Victory! Marxist/Anarchist party wins seat in Quebec election!

The most successful far left party in all of North America (excluding Mexico) is, without a doubt a provincial party in Québec called Québec Solidaire.

As of tonight, QS has become the only party in North America containing various sub-party groupings which openly identify as: Anti-Stalinist Marxist, radical, pacifist, anarchist, socialist, environmentalist and feminist, to hold a seat at the state or provincial level.

Unfortunately, the Québec Solidaire candidate in my riding (Hull), Bill Clennett, only placed third after the Parti Québécois and the Liberals.  Clennett, for those of you who don’t know, rose to fame in that quintessentially Canadian way:  he was once literally strangled by then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien on national television.

While I strongly disagree with Québec Solidaire’s sovereigntist leanings, the victory tonight in the provincial riding of Mercier is nothing short of one of the most important victories for the far left in the industrialized world.  This is one of the first times that I’m aware of since 1872 where anarchists and Marxists did that which commentators of all stripes had long claimed to be impossible:  They worked together within a single party structure and they succeeded.

If you want to see democracy in action, look no further than Québec Solidaire.

If you want to see the kind of anarchist/Marxist/social democratic co-operation that must characterize 21st Century struggle, look no further than Québec Solidaire.

If you want to see victory in the riding of Mercier, look no further than Québec Solidaire and Amir Khadir.

“Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose, but their chains…  Workers of the world unite!”

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See also:

Is Capitalism Justified?

Is socialism violent or is liberalism hypocritical?

Marx on religion: Dispelling more myths about socialism

Great Quotes: Marx

A *Really* Inconvenient Truth: ‘Green capitalism’ is an oxymoron

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I recently came across an interview with Joel Kovel, the man behind A Really Inconvenient Truth and Enemy of Nature.

Joel Kovel is an eco-socialist who critiques Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth not from an environmental skeptic position, but rather on the contrary, he critiques it from the left.

The interview is well worth the listen to if you get the chance. However, I do suggest that if you’re going to listen to it, do it soon because I’m not sure how long the radio program will be hosting the file.

You can access it here:

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or you can access it here.

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Propaganda in Action: Ontario’s election “priorities”?

A new poll just released by Environics, shows something more revealing than it bargained for. What it shows can be considered even more proof that the media does not have a left-wing bias.

The Environics poll asked Ontarians what they thought the most important factor/issue determing their vote in the upcoming election would be.

The results are interesting.

Now, some of these factors can be broadly categorized into socialist/social democratic issues (namely heath care and social programs/poverty/minimum wage) and conservative/capitalist issues (namely the economy and taxes). Recompiling the list with these ideological concerns grouped together results in this list of what Ontarians care about:

So what do Ontarians care about? Notice that by far, the answer, according to Environics, is overwhelmingly coherently socialist/social democratic issues, followed by two ideologically neutral issues, then followed by coherently conservative or capitalist issues.

But now let’s take a look at what the mainstream media coverage of the Ontario election considers to be the important issues.

We can see that the media has little interest in the issues that Ontarians actually cares about:

I compiled the data for this table using targeted advanced Google news searches and can be verified, if you’re interested, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

We progressives can easily convince ourselves that society is hopelessly biased and political culture hopelessly corrupted by the mainstream media, but I see these results as reason for optimism rather than forlornness.

Voters aren’t clamoring for tax cuts despite the hugely disproportional media coverage of the issue and voters continue to support socialist issues as their #1 election issues. If that, in and of itself, does not give progressives great faith in the prospects for the kind of changes we seek, then I don’t know what will.

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See also:

The ‘Propaganda in Action’ series (the rest of the series)

The NDP are cowards, what should true progressives do?

What do politics and monkey shit fights have in common?

The propaganda & hypocrisy of 9/11 anniversary media coverage

The Paulitics coverage of the Ontario 2007 election

An apology is owed…

This is an absolutely fantastic quote and a great quote for any progressive person who wants to throw something back at liberals when they turn their noses up at us.

“When capital and the ruling classes apologise for: Colonialism, the 14 hour day, class privilege, the 7 day working week, children in coalmines, the opium wars, the massacre of the Paris Commune, slavery, the Spanish-American War, the Boer War, starvation, apartheid, anti-union laws, the First World War, Flanders, trench warfare, mustard gas, aerial bombing, the Soviet Intervention, the Armenian Genocide, chemical weapons, fascism, the Great Depression, hunger marches, Nazism, the Spanish Civil War, militarism, Asbestosis, radiation death, the Massacre of Nanking, the Second World War, Belsen, Dresden, Hiroshima, Racism, The Mafia, nuclear weapons, the Korean War, DDT, McCarthyism, production lines, blacklists, Thalidomide, the rape of the Third World, poverty, the arms race, plastic surgery, the electric chair, environmental degradation, the Vietnam War, the military suppression of Greece, India, Malaya, Indonesia, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama and Turkey, the Gulf War, trade in human body parts, malnutrition, Exxon Valdez, deforestation, organized crime, the Heroin and Cocain trade, tuberculosis, the destruction of the Ozone Layer, cancer, exploitation of labour and the deaths of 50,000,000 Communists and trade unionists in this century alone, then — and only then — will I consider apologising for the errors of socialism.” (from: the Communist Party of Australia)

There’s a great pic to go with this quote that I’ve just added to the Paulitics Political Images resource (along with a bunch of other additions).

The ongoing debate over my post

It just occurred to me that there’s a huge debate going on over at progressivebloggers.ca (available here) about my post comparing Dion and Layton (available here) which nobody on this blog has any access to unless they also check Progressive Bloggers.

Here’s the rundown of the debate so far.  You can feel free to comment either here or over at progressivebloggers.ca, but if you want in on the debate, it may be better to comment over there.

Subject: Good Grief
by Steve V on Jan 12, 20:01 EST

Yes, Jack is as pure as the snow, and everyone else is an opportunistic charlatan. Silliness.

Subject: Steve V, you just demonstrated your ignorance
by Paul on Jan 12, 22:58 EST

I never suggested that Layton was pure. In fact, if you had taken the time to read the entire post, you would have discovered that, at the end of my post I wrote:

“Now this isn’t to be taken as an indorsement of Layton. Layton has allowed his party to tact to the right and I will forever be sceptical of him for that exact reason.”

Next time, before you criticize, it’s always a good idea to acually read what you intend to criticize.

The difference between Dion and Layton

This is priceless.  Want to see the chief difference between Dion and Layton?  Well, when it was in his interests to do so, this week Dion abandoned his principles in order to cozy up to big oil.  On the other hand, despite the fact that it is in Jack Layton’s interest not to further alienate unions [see this story for more details], he has continued to put ultimatums to the Conservatives on environmental issues because it’s the right thing to do.  So while Dion will do whatever is necessary to get elected, Layton has shown that, at least on this one issue, he will stand on principle and “let justice be done though the heavens fall”.

Here’s the proof:

Dion won the leadership of the Grits by draping himself (both figuratively and actually) in green.  His platform was touted as uber green.  Liblogers such as Jeremy Kirouac flaunt Dion’s environmentally friendly campaign (see here).  And what’s more, the many great things that Dion has campaigned on and said in the past are brought up at almost every opportunity.

What’s changed since his win?  Well, Dion is still passing off his ‘greenness’ one month after his convention victory, but what’s interesting is that he’s doing it while pandering to big oil.  One month folks, that’s all it took.  The Calgary Sun is reporting here that Stéphane Dion wants to give tax breaks to  tar sand oil companies if they voluntarily adhere to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and is dressing this move up as an attempt to make the tar sands “greener”.