Solidarity and struggle against austerity
Statement by the Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada
On this May First, the international workers’ day, the Communist Party of Canada sends greetings to all working people in our common struggle for a socialist future and for an end to capitalist exploitation and oppression. May Day is an important occasion to celebrate our historic victories, such as the 80th anniversary of the On to Ottawa Trek, which began in the spring of 1935 in Vancouver; the 70th anniversary of the May 1945 triumph over Hitler fascism; and the 40th anniversary of the liberation of Vietnam from U.S. imperialism on April 30, 1975.
This year, a new solidarity is forming across Canada. It is built on the strong foundation of working class experience, adapted to the present conditions. It showed strongly in the 2012 Quebec student strike, the Occupy movement, Idle No More and environment struggles. Solidarity was the pivot point of victory in the highly visible strikes by post-graduate education workers at the University of Toronto and York University in Ontario. This new solidarity reaches outward to recruit allies beyond the old labour solidarity which created it, making the unity of organized labour, social justice movements and the public a key ingredient in the formula for success. Today’s solidarity reflects changes in the working class itself, which is largely young, educated, street wise and precariously employed, and increasingly female and based in racialized communities. Most importantly, the new solidarity is unity in motion.
This unity is expanding in the fightback movement in Quebec. Tens of thousands of workers and students have been in the streets to defeat the “lightspeed” austerity agenda of the Couillard Liberals, which includes trying to strip municipal workers of pensions, forcing wage freezes, and swinging a wrecking ball into the hard-won principle of universality of Quebec social programs like childcare. These cuts cannot be defeated without winning at the bargaining table, and the collective agreement is a significant weapon of the working class against austerity. The recent Quebec budget has further propelled all public sector unions in the 2015 “Front Commun” towards preparations for strike actions next fall.
Importantly, the leadership of the CSN, FTQ and other Quebec unions have called for solidarity with students as they stand up to police violence and legal repression by the government. The students are fighting not just against austerity in education. Reaching out beyond their campuses, they also oppose the destruction of the environment, and the sharpening attack on women and social equality. Differences over tactics in this struggle will be featured by the right-wing and the corporate media as weaknesses, but in fact these debates are an essential ingredient in the process of maturing resistance. Similarly, the emergence of the Common Front led by the Ontario Federation of Labour and last year’s powerful strike action by British Columbia teachers are welcome signs that the working class is on the move.
The relentless neoliberal attack on workers and trade unions by the Harper Tories and the provincial governments is changing labour and its allies. The “social-partnership” ideology that permeated labour leadership during the years of the “welfare state” is gasping for breath. Canadian capital has gone on the offensive to destroy the public services, social programs, wages and working conditions which gave it a façade of credibility to maintain hegemony. The trade unions so far have been unable to deflect these multiple attacks. Mass unemployment, extensive de-industrialization, privatization, and unprecedented expansion of precarious work have taken a toll at the bargaining table, forcing labour to devise a coordinated response to the new strategy of capital.
As a key part of its new strategy, the ruling class is arming itself with police state weapons. Bill C-51 is the blueprint for tactics to silence labour, First Nations, environmentalists, students, women, and opponents of Quebec’s austerity policies. But even though the labour response to C-51 was delayed by NDP wobbling, it finally joined with the groundswell of resistance which is far from exhausted.
Meanwhile, Stephen Harper’s policy of repression and punishment at home is increasingly combined with war and fascism overseas, including military backing for the far-right government of Ukraine which is attacking its own population, and the expansion of war in Iraq and Syria.
In this situation, the pragmatic opportunism of social democracy is the major stumbling block to unity and solidarity, both within the labour movement and with its allies. A good lessonis Greece, where Syriza, after first adopting a militant position, moved towards tepid acquiescence to capital and managing the economy for the Troika. Changing names and leaders to deliver the “same old” hat-in-hand subservience to capital does nothing to meet the needs of working people.
Here in Canada, the centrist drift of the NDP leadership and its abandonment of support for many of labour’s demands has given rise to growing disenchantment and fueled divisions within labour, making it difficult to attain unity in the face of government and corporate attacks. Although not always clearly expressed, the heart of these divisions revolves around whether we need to mobilize a militant extra-parliamentary struggle, or instead continue to ‘contract out’ labour’s political struggle exclusively to the parliamentary NDP. The necessity for independent militant struggle engages workers and their unions every day in a thousand ground-level skirmishes around the fundamental question of struggle or surrender. The need to respond to the capitalist offensive is here and now, and cannot wait for parliamentary solutions or the arrival of some dreamlike utopian capitalism based on “fairness”.
The mid-level leadership of labour, its heart and soul, is caught in a very large crunch. This helps explain why the candidacy and action program of Hassan Husseini for CLC president was widely welcomed by delegates at the last Congress, and helped set in motion the events which led to the defeat of Ken Georgetti, its former President. Although a very close race, the demand for action and struggle won out, and Hassan Yussuff is now at the helm of the CLC. This marked a significant shift and a victory for labour democracy, though the degree to which it will lead to an actual turn-around in the dynamism and militancy of labour’s largest body is still in question.
With a crucial federal election looming, the working class needs to mobilize to defeat the most aggressive and reactionary section of big capital – the Harper Tories – and to win better political terrain to resist the wider neoliberal agenda. Given the immensity of the attack, it is difficult to criticize strategies designed to prevent a Tory victory. Indeed the ground-
breaking campaign of the Ontario Federation of Labour and its social justice allies, under severe duress from the right wing in the trade unions, contributed significantly to a major defeat of the Hudak Tories. The commendable and productive unity forged by labour and its social justice allies is developing and should continue.
But this unity should not be side-tracked by debates over unqualified NDP support vs. strategic voting, which as it exists today merely extends support from one party to two or more. These two narrow options are merely the extension of a dilemma, wherein support at the ballot box becomes unqualified ideological support. Both options fail to put programmatic demands on any party, and instead assume that labour support will be rewarded by those elected. This debate also identifies parliament – the fortress of capital – as the main area of political struggle for the working class, rather than the crucial extra-parliamentary arena of our workplaces and communities. Even so, elections are a very important part of the class struggle, the opportunity to advance progressive programs, tactics and strategies. The Communist Party and its candidates across the country will campaign hard to defeat the Harper Tories, and to win support for policies to put people’s needs ahead of corporate greed.
Today and beyond the federal election, the working class needs a coordinated ground level strategy and program led by labour. To mobilize and restructure the fightback towards this end will require a resurgence of the left, and a left program. The members of the Communist Party, as we have done historically, will continue to fight for class struggle trade unionism, and for unity in all its expressions, national, class and gender.
On May Day 2015, we call for all-out solidarity to defeat Bill C-51, to block the right wing agenda of austerity, war and fascism, and to drive the Ha