i><span style="font-style:normal"> et de la déclaration initiale de la campagne, des milliers d’affiches ont été posées dans les quartiers populaires, sur lesquelles apparaissaient ses principaux slogans: «</span><i>Le pouvoir est dans la rue! Pas de démocratie sans pouvoir populaire!</i><span style="font-style:normal">» Plusieurs événements ont été organisés à la Maison Norman Bethune, ainsi qu’un grand rassemblement de fin de campagne dans le quartier Centre-Sud.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">La campagne de boycott des élections a également été intégrée à la mobilisation en vue de la manifestation du 1<sup>er</sup> Mai, organisée par la <a href="http://clac2010.net/">Convergence des luttes anticapitalistes</a> (CLAC-Montréal). Cette manifestation, qui en est cette année à sa quatrième édition, vise précisément à permettre aux prolétaires et aux opprimé<span style="font-variant:small-caps">e</span>s d’exprimer leur rejet du système dominant, dont le cirque électoral est parti prenant.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">De manière générale, nous avons constaté un accueil bien différent dans les milieux prolétariens, à comparer aux secteurs de la gauche traditionnelle (syndicats, groupes communautaires, partis…), que l’on croit à tort «plus politisés». Ceux-ci ont encore énormément d’illusions sur l’État et le système bourgeois, ce qui n’est pas nécessairement le cas des travailleurs et travailleuses les plus pauvres, qui savent très bien qu’ils doivent se battre simplement pour survivre. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Comme le disait la <a href="http://ocap.ca/">Coalition ontarienne anti-pauvreté</a> il y a quelques années: «<i>On ne peut nier l’importante signification politique du fait qu’un nombre croissant de personnes ne voient tout simplement plus de raison d’aller voter. Contrairement à ce que prétendent certains snobs, le large groupe d’abstentionnistes n’est pas constitué de moutons stupides et apathiques. On parle ici de pauvres et de travailleurs et travailleuses qui font quotidiennement de lourds sacrifices et travaillent très fort pour combler les besoins de leurs familles. Ces gens, en réalité, sont capables d’agir de façon extrêmement vigoureuse lorsque quelque chose se produit qui leur apparaît significatif et important. Le processus électoral, toutefois, les laisse complètement froids. Ils et elles ne voient pas de raison d’appuyer tel ou telle candidat<span style="font-variant:small-caps">e</span>, parce qu’en ce qui les concerne, aucun d’eux ne mettra fin aux injustices qui les assaillent. Derrière le sentiment d’indignation un peu passif qui recouvre ce rejet des élections se cache en fait un profond sentiment de colère et de mécontentement. Et lorsque ce sentiment prendra le dessus, il ne prendra certes pas la forme d’une campagne de lettres adressées aux députés...</i><span style="font-style:normal">»</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>Bureau d'information politique du PCRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18295586869665345960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-75745048548067342032011-05-07T08:22:00.000-07:002011-05-07T08:28:09.223-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">[EN] <span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">On May 2nd: A Predictable Victory for the Bourgeoisie</span></span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><p style="font-style: italic;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-CA">Taken from the second edition of <a href="http://theredflag.ca/partisan">Partisan</a> newspaper:<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">As the federal election campaign comes to a close, we write knowing more or less the results already. Despite the upturn reported by the corporate media for the New Democratic Party (NDP), it is almost certain that the Conservative Party will form the next government. Anyway, whatever the final outcome, we already know it won’t bring anything good for us workers. The only thing we don’t know is whether the dramatic decline in the participation rate will deepen, or if the propaganda campaign waged by the bourgeois parties and the media has managed to contain it for now.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">As usual, except for a few promises that we knows are worth nothing, the campaign looked like a popularity contest on a reality TV show, where the voters were asked to choose the guy who looked the most sympathetic. In this system some praise as “the most democratic ever,” the form has long ago replaced the content.<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">A new element in this election campaign, and certainly one that represents a new hope for workers, is the boycott campaign that supporters of this newspaper have waged. Organized at the initiative of the Revolutionary Communist Party, the campaign brought together activists from Québec, Ontario and New Brunswick. For the first time, the slogan of boycotting the elections has resounded across the country.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">Contrary to the claims of some who tried to denigrate it, this campaign has been anything but a manifestation of apathy over how things are going in Canadian society. By massively abstaining, millions of workers, youth and indigenous people will be expressing, each in their own way, their rejection of a system that runs only for the rich. One of the objectives of the boycott campaign was to transform this passive boycott into an active one, by expressing our desire to live in a society where power will be exercised by the working majority.<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">This campaign has generated strong and sometimes opposing reactions in some quarters. On the streets, in workplaces and schools, it left no one indifferent. Hundreds, even thousands of comments circulated on the Internet, ranging from enthusiastic support to outright condemnation: some have even openly wished to silence us, in the name of respect for “Canadian democratic values” (sic) —which says a lot about what they really are.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">The Proletarian Revolutionary Action Committee (PRAC)-Toronto has promoted the boycott campaign through flyering and postering campaigns in several proletarian neighbourhoods across Toronto. The PRAC also organized three public events about campaign (two at the University of Toronto on March 19 and April 27 and one at Accents Bookstore on April 30) and have been interviewed about the campaign by a number of media outlets. These events provided a space for local organizations and activists to learn more about the campaign, voice any suggestions or criticisms and find out how they could get involved in spreading the messages behind the campaign and organizing for direct democracy over the long term.<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">People, like us, who are living and working in these proletarian neighbourhoods have welcomed the campaign and repeatedly emphasized their dissatisfaction with the democratic system to those who were flyering. Campaign organizers and community members keenly discussed and debated the need for a real people’s democracy and a different kind of government that no longer emphasizes profits over people.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">There was common agreement that the working classes are not apathetic, but are in fact disaffected by an electoral system that represents the interests of the rich and throws us a few crumbs to fight over. In particular, people expressed anger at the law-and-order agenda of all the electoral parties and vociferously spoke about being victimized as communities by police brutality, and that they could not simply stand in the streets where they lived and worked without being harassed by the police.<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">They were disgusted that none of the parties were willing to invest dollars earmarked for defense spending into community infrastructure instead. Communities were furious that further tax cuts were being promised to the capitalists, while none of the candidates were discussing the expansion of better job possibilities for underemployed and marginalized peoples, nor did any of the parties share their feeling of dismay that the future did not look any better for their children. They encouraged members of PRAC-Toronto to keep organizing and mobilizing, as they knew that there was no future in this bankrupt corrupt system.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">Comrades in Ottawa have also been actively promoting the 2011 Federal Election Boycott Campaign. After hosting a campaign launch on April 6, our activists hit the streets in force. Proletarian neighbourhoods and terminals, such as bus stops, were targeted with the campaign and this newspaper in order to reach the highest number of working class people possible in the short campaign period. </span></span><span style="color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA"><br /> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">The response from workers and community members was positive, with many remarking that they had never voted, didn’t intend to start, and understood what the campaign was attempting to draw attention to.<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">“For the most part people have been pretty supportive,” said one activist when asked about the responses that had been received. “Of course there are some that are against it, but as soon as you move off the campuses and away from the richer parts of Ottawa, the working class really understands that there’s no future in bourgeois politics. The positive attitude of the masses toward the campaign shows me that we adopted the correct line in this case. We’re looking forward to using the campaign to build a bigger presence in working class parts of Ottawa.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">One repeated occurrence saw people rejecting any material or discussion to do with elections, until they saw or heard boycott’ associated with it. “<i>Boycott</i></span><span style="color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA"> the elections?!” and then, “Gimme one.”</span><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">In Québec, where the identification with the federal government is obviously weaker than in other provinces, the boycott campaign was generally well received. In Québec City, activists who circulated the first issue of <span style="color:black"></span><i>Partisan </i></span><span style="color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA"></span><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">quickly exhausted the 500 copies they asked for. They reported that reception was particularly enthusiastic among the proletarian youth. One should believe that calls for “Youth Vote Mobs” made by comedian Rick Mercer did not have a big impact in that part of the country...</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">In Montréal, in addition to distributing <span style="color:black"></span><i>Partisan</i></span><span style="color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA"></span><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">, <span style="color:black"></span><i>The Red Flag </i></span><span style="color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA"></span><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">newspaper and the initial statement of the campaign, thousands of posters were placed in popular neighbourhoods, on which appeared its main slogan: “Vote With Your Feet! No Democracy Without Peoples’ Power!” Several events were held at the Norman Bethune Bookstore and a large rally was held in the Centre-Sud district.<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">The boycott campaign was also part of the mobilization for the May 1<sup>st</sup> demonstration organized by the <a href="http://clac2010.net"><span style="color:black"></span>Anti-Capitalist Convergence<span style="color:black"></span></a>. The event, which is in its fourth anniversary since its resurrection, is intended to enable proletarians and oppressed people to express their rejection of the ruling system, including the electoral circus. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">In general, the campaign was received quite differently in proletarian milieu than within the traditional left, mistakenly believed to be “more politicized.” So-called leftists in this country still have a lot of illusions about the state and the bourgeois system, which is not necessarily the case for working poor who are struggling just to survive.<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-CA" lang="EN-CA">As the <a href="http://ocap.ca"><span style="color:black"></span>Ontario Coalition Against Poverty<span style="color:black"></span></a> once said a few years ago: “It is impossible to deny that the vast and rapidly growing portion of the population that sees no reason to go to the polls is a matter of huge political significance. Contrary to the notions of some political snobs, this massive chunk of the population is not made up of stupid and apathetic sheep. They are poor and working people who make sacrifices and work hard to provide for their families. They are capable of acting very vigorously when they see something as meaningful and important. The ‘electoral process’, however, leaves them cold. They see no reason to support a candidate because, as far as they are concerned, ‘none of the above’ will deal with the injustices that beset their lives. Beneath the passive indignation that underlies this rejection of elections is a huge sense of grievance and anger. When it comes to life, it will not take the form of letter writing campaigns to MPPs.”</span></p>Bureau d'information politique du PCRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18295586869665345960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-15194256648569562472011-05-03T17:33:00.000-07:002011-05-03T17:37:57.025-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><style>
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><u>Reflections on the Election Results</u></b></span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">The 2011 Canadian Federal Elections are now over and we, the working classes, are finally done watching the latest spectacle akin to the shuffling of deck chairs. The newspaper headlines and political pundits scream about a Harper majority and a Layton surge, the collapse of the Bloc and the Liberals, in desperation to make it sound like that last night was “historic” however, none speak about how little has actually changed. It has been demonstrated time and again in the last six weeks that the NDP, Liberals and the Conservatives differ very little in political program or vision, whether it be on the budget, military spending, law and order etc. The NDP has had to admit that it has in fact adopted the Liberal Party’s platform and have simply rebranded it with the buoyant smile of Jack Layton. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">This simply marks a further shift to the right for all of the parliamentary parties, and demonstrates that even basic aspects of a radical program can be won. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">It simply demonstrates that the parliament exists to protect the interests of corporations and the ruling classes and it is our duty as revolutionaries to continue to show our rage at this system in the streets and organize in our workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods as to build our vision of democracy and society. </span>If in fact these elections do tell us anything it is that working classes of Quebec completely and thoroughly reject the bourgeois nationalist project of the Bloc Quebecois. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">Once again after so much ado, little has changed and this is reflected in the polls, which demonstrate that despite the “historic” nature of these elections that 38.6% of registered voters chose not to go to the polls. This is indeed a negligible 2.6% increase in voter turnout since the last elections, which continues to indicate that a large section of Canadians still remain dissatisfied with their options at the ballot box despite all of the media hype about an ‘historic election’ and a ‘NDP surge’. We recognize that the 38.6% of registered voters who did not vote did not also actively boycott the elections as we had called upon them to do, however, we do believe that we have been able to use to campaign to take the first steps in the building of a new revolutionary proletarian movement. - Boycott Sympathizer</div></div>PRAChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12798016485549515484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-53355889513982263822011-05-01T22:50:00.000-07:002011-05-07T08:22:12.898-07:00<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:red;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">POST MAY DAY REFLECTIONS ON THE BOYCOTT</span></span> </span>[English]</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">by JMP</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i>Originally posted on <a href="http://www.moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/">MLM Mayhem</a>.</i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The federal elections are almost upon us and soon voters will be lining up to participate in a ritual that has replaced democracy. It is telling that elections day follows closely upon the recent royal wedding in Great Britain: the people who avidly followed that spectacle––cheering on a family of anachronisms that should have been guillotined centuries ago––will doubtless be the same people excitedly voting for one of this country's bourgeois parties. And on the day following the elections business as usual, with perhaps a new face, will continue: the poor will remain poor, the peripheries will remain exploited, occupation both here and abroad will persist, and democracy will vanish from the radar until the next sacred rite. So I feel that now, close to the onslaught of ballot-casting fury, it is appropriate for me to conclude this series about the <a href="http://boycottelections2011.blogspot.com/">boycott campaign</a> with reflections of my experience with the elections boycott.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Hopefully this will be a more sober and introspective entry than <a href="http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2011/03/vote-with-your-feet-part-five.html">my last post in this series</a> which might have been, at least according to some, more irate than productive. Today, at the May Day march I attended (put on by the hard-working and amazing people of the <a href="http://www.may-1.org/">M1M Coalition</a>), I helped distribute newspapers and flyers connected to the boycott campaign, spoke about the elections with a variety of people, and engaged in a variety of discussions––many of which were similar to the discussions I've been having about this campaign since its beginning. This last round of interactions, due to their proximity to the elections and the context of the march, helped clarify my final reflections of this year's rushed and manic boycott campaign.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">As an aside, it is worth noting that the M1M organizers were supportive of our small PRAC contingent. Although the organization as a whole did not endorse the campaign, some of its members were sympathizers and many others were supportive, rather than openly dismissive, of the campaign's possibilities. Indeed, though the campaign was not openly endorsed the organizers included the "vote with your feet" slogan as one of the march's main slogans––on their signs and in their speeches––and at the last second even politely offered us room to speak on their stage. Despite any possibile disagreements, I want to note that the M1M folks, along with the good folks at <a href="http://basicsnews.ca/">Basics</a>, have been more supportive of this campaign, even if they have not always been entirely certain of its worth, then many of the organizations and individuals in the Toronto mainstream left.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In any case, I want to spend the rest of this entry discussing the final criticisms levelled at the campaign, as well as my own reflections about the possible limitations of this campaign, to conclude this series. At least for this year: since the boycott movement is growing, and has now stretched beyond Quebec, there will hopefully be another series about future campaigns in the years to come.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b>1. Your boycott is about political purity and demonstrates your leftist elitism.</b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">This criticism popped up time and time again, in different forms, right until today when one of my comrades was confronted with an arrogant undergraduate activist, when the M1M march merged with the No One Is Illegal march, who declaimed those of us who participated in this campaign––from the RCP-PCR to our small little coalition in Toronto––as elitists. According to this man we were intellectual elitists who had no idea what "the people" wanted (though apparently he knew), and he even went so far as to accuse my comrade of being nothing more than an inveterate "PhDer" and that PhD-types were ignorant because they spend all of their time talking about Foucault. (A strange accusation to level at a Maoist… but it was funny when my comrade, who actually does not spend much time talking about Foucault, pointed out that Foucault probably did more for activism than the activist levelling the accusation! Oddly enough, this same young man once verbally assaulted my partner for wearing a social democrat button [that was part of her job], telling her that she shouldn't vote, several years ago. We argued then that voting for social democrat parties was important, though should never be the focus of one's politics, <i>unless there was a boycott movement</i>. At that time there was no boycott movement and he refused to vote; now there is a boycott movement and he was arguing that we <i>should</i> vote.)</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I have been troubled by this criticism regarding elitism for a long time; in fact, it was this sort of critique that prompted by irate fifth post in the "Vote With Your Feet" series. I want to be clear that we did not begin this campaign by attacking other members of the mainstream left who disagreed with our position. True, we mentioned that part of its aim was to draw a line amongst the self-proclaimed left, but this was a line intended to highlight the problem with parliamentarianism, demonstrate what the RCP-PCR has called "a gap between leftist theory and practice" (where we argue that parliamentarianism won't end capitalism but we expend so much energy convincing people to vote), and break our fascination with elections. Really, many of us did not care if people disagreed with us or critiqued our position––in fact, we wanted to have these discussions. Some of my good friends and comrades engaged in these discussions and brought up good points (which I will discuss below), and I think that contributed to critical discussions amongst certain sectors of the left. Others, however, attacked us rabidly, called us "elitist", attributed a "purity" that didn't exist to our position (without even bothering to read or listen to what we were saying), and entered into the discussion with wild accusations and bizarre insults. Hence that controversial post that, I'll admit, probably just fanned the flames: not only did it confirm the conspiratorial suspicions of those who had straw-personed us from the beginning, it ended up unintentionally insulting others who were actually interested in having the discussion––and for that I apologize.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Still: the charge of "purity" and "elitism" is an empty charge, one that speaks more to the political sentiments of those attacking us, than anything else. Take <a href="http://www.newsocialist.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=426:canadas-federal-election-2011-should-radicals-care&catid=51:analysis&Itemid=98">the recent New Socialist post</a> about voting for the NDP, for example, where the authors deride the boycott campaign for its supposed puritanism around politics. Despite the comments written by myself, comrades who support the campaign, and comrades who do not support the campaign but our supportive of its intentions, the authors are apparently still under the impression that the fact that millions watched a debate is indicative of working-class politics, thus participating in the election and backing the NDP is good revolutionary behaviour. Well… millions watched the royal wedding but does that mean we should organize around the monarchy?</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Generally I have started to feel that these attacks about the campaign's supposed "purity" and "elitism" are due to a fear of principled politics and an <i>actual</i> elitism. The former problem is translated into a complaint about "purity" in the same way that [usually the same] people equivocate political commitment with sectarianism. I want to reemphasize that we were never telling people that they were not "authentically" socialist/communist/radical by joining the boycott: strangely enough, though we never made that claim, so many people started to ascribe that thinking to us. Did they suddenly feel convicted by our position and, for lack of a better response, decided to accuse us of making insults we never made? Perhaps. Or maybe we are so terribly messed up by bourgeois ideology that we simply assume the worst about our possible comrades.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The problem regarding elitism is also rather telling. Returning to the story about the young man who attacked my comrade today––the same arrogant young man who attacked my partner several years ago––I want to point out the massive problem of an undergraduate student declaiming a boycott movement's supposed elitism, mocking them all as "PhD" people divorced from the masses, without any clear understanding of the movement's aims, who and for whom it communicates to, and who created the movement in the first place. The aims were always organizational, the people we spent most of our time talking with in person (but obviously not on the internet!) were NOT the mainstream left but people on the street in poor neighbourhoods <i>who already didn't vote and probably didn't give a shit about this young man</i>, and the group that originated the boycott (RCP-PCR) is predominantly composed of people who are NOT university students. But no: he knew more than us, could call us elitists only because we had more university education than him, and not critically consider even one of our arguments. This is the height of elitism. I am tired of intellectuals, who possess a certain amount of privilege denied to the majority of the population, attacking intellectualism. I am also tired of arrogant young undergrads, who weren't even in highschool when I was an activist, suddenly thinking that they know more than everyone else and using the charge of "armchair activism" or "intellectual elitism" as an ad hominem hammer to bludgeon their way through a debate. If an undocumented migrant worker accused me of these charges I would listen… but I will not take them seriously if they come from someone who is also involved in the academic game and is only using them as a pitiful rhetorical tool.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In any case, how exactly were we elitist when this boycott movement was designed with the concept of the mass-line involved? The argument was always: the majority of people do not vote, they are sending us a clear signal, we should use that as an opportunity to talk to them about democracy outside of the bourgeois game. In other words, we were responding to a boycott already in existence––the attempt, as we emphasized over and over again, was to try and make the implicit explicit. Which leads me to the next category…</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b>2. How is the boycott campaign a good organizing tool?</b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">This was the best and most critical question we received. Some of the people who raised it would agree that they would never organize people to vote, that they agreed that voting was useless and that all the parties were already drifting too far to the right (now the NDP is really no different from the Liberals), but that they did not see any reason to waste time and resources on a boycott campaign. One even raised a very good and very critical point: if peoples' focus on parliamentarianism is a problem (and he agreed that it was), then by focusing on a boycott campaign we were also focusing on parliamentarianism.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Personally I think this critique is one that requires more discussion and more reflection. I do not want to dismiss it out of hand and so I am wary of discussing it here. But generally (and this should not be taken as a dismissal), I think it can be answered by an appeal to political directness. As many have pointed out (most recently William Upski Wimsatt), during federal elections <i>everyone</i> has politics on their mind: it is a concretization of the politics that are usually invisible in our lives. Now some people (like Upski Wimsatt) will argue that we should use this as an opportunity to campaign for some liberal or social democratic party to break the hold of the conservatives. We argue that it is an opportunity to talk about radical politics, to talk about the possibility of breaking parliamentarianism altogether, with people who will probably never talk with you about politics otherwise.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Listen. In the manic and forshortened period of this campaign we were on the streets and putting up posters about the campaign. People actually came up to us and wanted to talk about radical politics. They would even listen to and engage with discussions about communism. The federal elections puts democracy on the mind of people who are the most excluded from bourgeois democracy and who, because they <i>feel the disempowerment of this exclusion</i>, want to talk about politics, about how they will never vote because they hate the government no matter how it appears. These are the people who get blamed by the middle-class for every right victory because of their lack of interest in electoral politics; these are the people who have this lack of interest because the left offers them nothing except electoral circuses. The point the RCP-PCR made from the beginning was that there was an implicit boycott and that there was a reason for this boycott: by going out and advertising a campaign in those neighbourhoods that refuse to vote, we are communicating to a deeply felt disaffection.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">While I agree that organizing cannot simply be around a boycott, I have to admit that I was surprised by the strategic advantages of this campaign. In all my years of activism I have never, upon putting up a poster in a neighbourhood, been approached by so many people who suddenly wanted to talk about politics. Never. Again: there already is a boycott, and there are reasons for this boycott, we were only trying to make it explicit. And, to speak to the previous point, it would be nice if the left in general recognized that this was a fact rather than writing peons to the bloody NDP.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Clearly there are limitations around this method of organizing but we never argued that we were only interested in organizing boycott campaigns. The resolutions that were passed and adopted at the Canadian Revolutionary Congress were not simply resolutions about a boycott campaign: we never agreed to just work on this issue, suddenly appearing at every federal or provincial election but ignoring everything else in the meantime––this was always understood as part of a larger strategy.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">And the larger strategy was about boycotting the bourgeois state, the campaign around the federal elections being a coherent and concrete method utilized to bring the already existing boycott of the elections into contact with the idea of boycotting the state in general. Going into communities with the slogan of "boycott the bourgeois state", however, and especially when there were no federal/provincial elections on the immediate horizon, is by itself rather ludicrous. Again: people want to talk about politics at election time because politics––especially bourgeois politics––are everywhere. The point was to reject the bourgeois political approach and use this period as an opportunity to discuss boycotting the state.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Perhaps the greatest limitation to this approach, though, was the foreshortened period in which we could agitate. As one frustrated and disenchanted woman on the streets complained: "you should have started talking about this months ago." Unfortunately none of us expected an election to be called this soon and, just after adopting the resolution at the Canadian Revolutionary Congress, along with other resolutions, we were hit with the prospect of a spring election. A very short time to work on this issue, with only the germ of a coalition in Toronto, is not entirely useful for organizing. If there were fall elections and we started now the campaign might have generated more results: several weeks of talking with people, and trying to push community events when most of these people did not know who we were, is an uphill battle. The campaign demonstrated its possibilities as an organizing tool but all it really did, due to the short time period and the limited human power, was show us that the hill we needed to climb existed.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b>3. Rejecting all reformist politics wholesale is ultra-leftism.</b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I briefly critiqued this argument, an argument that claimed we were being un-nuanced and ultra-leftist by rejecting bourgeois freedoms altogether, in <a href="http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2011/03/vote-with-your-feet-boycotting-federal.html">my first post</a>. And yet the argument was consistently raised––a fair argument because I've made it before and will probably make again in other contexts. Personally, I do not believe that this campaign is about some "drop-out-of-society-and-live-on-a-commune" approach to politics. At the Congress one of the speakers argued that "we should use bourgeois freedoms but not in a bourgeois manner"––this was the spirit behind the boycott.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">But what does that mean exactly when we are demanding that the bourgeois freedom of electoral politics should be rejected? Simply that we do not think that, at this juncture of history and in this society, that it is even a bourgeois freedom that is worthwhile using in a non-bourgeois manner. <i>Especially</i> when every party is moving more to the right and, if you really start comparing the current NDP to the Liberals point-by-point, you will realize that there is no real difference between the two. Someone at the May Day rally today even argued with us that the NDP occupation of Afghanistan would be <i>better</i> because it would <i>look significantly different</i>––although he could not say how an occupation could be better, or how it would look significantly different, or why we should be arguing about what government had a better approach to neo-colonialism in the first place. Point being: if the NDP is now no different than the Liberals, and could probably comfortably merge as the Reform/Alliance did with the Conservatives years back, then should not all the leftists who are arguing that voting for the NDP is a "lesser evil" really, if they want to be realistic, start agitating for the Liberals? And yet they would never go that far because still, for some bizarre reason, people still imagine that the NDP is the party of the working-class. Never mind the fact that they have <a href="http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2011/03/vote-with-your-feet-part-4-guest-post.html">consistently demonstrated</a>, whenever they have taken provincial power, very anti-worker policies.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The aforementioned New Socialist article, and the defensive comments by the authors, tries to make the exact same point: vote for the NDP because it is a vote for reform and that is worthwhile to pursue while we also pursue the business of revolution. That's all fine and good if the left was actually pursuing revolution, but are we doing that? Are we organizing around politics that appeal to the most disenfranchised and angry? And if the boycott is not the most worthwhile approach––and this is worth debating of course––then what approach should we suggest? But the only approach on the table seems to be: vote for the NDP and then march at some demo or other as we always have done.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">What is entirely surreal about the New Socialist article is that one of its authors, Alan Sears (who, by the way, I respect), once wrote <a href="http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/pesm/QueerAntiCap.pdf">an article</a> about how the demand for gay marriage deradicalized the demands of the queer movement. But I would argue that fighting for gay marriage, despite its limitations, could be an instance of using bourgeois freedoms in a non-bourgeois manner. Perhaps I am wrong, but I do not see how one could severely critique the gay marriage movement for being bourgeois and commodified, and yet apparently refuse to make the same argument about the rite of voting. The latter, in my mind, does not in any way, unlike gay marriage (though limited like any reform), promote human self-determination.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I would go further and argue that I would fight for anyone discriminated against in this society to have the right to vote… and then I would also argue that they should boycott the bourgeois elections: I do not see this as a contradiction––in fact, I see this as utterly democratic. Moreover, I think this boycott speaks to the fact that a large sector of workers, who are undocumented and lack citizenship, can never vote, will never be given the right to vote because they will never be given citizenship, and should be organized against the entire cancerous system.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">If anything, this manic and foreshortened campaign has caused a debate amongst the left while, at the same time, demonstrating untapped possibilities of organizing. In retrospect, I am inclined to argue that we should have foregone the debate with the established left altogether, ignored the rude and insulting attacks (I should not have written that fifth post in this series perhaps), and just spent all of our energy on the streets, day after day, talking with people. At the same time, however, I do think it is important to push this debate within the circles of the established left because the line drawing––not a line drawing intended to be elitist or sectarian but to put principles back on the table and, if anything, to produce thoughtful discussion––is necessary in a time where we consistently water down our politics and get mad at anyone that complains about the watering-down for not being a good sport.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In less than 48 hours this country will have a new government and, even this government because of some miracle happens to be the NDP, things will not change too much. Public services will still be cut, imperialist wars will still continue, and the people who will never vote because they cannot see a difference will still be evicted and beaten by the cops. And if there is a miraculous NDP victory, and we on the left expended so much energy arguing that the NDP somehow represented our interests, what are we going to say when we demonstrate against them? What are we going to tell those same people we told to vote for them when we suddenly appear on the streets in protest? The Obama movement south of the border was faced with the same problem: it killed entire sections of the left. Even if we cannot agree that the boycott campaign is the best strategy we have to at least, as those comrades whose critiques have been helpful and supportive have understood, recognize that there is no point in backing "the lesser evil" in even the most minuscule manner.</div>JMPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13384595330293618571noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-18811927603420231222011-04-26T08:44:00.000-07:002011-04-26T08:55:18.030-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivvg7UvgivIC-DlYRbpt6MLaAg-X-lcAge51CskyfL2t8B5f4B03jYcUQ7KjYr1X8E-UWOEaEfPXcZhWX47XsaMp7LTaUL_xG2d2SrtpGldiz6y3CsruI1qiX1kTyXZub_LJBpac8jPQ4/s1600/maydaykingston.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivvg7UvgivIC-DlYRbpt6MLaAg-X-lcAge51CskyfL2t8B5f4B03jYcUQ7KjYr1X8E-UWOEaEfPXcZhWX47XsaMp7LTaUL_xG2d2SrtpGldiz6y3CsruI1qiX1kTyXZub_LJBpac8jPQ4/s320/maydaykingston.jpg" width="247" /></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="il"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Fuck the vote!" will be a main rallying cry for activists in a Kingston</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> May 1 march. This is just one more sign that growing numbers are rejecting the parliamentary system altogether in the realization that real change is only possible when we organize on the streets!</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For information about the upcoming event - as well as other boycott-related events in Ontario and Québec -</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> please see the "Events" tab.</span></div>PRAChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12798016485549515484noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-6278875101082428722011-04-24T08:56:00.000-07:002011-04-24T08:57:21.335-07:00<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);font-size:180%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">NDP: Part of the Imperialist System</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Taken from the first edition of <a href="http://theredflag.ca/partisan">Partisan</a> newspaper:</span><br /><br />The New Democratic Party (NDP) promotes itself as the option for the left in Canada. But just like the Conservatives and Liberals, the NDP is steeped in imperialism, in which Canadian business and political elites exploit and impoverish already poor countries for the benefit of Canadian companies.<br /><br />One of the most visible ways the NDP is pro-imperialist is its support for wars in the Middle East. Certainly no self-proclaimed leftwing parliamentary party is going to go so far as to advocate national wars, but the NDP goes to war none the less. When it does war -the NDP initially supported Canada's involvement in the US invasion of Afghanistan and currently supports the NATO invasion of Libya- it is framed as a humanitarian intervention, like a 'no-fly zone', or a human development initiative like 'aid' and 'rebuilding'.<br /><br />On Libya, NDP leader Jack Layton said in late March that Canada should "draw a lesson from the war in Afghanistan and give parliamentarians a surveillance and oversight role." He neither challenges the imperialist motives of both wars, nor criticizes the conspicuous militarization of Canada.<br /><br />The reason NATO countries including Canada are occupying Afghanistan is not to advance democracy but to secure access to the country's vast mineral resources and control pipelines that bring natural gas and oil from adjacent countries to the Arabian sea and Caspian sea basin. The US military expressed surprise in 2010, when it Afghanistan's untapped mineral wealth was estimated at $1 trillion, but the surprise was phony: geological surveys conducted in the 1970s and 1980s revealed Afghanistan was a gold mine (as well as a mine of several other minerals including copper, bauxite, lithium and uranium).<br /><br />Well aware that an advanced military is required for ensuring cheap access to natural resource in foreign countries, the NDP supports Canada's increasing militarization. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reported that Canadian military spending is 54% higher than it was before 2001. The NDP has promised not to cut military spending, but to keep it at the $26 billion proposed in the most recent Conservative budget. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute ranks Canada the 6th largest military spender within NATO's 28 state membership, and 13th in the world. In Nova Scotia, the provincial NDP government contributes to this militarization by funding Lockheed Martin, the biggest military contractor in the world.<br /><br />If we demand from our government social security from exploitative economic forces, how can we settle for a solution financed by the exploitation of foreign people? Do we not become the exploiters if our governments provide services that are paid by the conquest of other peoples and we do not fight for a solution that would put people before corporate growth?<br /><br />In Canada, we may not see the suffering and devastation caused by imperialist wars. Instead we see only a trickle of migrants and refugees fleeing poverty and wars that are the direct result of policies and military intervention by imperialist powers. Fortunately for Layton, he has a solution for these victims of imperialism within Canada's borders: on April 6, he announced his party would fund 2,500 more cops.Bureau d'information politique du PCRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18295586869665345960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-10400256587152284172011-04-24T08:54:00.000-07:002011-04-24T08:56:06.214-07:00<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);font-size:180%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">Boycott des élections: le point de vue de la classe ouvrière</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Article paru dans le premier numéro du journal <a href="http://ledrapeaurouge.ca/partisan">Partisan</a>:</span><br /><br />La campagne que les supporters de ce journal mènent pour le boycott des élections rencontre un écho favorable en milieu ouvrier. De fait, tout porte à croire que plus de la moitié des travailleurs et des travailleuses n'iront pas voter le 2 mai prochain.<br /><br />Ce phénomène, on l'observe immédiatement dans les circonscriptions à forte concentration prolétarienne, où le taux de participation est généralement inférieur à la moyenne nationale. Quand on tient compte du fait que des centaines de milliers de prolétaires, qui vivent et travaillent sur le territoire canadien, n'ont pas droit de vote parce que résidents permanents ou sans statut, l'abstention ouvrière dépasse largement les 50%.<br /><br />Outre celles qui proviennent des partis bourgeois eux-mêmes, les réticences les plus fortes que l'on rencontre envers le boycott viennent de cette gauche qui espère encore que le système bourgeois puisse faire preuve de «compassion» et adoucir les horreurs dont il est pourtant responsable. Il faut dire que beaucoup de gens parmi cette faune (militants syndicaux, salariéEs de groupes communautaires, etc.), dont les intentions sont par ailleurs sans doute honnêtes - là n'est pas la question - sont eux-mêmes liés par mille et un fils à l'appareil d'État. Ce système, ils vont apparemment y croire encore toute leur vie...<br /><br />Ces gens-là nous disent qu'il faut aller voter parce que sinon, on aura le gouvernement qu'on mérite et qu'il sera trop tard ensuite pour se plaindre de ses décisions. Mais depuis quand la légitimité de notre colère et de nos revendications dépend-elle de notre bulletin de vote? En fait, ce sont ceux qui participent au système électoral qui vont conférer une légitimité au prochain gouvernement. Qui donc sera élu le 2 mai prochain? Harper, vraisemblablement. Ignatieff, peut-être. L'un ou l'autre, c'est sûr.<br /><br />Comment peut-on imaginer que le vainqueur appliquera un autre programme que celui de la grande bourgeoisie canadienne? Et de quoi auront donc l'air nos valeureux «démocrates de gauche» au lendemain de l'élection? Espérons qu'ils ne ressortiront pas leurs pancartes où c'est écrit <span style="font-style: italic;">«J'ai jamais voté pour ça»</span> parce que de fait, <span style="font-weight: bold;">ils auront voté pour ça: </span>pour un gouvernement bourgeois qui pourra se réclamer d'un mandat populaire fort et légitime, élu avec à la complicité d'une gauche servile.<br /><br />Certains nous disent que cette fois-ci, c'est différent, que Harper est plus dangereux que les autres et qu'il faut tout faire pour freiner la <span style="font-style: italic;">«montée de la droite»</span>. Le problème, c'est que le durcissement du pouvoir bourgeois auquel on assiste effectivement, qui par ailleurs n'est pas un phénomène strictement canadien (ça se passe aussi dans la plupart des pays capitalistes que l'on dit «avancés»), touche tous les partis et tout l'appareil politique dominant. Quand c'est rendu que le principal parti «de gauche», le NPD, vote en faveur du déploiement militaire canadien en Libye et promet l'embauche de 2 500 flics supplémentaires et le maintien des dépenses militaires à leur niveau actuel s'il est élu, on peut douter sérieusement de sa capacité à freiner la droite - si tant est qu'il en ait la volonté.<br /><br />Les travailleurs et les travailleuses ont bien raison de se désintéresser du cirque électoral qui se déroule sans elles et eux. Boycotter les élections, c'est commencer à cesser de penser comme nos ennemis; c'est un premier geste de rupture, le début d'une réappropriation de notre identité comme prolétaires.Bureau d'information politique du PCRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18295586869665345960noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-34032676944536241602011-04-23T11:06:00.001-07:002011-04-24T08:50:59.470-07:00<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);font-size:180%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">Our Voices Are Our Fists!</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">This message is from a supporter of the Boycott the Elections 2011 campaign in Central Ontario:</span><br /><br />On May 2nd the capitalists will have their so-called election. We as Communists will never support such an obvious attempt at securing power for the wealthy ruling class. They produce mass amounts of propaganda about how we <span style="font-style: italic;">must vote</span> in order to exercise our so-called democratic right. What we must do is resist everything that the ruling class tries to do. We must fight with out voices and our fists...<br /><br />This system needs to be shattered with no mercy. In order to do this we must boycott this phony election. They want us to vote, we will vote with out feet and our fists; we will show them just how sick we are of all their shit. The time for talking is over, no longer can the working class support the mistakes of the wealthy. We must make them pay for all of their faults, for everything they have done to the working class in this country.<br /><br />Instead of voting on May 2nd, march on May 1st! Our voices are our fists and we must make every fist we have a weapon. In this struggle we are vastly outnumbered, however we have a few things that the ruling class will never have and that is Pride, Honour and Anger... We cannot fail and we will not fail. Our goal is simple: The destruction of the ruling class and its system! On May 2nd don't prop up this system by voting, show it your frustration by voting with your fists!<br /><br />Hans PedersenBureau d'information politique du PCRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18295586869665345960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-60013231767826060722011-04-23T10:42:00.000-07:002011-04-24T08:52:48.543-07:00<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);font-size:180%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">Nos poings sont nos voix!</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Message reçu d'un supporter de la Campagne 2011 pour le boycott des élections du centre de l'Ontario:</span><br /><br />Le 2 mai, les capitalistes tiendront leur prétendue élection. Comme communistes, nous n'appuierons jamais cette tentative évidente de renouveler le pouvoir de la richissime classe dominante. Les capitalistes nous assènent une propagande démesurée pour nous convaincre d'exercer notre soi-disant droit démocratique. Il faut résister à ces manœuvres. Nous devons nous battre avec nos voix et nos poings...<br /><br />Il faut briser et détruire ce système injuste! Boycotter cette élection bidon, c'est un pas dans cette direction. Les capitalistes veulent que nous votions, mais nous allons voter avec nos pieds et nos poings; nous allons leur montrer à quel point on n'en peut plus de toute leur boulechite. Le temps des discussions est terminé, la classe ouvrière n'en peut plus de subir les erreurs des riches. Nous devons leur faire payer pour tout ce qu'ils nous ont fait subir, pour tout le mal qu'ils ont causé à la classe ouvrière de ce pays.<br /><br />Au lieu de voter le 2 mai, nous allons marcher le 1er Mai! Nos poings sont nos voix, on doit les utiliser comme une arme. Dans la lutte âpre et certainement difficile qui nous oppose aux capitalistes, nous disposons d'un certain nombre d'atouts que la classe dirigeante n'aura jamais - la fierté, l'honneur et la colère... À terme, nous vaincrons. Notre objectif est simple: c'est la destruction de la classe dirigeante et de son système! Le 2 mai, n'apportez pas votre soutien au système avec votre bulletin de vote; exprimez votre frustration en votant avec vos poings!<br /><br />Hans PedersenBureau d'information politique du PCRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18295586869665345960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-5563706739923404462011-04-21T07:23:00.000-07:002011-04-21T07:25:16.135-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">[EN] </span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">Other forces are campaigning for abstention</span></span></span> </b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><br />
Common Cause in Ontario and “Union Communiste Libertaire” in </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">Québec </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">are officially campaigning for abstention in the May 2 federal election. They launched a common website (</span><a href="http://www.genuinechange.info/" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">www.genuinechange.info</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">) that includes some material explaining why they consider “genuine change can only come from ourselves.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><span style="color: maroon;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"> <br />
Meanwhile, Montréal “Reconstruction Communiste Canada” officially endorsed the 2011 Boycott Elections Campaign. These comrades are helping flyering and postering in the areas where they are active.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;"> [</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">FR] </span></span></span> <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">D’autres forces se rallient au boycott</span></span></span> </b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><br />
Depuis quelques jours, l’Union communiste libertaire et son pendant ontarien Common Cause font officiellement campagne pour l’abstention en prévision de l’élection fédérale du 2 mai. Les deux groupes ont lancé un site Web conjoint (</span><a href="http://www.levraichangement.com/" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">www.levraichangement.com</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">) où ils expliquent que «le vrai changement ne peut venir que de nous-mêmes».<br />
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Entre-temps, un groupe montréalais appelé «Reconstruction communiste Canada» a annoncé son appui à la Campagne 2011 pour le boycott des élections et participe à la diffusion du matériel à divers endroits de la métropole.</span> </span></span></span></div>PRAChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12798016485549515484noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-23615883090485866202011-04-17T07:23:00.000-07:002011-04-17T07:32:28.648-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Our comrades in Ottawa put together this powerful video in response to a Rick Mercer report that encouraged young people to vote in support of this whole, rotten system. Check it out!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/i5kIEdBm90o?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br />
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</div>PRAChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12798016485549515484noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-48242505198516560052011-04-11T19:57:00.000-07:002011-04-13T14:54:32.409-07:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: large;">RADIO INTERVIEW [English]</span><br />
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On Radio Basics in Toronto, Louise Jones and Joshua Moufawad-Paul were interviewed about the campaign. Several members of the community called in and produced a thoughtful discussion.<br />
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<a href="http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/50937">Listen to the interview here.</a><br />
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Direct download available in the <a href="http://boycottelections2011.blogspot.com/p/materials.html">Materials</a> section.JMPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13384595330293618571noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-31247598850669947562011-04-10T21:07:00.000-07:002011-04-10T21:09:58.815-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: large;"><b>Don't Vote, Fight!</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><i>[English]</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><i><br />
</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><i>Originally posted on <a href="http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2011/03/vote-with-your-feet-boycotting-federal.html">M-L-M Mayhem</a></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><i>by JMP [ENGLISH]</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOZlh5eGNeRiHQv3YDnNfLNMtSUW7EY6hjOwJDz5DkCOVdlXaAeROWdNhYDvThCnPWHGsgEnwfmQSvtN0rgEDvgOgJ3PsjeOf7_aQ73-PnFZlySU4LudLaNiaiW42sJuYs5TycaciyTuX-/s320/boycott.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="192" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">"Fighting" through the electoral process in this social context, and generally in the context of the imperialist centres of capitalism, is a rigged game and a waste of our time as leftists who speak of revolution on the one hand and then, when it comes to our activism, hide our politics by sublimating them in reformist organizations. I know I've wasted time and energy in these types of coalitions, convinced that official trade union politics represent the beating heart of proletarian consciousness and willing to suspend my theoretical communism in order to work alongside social democratic labour activists. This is the gap between theory and practice <a href="http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2010/12/of-parties-and-sectarianism-report-on.html">that was critiqued at the Second Canadian Revolutionary Congress I attended in December</a>: we argue that capitalism cannot be defeated by bourgeois parliamentarianism, we understand why theoretically, and yet our activism often gravitates towards the very parliamentarianism we philosophically reject.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">Therefore, the elections boycott is motivated by two central concerns and aims to cognize the distance between leftwing activists and the masses they claim to support: 1) leftwing activists who understand that revolution does not come from voting often waste their time trying to claim electoral space and concessions; 2) possibly 60% of the Canadian masses do not vote. The point of the proposed boycott movement is to clarify the distance between these two concerns. In my mind it represents what Alain Badiou calls <i>a philosophical situation</i>––that is, a "situation [that] involves the moment in which a choice proclaimed – a choice of existence, or a choice of thinking." And the "proper task is to make the choice clear." (Badiou, <i>Polemics</i>, 4) The event on March 19th that has started, at a micro-level, to stir up some controversy is designed to make our choices clear, to draw a line, to demonstrate not only the gap between theory and practice but also the gap that still exists between leftwing activists and the vast majority of the working and non-working poor.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">Again, the event is not aimed at social democrats who already believe that change can only come through the electoral process and that our current system determines the parameters of reality. Nor would any boycott movement be aimed at the population they represent: the liberal middle class, the concerned ex-hippies, the conscientious objectors. Their position in this debate is already clear, they have never pretended to be anything but social democrats, and we know from the very beginning that they would be horrified by anything that insults their understanding of democracy where change can only come through voting in the most socially democratic and reformist party. And yet there are many of us who claim to reject the philosophy of social democracy but still act according to socially democratic ideals––and we reject the possibility of a boycott movement for various reasons, some of which I will attempt to demystify below.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><b>1. While it is true that bourgeois democracy will not usher in the revolution, the masses aren't ready for anything but reforms so they need to vote for these reforms.</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><b><br />
</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">This is the main justification for working in social democratic and ultimately reformist coalitions/institutions for those who theoretically believe that reformism is not the same as revolution. Since the possibility of revolution is set beyond the horizon of the foreseeable future, as if this can be predicted through a social-science crystal ball, then the best we can do is agitate for reforms by trying to vote in the most socially democratic party (in Canada this is the New Democratic Party [NDP]). Then the masses, once they see how we have helped win them reforms, will be ready for revolution. Or, at the very least, their lot in life will be better.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">Except that the masses have already spoken by not voting, demonstrating that there is an <i>implicit boycott already in affect</i>. So if the masses have spoken, and you claim to represent the masses concerns, it is insulting to say that they aren't ready for anything other than voting for reforms. Clearly they are not willing to vote for reforms and to argue that this is because they are <i>stupid</i> or <i>not even ready to vote</i> is just rank pessimism. They are not voting because voting does not communicate to their material existence and no party apparently represents their interests: we need to figure out what this means rather than waste our time, again and again, trying to get them to vote and then complaining that they are <i>apathetic</i> or <i>dumb</i> when they don't listen. Besides, the social democratic parties have enough of their own resources and loyal followers to agitate for this on their own––so why do we waste time agitating with them when the hard left is strapped for resources as it is?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">Moreover, if we waste all our time in reformist pursuits, how can we build a militant left movement that can actually challenge capitalism? Why do we refuse to speak of a strong anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism? Why do we say that we need an anti-capitalist organization and yet build nothing more than social democratic coalitions, secretly imagining that they will one day magically transform into revolutionary parties and organizations when "the masses are ready"? So when will the masses be ready in a context where we are always fostering the ideology that they are not ready?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><b>2. Rosa Luxemburg argued that social reforms, though not an end goal, are necessary to support because they alleviate the suffering of the poor. And Lenin once argued, in the case of England, that it was "ultra-leftism" to allow the reformist-electoral spaces to be claimed by liberals.</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><b><br />
</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">The problem is that when these arguments are made they are both made out of historical context. Both Luxemburg and Lenin were speaking of social democratic parties that were far more radical than the social democratic parties of the North American context where it is difficult to even call the NDP (in Canada) "social democratic" anymore, and impossible to call the Democratic Party (in the US) "social democratic" even at its inception. Luxemburg was speaking of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (where we get the in-leftist slur "social democrat"), which was still motivated by a defanged marxism, and Lenin was speaking of the Labour Party in Britain that, at that time, was filled with unionists who were arming themselves (and the Labour Party in England now is a far cry, all Tony Blair imperialism, from the Labour Party of Lenin's day).</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">Then there was the fact that Luxemburg was speaking, in her article, of building a revolutionary party that was not reformist––something we are not doing in our context––and her ultimate argument was that those who call themselves "revolutionaries" should not be wasting their time in reformist organizations. It is also interesting to note that the voted-in Social Democratic Party of Germany was not able to stop the Nazi rise to power, even collaborating with the Freikorps to crush the Spartacist Uprising and have its leaders, Luxemburg included, murdered. And again, the SDP was far more to the left than the supposedly "social democratic" parties in the North American context.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">Furthermore, Lenin was actually proved wrong about the Labour Party. As <a href="http://theworkersdreadnought.wordpress.com/">one of my good comrades</a> never tires of reminding me, Lenin's "Left-Wing Communism: an infantile disorder," a piece that is often used to justify entryism, was probably one of Lenin's weakest pieces. Not because he was wrong about some of the theoretical positions he argued but because the concrete tactics he supported in Britain––that were rejected by Sylvia Pankhurst––actually failed. And yet this tract is still treated as dogma by some leftwing groups who would prefer to ignore everything Lenin wrote about "opportunism" and spend most of their time insulting everyone who does not want to be a social democrat as "ultra-left."</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><b>3. We need to work hard to vote in a social democratic, or at least liberal, government because of the swing to the right and the rise of conservative parties. Fascism is a real danger.</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><b><br />
</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">This argument seems reasonable on the surface but, concerned only with appearance, fails to even engage with essential questions about fascism. Fascist movements are generally populist movements that begin outside of the electoral process by <a href="http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2011/01/immanence-of-monolithic-capitalism.html">disaffected masses manipulated by a monolithic capitalism</a>. If and when they come to power through parliamentarianism this demonstrates two things: 1) the election is only the end point of something larger; 2) bourgeois parliamentarianism is often sympathetic to fascism.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">Look at the rise of the Tea Party in the US, accompanied by open fascist policies, and the danger of fascism is clear. Moreover, this is a danger that happened both in spite and because of leftists wasting their energy on social democratic pursuits (if you can even call it that in the American context). The movement that cohered around Obama, raised against the weak fascism of Bush, did nothing but waste the energy of the left: capitalism is still being protected, imperialism is still alive and well, and in response to this election a fascist movement is growing. And those who sublimated their energies and beliefs in the Obama election are proving incapable of combating this movement; their blunted revolutionary politics, their inability to communicate with the deep-seeded disaffection of the poor, neutralizing them in the face of contemporary fascism. What would have happened, we need to rhetorically ask, if the US left had not wasted all of its time in getting a Democrat elected and instead concentrated on building a parallel movement?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">Fascism lurks at the threshold of the bourgeois parliamentary process and we render ourselves incapable of dealing with this danger the more we hide ourselves within this process and deny that the threat is coming from those spaces in which we fail to organize. And these spaces are not primarily the privileged spaces of unions because we live in a context where the majority of the most exploited labour is non-unionized, oft-times migrant, and subordinated to the threat of a massive reserve army of the poor and deportation. This is not to say we should ignore union spaces, and the resources these spaces possess, but that we need to start thinking outside of the traditional "this-is-the-proletariat" box––a box that is often the box of the labour aristocracy.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">And if the terrifying conservatisation of our society is a warning of the dawn of real fascism, then we need to ask ourselves why we have failed to prevent conservatism in the past with all of our voting power, all of our mobilization, all of our attempts to prevent these anti-human politicians from winning the ballot. We keep arguing that we need to vote in some social democratic government to end the rise of the right and yet our arguments have been proved, time and time again, completely wrong. In the US Obama's election is not preventing the right from gaining power, state by state, from gaining both popular and electoral support. In Canada we keep getting the Harpers and Fords elected. Then we blame the poor who do not vote for spoiling our social democratic fantasies, imagining that they are stupid rather than asking why they don't vote in the first place.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">Meanwhile, imperialism, settler-colonialism, and capitalism continue. So many of us lock ourselves in reformist and/or trade union contexts and complain that there is nothing powerful enough to challenge actually existing capitalism and yet do nothing to change this state of affairs.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">Let us be clear: the electoral space in these centres of capitalism is a moribund vehicle for change and our participation in this space has done nothing to prevent enemy forces from growing. Moreover, and this is very important, social democratic electoral parties continue to move to the right: <i>conservatisation is not limited to the conservative parties but is currently part of the entire process of electoral politics</i>. And this despite every attempt on the part of a left that should know better to fight for social democratic spaces in parliament.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">As the RCP Canada argued in 2004:</div><blockquote><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">No election in the framework of bourgeois democracy will transform the army, the police and justice to put them at the service of the exploited. We have to prepare for this confrontation, not with unarmed pro-bourgeois parties, which the State can easily ignore. We must prepare by finally building a revolutionary party serving the oppressed that will not be afraid to say: the bourgeoisie will never abandon its power by itself! The majority has to seize power by the force of its numbers and defend it by every means necessary! <b><i>Against elections, let's prepare the revolution!</i></b></span></div></blockquote>JMPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13384595330293618571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-20555798800556341282011-04-10T17:57:00.000-07:002011-04-10T18:02:40.972-07:00<span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Bourgeois democracy, the Parliamentary system and workers power</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">“Instead of worrying about bourgeois organs of power, we should be busy constructing our own proletarian organs of power.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Read this extensive post from the </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://sorev.wordpress.com/2010/01/03/a-communist-position-on-bourgeois-democracy-and-the-parliamentary-system/">Social Revolution Party</a><span style="font-style: italic;">, an Ottawa-based communist group. </span>Bureau d'information politique du PCRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18295586869665345960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-62703041573729258872011-04-10T17:48:00.000-07:002011-04-10T17:56:24.064-07:00<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-size:180%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">Les étapes de la formation du parti unique de la bourgeoisie canadienne</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Article ayant été publié quelques jours avant le déclenchement de l'actuelle élection fédérale, qui trace </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" > à grands traits les caractéristiques des trois grandes étapes qui ont marqué la formation par la bourgeoisie canadienne de son parti unique:</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><p><span style="font-size:100%;">On saura dans quelques semaines si une élection fédérale aura lieu ce printemps. Si c’est le cas, on vous annonce dès maintenant que le <i>parti unique </i>de la grande bourgeoisie canadienne va reprendre le pouvoir! Ses deux ailes, le Parti libéral et le Parti conservateur sont, parmi tous les partis bourgeois d’Occident et du monde impérialiste, au nombre des cinq ou six partis, tout au plus, qui ont construit les liens les plus durables, qui ont assis leur longévité sur l’implantation dans les milieux capitalistes et la défense des intérêts communs à toute la bourgeoisie, parmi les plus solides que l’on puisse trouver à travers tous les parlements bourgeois.</span></p><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><p><span style="font-style: italic;">Lire la version intégrale sur </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://ledrapeaurouge.ca/node/303">ledrapeaurouge.ca</a><span style="font-style: italic;">.</span><br /></p>Bureau d'information politique du PCRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18295586869665345960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-76709213701156603102011-04-10T17:37:00.000-07:002011-04-10T17:56:41.738-07:00<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >Des mots qui tranchent et qui ne véhiculent aucune illusion:</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-size:180%;" >Boycottons les élections!</span><br /></span><p>En politique, la langue des bourgeois est maintenant une langue vieillie, pétrifiée, qui n’a plus de sens, et que de moins en moins de travailleurs et de travailleuses écoutent avec respect et soumission. Le prolétariat a besoin plus que jamais de parler et d’agir par lui-même. Et en l’espèce, aujourd’hui, il est écœuré de voter pour le «parti unique» de la bourgeoisie.</p> <p>Que ce «parti unique» soit bicéphale ou tricéphale, qu’il se compose d’un gros corps obèse et totalitaire libéralo-conservateur et de deux flancs: un flanc gauche et un flanc droit plus ou moins visible ou discret selon les époques et les circonstances, cela importe tout compte fait assez peu. Ce qui compte vraiment, c’est que les mêmes intérêts (ceux des capitalistes) règnent à la fois au gouvernement et dans l’opposition, si bien que quand la représentation parlementaire change d’une élection à l’autre (et elle doit changer pour que l’édifice tienne), la nature du Parlement, elle, reste la même.</p> <p>La société bourgeoise actuelle cherche son souffle, cela est évident. Mais une chose est certaine, c’est qu’elle a beaucoup de peine à trouver ce souffle supplémentaire du côté de la démocratie. Son parlementarisme apparaît de plus en plus une œuvre du passé, déconsidéré dans le présent, et dépourvu de toute utilité pour l’avenir.</p> <p>Les militantes et les militants d’aujourd’hui aspirent à renouveler la participation des pauvres et des exploitéEs à la transformation radicale de la société. C’est ce qu’on appelle la révolution. En boycottant les élections, ils et elles nous disent clairement deux choses. D’abord: qu’il n’y a pas de pauvres ni de travailleurs ou de travailleuses révolutionnaires dans les parlements, et qu’il est inutile de les y chercher. On y retrouve certes des bourgeois, des petits-bourgeois et des <i>labour lieutenants</i>, mais pas de pauvres ni de travailleurs ou travailleuses révolutionnaires.</p> <p>Cela en soi est significatif. Mais plus significative encore est la deuxième chose qu’ils et elles nous disent, à savoir que les pauvres et les travailleurs et travailleuses révolutionnaires ne cherchent surtout pas à entrer au Parlement! Leur politique va plutôt dans le sens de le détruire et avec lui, de détruire les autres appareils de l’État bourgeois qui sont, considérés dans leur ensemble, les moyens de la domination de classe de la bourgeoisie sur les travailleurs et les travailleuses.</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">Lisez la version intégrale de cet article sur </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://ledrapeaurouge.ca/node/302">ledrapeaurouge.ca</a><span style="font-style: italic;">.</span><br /></p>Bureau d'information politique du PCRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18295586869665345960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-34125882643036911552011-04-10T17:32:00.000-07:002011-04-10T17:55:25.640-07:00<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >Words that convey no illusions:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:180%;">Boycott the Elections!</span></span></span><br /></span><p><span style="font-size:100%;">In politics, the language of the bourgeoisie is now an old language, petrified, that doesn’t have meaning anymore and that fewer and fewer workers listen to with respect and submission. The proletariat needs more than ever to speak and act by itself. Today, it is sickened to vote for the bourgeoisie’s “single party.”</span></p><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><p><span style="font-size:100%;">Whether this “single party” has two or three heads, is composed of a large obese liberal-conservative body and two sides (a left side and a more or less visible or discrete right side according to the times and circumstances): that doesn’t matter very much in the final analysis. What really counts is that the same interests (those of the capitalists) reign at the same time in the government and in the opposition. Thus, when the parliamentary representation changes from one election to another (and it must change to give the system a fake credibility), the nature of the Parliament still remains the same.</span></p><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><p><span style="font-size:100%;">The actual bourgeois society seeks its breath, that’s obvious. But it’s certain that the bourgeoisie cannot find much air on the side of the democracy. Its parliamentarism seems more and more a work of the past, discredited in the present, and deprived of any utility for the future.</span></p><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><p><span style="font-size:100%;">Today’s activists intend to renew the participation of the exploited and the poor in a radical social transformation. This is what is called <b>revolution</b>. By boycotting the elections, they clearly tell us two things. First: that there are no poor nor revolutionary workers in the Parliaments, and that it is useless to seek them there. We can certainly find there a lot of bourgeois, petit-bourgeois and “labor-lieutenants,” but not a single poor nor revolutionary worker.</span></p>That, in self, is significant. But still more significant is the fact that the revolutionary poor and workers do not seek to enter at all to the Parliament! Their interest rather go in the direction of destroying it, and with it, the other apparatuses of the bourgeois state which are, considered as a whole, the tools used by the ruling class to ensure the continuation of workers’ exploitation.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Read the whole post on </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://theredflag.ca/node/65">theredflag.ca</a><span style="font-style: italic;">.</span>Bureau d'information politique du PCRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18295586869665345960noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-10979063264685126382011-04-10T15:44:00.000-07:002011-04-10T15:52:19.128-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><u style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: large;">NDP supports jailing youth and funding corporate criminals</span></u><br />
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The New Democratic Party recently revealed it would like to fund 2500 more cops, give more money to prosecution (which will only further criminalize and limit the options of youth) and keep military spending at the same level as the Conservatives! The NDP is supposed to be the most "progressive" of the three parties. The truth is it is the most progressive. And that's not only deplorable, it's also unacceptable.<br />
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Even former NDP organizers, Andrew Klochek and Michael Laxer think that the NDP "would do nothing to alter the political economy of the country" and that "the time has come to fight state capitalism itself." <br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://media.thestar.topscms.com/images/35/c9/e4bd4c1843629c5d09949a9778d1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="237" src="http://media.thestar.topscms.com/images/35/c9/e4bd4c1843629c5d09949a9778d1.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The old white boy's club: Jack Layton (L) is just like the rest!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Boycott the elections! Let's fight the whole system! <br />
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<i><b>The following is excerpted from a recent article Klochek and Laxer wrote for rabble.ca, the full text of which is available <a href="http://rabble.ca/news/2011/01/seeking-democratic-socialist-canadian-political-life">here</a>.</b></i><br />
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Over the last 40 years, the ideology of neo-liberalism has won every battle in its attempts to reshape our society... <br />
With the willing complicity of our self-proclaimed voices of the left, we have instituted a system of socialism and welfare for the rich. The effect of this political order is to prop up the failures of our societies' wealthiest while abandoning everyone else, including our societies' most vulnerable, by stealing tens of millions of their dollars to fund CEO slush funds and salaries.<br />
While workers were forced to make concessions and millions of them lost their jobs, CEO's salaries went nowhere but up, all subsidized by your tax dollars. Instead of using the power of government to declare war on poverty, we have declared war on the poor and the middle class.<br />
The issue is not that the NDP supported stimulus spending in order to save jobs. The issue is that in supporting these measures, they did so without actively calling for fundamental changes to the system that required bailouts in the first place. As a result, in the final analysis they basically called for the government to back up the tremendous social inequality that is represented by these same CEOs who forced this bailout and yet are now making over 150 times what the average worker does.<br />
...<br />
In the face of this system, the NDP, which once articulated a vision for an alternative economic order, now merely argues for changes that are cosmetic, not structural. Rather than help organize citizens at grassroots levels to fight this assault in their communities, they offer band-aid solutions while editing their language and image in the vain hope that they can marginally increase their seat total in an election which, even if they won, would do nothing to alter the political-economy of the country....<br />
The time has come to fight, not individual aspects of the state-capitalist system, but rather State Capitalism itself. The time has come to fight against the corporations that have moved our jobs to China, impoverishing workers there while destroying jobs at home. The time has come to fight against the system that has ensured that many of our fellow citizens work most of their lives in temporary labour without health insurance or retirement benefits. The time has come to stand up against the neo-feudalism that creates a society where individual debt is at an all time high while CEOs, "movie stars" and entertainers earn more in a day than most hard-working Canadians will in a year or even a decade, and where they get totally different treatment by the legal system. Rest assured, if the person who stole the $50 TV out of your house is caught they will likely go to jail as opposed to an investment banker who screwed people out of their entire livelihoods.<br />
The time has come to stand up against the daily violence of the system with its destruction of good jobs in Canada and its entrenchment of poverty in the third world, all designed to satisfy an unsustainable consumerism.<br />
...An organized grassroots movement can alter the political landscape more effectively than a political party that won an election on a platform patched together from focus groups and pollsters. Focusing on short-term electoral victory may bring more immediate gratification compared with the hard work of building a grassroots movement that will reawaken opposition to the existing socio-economic order. But where has this led us? The left has done focused on short-termism for 30 years and we have only lost.<br />
There is an alternative.<br />
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<div class="node-related-items"><div class="related-item related-item1"></div><div class="related-item related-item2"></div><div class="related-item related-item3"></div></div><h2 id="comments-title"><br />
</h2></div>PRAChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12798016485549515484noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-91012370219903801872011-04-09T10:10:00.000-07:002011-04-10T05:31:28.896-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="color: red; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;">Will voting bring real change? </span></div><br />
<i>The following article on the boycott was published by <a href="http://basicsnews.ca/?p=2948">Basics News</a>.</i><br />
<br />
By Louise Jones<br />
<br />
As the election nears, Canada’s three major parties all claim they’ll take action that will help workers and their families. But the track record of these parties tells a drastically different story.<br />
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<b>The Conservative Party</b><br />
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One of the first things the Harper minority government did when it came to power in 2006 was to withdraw billions of dollars from Aboriginal communities, even though the Kelowna agreement guaranteed these funds. His government also eliminated the Status of Women Canada, a federal agency focused on promoting women’s equality, illegally defunded KAIROS, a faith-based charity organization critical of Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza and spent more than one billion dollars to violently quash dissent in Toronto during the G20 protests. And that’s just to name a few of the current government’s memorable moments.<br />
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These symbolic manoeuvres fall in line with the larger conservative policy trend to divert taxpayers money away from social programs. This money is instead spent on security at home, to better protect the political and economic elite, and abroad, where a handful of corporations make a literal killing from imperialist occupations. The current conservative government allocates $30 billion for fighter jets and $13 billion for what mainstream media have termed “US-style mega prisons.”<br />
<br />
While it was a Liberal government that first sent troops to Afghanistan in 2001, the Conservatives extended the mission two times, most recently saying Canadian soldiers will remain in the country in a “training capacity” until 2014. Testimony from Afghani people and Wikileaks documents revealed that NATO forces fund warlords and even the Taliban themselves as they attempt to establish a west-friendly regime in a land rich with minerals.<br />
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<b>The Liberal Party</b><br />
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Historically, the Liberals have dominated parliamentary politics in Canada. The Liberal Party was in power for 17 of the last 30 years alone. During this time, the richest one per cent of Canadians nearly doubled their wealth, from 7.7 per cent in the late 1970s to 13.8 per cent today, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Meanwhile, according to the United Way of Greater Toronto, the number of those living in poverty in Toronto has doubled since 1990, to nearly 30% of all families.<br />
How did the Liberals facilitate this massive shift of wealth from the poor to the rich? Like the Conservatives, they cut taxes on corporations, privatized state assets and axed social spending. Paul Martin slashed corporate tax rates from 28 per cent to 21 per cent when he was in government and as leader of the party in the 1990s, Jean Chrétien severely restricted access to unemployment insurance and privatized CN Rail and Petro Canada.<br />
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<a href="http://basicsnews.ca/?attachment_id=2984" rel="attachment wp-att-2984"><img alt="" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2984" height="224" src="http://basicsnews.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/partyleaders-300x224.jpg" title="partyleaders" width="300" /></a><br />
<br />
The Liberals, as with the NDP, portray themselves more progressively in opposition than when they act in power. For example, Michael Ignatieff’s announcement of a $500 million childcare plan is a stripped down version of unfulfilled pledges for national childcare programs that Liberal leaders have made since the 1980s. (On the childcare note, despite repeated calls from women’s and anti-racist organizations, neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives have bothered to address the abysmally low pay, exhausting hours and violence faced by the overwhelmingly Filipino women in the federal Live-In Caregiver (LCP) program.)<br />
<br />
<b>New Democratic Party</b><br />
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The NDP has never won at a federal level but the party has won many provincial elections across Canada. Although the party tends to oppose corporate tax cuts during campaign time, NDP leaders have actually given corporations tax breaks at the provincial level. In the last decade, NDPer Lorne Calvert reduced the corporate income tax rate from 17 per cent to 12 per cent in Saskatchewan and Gary Doer, the former NDP premier of Manitoba, cut the rate by nearly 30 per cent to “provide business with a competitive environment,” as he put it.<br />
Despite being the party of choice for major unions like the Canadian Auto Workers, the NDP does not treat the working class radically different than other parties. When Chrétien cut 45,000 public sector jobs, current NDP leader in Ontario Andrea Horwath responded by saying, “everyone knows that times are tough…[public sector workers] have to do their part as well.” Bob Rae, the NDP premier of Ontario from 1990 to 1995, imposed a wage freeze on public sector unions. Michael Harcourt, who ran the BC government in the 1990s, cut off welfare to some of the province’s most impoverished, referring to them as “deadbeats and varmints.” Although the NDP has introduced some legislation that aims to cushion the blow of capitalist exploitation, the response of the NDP to the pressures to promote economic growth is to fall in line with the other two parties, by cutting corporate taxes and social spending.<br />
<br />
From a foreign policy standpoint, the NDP is now critical of the war in Afghanistan but the party didn’t raise any objections until 2006, when the occupation was more than four years old. In Nova Scotia, the provincial NDP government has partnered with Lockheed Martin in energy development and frequently praises the company for employing Atlantic Canadians in producing military technology. Lockheed Martin is one of the biggest military contractors in Afghanistan and the Palestinian occupied territories. Like the other two parties, the NDP responds to pro-Israeli lobbyists in Canada. NDP MP Svend Robinson was stripped of his Middle East portfolio when he accused Israel of war crimes and many NDP condemned the use of the term “apartheid” to describe the gross injustice Palestinians face. Most recently, on March 20, 2011, the NDP lined up with the other parties in supporting the imperialist military aggression against Libya.<br />
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<b>Vote with your feet?</b><br />
<br />
None of the parliamentary parties in Canada truly represent the people as they all prioritize the needs of investors and so-called “security” over the needs of the people both in Canada and abroad. In a true democracy, we should be able to actually influence the economic, environmental and education policies that affect our everyday lives. Instead, we’re given the option to vote for one of a handful of pro-capitalist parties every four years.<br />
<br />
For this reason, a coalition of anti-capitalist groups has launched a boycott campaign to draw attention to the lack of real democracy in Canada and inspire a conversation about how we can fight for a truly egalitarian and democratic society. After 150 years of this so-called democratic system, the boycott campaign is calling on Canadians to organize for real people’s power.</div>JMPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13384595330293618571noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-61756583911308795292011-04-02T08:49:00.000-07:002011-04-02T08:49:38.849-07:00Why I Don't Endorse Voting in the May 2nd Elections [English]<b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">By</span> </b><small style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Rowland Túpac Keshena</strong></small><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><i> </i><br />
<br />
<i>This was <a href="http://bermudaradical.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/why-i-dont-endorse-voting-in-the-may-2nd-election/">originally posted</a> on the excellent blog <a href="http://bermudaradical.wordpress.com/">Speed of Dreams</a>.</i><br />
<br />
<blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><em>If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal – Emma Goldman</em></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">With the announcement of the dissolving of the current Harper settler government in Ottawa and the scheduling of yet another election (the 3rd in my 5 1/2 years of being in Canada) for May 2nd, the topic has come up a lot in my circle of friends and other contacts of who one should vote for, or shouldn’t vote for, and why. Indeed, this discussion started to pop up before the official announcement of the election, as it was pretty clear that the government was going to fall. So I’ve had quite a bit of time to put some thought into my answer to this now very common question.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">So what do I think? Well, as the title of this post would I hope imply, I don’t endorse voting in the federal election, or actually provincial elections either when those roll around. None of the major federal parties (Green, Conservative, NDP & Liberal) reflect my views on things. This of course should be obvious. I consider myself a revolutionary communist, I don’t really try and conceal that, and of course none of the major parties, even the most left elements of the NDP, espouse politics even remotely close to that. But then again, I don’t endorse voting for the Communist Party of Canada (original flavour or Marxist-Leninist), or the so-called revolutionary elements within the NDP either. So obviously my objections to the elections run a little deeper than the fact that there are no communists on the ballot.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The quote from Emma Goldman that I started off with touches on the surface of what I actually believe. As she said, so aptly, if voting was going to change anything, they’d make it illegal. She means that voting ain’t gonna change shit! So why isn’t voting going to change anything? Sure it might bring about more or less superficial changes in society (welfare, queer rights etc.), but the fact is that the very basis of Canadian, and for that matter wider North American, society is what prevents, and always has, and always will prevent, “change” through the electoral process.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span id="more-11940"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At its core North America (the states popularly known as the United States, Canada and Quebéc) is a settler-colonial society. This means that the principal contradiction, the one that defines all class struggle in the society between the working class and the bourgeoisie, is between the colonizer and the colonized. Some leftists, especially those who advocate voting for parties like the NDP and even most that don’t, will not fully interrogate this, but it is the reality of the situation here.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">So what does this translate into in terms of electoral politics?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It means this: all political parties that run in elections, even the most left-wing of the social democratic formations, are parties of a settler-colonial government, vying on behalf of this or that element within the settler nation (or nations, in the case of Canada) labour aristocracy to be chief exploiter of the colonized peoples. These parties, again we include the most supposedly left-wing factions, will <em>NEVER</em> be interested in any kind of meaningful national self-determination for the colonized nations. This is not because they’re not smart, and don’t realize the nature of things, it is because of the very opposite in fact. They know the game. They know the score. They know that their very existence is rooted in the existence of the colonial state, and as such they have a vested national and class interest in the maintaining of the current colonial state of affairs.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Working with or within these formations of the colonizer labour aristocracy and complete and utter waste of time and energy for serious revolutionaries on this continent, and in this country. Again, as it bears repeating, even the most left-wing factions, both in and outside the social democratic NDP organizations, because they do not want to alienate the core of their labour aristocracy voting bloc, will never take anything resembling a strong anti-imperialist stance, on any issue, and definitely will never do anything approaching true internationalism with the anti-colonial struggles WITHIN North America, aside from perhaps every once in a while saying some harsher than usual words regarding the abuse of the “rights” of the colonized, which are of course “rights” understood in a Fanonian sense as something to be granted, and thus also taken away, by the colonial state.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">So that’s why I do not endorse voting for any of the parties in the May 2nd election. I hope you, whether you are Native or an ally, will give some thought to this if you choose to enter the voting booth come next month.</div>JMPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13384595330293618571noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-85972316127321213782011-03-29T08:39:00.000-07:002011-03-29T20:23:36.995-07:00Vote With Your Feet [English]<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;">(<i><a href="http://boycottelections2011.blogspot.com/2011/03/le-pouvoir-est-dans-la-rue-francais.html">Version Francais?</a></i>)</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
VOTE WITH YOUR FEET!</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">No Democracy Without People’s Power!<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 18pt;">LET’S BOYCOTT THE ELECTIONS!<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Canadian federal elections will take place May 2. As soon as the announcement came, each of the four big parties – Conservatives, Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois – began their campaign to “seduce” all the voters. We are proposing a radically different “electoral” campaign: we call on all those left out of the parliamentary charade, whether they be exploited workers and students, single mothers, migrants or indigenous peoples across Canada, to participate to the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">2011 Boycott Elections Campaign</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">This national boycott campaign, which we aim to spread across the country, is first and foremost a definitive vote of “non-confidence” to all those bourgeois parties who still want us to believe after 150 years of parliamentarianism, they represent the interests of the majority of the people in Canada. We want to break from the phony bourgeois democracy, which only allows the people a single vote every four years. This vote is in fact a wet blanket over people’s democracy. The ruling class is essentially saying: “Go and vote today, but shut your mouth for the next 4 years!” To this, we respond: Let’s boycott the elections and organize real people’s power for the years to come!<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">In the candidates’ speeches, we can already see the usual list of accusations and theatrical statements, all meant to distract from the emptiness of their proposals: “Harper’s a liar!” they say. “No, it’s Ignatieff!” “A vote for the NDP is useless!” And so on. In reality, all of these parties are very similar. They only differ in some tiny nuances. All of the parties prioritize the protection of capital and business over the needs of the exploited masses, including immigrants, the working poor, the unemployed, the young or single mothers. No matter which party has been in power, statistics show that the trend of growing inequality between the rich and poor has continued unabated. This is because all of the parties are first and foremost interested in propping up the capitalist system. They all want Canada to be an “attractive” place to do business, which means keeping wages of workers low, criminalizing the poor, quashing indigenous struggles and financing corporations that exploit people across the globe.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">These policies and the impoverishment they provoke are not new. Whether the parties lean slightly more to the left or to the right, all of their policies have the same effect of protecting the bourgeois and exploiting the masses. The NDP demonstrated this at the provincial level when in power in Ontario from 1990 to 1995 and in British Columbia from 1991 to 2001. The Parti Québécois, the Bloc Québécois’s provincial brother, did the same during its long reign in Québec. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">While each party may offer some nuances, all apply the same overall program of the wealthy, also known as the bourgeoisie. It is now for that program that they urge us to go and vote on May 2, 2011.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">This is NOT democracy!<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">The current “democratic” system in Canada is made for the bourgeoisie. Since 1867, the Canadian ruling class imposes a parliamentary system that monopolizes the entire political activity and reduces it to election campaigns every four years. This election process can hardly influence the laws, the social inequality and the economic decisions that are at the heart of the exercise of political power. On the contrary, the bourgeois elections give extraordinary power to a small class that allows it to act for itself, to influence and even impose policies that are in the best interests of the capitalists it represents. The practice of voting is meant to make the masses think they have influence when in fact the entire political and economic system has been set up to prevent the masses from being able to influence Canadian politics. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">The steady decline in the federal elections turnout (the lowest turnout in the history of elections in Canada was reached in the 2008 elections with 58.8%) surely indicates that a large portion of the masses have lost their faith in Canadian bourgeois parliament as well as in the different parties who have sat there for nearly 150 years. For most of the masses and the poorest among them, this disaffection reveals a real sentiment: elections will not change their lives. This lack of interest is also the result of the repeated lies, of broken promises, of abuses of power, of more and more corruption, of the unabashed wealth of fraudsters who remain unpunished and of privileges and preferential treatment for the bourgeois class and its political elite, while a significant portion of the population suffers from poverty. Even when they have access to a little more, the majority of people continue to struggle to pay for basic necessities of life including housing, food and clothing for their families at the same time as the wealthy minority live lives of grotesque, and environmentally damaging, excess.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">We call to transform this disaffection, from a “passive” boycott, to a dynamic and constructive one. We call to make it a movement that truly expresses the kind of democracy we want, a people’s democracy and most importantly, the kind of society we want, an egalitarian society free from all forms of oppression and from class exploitation.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">We want to:<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 18.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span>Expose the emptiness of the political bourgeois programs and oppose them with a program of people’s demands;<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 18.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span>Reveal how undemocratic bourgeois elections are and call for real political action, which is to defend, fight and organize for a people’s democracy and true people’s power. This active campaign will include public demonstrations and meetings, and the creation and distribution of newspapers, leaflets, and statements that will spread awareness about the boycott and start a conversation about how to create real equality and democracy.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Over the days and weeks to come, you are all invited to join as individuals or groups to participate in the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">2011 Elections Boycott Campaign</b>. You can do so by:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 18.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span>Circulating the official poster of the campaign, which is available in English and French;<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 18.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span>Joining campaign teams who will distribute information about the boycott in different cities across Canada, whether through statements, flyers or the biweekly and bilingual newspaper called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Partisan</i>, which will develop the perspectives and engage discussions about the type of society and democracy we want and will fight for! <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 18.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span>Participating in different public meetings and actions that will take place all along the electoral campaign; <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 18.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span>Contacting us at: info@boycott2011.ca<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Vote With Your Feet! <o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Let’s Participate in an Active Boycott!<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>JMPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13384595330293618571noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519065562113528803.post-20417147152642445042011-03-29T08:34:00.001-07:002011-04-04T12:07:15.948-07:00Le pouvoir est dans la rue! [Français]<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><a href="http://boycottelections2011.blogspot.com/2011/03/vote-with-your-feet-english.html">English Version?</a></span></i></div><span lang="FR-CA"> LE POUVOIR EST DANS LA RUE !</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR-CA">Pas de démocratie sans pouvoir populaire !<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="FR-CA" style="font-size:18pt;">BOYCOTTONS LES ÉLECTIONS !<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="FR-CA">Les élections fédérales auront lieu le 2 mai prochain au Canada. Dès leur annonce le 26 mars dernier, les quatre grands partis, conservateur, libéral, NPD et le Bloc québécois, ont chacun entamé leur campagne de « séduction » des électeurs et électrices pour conquérir leur vote. Eh bien, cette année, nous proposons à tous les laissés-pour-compte de partout au Canada, qu’ils soient jeunes, ouvriers et ouvrières exploitées, femmes ou familles monoparentales, immigrants ou sans-papiers, membres des nations autochtones de partout au pays, de participer à une campagne électorale radicalement différente : <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">la Campagne 2011 pour le boycott des élections. </b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="FR-CA">Cette campagne nationale de boycott, que nous souhaitons étendre à tout le pays, est avant tout une déclaration définitive de « non-confiance » adressée à tous ces partis bourgeois qui depuis 150 ans de parlementarisme, veulent encore nous faire croire qu’ils représentent les intérêts de la majorité de la population canadienne. C’est une déclaration de rupture avec la fausse démocratie « bourgeoise », qui réduit la démocratie à un simple vote à tous les quatre ans. Ce vote, qui dans les faits est un véritable éteignoir de la démocratie populaire, ne signifie qu’une chose pour la classe dirigeante au pouvoir : « allez voter aujourd’hui, mais fermez votre gueule pendant quatre ans ! » Nous disons plutôt : « boycottons les élections le 2 mai, mais préparons le pouvoir populaire pour les années à venir ! »</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="FR-CA">Déjà, les discours de campagne des Harper, Ignatieff, Duceppe et Layton comportent leur lot habituel d’accusations et de théâtre, pour mieux masquer le vide de leurs propositions : « Harper ment », « non, c’est Duceppe », « les partis d’opposition veulent une coalition », « un vote pour le Bloc est inutile », etc. C’est dans tout ce qui n’est pas dit qu’on voit que rien (ou si peu) ne distingue ces partis les uns des autres. Bien sûr, on s’arrange pour faire certaines nuances – marketing oblige ! Mais fondamentalement, sur l’ensemble des questions qui affectent les prolétaires, les couches immigrantes, les travailleurs et travailleuses pauvres, les jeunes sans-emplois, les mères monoparentales, tous ces partis font cause commune. Protéger d’abord le capital et ses entreprises, couper plus ou moins les programmes sociaux, appauvrir davantage ceux qui le sont déjà. Peu importe le parti au pouvoir, les chiffres démontrent que les inégalités économiques et sociales n’ont jamais cessé de croître. C’est dans la nature même des partis bourgeois, qui soutiennent tous le système capitaliste. Ils veulent tous un Canada attirant pour les capitalistes, et cela signifie des salaires plus bas, la criminalisation des pauvres, l’écrasement des luttes autochtones et des subventions aux compagnies qui exploitent les peuples ailleurs dans le monde.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="FR-CA">Ces politiques et l’appauvrissement qu’elles génèrent ne sont pas nouvelles. Les partis se disant plus à gauche, comme ceux de droite, les ont appliquées. Le NPD l’a prouvé à l’échelle provinciale lorsqu’il a été au pouvoir en Ontario de 1990 à 1995 et en Colombie-Britannique de 1991 à 2001. Le Parti québécois, équivalent provincial du Bloc, a fait de même pendant son long règne au Québec. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="FR-CA">Ils appliquent tous, avec quelques nuances mais sans véritables différences, le programme de la bourgeoisie canadienne. Et c’est pour ce programme anti-populaire qu’on nous suppliera d’aller voter d’ici au 2 mai.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="FR-CA">La démocratie, ce n’est pas ça !<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="FR-CA">La « démocratie » actuelle, c’est la démocratie pour la bourgeoisie. Depuis 1867, la classe dominante canadienne impose un système parlementaire qui lui permet de monopoliser l’activité politique réelle et le contrôle sur les organes de pouvoir de l’État, en réduisant cette activité à des élections à tous les quatre ans. Ces élections ne permettent aucunement d’influer sur les lois, les inégalités sociales et les décisions économiques qui sont au cœur de l’exercice du pouvoir politique. Au contraire, les élections bourgeoises donnent un pouvoir extraordinaire à une petite classe pour agir à sa guise, influencer et imposer les politiques qui servent au mieux les intérêts des capitalistes qu’elle représente. La pratique du vote vise à laisser croire aux masses qu’elles peuvent influencer le cours des choses alors qu’en fait, tout le système politique et économique est conçu pour les dépouiller de quelque capacité d’agir sur la vie politique canadienne.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="FR-CA">La baisse constante du taux de participation aux élections fédérales – avec le plus bas taux de toute l’histoire des élections au Canada atteint aux dernières élections de 2008 avec 58,8% – est un indicatif certain de la crise de confiance des masses canadiennes envers le Parlement bourgeois et les partis qui y siègent depuis près de 150 ans. Il y a dans cette désaffection d’une grande partie des masses et parmi elles des plus pauvres, le sentiment réel que les élections ne changeront rien à leur vie de misère. Mais ce désintérêt s’explique aussi par les mensonges répétitifs, les promesses jamais tenues, les abus de pouvoir, la corruption grimpante, la richesse éhontée ou les fraudes de certains qui demeurent impunies, les privilèges et traitements de faveur que se paie la classe bourgeoise et l’élite politique en son sein, alors qu’une partie importante de la population peine à joindre les deux bouts. Et quand celle-ci y arrive, elle continue à se battre pour payer ses biens de première nécessité, dont le loyer, la nourriture, les vêtements. Tout cela alors même qu’une riche minorité nage dans l’argent et se paie tous les excès et gaspillages, au mépris du bien commun.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="FR-CA">Cette désaffection, ce boycott « passif », nous appelons à le transformer en boycott vivant, dynamique et constructif. Nous appelons à en faire un mouvement qui exprimera véritablement la démocratie que nous voulons, une démocratie populaire et surtout, la société que nous voulons, une société égalitaire, sans oppression et sans classes.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="FR-CA">Nous voulons :<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 18.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span lang="FR-CA" style="font-family:Symbol;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="FR-CA">Dénoncer le vide des programmes politiques bourgeois et leur opposer un véritable programme de revendications populaires ;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 18.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span lang="FR-CA" style="font-family:Symbol;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="FR-CA">Démontrer le caractère antidémocratique des élections bourgeoises et leur opposer une action politique réelle, qui consiste à défendre un véritable projet et un pouvoir populaire authentique. Cette campagne active inclura des actions, des manifestations et des assemblées publiques, ainsi que la production et la diffusion de divers documents (journaux, tracts, déclarations) qui feront connaître le boycott et qui lanceront la discussion pour une démocratie et une égalité réelles.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="FR-CA">Au cours des jours et semaines à venir, vous êtes tous et toutes invité<span style="font-variant: small-caps;">e</span>s à vous joindre aux militantes et militants participant à la <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Campagne 2011 pour le boycott des élections</b>. Vous pourrez le faire :</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 18.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span lang="FR-CA" style="font-family:Symbol;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="FR-CA">En faisant circuler l’affiche officielle de la campagne, disponible en français et en anglais ;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 18.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span lang="FR-CA" style="font-family:Symbol;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="FR-CA">En vous joignant aux équipes de diffusion qui s’activeront dans plusieurs villes à travers le Canada à diffuser diverses déclarations, ainsi qu’un journal bimensuel et bilingue intitulé <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Partisan</i>, qui développera différents points de vue et engagera la discussion sur le type de société que nous souhaitons, mais aussi, le genre de démocratie que nous voulons !</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 18.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span lang="FR-CA" style="font-family:Symbol;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span lang="FR-CA">En participant à différentes actions, assemblées publiques et rencontres qui se tiendront tout au long de la campagne.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="FR-CA">Le pouvoir est dans la rue !<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="FR-CA">Participons activement au boycott des élections !<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>JMPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13384595330293618571noreply@blogger.com2