Choose Your Tactics Well

 

"Electoral politics must be viewed as a tactic, a means to an end, not and end in and of itself."

--- "Support the People of Gaza: An Analysis by Solidarity Halifax"

 

Blowing stuff up is a tactic—one that Nelson Mandela favored (it's what got him imprisoned on Robben Island). Turning yourself into a human torch is a tactic—it's what kick-started the Arab Spring. As suggested by sex activist Annie Sprinkle, giving complimentary blow jobs to politicians, whose projection onto society of their own libidinal frustration and repression causes them to act repressively, is a tactic. Praying; sending out positive karmic energy; offering libations or burnt offerings to the gods—all these are tactics.

I could go on (and on) but I trust I've made my point. To describe a particular action as a tactic, and leave it at that, tells us precisely nothing. At a minimum what we need to know is: (a) if there is a reasonable expectation that it will be effective at all; (b) whether it is likely to be more or less effective than alternate methods; (c) how much of an investment of time, energy and other resources it requires compared to other options; (d) if it is ethical.

Since last fall I have been at pains to demonstrate that—not in all places or at all times, but in the current conjuncture—electoral politics is an extremely poor choice of tactics for the Canadian left on all of the above counts. In making my case I have offered logical analysis, empirical evidence and moral intuition.

By contrast, the framers of Solidarity Halifax's statement, referenced by Evan Coole, on the 2013 provincial election, seem to believe that merely stating their opinion that "elections are important" makes it so. They assert that "[t]he outcomes of elections have real consequences in people’s lives," but the only justification given for this contention is the further assertion that organizing for progressive change is facilitated by having the NDP in power, as opposed to the Liberals or Conservatives. We are given no basis for this claim, as if it were simply self-evident, yet the most cursory glance at recent history throws it in doubt. For example, a vibrant anti-war movement grew up in the United States during the George Bush, Jr., presidency—and promptly melted away on the election of Barack Obama. In the United Kingdom, the energies that had been building against Thatcherism collapsed with the election of Tony Blair's New Labour. The MST in Brazil was very successful in its land reclamations under the military dictatorship but when the Workers' Party came to power it was largely demobilized.

The Solidarity Halifax statement is not only short of arguments for the importance of electoralism; it is also guilty of special pleading. The document makes it clear that it is not elections as such that matter—rather, it is electing the NDP. Here, too, the reasoning is presumptive. We are told that while the Liberals and Conservatives "only serve the interests of the ruling class," the NDP are different "due to the make up of its membership and candidates, due to its relationships with labour and social movements, and due to its founding mandate."

Hm, all of those attributes apply (actually much more strongly) to the African National Congress, to take one example relevant to Evan Coole's article. That hasn't stopped the ANC from ruling as brutal neoliberals (with the full support, what's more, of the South African Communist Party) so that the economic and social conditions for most black South Africans today are worse than they were under apartheid.

The special pleading shows itself in Evan Coole's differential treatment of the NDP's stance on Gaza. He roundly condemns Conservative and Liberal support for Israel. Meanwhile, he notes that while the response from the New Democrats has been inadequate and disappointing, they "have called for a ceasefire and expressed concern at Palestinian casualties."

It is interesting to note that, the day before Evan Coole's essay appeared on the Media Co-op site, another Solidarity Halifax member had posted on the same subject, but with a rather different perspective. Judy Haiven ends her piece "30 minutes every day at noon" with paired quotes from Stephen Harper and Thomas Mulcair on the assault on Gaza. As Judy Haiven observes: "It’s astounding how similar the Tory and NDP position are."

For far too long right-thinking leftists have felt that they could simply assert the importance of participating in elections without making any serious attempt to justify their position. They have been able to get away with this because, from our earliest years, all people who grow up in European or settler societies are incessantly bombarded with the message that it is our right and our duty to vote. Proponents of electoralism don't need to offer any arguments for their position because they know that the vast majority of Canadians—including most left-wing Canadians—will simply accept it as common sense, because that's what mainstream society has drilled into our heads. Well, mainstream society also accepts as common sense the idea that humanity is incapable of any higher form of social organization than capitalism. Does that make it so?

The conventional arguments in favor of electoralism are classically liberal. They take it for granted that nothing could be fairer than one person/one vote. What makes Solidarity Halifax's position on electoral politics so peculiar is that the organization grounds much of it in socialist analysis. That is to say, unlike liberals, Solidarity Halifax draws attention to context, particularly the existence of antagonistic social classes which (by definition) have unequal access to resources—including, notably, political power. Commendably, this leads the group to state, in Evan Coole's words, that: "electoral politics can never bring about deep change in society...[c]hange must come from below."

Yet, Solidarity Halifax somehow seems to lose its bearings when it comes to the NDP. Abandoning the laudably socialist—which is to say, materialist—approach that allowed the group to recognize the fundamental dynamics of social change, Solidarity Halifax suddenly switches over to an idealist conception in which the NDP will do what the Left wants because of the party's founding mandate and because it fields many candidates from organized labour and the social movements.

Have we learned nothing from Marx? At the level of analysis that is meaningful for social change, what counts is not the ideas that people claim to subscribe to but what they perceive to be in their material interest.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that cupidity is the sole or even most important motivator of people's actions. Unlike neoclassical economists, I don't think that even politicians are all "rational optimizers" out to maximize their financial returns with no regard to other considerations.

Here, Marx's idea of socially conditioned needs is of crucial importance. Marx observed that merely to live all humans must have access to certain necessities such as oxygen, water and food, but that people have a much broader range of needs that will vary depending on such factors as the distribution of wealth and the level of technological progress in a given society; and furthermore that the latter constitute requirements scarcely less real than the former.

Doubtless there are as many reasons why people go into politics as there are for why they enter any other occupation. Some, no doubt, will be motivated by the pay, the prestige or other perquisites. Some will be attracted to the job as an invigorating challenge. Some will be drawn to it as a medium for public service.

It is probably not outrageous to suppose that the NDP will attract more candidates of the third type than will the Conservatives or Liberals—though the proportion even of the NDP caucus that fits this description is another matter (something tells me that Thomas Mulcair, for one, does not belong in this category). Be that as it may, the public-spirited NDP politicians know as well as their less saintly colleagues that if they want to be effective in their jobs their first priority is to keep them. In other words, the policies they advocate must be acceptable both to the electorate and to officers of their own party—such as the members of their constituency association and, of course, the leader—who will determine whether they are nominated as candidates.

What determines the limits of the acceptable? Well, the unrelenting barrage of pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist propaganda that passes for mainstream news, for one. What capitalists find to their liking and are therefore willing to fund through political donations, for another. What does not come into the picture is whether an individual politician is a nice person with a background in social movements or a mean old devil who went into politics after retiring from the RCMP. Both will vote as their party leader dictates and the party leaders themselves will decide on the basis of what will please Bay Street, always, and Main Street, as necessary.

Here we see how Solidarity Halifax's position is not only illogical, but plain counter-productive. In its statement on the 2013 provincial election, the group notes that it is only "with pressure" that the NDP "can be better swayed [than the Conservatives or Liberals] toward progressive decisions." How, pray tell, does Solidarity Halifax expect to exert effective pressure if it has committed itself in advance to supporting the NDP? "If you don't do what we want we'll still work to get you elected next time—but we won't do it with smies on our faces!" Yep, sounds like a scary threat to me. I'm sure Thomas Mulcair is quaking in his boots.

Actually, what it puts me in mind of is the Pentagon procurement process: only accept one bid on a given contract but sternly warn the chosen firm that there will be repercussions if they don't hold up their end. The company then proceeds to deliver shoddy goods well after the scheduled date and with a 100% mark-up. How does the Pentagon respond? By sending the firm a strongly-worded memo expressing its displeasure—along with an invitation to submit a no-competition bid on a different contract.

As I have argued at length elsewhere, whatever minimal good can be obtained from participating in elections is decisively outweighed by the negatives. These include the displacement of valuable resources into feckless activity, the moral and intellectual degradation that its attendant Faustian bargains visit on activists and the disaffection from socialist values that it instils in the wider public. In short, I see it as deeply objectionable from an ethical standpoint as well as worse than useless in practical terms, since it is not just that socialists could better employ their energies on other projects but that electing social democrats inevitably results in public cynicism about the possibility of progressive change.

Solidarity Halifax espouses electoralism but has provided no real rationale for this position. To the extent that the organization does offer a discussion of electoral politics it seems completely at variance with the group's allegiance to the NDP.

Oddly enough, I agree with much of Solidarity Halifax's statement on the 2013 provincial election. This makes it all the more disappointing that I find the conclusions they draw to be utter non sequiturs.