An interesting piece on the CCPA site by senior editor Ed Finn. In it, Finn address the following: If the left is right, politically, why isn't it more popular? A good catalyst for discussion, even if many NDPers will, no doubt, feel under attack.
But that's only fair. It's the NDP, as the largest organized force on the left, that has been such an utter failure to address alternatives to neo-liberal orthodoxy and failed to abandon that repulsive prejudice and allergy to socialist ideas.
In the United States, for example, President Obama's bailout of Wall Street has already soared beyond $2 trillion and could eventually reach the stratospheric level of $12 trillion or more, according to some reliable projections. In sharp contrast, his $787 billion economic stimulus package (designed to create or save jobs), while certainly not an insignificant sum, amounts to less than 8% of the enormous projected bank bailout. It's a horrendously expensive rescue operation that, if successful, will only restore and perpetuate the pernicious system that precipitated the crisis. The trillions are being spent, in effect, not to solve the economic problem, but to make sure it won't be solved.In Canada, the Harper government's response has been similarly skewed.
The following gives a taste of Finn's remarks on the left...
It is not because of its merits, however, that a system so clearly barbaric and destructive continues to be so widely sanctioned by electorates in the West. It is because most voters still don't see socialism as a preferable alternative, either politically or economically. And that is a failing of the socialist parties and governments, not of socialism itself.
