In order for activists to properly assess the importance of the NDP under the leadership of Jack Layton, and what, if any, their orientation to it should be, it is necessary to first clarify the political context in which we’re currently operating and what demands arise from this.

The political situation in Canada, unlike in Europe and Latin America, is marked by the retreat of progressive movements. While concerns around such issues as global justice, war and militarization, economic restructuring, and poverty have not abated (consider, for one small example, the striking success of the film The Corporation), clearly the movements for these things have. People are still fighting, of course, but the scale and dynamism of these fights have dissipated sharply and socialist ideas remain largely disconnected from most working people.

Given this context, the goal for activists pursuing social change has first and foremost to be the re-building of movements on the ground. It’s only through struggle, where people directly challenge injustice in their workplaces or communities, that change, if even small, can be won and movements develop. Movements develop and peoples’ consciousness deepens as they organize directly against things like racist policing or job cuts, and as they experience the power of democratic mass mobilization with their co-workers.

While the point here is not necessarily to propose total abstention from traditional electoral politics, the central fact remains that the history of social change (for union rights, social housing, or a woman’s right to choose abortion, for example) and political radicalization (where people’s experiences in struggle lead them to question the very nature of the system in which we live and the best ways to change it) in Canada, as elsewhere, is the history of grass roots movements challenging structures of power directly from the bottom up. If anything, the space for progressive politics in legislatures is opened up by these struggles.

SAME OLD, SAME OLD?

So what does all this mean for movement activists’ relation to the NDP under Jack Layton? Well, for starters we need to be absolutely clear about Layton’s leadership and how it’s affected the NDP. Leaders of the New Politics Initiative (NPI), such as media commentator Judy Rebick and CAW economist Jim Stanford, have been singing Layton’s praises, arguing he’s fulfilling the NPI’s goal of building a more left wing, democratic and grass-roots driven party, and that this is reason to dissolve the NPI.

However, speaking at the recent NPI wrap up forum in Toronto, Layton made no mention of making the NDP an activist-oriented party where movement building is made central to the work of members. Membership appears to very much remain passive rather than active, centred around electioneering, as the party leadership has always wanted. Layton proudly boasted of the new parliamentary “advocacy” commitments around a given political issue that his caucus members must each now take up, and how this is enabling them to develop policy out of the experiences of, and in relationship with, social movements. But in the example he lauded – advocacy on sustainability – the only “movements” he mentioned consulting were Greenpeace and Canadian Auto Worker President Buzz Hargrove, who, Layton proudly announced, publicly endorsed the NDP’s position.

Layton’s failure to really begin to transform the NDP from a bureaucratically- controlled electoral party into a movement-driven one that is willing to challenge the desirability of a social system that puts corporate power and profits ahead of human need, really should not come as a surprise. Layton may be more dynamic than past leaders and thus generate some media buzz, but he never represented a threat to the party’s bureaucratic establishment. While his leadership campaign enjoyed the backing of the two most left-leaning MPs, Libby Davies and Svend Robinson, it also had the support of more right-leaning establishment figures like Wayne Samuelson (president of the Ontario Federation of Labour) and former party leader Ed Broadbent.

If anything, Layton’s leadership represents the NDP establishment’s successful absorption of the NPI challenge to its leadership. This is confirmed by Layton’s sad (and failed) attempt to court former Liberal Party cabinet ministers Sheila Copps and Lloyd Axworthy, both of whom participated in the most aggressively neoliberal federal government Canada has seen.