[The following is a statement on the July 8 Canadian elections by the League for Socialist Action/ Ligue Socialiste Ouvriere, Canadian section of the Fourth International. It is reprinted from an election supplement to the revolutionary-socialist fortnightly Labor Challenge.]
Soaring prices and lower real wages for working people, yet record profits for the giant corporations, housing that only the very rich can afford; almost 600,000 Canadians out of work; parliamentary strikebreaking of last summer's rail strike; refusal to grant job security to postal workers; failure to grant asylum to refugees from the Chilean terror; jailing of Dr. Henry Morgentaler, Canada's most prominent advocate of women's right to abortion.
These are among the key issues of this election campaign. They spell out the shameful record of Liberal party government in this country.
Yet there is growing indignation and opposition to these Injustices. Quebeclabor has formed a common front against inflation, demanding contract reopeners and escalator clauses. These demands have spread across Canada, sparking a series of sharp labor struggles in recent months. Prominent individuals and organizations, from churches to trade unions, are demanding that Canada open its doors to refugees from the brutal military junta in Chile. Broad support for women's liberation has developed among Canadian women, especially for repeal of the restrictive abortion law and in defense of Dr. Morgentaler.
But still, Prime Minister Trudeau has the gall to go before the Canadian people and ask for another term in office. With 836
unmatched cynicism, he says he can't do anything about inflation. His finance minister, John Turner, prediets more of the same.
The Tories offer nothing better. Conservative leader Robert Stanfield calls for "wage and price controls"- in reality a law to prevent working people from keeping up with the cost of living.
Both the Liberals and Conservatives represent big business. Except for a few slight differences in their election promises— which they don't intend to keep anyway — they are alike as two peas in a pod. Liberal or Tory governments mean more oppression and exploitation.
But while there are no fundamental differences between them, their existence as separate organizations does benefit big business. One of several purposes-and a particularly important one-is to create the illusion of a choice at election time. This is the reason why the big corporations contribute huge sums of money
It's time for change. Working people need to throw the big business parties out of office and form their own government, committed to policies that will fundamentally transform society.
For a Socialist Canada
Capitalism is everywhere in crisis. It cannot provide jobs for all or a decent standard of living for workers. Inflation is built into the system. The monopolists thrive on the superexploitation of the people of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. At home, they profit from the national oppression of the Quebecois and native people, and the oppression of women. They spend billions on the military, sending Canadian troops all over the world to protect the status quo, yet promote cutbacks of needed social services in Canada. The government offers gifts, loans, and tax write-offs for the corporations, yet can't find the money to build public housing.
The system itself is bankrupt. The needs of the masses can only be met through creating a planned economy, where ownership and control of the means of production are taken from the tiny minority of capitalists and placed in the hands of working people.
Revolutionary socialists advance a program of demands that meet the urgent needs of working people today and that point the way forward to a socialist transformation. Among the key demands in this election are the following:
• Fight inflation with escalator clauses in every union contract, based on the real cost of living determined by union pricewatch committees. A minimum wage based on union rates of pay. Cost-of-living escalators for all social security payments.
• Jobs for all through a shorter workweek. An immediate 32-hour workweek with no loss in takehome pay. Unemployment compensation at union rates of pay for the entire period a person is out of work.
® For a massive program of public housing, under tenants' control. Nationalize the land speculators and developers.
• Nationalize the oil industry, from oil well to gas pump, under workers' control.
• Nationalize the food monopolies, under workers' control.
• Nationalize the transport and communications industries, including the CPR and Bell Telephone, under workers' control.
• Stop the cutbacks in education and social-service spending. For student-faculty-staff control of the schools and universities.
• Defend the right of the people of Quebec to self-determination, including the right of independence.
• Support the rights of native people. Stop the James Bay hydro project and the Mackenzie Valley pipeline.
• Support women's liberation. Free, 24- hour child-care facilities controlled by those who use them. Equal pay for women and preferential hiring to eliminate inequalities. Repeal the anti-abortion law. Drop the charges against Dr. Morgentaler.
• Open Canada's doors to victims of repression in Latin America and elsewhere.
• A foreign policy that supports worldwide struggles for liberation and socialism. Immediate withdrawal from the aggressive nuclear alliances NATO and NORAD. No participation in so-called peacekeeping missions-forces that are designed to reinforce the status quo and crush liberation struggles. Withdraw Canadian forces now from the Mideast.
NDP to Power With Socialist Policies
The NDP [New Democratic party] represents a historic break from the domination of political life by the parties of big business. It is a labor party. The NDP is controlled and funded by the tradeunion movement, not by big business. It has the allegiance of those workers who see the need for independent working-class political action.
Thus, there is a class confrontation in this election, between the NDP and the big business parties. And, as in all class battles, revolutionary socialists cannot remain neutral. We call for an NDP government, committed to socialist policies. We demand that the labor movement get behind the NDP campaign. No scabbing at the ballot box — workers and oppressed people should support, campaign for, and vote for NDP candidates in this election.
But the NDP leadership's strategy and program are not anticapitalist.
David Lewis presents many effective exposes of big business rule, his "solutions" fall far short of what is needed. The NDP program on inflation, for example, fails to challenge the source of inflation, the system itself. The NDP leaders offer a prices review board when a fight for escalator clauses is called for. They call for an "excess profits tax" when only nationalization and a planned economy can solve the problem.
The NDP stands for piecemeal reform, instead of real solutions in the interests of working people. Its aim is to make capitalism work, rather than to create a socialist society. While some useful reforms may be won under NDP governments, these are not secure as long as capitalism remains. The brutal coup in Chile shows both the instability of reforms and the inability of reformism to defend the gains of working people.
The NDP Record
The NDP holds power in three provinces, yet provincial NDP governments pass laws that restrict the rights of the labor movement. They fail even to implement policy adopted at NDP conventions, such as child care, abortion facilities, and support for native rights. They have failed to challenge the rights of big business. Instead, they obey the dictates of big business, and administer the capitalist state on behalf of the bosses.
In the federal parliament, the NDP caucus kept the Liberals in office for a year and a half. They supported increases in the price of oil; they called on railway workers to obey the government's strike breaking law; they voted for legislation to maintain the army and police forces. They subordinated the independence of labor to "making parliament work" — while even Lewis admits that big business, not parliament, rules Canada.
Their record in parliament shows that the NDP leadership is not serious about fighting for power - that they accept their role as a junior partner to one of the capitalist parties.
The NDP's undemocratic structure re flects the conservatism of the labor bureaucracy, not the real needs of working people. The bureaucrats, who seek to conciliate and mediate the class struggle, control the NDP.
These bureaucrats fail to make the NDP an effective vehicle for working-class action. They have even failed to win most union members-let alone unorganized workers-to support of the NDP. In the past two years, the number of union locals affiliated to the NDP has dropped from 809 to 743. There are far too many workers who have not yet come to the conclusion that they need their own party. Too many workers vote for the big business parties.
This situation is in large measure attributable to the reformist NDP and tradeunion leadership. Labor officials seil out strikes and compromise with the bosses at every opportunity. The NDP leadership sacrificed the principle of independent labor political action by entering the alliance with the Liberals in the last parliament. This leadership has made the NDP little more than an electoral machine for handpicked candidates in provincial and federal elections. They fail to challenge the Liberals and Tories' stranglehold on municipal politics.
No wonder that many workers are cynical and see the NDP as little different from the Liberals and Tories!
Support the NDP
However, despite its bankrupt program and leadership, the NDP is the only party that offers working people a class choice in most constituencies. It is the mass political party of the English-Canadian labor movement. It is the only force in the working-class movement that can challenge the big-business parties for governmental office. That's why big business and its media are almost unanimous in their opposition to the NDP in this election. They prefer to rule through their own political parties.
We of the League for Socialist Action/ Ligue Socialiste Ouvriere, call for an NDP government with socialist policies. In supporting the NDP in this election, we do not give any support to its bureaucratic leaders, nor do we endorse their program. We call on rank-and-file trade unionists and NDP supporters to get into the NDP campaign, to help elect NDP candidates, and to fight for socialist policies against the reformist leadership.
And as revolutionary socialists, we aim to intervene in this election campaign to press forward the real issues and the socialist alternative for working people.