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Jamie Swift: Why did you write this opening survey
of the history of socialism in Canada?
Ian
McKay: I've been
interested in the Canadian left, as a scholar, for
about twelve years. And I've increasingly come to
the view that we need to look at the history of the
left again, more critically and analytically. If we
can be both analytical and sympathetic, we can
write a better kind of history than the old style
of histories. They tended to combine sentimentality
with sectarianism. I'm trying to say something in a
new tone of voice, asking new sorts of questions.
JS: What sort
of questions?
IM:
The core question is: what made these people tick?
Why do they--our left ancestors--so often speak and
act in ways that are unexpected to a 21st-century
leftist? Take, for example, the case of the early
Canadian socialists and Herbert Spencer. Today, you
won't find a disciple of Herbert Spencer in a day's
walk--the consensus is that he was a racist, sexist
reactionary. Back then, everyone, from
mild-mannered theological socialists to
fire-breathing revolutionaries, was quoting him. I
see in that a strong indication that their
"language of socialism" was quite a bit different
than ours. Or, to take another example, look at the
Co-operative Commonwealth Federation--the
CCF-ancestor of today's NDP. When you look closely
at the CCF and its writings, it really doesn't
sound very much like the NDP at all. It sounds like
a party that wants to plan Canada from top to
bottom-in a comprehensive effort to replace
capitalism with a different order of society.
JS: Though you
have been interested in this project for twelve
years, your previous work on folklore and labour
history must have informed this.
IM:
The tie in with what could loosely be called my
cultural work would be that I am trying to look at
the left as a succession of past frameworks on
which people constructed not just their politics
but really a lot of their lives. These frameworks
told them who they were, what history was, what
words to use in particular settings, and so on. I
see these past frameworks--five of them in Canadian
left history--as much bigger and deeper than
ideologies or mere ways of voting. They are more
like "dialects" of the language of socialism.
JS: Five
frameworks? Could you describe
them?
IM:
The first is the evolutionary socialists, the
Spencerians who were evolutionary not just in the
sense that they were not partisans of violent
revolution. (Some of them actually were.) It's more
the idea that socialism is the science of social
evolution so that everything a socialist does
should proceed from a scientific analysis.
The second I call the
Bolshevik framework. It proceeds from the Russian
revolution as an example to emulate and a really
quite serious attempt to build a revolutionary
politics founded on Leninism. That picks up from
about 1917 and goes to about 1937.
The third is what I have
borrowed from the historian Geoff Eley and is
called radical plannism. This revolves around the
concept that you can plan just about everything
about the economy. In many CCF analyses, the
"default position" is that everything should be in
the public sector--you have to have special,
particular reasons for why an economic or social
activity should remain outside it. The more
fundamental thing is that everything should be
centrally planned.
Radical plannism takes us
into the sixties and the new left, a new
revolutionary politics based on liberation.
Liberation of the person. Liberation of nations.
Liberation from capitalist alienation. A whole new
tone of voice and a new set of categories enter
with the self-proclaimed new left. Along with the
protests against the war in Vietnam.
The final socialist
framework I would reference is socialist feminism
that in a sense rises out of the new left and asks,
"What about women?" Those are the five big
formations I see in Canadian left history.
JS: Has such an
approach been attempted before?
IM:
Not really. There is a big library of books on the
Canadian left, but many of them are really trying
to talk you into buying one party platform or one
political philosophy. I want to explore how
leftists constructed their worlds as well as how
they constructed their political parties.
JS: But has
there even been a book about the broad history of
socialism in Canada? There are books on communism,
on social democracy, on the new left, on feminism.
But is this sort of sweep something
new?
IM:
It sounds quite self-serving to say so, but I think
this is the first book that tries to put it
together in this way. For example, there are
already books out there called "Socialism in
Canada" or "The Failure of Canadian Socialism" or
"The Left in Canada". Many of them are quite good
and useful. But overall they talk about the CCF/NDP
or the Communist Party, not about broader, more
inclusive questions. In other words, they tend to
take the part for the whole. My critical position
on them is that they are not struggling for a sense
of the whole picture because they're trying to
persuade you that tendency X or person Y speaks for
the whole thing. I hope my book will mark a first
step beyond that approach, and others will be
tempted to follow it up.
JS: As an
English Canadian historian, how would you say
Quebec fits into this construct?
IM:
Quebec is undeniably the most important force in
new left socialism in Canada. You could say in
general that the new left doesn't make that much of
a difference in Canada because people in Canada
were essentially doing the same things that they
were doing everywhere else-protesting against the
War in Vietnam, occupying campus offices, and so
on. The big exception is Quebec. In the case of
Quebec the new left actually shook the foundation
of the state. It made a huge difference in
intellectual and cultural life. It changed the
whole way people thought about the Quebec Nation,
Sexual Politics, the role and function of the
state--you name it. Quebec's transition in the
sixties from being the most conservative to the
most radical part of the country was astonishing.
And it marked a seismic shift in the history of the
entire Canadian left--a history that cannot be
understood or appreciated without Quebec, whatever
the ultimate decision of the
Québécois with regard to continuing
with confederation.
JS: How about
the way that this short volume relates to your
wider, long term project?
IM:
I'm using this book to lay out the organizing ideas
and map the terrain in a general sense. I'm hoping
it will be a pretty good book to read if you just
want to read one book on the Canadian left to whet
your appetite for more. I've tried to pitch it to
the general reader, who may sense that the world is
becoming more and more dangerous and unjust, but
not really have much of a handle on past attempts
to look at the same sorts of problems. I tried to
trim the detail and reach for the big general
ideas. This general introductory essay about the
left outlines the theory and methodology of the
volumes that will follow. I probably won't write a
volume for each framework. I hope to develop each
of these five as I go through Canadian history both
thematically and chronologically. The first
substantive volume takes us through 1919 and the
Winnipeg General Strike. The second will take us up
to 1937 with the rise of the Communist Party and
the rise of the CCF when there was a real
competition for the left. After that, let's see how
much energy I have left!
JS: So why
start this incredibly ambitious project now, aside
from the fact that you are an historian by trade
and, one might say, by calling?
IM:
Well, to paraphrase the mayor of Hiroshima, "To
remember the past is to commit oneself to the
future." Since we are now witnessing a renaissance
of the left it's a good time for leftists to
reflect on our traditions (and also the problems of
our traditions). The end of the Soviet Union has
opened up a whole new terrain of freedom. People
aren't as subject to what I would call the great
distraction of having their loyalty called into
question by their commitment to the left's project
of enlightenment and human emancipation. The left
is now free to think much more creatively about its
underlying ideas; it has the freedom, for example,
to think through and retain (or reject) the Marxist
approaches that, in an earlier time, had to be
accepted or rejected on faith. You don't have to be
a leftist to sense that we are at a kind of turning
point, especially on human rights and environmental
issues. If half of what one reads about global
warming is true, it is difficult to escape the
conclusion that human survival itself depends on
how successfully leftists address the present day.
I'd like to see my work as making the modest
contribution I can make to a more general
collective struggle to remember the past and commit
ourselves to a future very different than the one
neo-liberalism is shaping for us.
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