A New Vision for the Left II: Challenges

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When I showed When the People Awake to an undergraduate class in the mid-70s, the militant documentary received a strongly favourable response. It had been made in 1972 by left-wing Chilean film-makers who supported the democratic-socialist administration of Salvador Allende’s Unidad Popular. When I screened the same stirring documentary in the same course 25 years later, the students responded negatively. In fact, they voted with their feet, most of them withdrawing from the classroom under the cover of dark. What had changed in the interim? Continue reading →

A New Vision for the Left I: Legacy

Tolstoy observed that there are only two essential questions: how shall we live, and what should be done? A vision effectively answers these two questions.

But the left’s vision is no longer as compelling as it once was. The failures of socialist and social-democratic movements in the 20th century and new challenges in the 21st century demand a rethinking. The absence of a compelling and viable worldview has allowed far-right, populist movements to step into the breach and make headway everywhere.

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Is Donald Trump a Fascist?

Fascism is much in the news. In Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, Turkey and elsewhere, we read reports of the rise of right-wing nationalist-populism, while, in the Middle East, “Islamo-fascism” is blamed for vicious and unending wars. In the United States, Donald Trump is now routinely dismissed as a #fascist. Is the US falling into the same deadly pattern so evident elsewhere? Continue reading →

Towards This Generation’s New Left

Every generation develops its own New Left. This is a natural process as proponents struggle to come to grips with new challenges and old failures. Continue reading →

Learning to Dance with My Lectern

I started blogging a couple of years ago because I felt passionately about a particular topic – rejuvenation of the democratic left – and felt I had something useful to say.

But, as a blogger, my greatest handicap was my life’s work as a lecturer. I’ve come to realize that, to succeed, I need to spurn the lectern or at least learn to dance with it. Continue reading →

Is Canada’s ‘Leap Manifesto’ Too Radical?

The press attacks on the LeapManifesto when it was considered by the New Democratic Party  piqued my interest. “A Hard Left Turn to Nowhere,” thundered the National Post. Barrie McKenna of the Globe & Mail proclaimed that “The Leap Manifesto is a Prescription for Ruin.” Macleans lamented “How to Kill the NDP.” Some columnists concluded that the “loony left” had captured the party (even though the party had not endorsed the manifesto). What is all the fuss about? Continue reading →

Why Identify with Left-Wing Politics?

“A young person who isn’t a socialist hasn’t got a heart; an old person who is a socialist hasn’t got a head.” Is this true?

This old adage suggests that an attachment to the left is merely a romantic and naïve phase that should eventually pass as we mature and gain a more “realistic” understanding. Realism from this viewpoint involves the acceptance that There is No Alternative (TINA) to presently-existing capitalism and liberal democracy, that the most we can expect is some minor tinkering.

But this conservative viewpoint is unconvincing for two reasons. Continue reading →

Where Lies the Heart of Darkness?

Notes For a Lecture

A. INTRODUCTION

The central conundrum at the heart of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness  is: Why does Marlowe, the narrator, so admire the brutal Kurtz, as do others in the story [such as the Russian trader, the general manager]? Continue reading →

Pursuing a Passion for the Possible

Albert Hirschman’s challenge to social scientists in A Bias for Hope (1971) to embrace a “passion for the possible” has largely been ignored in the mainstream disciplines. That is a pity for, in this age of high anxiety and disaffection, don’t we desperately need perspectives that transcend the limiting confines of liberal democracy and the commodification of everything? Continue reading →