A Renewed Insurgent Left

by Alan Sears


A new left is emerging in the movements for global justice and against poverty. This new left represents a departure for progressive mobilizing at the level of tactics, organization, and politics. The tactical tool kit of this new left emphasizes effective mobilizations that aim to accomplish something, as opposed to simply symbolic protests. The organization methods of this new left reflect a well-grounded suspicion of entrenched institutions, and an anarchist democratic and anti-hierarchical commitment. Finally, this new left is taking on a broadly anti-capitalist character that ties specific issues back to their roots in the broader capitalist system.

This new left is on the threshold of new possibilities, yet it also faces real challenges. These challenges are posed particularly clearly since the September 11 terrorist attacks. We now find ourselves in the midst of a developing "war on terrorism" that in the short term has created a sharp political swing to the right. The popularity of US president Bush has shot from 50% to over 80%. Even the modest concerns about militarization expressed by NDP leader Alexa McDonough are treated as if they are beyond the pale of useful political debate. Racial profiling has become a completely legitimated central feature of public policy, even if politicians try to cover their tracks with suggestions that people not discriminate.

This political swing is not surprising, given the horror of the human tragedy on September 11 and the high-intensity boosterism beaming at us from all sides. The left can neither ignore it (proceeding as if nothing has changed) nor surrender to it (giving up our struggles). In fact, this situation makes the continued development of the emerging new left that much more urgent as we mobilize against the war and racism. This "war on terrorism" will combine a horrifying assertion of imperialist power globally with an intensification of the everyday racism of Canadian society and a serious crackdown on dissent.

The Ontario Common Front campaign of economic disruption is an important effort to generalize the insurgent energies of the movements for global justice and against poverty. This campaign is politically of the utmost importance given its potential to convince people that it is possible to take on the Harris government. Further, this campaign reminds us that the goal of socialism from below is broad-based, democratic insurgency, a situation where the working class (understood broadly to include both employed and not employed, women and men, unionized and non-unionized, people of colour and whites, queers and straights, without regard to national boundaries) mobilizes, using our collective power to confront the power of established authorities.

Of course, broad-based democratic insurgency cannot just be summoned up by the use of the right slogan. Nor can it simply be brought into being by a union, movement, or party leader from above. It is the result of a complex process in which activist successes (often depending on the audacity of relatively isolated militancy) draw broader layers of people into mobilization and therefore create space for ideas that challenge the dominant assumptions. In this process, thousands and then multiple thousands of people must individually and collectively recognize that their own actions matter and their own ideas count. To be successful at such mobilization requires that we challenge the divisions that mean that some members of the working class accept the disadvantage of others (women, people of colour, queers, people living with disabilities, people not employed, the young and the elderly).

Workers won basic union rights in Canada through this kind of broad-based democratic insurgency and economic disruption. In November 1945, for example, a picket line outside the Ford power plant in Windsor was supplemented by a car blockade that included union members' cars and others that were commandeered. Outside police forces had been brought in to back up the company's effort to bust through the picket lines and get the power plant running to protect their investment as cold weather approached. The provocation of outside police forces coming in was one of the factors that got other workers to down tools in solidarity strikes and bolster the picket lines. The blockade and mass pickets were absolutely essential elements of this crucial strike that won key union rights for Ford workers.

The challenge we face today is how to get to that level of mobilization. At the present time, there is an audacious and growing layer of militant activists who have shown that they are willing to confront the police and the established authorities. At the same time, most of the labour movement and other social movements are still in retreat mode. This is a time when most workers and movement activists do not feel that their own activity matters, that they can make a difference through mobilizing. When people do not feel effective, they are more likely to be resigned to the dominant ideas, to concede to employer demands in the workplace, and be swept up in right-wing opinions.

The challenge of rallying broad-based democratic insurgency is therefore a complex political task that requires that one eye focus on the militant activists who are fighting now and the other on the broader layers of workers and oppressed people who must be drawn into the fight. It is difficult to get both eyes working together when they are focusing on two places that seem so far apart. It is a mistake to write off the Ontario Days of Action that mobilized hundreds of thousands, even if they were built from above, far too limited, and did not contribute sufficiently to a new sense of collective power. It is also a mistake to write off the audacious and militant activism that is tearing through the fog of passivity that has settled in through this long period of retreat.

For example, from the perspective of many of the best militant activists of the emerging new left, the New Politics Initiative (NPI) effort to radicalize the NDP is bound to seem insipid and useless. They know through their own experience of activism that it is effective mobilization that changes things and not parliamentary electoralism. Yet a revitalized mass political pole on the left, genuinely committed to extra-parliamentary mobilization and challenging the neo-liberal agenda would provide a crucial link to large numbers of workers and activists who feel that there is something wrong with the direction of politics but sense they can do little about it.

The brilliant campaign by left activists in CUPE, and particularly members of local 3903, to bring their provincial union on-side in the Ontario Common Front campaign is an important example of the kind of building required to make economic disruption a reality. It combines a mobilization of the most militant with effective outreach to less militant sisters and brothers, including a complex relationship with the union leadership that is crucial to connecting with broader forces inside the union.

The coming movement against racism and war will need to build on the tactical and political innovations of the emerging new left to develop campaigns that can begin to draw in the broader forces that are currently in retreat mode. Socialist organizing can contribute to this by providing a crucial site for people grounded in different struggles with somewhat different political gut instincts to come together to work out common strategies and to develop political clarity on key issues through discussion and debate.