Elections, according to an old radical saying, are the lowest form of politics. Rather than promoting self-activity of oppressed peoples – such as demonstrations, rallies, strikes and sit-ins – elections discourage self-mobilization by instilling the idea that people are merely capable of marking an X on a ballot, while leaving the business of politics to professional elites. For this reason, radical socialists typically de-emphasize the importance of electoral politics.

It does not follow from this, however, that elections are without interest. Often, they tell us much about general moods within society. Recent elections in Spain, for instance, gave expression to widespread opposition to the war in Iraq. And the radical left can sometimes use the political interest generated by elections to launch significant public actions and campaigns, or to promote candidates who agitate for anti-capitalist politics (as has occurred in France in recent years).

What, then, can we learn from observing the federal election campaign in Canada? And what might it tell us about prospects for the left.

To begin, the election campaign is exposing the underlying weaknesses in the Liberal machine, which has dominated the federal political scene since 1993. While Prime Minister Paul Martin took that dominance for granted, it seems clear (in the early days of the campaign) that the Martin-led Liberals will lose many seats, and will perhaps be reduced to a minority government.

It is also clear that a key reason for Liberal decline is voter disaffection with the party’s continuing moves to the right. Paul Martin may be popular on Bay Street as the former finance minister who slashed billions from social programs, but he does not command the same support from the general public. Equally important, the hard shift to the right by the Liberal government in Ontario – which has eliminated free public healthcare by introducing health premiums – has produced widespread anti-Liberal sentiment. Contrary to their claims, then, the Liberals appear as anything but the guardians of public healthcare and voters, especially in their Ontario power base, appear poised to punish them for that.

While some former Liberal support is clearly flowing to the reborn Conservative Party, it is instructive that the party’s leader, Stephen Harper, has buried his hardcore right-wing views throughout the campaign, preferring to market himself as a warm and cuddly guy who believes in medicare and can be trusted with public money.

But for the left, it is the revival of the New Democratic Party (NDP) under Jack Layton that has commanded most attention. And this revival is a complex and contradictory process.

CAN’T GET EXCITED ABOUT THE NDP

On the one hand, the NDP is the traditional parliamentary party of the left. To be sure, it has long abandoned the promotion of socialism, and has settled into a sort of leftish-liberal reformism. In provinces where it has been in office, most notably Saskatchewan, the NDP has implemented major cuts to social programs. Yet, for all that, it remains, at least at the federal level, the party of most trade union activists, and of many thousands of people in anti-poverty and other social movements.

As a result, the rise in the electoral prospects of the NDP tends to induce a certain ambivalence among people on the socialist left. Since most of us have co-workers and fellow movement activists who are NDP members, and because the party takes the occasional swipe at the corporate elite and calls for raising taxes on the rich, we take some pleasure from the improvement in its fortunes. At the same time, many of us also recognize that the NDP’s rising prospects will do nothing to build socialist consciousness and activism. The NDP’s campaigns do not mention capitalism, nor do they talk about the sort of thoroughgoing social upheaval that would be necessary to overturn it. The party does not promote self-activity of the oppressed, and it is as guilty as any other of suggesting that the road to social improvement lies through parliament and the ballot box.

Nothing in the NDP’s 2004 campaign would change this assessment. For instance, Jack Layton’s campaign literature in his own riding (Toronto-Danforth) is remarkably tame. Layton’s pamphlet calls for investment “so that our cities work for people and businesses” – as if improving the investment climate for business should be a priority for a party of the left – and it makes vague reference to the need to “close the gap between rich and poor,” without even suggesting that socialists seek to eliminate class differences altogether. Perhaps most disconcerting, in a blatant concession to neoliberal jargon and policies, it promotes balancing the federal budget, citing this as an example of “Jack’s commitment to fiscal responsibility.”

STYLE, NOT SUBSTANCE

What Layton has done in reviving the federal NDP is all about style rather than substance. He has given the party a hipper, more urban, and more environmentally-friendly feel. He has cleverly managed to garner increased media attention for a party that had pretty much fallen off of public radar screens. What he has not done, however, is move the party to the left, or link it organically to social movement activists. At the end of the day, Layton has left us with pretty much the same uninspiring left-liberal or social democratic platform, but one that is more skillfully packaged and promoted. While many on the left will still vote NDP, we should harbour no illusions that this will advance the struggle for socialism.

So, where does all this leave the socialist left, especially once the campaign is over?

To begin with, it leaves us outside the NDP. If we are serious about the task of building anti-capitalist politics and organization, this can only mean developing groups and networks that are independent of the NDP. Anti-capitalist politics and activism have no place in the NDP: they are not practiced, promoted or even discussed by the party.

At the same time, the radical left also needs to take stock of where it is at. Our forces are so weak and scattered that it was not possible to even imagine a common campaign conducted in most major cities during the election – around, say, housing, North American missile defence or racism and immigration. Yet precisely such a campaign should be among the objectives of the socialist left today. Not only could it allow anti-capitalists to make contact with thousands of people; a joint campaign could also help foster collaboration and networking among socialists in different parts of the Canadian state, thereby laying the basis for a more unified and effective movement of the left.

REBUILDING THE LEFT

The Rebuilding the Left project of several years ago represented an attempt to move in that direction. From the beginning, it was plagued by internal differences and tensions that seemed manageable – even necessary and healthy to a diverse left – in the context of the new political radicalization that characterized the days of mass protests from Seattle to Quebec City. But once the political fallout and massive retreat of the left in North America took place after 9/11, political horizons contracted, those divisions became especially sharp and the project unsustainable. The second effort to launch a new project of the left, the New Politics Initiative, also came to naught in the end (as Nathan Rao argues elsewhere in this issue).