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TAKING CHARGE OF ECONOMICS
Herschel Hardin Leadership Campaign
Policy Circular 5 • May 25, 1995 |
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We need above all to establish a major presence on economic issues. Turn the NDP into the natural authority on economic matters the first crucial step in making ourselves a complete party rather than just a fragment. Lead the way in matters of enterprise, technology, the workplace, and financial management, and not just be satisfied with the social safety net. Become, again, the party of economic creativity and imagination.
The early CCF in Saskatchewan had that presence. Nationally, while the CCF pushed for old age pensions, unemployment insurance, and public medical care, it also had large ideas about the creative side of the economy and the nature of work.
Somewhere along the way, however, we lost confidence in ourselves. I date this falling away to the Eisenhower McCarthy years in the U.S. in the 1950s, the red baiting which spilled over the border, and the consumer prosperity which came to be known as the American way of life. All this put the CCF's economic ideas, which had grown out of the depression, seemingly into disrepute. The party was traumatized, frightened from leading with large arguments about enterprise, economic creativity, technology, and finance.
We never recovered. As the NDP, we talked less and less about those issues. Inevitably, we had declining credibility in those areas so, at election time, we shunned them even more. Gradually we found ourselves boxed into a small corner, without sufficient amplitude as a party for the breakthrough we were always looking for.
The ideological intimidation had the most dampening effect on our espousal of crown and co operative enterprise, to the point where privatization could be implemented effortlessly. Ironically, there are compelling business arguments for such community-centred ownership, waiting to be picked up and taken advantage of politically.
Not only do we need to speak to economic issues, we should also be taking leadership in these matters as our natural right. Social democracy, moreover, far from being outdated, encapsulates the economic future. Economic issues also are connected to everything else the public sector, public broadcasting, culture, and the environment. Without presence and expertise on the first, we diminish our ability to articulate the future for the second and, ultimately, to defend them.
Engaging the public on economic and business issues also generates other possibilities which now go begging. Market dogma and the excesses of "the American model" provide endless ammunition for satire, debunking, scoring populist points, and generally making political hay. Far from avoiding economic issues out of defeatism and electoral wariness, we have a world to gain by taking them on.
My campaign outlines this future territory, on everything from community-centred enterprise to an ecological political economy. Please see the summary of the 10 main points in our platform (Policy Circular 4) and the following individual policy circulars.
There are other themes to be articulated involving technology, the changing nature of work, and creativity. One of the fundamental tenets of democratic socialism is the dignity of labour: Work is important and employees should not be treated as just another commodity. History is proving our point in an unexpected way. The creativity and commitment of employees hence respect for people and involving them in decision making are now increasingly seen as crucial to enterprise and public administration.
We should be taking the lead in pushing this pattern forward both articulating it in our terms and using it as illustration to the benefit of our larger platform. The pleasure and identity that good kinds of work provide are integral parts of this. The NDP should include this positive and creative side of work as part of our culture.
It is important to talk about this creativity for another reason. Reigning mythology has it that enterprise resides in speculative, greedy individuals or, if not them, at least in corporate executives, who therefore deserve to be paid a king's ransom. This confers on them great political power, for if they are so vital to enterprise, and hence to prosperity, we lose as a political party, in the public's mind, when they reject us.
If enterprise, however, is something which pervades an organization, the picture changes. Economic creativity is seen as collective and incremental, residing in the workforce at large, and behind them, in their public education system. We are no longer so captive to bluster and to threats to stop investing. Enterprise in any case was always much more than a few notable individuals.
Nor is that all. The very nature of work is radically changing. More and more people are working out of their homes, linked by telephone, computer modems, fax machines, fax modems, and email. In a prior generation, they would have been in an office or factory, with a contract, a pension plan, and a shop steward, or in a middle management position with other guarantees. They now float freely in the economy, often with partial incomes, looking for common ground with others, and with profound concerns about financial security, fairness, and the strength of the public infrastructure. For the most part, they should be our people; we should be reaching them.
Nor is that the end of change, either. Many conventional jobs are simply disappearing. One estimate has it that sometime in the future as little as 2 per cent of the world's labour force will be required to meet total industrial demand. The "knowledge" and entertainment sectors will become dominant, but they will generate work only for a minority of people. This frees up large numbers of people to either become unemployed and alienated or to work creatively on cultural, social and environmental tasks either the end of our civic community as we know it or the beginning of a new dawn. It all depends on our political imagination.
Cutting back overtime and reducing the work week will distribute work and income more broadly, absorbing much unemployment and having a dramatic, positive effect on the economy. The challenge, however, goes beyond that, to creating this new, paid, non-market work, what is coming to be called the “social economy.”
This is as great a social transformation as the industrial revolution (and the creation of labour unions and public health laws which resulted, and which lie at the beginnings of our movement). It is indeed a great transformation. It also lends itself to the connectedness of work and society for which we have always argued. We must not let these issues get away from us. Aptly, this future is being referred to as the "post market" era. The Liberals and the Reform Party, and the Democrats and Republicans in the United States, tied fast to current market dogma looking through the rear view mirror cannot make this leap. We can. Democratic socialism really does encapsulate the future. In this new economic age above all, we should be leading the way. |
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