Reposted from Next Year Country.
Forty years ago a manifesto entitled “For an Independent Socialist Canada” was published by a group of left NDP activists. This movement, strong in Saskatchewan, came to be called the Waffle.
Rebuilding the Left aims to have participants reflect upon the experience of the Saskatchewan Waffle and discuss what the left needs to do to rebuild a movement here to challenge the growing attack from the right.
To register for the conference, contact Joe Roberts at sjroberts@sasktel.net or phone 352-9282.
The Conference is free. Lunch provided but donations will be requested to defray costs.
Bookmark this page as more information on the agenda is developed.
Draft Agenda for Rebuilding the Left
Saturday, January, 30
Conference Begins 10:00 a.m.
Chair - Hugh Wagner, former Waffle member
Morning:
Brief Presentations on the Waffle Experience
Speakers - Lorne Brown, former Waffle member and historian
- Don Mitchell, Waffle candidate
in the 1970 provincial NDP leadership election
Brief Presenattions on left activism today
Speakers - Cara Banks, feminist and trade unionist
- David Mitchell, Briarpatch editor and activist
Questions and Discussion will follow the presentations
Afternoon:
Facilitator - Adriane Paavo
What can the left do?
Adjourn 3:00 p.m.
Recommended Pre-conference readings:
Statement on Rebuilding the Left: Reflections from the Waffle
Forty years ago a manifesto entitled “For an Independent Socialist Canada” was published by a group of students, young faculty and social activists in Ontario. It was soon endorsed by many who sought the same goals across Canada, including Saskatchewan. Strangely, perhaps, 1969 was not a time of economic crisis in the capitalist world that might explain such a manifesto. But it did come at the end of a decade in which the crisis of democracy had become glaringly apparent.
Recently there have been invitations issued for gatherings in Winnipeg and Toronto to celebrate the memory of the Waffle Manifesto. The Waffle experience in Saskatchewan arose differently and had different effects from other places. Many who participated in that movement and were influenced by the experience remain politically and socially active today.
Now Canada and the world are in the grip of a severe economic and social crisis of capitalist development. To those who experienced the mobilization forty years ago it must seem strange that there has been no similar uprising of protest and demand for change comparable to what the manifesto in its innocence proclaimed. For as alarming as the present crisis is, it is far worse that no voice of challenge has arisen from a left demanding a new social system.
So some obvious questions seem to present themselves: for those who experienced the Waffle here is there anything useful to be said about the present state of affairs? Would it serve any purpose in stimulating initiative to gather and discuss the present crisis?
Of course, many issues unexamined during the Waffle era have now become evident and contribute even larger threats than the cyclical economic crisis. The most awesome is environmental breakdown. But the development of industrial agriculture which began to be evident forty years ago is now a scourge globally as well as in our own neighborhood. The long record of injustice to the aboriginal population, generally overlooked by the left in the past, is today inescapable. These and other changes significantly affect the landscape now faced by us who felt confident of change in those past decades.
Yet it is also true that those who are no longer with us have been replaced by others who, as if fellow travelers, aspire to a society – a world – no longer in thrall to capital accumulation, war and class rule. Of necessity this message is addressed initially to those who experienced the Waffle call, but those who emerged subsequently with similar views are invited to respond to this initiative.
1969 Waffle Manifesto: For an Independent and Socialist Canada
Link here.
1973 Saskatchewan Waffle brochure
Link here.
Socialist Project: What Should We Do To Help Build a New Left?
Link here.
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4 comments
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January 18, 2010 at 2:50 pm
David Boehm
Wow, talk about ossified. Albo et al, sound positively stuck in the 1930s–were they cyrogenically frozen. What about organizing around local economies and agricultural systems (in the largest sense of producer/consumer solidarity). Forget labour unions that long ago became only another parasitic elite sucking dry the non-unionized worker (witness the teachers shopping at the Dollar Store). Oh, and more socialist media/education–’cadre’ propaganda vs. Fox News: I wonder who will win… What is it with ‘cadres’? Are we going to wear berets too and sing the International ?, because I only know the first lines.
I call for a fair and just transnational agrarian movement supporting human ecology. Mass movements with university professors for leaders I can do without thank you very much for asking. This is a moral battle we are fighting–that and a battle of wits. Plant your feet on the ground and get to know your neighbour. Be cooler than the neoliberal morons. This is how the world has always been saved.
January 19, 2010 at 7:28 pm
Doug Taylor
Wow, David just dismissed academics (people who think), trade unionists (people who work) and calls for an agrarian movement. Sounds like ossified romanticism to me.
To actually quote Greg Albo…
“socialist approaches to the environmental crisis need to be explored and movements built around them, and challenge the ecology movement’s drift toward its vulgar embrace of market solutions and its utopian and nativist vision of localist enclaves. This is a longterm imperative in terms of addressing climate change, loss of habitats and species
and so forth. But it is also an immediate need to address the needs of daily life and the saturation of human bodies with a diet of junk food and an endless slurry of pollutants; the necessity of reducing worktime; and the social imperative to contest the massive burden of environmental
injustices borne by workers and racial and indigenous minorities.”
Well, my feet are on the ground and my neighbour is a Jehovah witness.
January 20, 2010 at 9:43 am
David Boehm
Doug you are right. I was dismissive of university professors and of trade unionists; Greg Albo did make a connection with human ecology. True socialism is supposed to be about producers enjoying the process and fruit of their production. The conditions for this are only possible in a culture where the majority of people are in close engagement with the basic elements of their existence: food, housing, clothing, and community. It may be unduly idealistic, but such a society can only be created from the ground up by creating real economic, ecological, and social relationships in real places. I do not see such a society being created as a gift given by elites, whether by academic or labour leaders–however useful their services overall. Albo writes with the trenchant tone of earlier socialists speaking from the mountain to the reproducers. His platitudes are not linked to any definite plan of attack to the problem of creating a new society in a market-dominated, consumer oriented, hell-bent on destruction society. One of my neighbours is also a JW, and a very good mechanic–built his own wind turbine.
January 21, 2010 at 10:30 am
Doug Taylor
My JW neighbour is also better at recycling than I am! They also use a manual push mower, no gas or electricity.