Celebrating a landmark anniversary for radical politics in Canada

The Regina Manifesto turns 90

Just before COVID-19 plunged us into a global pandemic, or actually, just as it was plunging us into a global pandemic, the right-wing Fraser Institute was celebrating a 25th anniversary. It was the end of February 2020 and they coordinated a series of essays celebrating, reflecting on and analysing the most important budget of a generation: the 1995 Martin/Chrétien budget.

They would of course celebrate it — the budget pulled tens of billions of dollars out of the Canadian state and solidified neoliberalism as Canada’s economic order for years to come. While their celebration was muted by COVID-19, they were organized enough to be on top of this anniversary and use it to advance their right-wing, we hope the poors die economic policy.

The left is not so organized.

Ninety years ago, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, the closest thing Canada has ever had to a viable socialist party, released the Regina Manifesto. The document was radical. Today, it’s impossibly radical. It’s pie-in-the-sky, NDPers crying about never getting elected, divisive-ass radicalism that could, and should, guide our political priorities today.

And aside from one article in Spring Magazine, I haven’t seen many references to this important document.

Here’s the introduction:

WE AIM TO REPLACE the present capitalist system, with its inherent injustice and inhumanity, by a social order from which the domination and exploitation of one class by another will be eliminated, in which economic planning will supersede unregulated private enterprise and competition, and in which genuine democratic self-government, based upon economic equality will be possible.

The present order is marked by glaring inequalities of wealth and opportunity, by chaotic waste and instability; and in an age of plenty it condemns the great mass of the people to poverty and insecurity. Power has become more and more concentrated into the hands of a small irresponsible minority of financiers and industrialists and to their predatory interests the majority are habitually sacrificed.

When private profit is the main stimulus to economic effort, our society oscillates between periods of feverish prosperity in which the main benefits go to speculators and profiteers, and of catastrophic depression, in which the common man’s normal state of insecurity and hardship is accentuated.

We believe that these evils can be removed only in a planned and socialized economy in which our natural resources and principal means of production and distribution are owned, controlled and operated by the people.

It was the 1930s. Short paragraphs were out of style so I added them here (yes, this is supposed to be a block of text!).

In 90 years, Canada moved from Keynesianism-lite to full-blown neoliberalism and we find ourselves today far worse off as a result. In fact, with perhaps the exception of healthcare, we live in as much precarity as did the folks who drew up the manifesto; who called for a new day to dawn over this Dominion.

Many Canadians believe that the post-war period was Canada in its purest form and that since, we’ve drifted away. What is more likely the case as many socialist academics have argued is that the post-war period was an interregnum — a transitionary period — that created the conditions to give birth to our current hell. And here we languish, staring down climate disaster and death, explosive housing costs and inflation, wealth concentration and powerlessness. And we ask, we ask, we ask —

The big difference between now and 1933 is that the left back then was organized enough to build a credible, serious and powerful parliamentary force. Today, that feels impossible. We have no shortage of manifestos, ideas, calls to action and things to do. What we lack entirely is leadership, movements and structures to develop, elaborate and build power. We have no shortage of spirit, will or desire. We have an absolute shortage of vehicles.

Today, the strike by port workers in British Columbia was declared illegal. Announced by Seamus O’Regan, the federal labour board found that by not giving 72-hours notice to go back on strike (they were already on strike) the workers broke the law. O’Regan is calling on them to go back to work for 72 hours.

The workers have been on strike since July 1 and had just rejected a proposed contract saying that there were not enough guarantees that they would be adequately or fairly paid. For the federal labour board to expect them to return to work to then re-give notice to strike for 72 hours is silly, pro-employer politicking. But that doesn’t matter — O’Regan knows who butters his bread and no number of union convention appearances that he makes will change this.

The employer is an agency who represents some of the biggest companies in the world, with profits that collectively soar into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

O’Regan has also hinted at imposing back-to-work legislation which is how they brought the strike at the Port of Montreal to end a strike there in 2021. Any decision that forces workers back to work helps the employers amass even more money while port workers are legislated into earning less money. It’s straight-up class warfare.

The class warfare will continue. We know that. The 130 delegates at the CCF meeting knew that. It rolls on and is only stopped or slowed by the obstacles that we place in its way.

I don’t know who or when or how but this is exceedingly clear: we are fucked if we continue to do nothing or build nothing that both operates nationally and regionally. No one is coming to save us. If amid the crushing economic conditions of the 1930s, organizing that posed a serious threat to the establishment was possible, then it’s possible now. And so those questions — who? When? How? hang in the air as thick as wildfire smoke threatening to choke us to death if we don’t figure out the answers.

For a more detailed look at the Regina Manifesto and how its calls remain relevant today, check out what Mitchell Thompson wrote to celebrate its 85th Anniversary.