“Wonderfully passionate, sardonic and incisive,” one book reviewer called him. “We need more guides like Herschel Hardin who know the territory, speak the language, and who aren’t afraid to fight,” wrote another. Herschel Hardin is a British Columbia author and lifelong democratic socialist, and those are the qualities he can bring to the New Democratic Party leadership. Courage. Passion. Wit. Incisiveness.
At different times he has been a book writer, playwright, broadcaster, book critic, arts commentator, economic historian, lecturer, newspaper columnist, public interest advocate, broadcasting policy specialist, and consultant.
He is a democratic socialist with deeply rooted populist, egalitarian convictions. He is someone with a far reaching background in economic history, enterprise, business, and finance. He is a writer and sometimes journalist who has always understood the key role that mass media and culture play in society and politics. He is a committed Canadian nationalist and was a member of the original Committee for an Independent Canada. He is a member of the Writers Union of Canada.
Herschel Hardin grew up in Vegreville, Alberta. His father was an early CCF supporter. He can remember, as a boy, being introduced to Tommy Douglas on Vegreville's main street. He was a member of the CCF Club at Queen's University, in Kingston, Ontario, where he studied philosophy. He was secretary of the Young CCF in Vancouver and, later, editor of
Prometheus, the short lived but noble quarterly journal of the B.C. Young New Democrats.
He is the author of the classic,
A Nation Unaware: The Canadian Economic Culture, 1974, a broad ranging exploration of Canadian identity, public enterprise, regional fairness, and the Canadian public broadcasting culture.
Closed Circuits: the Sellout of Canadian Television, 1986, is an expose of television politics and how power works in Canada.
The Privatization Putsch, 1989, debunks the privatization of crown enterprise in Canada (and of state enterprise in Thatcher's Britain.
The New Bureaucracy: Waste and Folly in the Private Sector, 1993, is an iconoclastic analysis of corporate business and finance, dealing mostly with the American scene.
The New Bureaucracy also contains two crucial chapters on the commercialization of modern society - one on advertising and marketing and another on commercial sponsorship a propaganda system which undermines social democracy.
These four books, together, provide a launching pad for a forward looking democratic socialism, one which leaves the "American model" behind. |
