Faced with the rise of neoliberal parties: Building a common political and social front
By Bernard Rioux
Québec’s popular and working classes have faced several defeats throughout the past few years.
The Canadian capitalist class, helped by federalist and nationalist politicians in Québec, has succeeded in imposing free trade agreements and increasingly aligning Canadian politics with those of the US government. The Conservative Party’s victory has allowed the latter to raise military expenditures, to engage Canada in imperialist adventures such as the one in Afghanistan, to reduce environmental policies to close to nothing by withdrawing support for the Kyoto Accord, and to launch an attack on women’s organization.
In Québec, Charest’s Liberal government has opened breaches in trade union rights by adopting laws that put new obstacles in the way of unionization attempts; it has imposed working conditions that intensify work in the public sector; it has encouraged privatization and public-private partnerships in the education and health sectors; it keeps trying to develop the energy sector in a polluting way while hiding its real intentions behind false pretences.
More dramatic even, the manufacturing sector is paying the price of a savage and unbridled globalization process. Entire segments of the production apparatus that workers have put into place are being destroyed, while workers are forced into unemployment. Trade unions are weakened while the bosses try to impose their agenda by any means; it is now frequent to see big corporate bosses demanding wage cuts and the deterioration of health and safety conditions at work.
Despite numerous mobilizations and important mass actions organized against policies put in place by the Charest government, the trade union movement has not used strategies that could have forced the government to back off and business to stop demanding cutbacks.
Strategic breakdown for the union movement
The trade union movement is experiencing a strategic breakdown: its organic division between a great number of competing organizations makes it difficult for the latter to build their unity through action. Furthermore, the trade union movement has no relay on the political terrain and has been living, for decades now, in a state of dependence towards the Parti Québécois, while the PQ has evolved towards increasingly clear neoliberal positions. With the PQ’s crippling drift towards the right, it is now more than ever time to put an end to this dependence.
This internal division and the absence of a political party capable of clearly and autonomously expressing workers’ interests leads to the trade union movement’s incapacity to really take on the demands of the unorganized sectors of the population. Moreover, the latter can witness the weakening of the trade union movement as well as the poor results obtained by its collective action. This is why the union movement does not appear as an attractive reference anymore for other layers of working people, including the middle class. This situation has opened a considerable terrain for a neoliberal politician like Mario Dumont of the Action Democratique party [now the official opposition in Québec’s National Assembly – NS] who, assisted by the capitalist mass media, has offered demagogic solutions to the problems experienced by the unorganized sectors of the population.
The reconfiguration of class relations
The redefinition of the party structure in Québec hence mirrors a political reconfiguration of class relations, including with the Canadian capitalist class. This process is far from complete, and its evolution will largely depend on the possibility for Québec Solidaire’s political left [Québec Solidaire is the left-wing party formed in February 2006; see coverage in issues 56 and 59 of New Socialist – NS] to engage in a vast debate with social movements: this debate must address the pertinence of building a large militant party, present not only on the electoral terrain but also on that of social struggles of all scales, in order to oppose a common social and political front to the pernicious effects of the globalization process within the territory of Québec.
To speak of the relationships between the political left, social movements and the workers’ movement, to determine what part each must play, to underline the connections they must develop and maintain: these are the debates we must engage in now. Social movements (the women’s movement, the environmental movement, the student movement, the anti-war movement, the global justice movement, etc.) and the trade union movement are facing a new phase of the neoliberal offensive. It is therefore urgent for these movements to go beyond fragmented and immediate struggles and to define more clearly than ever their transition to political action – where the respect of every movement’s autonomy, democracy from below, and the rejection of hierarchical principles will serve as foundations for a new politics.
Québec Solidaire’s electoral campaign has allowed it to use many electoral tribunes to present progressive options and alternatives to the politics of business, the dominant class and the governments that serve them. We can only take our hats off to this constructive campaign, which has not finished producing significant effects on the Left in Québec.
A large convention?
But the trade union, feminist, youth and popular movements are already organized on a massive scale in Québec: most of these structures have existed for a long time and are recognized as legitimate organizations by non-dominant social sectors. The construction of an alternative political party therefore must acknowledge such a situation and facilitate the opening of a large debate involving all of these social forces. This is why we think Québec Solidaire must favour the convocation of a large convention of reflection and orientation, called on the initiative of trade union organisations and other representative social movements.
This convention should help us feel the pulse of the present situation, develop a relatively common understanding of it, and act as a political interlocutor in a society where the urgent task is to move beyond present divisions in order to group all progressives into a constant and irresistible force. A first moment in this collective reflection is right ahead: at the end of August (23rd-26th), the first Québec Social Forum will take place in Montreal. Organized by a large coalition of social movement organizations and activists and supported by Québec Solidaire, this event appears as the opportunity for the radical Left to open a large debate on the necessary politicization and unification of social movements from below.
Bernard Rioux is a member of Québec Solidaire and Gauche Socialiste. Translation by Gabrielle Gérin.
For coverage in French, see these websites:
www.lagauche.com
www.pressegauche.org
www.québecsolidaire.net
www.forumsocialquébecois.org
