> You were annoyed that I found Bob Brenner's question - "Just what do
> you Canadian nationalists hope to accomplish with your nationalism?" -
> funny and apt. I never did hear an answer - just a wisecrack about how I
> should shave my head and become a spokesman for the right.
>
> Doug
For the record, you inferred "the shaved head and spokesman for the right from" a crack I made about your hair. See below for clarification on my initial crack.
Ok there are two issues here the first is what are the dimensions of the Canadian hell and the second is Brenner and your favourite hobby-horse "what do you Canadian nationalists hope to accomplish with your nationalism?" Let me attempt an answer to the second question in the hopes that it will illuminate an answer to the first.
At the outset it is useful to put Brenner's question in some historical context. Brenner asked me this question a couple of years back down in the Carolina's. But as Brenner stated at the time: let me ask you a question I asked Canadian nationalists back in the late 1970s early 1980s "just what do you Canadian nationalists hope to accomplish with your nationalism?"
I explained that at the time, the mid-1970s-mid-1980s, left nationalism was a political strategy forged in the context of what seemed to be an unwinding international order and the decline of American empire. Now you perhaps remember those times better than I for I still have a full head of hair- get the reference now. The left nationalist strategy was about attempting to make a class compact with sections of domestic capital such that they could sever their deep dependence on US capital in exchange for greater control over the national economy. What that development strategy would have amounted to in the end it is impossible to say.
But for the left it was key to getting control over the resource sector (at the time characterized by heavy Foreign-US -ownership) and using the surplus generated from the resource sector to more fully diversify and gain a higher degree of domestic control over the manufacturing sector (which at the time in some sectors was over 55% US controlled). That is, it was a strategy about developing a more autocentric model of economic growth which would be capable of weaning Canada off its reliance on the truncated form of branch-plant development it had been pursuing for the last 70 years.
In the end the national-left lost because dominant sections of Canadian capital decided it would be better to throw their lot in with American capital then with Canadian workers. Canadian capital may be a touch lazy but it is not stupid. But the point of the whole program for left nationalists was to bind the fortunes of Canadian capital to the fortunes of its own working class by creating a national model that approximated something like a European social democracy.
In sum, left Canadian nationalists hoped to accomplish with their nationalism a), a more diversified economy; b), the development of greater technological capacity by channelling rents from resources to domestically controlled manufacturing; c), greater scope for working-class institutions and organizing; and thereby d), greater national autonomy for both domestic macroeconomic regulation and foreign policy.
Now we can go on for so about the inherent flaws of this strategy had it been pulled off. But at the time, it seemed a viable response to American decline and Canadian dependence. It should be pointed out that Left nationalism is dead but its spirit still haunts Canadian/US relations from time to time. Hence, Cuba, or why Canada did not "officially" take part in Iraq nor will it "officially" take part in missile defence. So in part the freedoms you cite are one of the accomplishments of Canadian nationalism.
As to the first question: what are the dimensions of the Canadian hell? Well they are not all that different from other "second tier" countries as you have called them. Although it might be better to speak of a first tier and the "One". The dimensions of this hell are that given our level of integration at this point (over 80% of exports go to the US) it has become increasingly difficult to negotiate this deep dependence as it has become increasingly hard to defend existing social programs, labour legislation, and taxation regimes in the face of regulatory competition from the US. And for the record it is not American Capital that has made it difficult to defend the social fabric, rather it is Canadian capital and its constant willingness to use the threat of flight of head offices or productive facilities to the US. So the last two decades have been witness to a slow but steady erosion of social programs, labour rights, and the like.
That the US has moved farther in these respects is simply a function of its own neoliberal restructuring. The difference is that the American's started the neoliberal project and the rest of the tier is following slowly in train. There is no doubt that it is better to be in second class sleeper cars, than in the third class or the box cars filled with straw but the destination is fixed by forces beyond our control.
For my money, this is why any talk of a more progressive era in politics can not look to the developing or third world but rather must look to the US. Until the subordinate classes in the US start causing some serious trouble for their own ruling class the rest of us are stuck on this neoliberal ride. Note that this was exactly the fear of left nationalists.
So yes we are happy to have jobs we would just like more ability to control the pace and form of work. But never let it be said we don't thank uncle Sam for the work and are not eternally grateful. In solidarity,
Travis