No Illusions
“If Voting Changed Anything, They’d Make It Illegal” – Emma Goldman
Let’s not fool ourselves. It never mattered who won this election. At the end of this months long electoral spectacle we were always going to come out with a government that supported the disaster that is international neoliberal capitalism. There was no alternative presented by any national party that would have ended this tyrannical economic policy. Instead, only slight differences in how the effects could be mitigated upon the population and the environment were presented – we were given no real choice at all.
Yet, as the Harper Government secured its long coveted majority, Canadian’s were told we were witnessing a major shift in our political landscape. And it’s true, we were. But it’s not the simple changing of the guard, or the switch of left leaning parties that the corporate media is peddling – it’s not even a massive blow to separatism. No, what Canadians are witnessing is a political shift in the way the constituency is dealing with a failed social contract and the increasing hardship Canadians are bearing for this failure. Up until now, the left had been willing to forgive, to buy into the illusion that somehow the morally liberal free market governance of the past would continue to allow for our prosperity; a prospect the political right had long ago given up on. But the continued corporate dominance over our government, our media, and our economic policy (to name but a few instances) has proven that illusion to be false, and we cannot forgive this anymore; for we are paying for it with our lives.
Prof. David Hulchanski, of the Center for Urban & Community Studies at the University of Toronto, presented three maps in his 2010 report The Three Cities Within Toronto: Income Polarization Among Toronto’s Neighborhoods, 1970-2005, which point to the growing gap between the have’s and the have-nots in contemporary Torontonian society.
In the first map from 1970, we see a Toronto mostly made up of middle-income neighborhoods, making up 66% of the city:
In the second map, from 2005, the size of this middle-income area decreased to just 29% of the city, while the lower-income bracket increased by 22% (defined as 20% below the average income), and the lowest-income bracket increased by 13% (40% below). At the same time, those making the very top income (40% above) increased there by 8%.
The maps don’t indicate a smaller middle class because it is calculated by mean average (in fact, regardless of income category income increased). But while the average income of the lowest income earner increased by 32%, the average income of the wealthiest increased by 90%. More worrisome is the the demographic movement from middle-income earners to lower-income earners. For anyone who moved down this ladder, they likely didn’t see much in the way of increased income at all. The poor might not be getting poorer (yet), but the rich are definitely getting richer, and less and less people are participating in this growing wealth.
But Hulchanski’s map only tells part of the story, because it’s only looking at our private incomes, and not our shared wealth. In her lecture given at 2010’s Walter Gordon Massey Symposium entitled Income Inequality and the Pursuit of Prosperity, economist Armine Yalnizyan, from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, writes:
This past decade saw the lion’s share of wage gains go to Canadians at the top, and the public policy priority of the decade was tax cuts, which also primarily accrued to people at the top. Instead of using a steady portion of a rapidly expanding economy to invest in the things that define the good life for a society, we shrank governments and, not surprisingly, we found ourselves having trouble finding the money to keep existing public assets in good repair, or even keeping the pools and rinks and libraries open for our kids to use.
This rush to privatization has been peddled as the best way to improve cost and efficiency, but the social cost is further inequality, as it eats into after-tax incomes, further burdening those that are already facing soaring food and energy prices. Yalnizyan says we have “privatized the very notion of prosperity. We consider vast excess at the top to be normal, and have grown accustomed to hearing that access to the basics – basics like housing, education, savings for retirement or a rainy day – is increasingly difficult to attain for many, and not just the poorest.” While the top income earners can absorb these costs rather easily, everyone else are made even poorer because they no longer have the benefit of these commons.
This growing segment of the developed world, including many Canadians, are now searching for a new deal because the liberal class’s acceptance of neoliberal capitalism has failed to keep their side of the bargain. It is the simplest explanation for why one would care to give up their basic human freedoms; these rights have not protected the hard workers of this country regardless of whether we still believe in their importance – or not. The demise of the Liberal Party, and the Bloc Quebecios can be explained (always partly) in this sense – both parties espouse a status quo that is no longer working for its supporters. Equally so, the shift to the more polar forms of representation of the Conservative Party and the New Democratic Party can also be seen in this light – in this case they are the hope being peddled (real or not) to a citizenry that is desperate for answers.
It is here that we enter an era of instability (needed as it may be), because as people search for answers away from a center that has failed them, voices of extremism will inevitably pull us apart. As Armine Yalnizyan concluded “the middle class is the conveyor belt of ideas, social norms, cultural expectations. The more incomes are polarized, the less social glue we share”. And rather than sit down for honest discussions about how to fix our problems, we are being conned into calling names at each other. “Fascist!” yells one side. “Socialist!” yells the other. Both sides have a right to be angry – we’ve all been failed – but being angered by our differences does not help us overcome the corporate rule we are now subject to.
And here is the awful truth inherent in the new dynamic Canadians are now witnessing. The political shift from Liberal to the NDP, and from PC to the Harper Government, has not, and will not, allow us to loosen the corporate grip that has taken over our country. Our growing income disparity has led to a growing disparity in our political ideology, but, unfortunately, there has been no shift in real power. If anything it has dragged our extreme parties closer to the center, allowing the corporate takeover, as has happened in the states, to eclipse the few alternatives we did have.
The Globe and Mail’s senior political columnist Jeffrey Simpson wrote during the campaign, “amid all the venomous attack ads and excessive rhetoric you can hear the silence of agreement”. Canadian’s, like their counterparts in the US, are falling for the same false hope that “Brand Obama” offered our neighbors. They get us so riled up about defeating our political enemy, that we can’t hear Simpson’s “silence of agreement” at all. Our ideological differences are perverting our ability to accurately direct our rage.
And there is no doubting where this rage must be focused anymore. If the 20th century saw the disastrous effects of centrally planned socialism, then the early 21st century has shown us the disastrous effects of unfettered capitalism. Neoliberal capitalism “has ended the dream of human emancipation”; said David Schweickart, author of After Capitalism, at a conference in Prague yesterday. And, as we move beyond the spectacle of the election, into what will surely be more extreme versions of the same neoliberal policies, we must remember that that is the goal; human emancipation – for what else do we have if we don’t have that.
As the country moves further into opposite directions, all of us who believe this dream, must attempt to continue speak of it, to share its discourse, and seek alternatives that enable this reality – for if we fall into a circle of hatred, the future is far from rosy. As Chris Hedges writes about America, but can equally be applied here:
The coup d’etat we have undergone is beginning to fuel unrest and discontent. With its reformist and collaborative ethos, the liberal class lacks the capacity or the imagination to respond to this discontent. It has no ideas. Revolt, because of this will come from the right, as it did in other eras of bankrupt liberalism in Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and Tsarist Russia. That this revolt will be funded, organized, and manipulated by the corporate forces that caused the collapse is one of the tragic ironies of history.
We must find our commonality again, but in new forms, and we must find it quickly. But above all, we must find a way to rebel – together.
I’d like to thank Natalia Jakubek for pointing me to the work of Prof. David Hulchanski and recommend for further reading the following article by Keith Jones, national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party: Canada: NDP will abet big business in imposing its class war agenda (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/may2011/cndp-m02.shtml)
