[lbo-talk] Jewish "nation"? (Was Armenian genocide?)

Marvin Gandall marvgandall at videotron.ca
Fri Oct 19 12:44:43 PDT 2007


Chris wrote:
>
> I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Could you clarify
> in the case of, say, Quebec?
>
> I think secession is almost always a bad idea, but
> rgere are exceptions.
>
> --- Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
>
>> Couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, the mistake some
>> on the left make is to
>> confuse their own bias in favour of breaking down
>> national barriers with the
>> right of others who are disgruntled to opt out of
>> multinational states. This
>> has always been a problem on the Canadian left in
>> relation to Quebec, for
>> example, and there are many other similar examples
>> of how leftists react to
>> separatist movements which invoke the right to
>> national self-determination.
=========================== The social democratic NDP is resolutely federalist and strongly opposed to the Quebec independence movement. The small Canadian Marxist left has been split. The Trotskyists have generally supported it while the Communist party and Maoists have seen the independence issue as divisive and a distraction from the main task of building a more progressive bi-national Canada.

In two provincial referenda called by parti Quebecois provincial governments in 1980 and in 1995 to decide whether the government should be given the authority to negotiate separation (and a new association) with English-speaking Canada, the NDP called for a No vote, the CP and Maoists essentially called for a plague on both houses, and the Trotskyists supported the Yes side.

The problem for the left in Canada and elsewhere is that it has often found itself caught between its principled opposition to national divisions within the working class of an existing state, and the consideration that the most progressive sectors of the restless national minority - notably the workers and intellectuals - are often in favour of independence.

In Quebec, a majority of the French-speaking population favoured sovereignty, and the referenda failed narrowly only because of the monolithic voting behaviour of the historically more privileged English-speaking provincial minority, joined by recent immigrants with more of an allegiance to Canada than to the province. The independence movement has declined in the wake of the boom in the world economy since '95 and the corresponding desire of cosmopolitan young Quebecois to participate in it, but I think the movement could well revive if there is a global downturn.



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