Part of a Campaign

Started passing out pamphlets for the Communist Party of Canada - Alberta today. My firs task was posting copies of the pamphlets on the public bulletin boards around town. That's all for today. More updates to follow.

Political Evolution and Other Thoughts

Time to Start Again

It's been a while since I've posted on my blog. Even though I had been meaning to get back to it, there have been some significant changes in my life. At this moment, I'm finalizing a divorce with my ex-wife. While the break-up has been, by-and-large, friendly it has still been disruptive over the past several years.

Political Views

When I started this blog my political views had already been moving leftward for some time. In some strange way I probably still considered myself conservative, even though I never voted for Conservatives in my province or country, and only grudgingly voted for Liberals if there wasn't a viable NDP candidate available. But as left as I thought voting NDP made me, it actually didn't. In my mind at the time, that was as far left as anyone could go in our political system. Oh sure, the Green Party was left of the NDP on some issues, but the NDP was left of the Green Party on others. The truth is, both the Green Party and the NDP are quite liberal, albeit progressives

With the somewhat disappointing running of Canada's NDP in the 2015 election, where Tom Mulcair actually campaigned to the right of the Liberal Party of Canada's Justin Trudeau, I found myself questioning the political landscape in Canada. Rachel Notley and the Alberta NDP also won that year in my home province, but their promoting the pipelines and the oilsands while talking about fighting climate change and environmental disaster really bothered me. Since then, I've been looking for a means to fight back at the system that was dragging us all to the edge of disaster.

Exploring the Political Realm

So I began to look around. Centrism is selling itself as the only possible rational answer, but when you look closely at Centrism and centrists they are not actually in the centre as they claim to be. What centrists are in the "centre" of is what are perceived to be the right and left parties of the political establishment. As politics is shifted, and indeed shifting, to the right around the world that means the centrists are actually rightists. Not the rational and objective centred persons of discernment they promote themselves as. Plus many centrists love to push far right talking points, such as "Horsesh*t..." er, "Horseshoe Theory," which only moves the conversation, and the political spectrum further to the right.

Thanks galaxy-brained centrists!

Rejecting Centrism for the sham it was, and that all major parties were rightists promoting one or another form of austerity and imperialist actions, I found myself turning firmly now to the Left. This was frightening because "Commies" were to the left. In fact, if you took the word of conservatives, anything left of them are actually "Commies" including milquetoast liberals and social democrats. I rejected any accusations that I was a communist in an almost reflexive manner. It's not that I thought badly of Communists, but I didn't feel at the time that I was one, and I also understood the negative social implications of being accused of being such.

Yet, throughout my life I have been anti-capitalist in some way or another. Again, this was not born out of a deep-seated hatred for capitalism, but more a resignation that this was the only option available, as shitty as it was. I grew up being taught that. While I do recall various teachers and professors encouraging criticism of capitalism they were few and far in between. When the USSR was disbanded in 1991 I watched the televised tearing down of the Berlin Wall and my feelings were mixed. Part of me was cheering East Germany finally being free, and the end of the threat of impending nuclear war. But East Germany isn't really free, they just have a free market, and at this point in history the threat of nuclear war is higher than it has been in a long time, perhaps since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It's two minutes till midnight. (The Doomsday Clock. Feb 14, 2019)

In my early twenties, a friend I knew in Victoria, BC mentioned that I'd make a good anarchist. I wasn't too sure what he meant by that and that's when I found out that he was a communist. At this point, I wasn't too interested in being any sort of communist, but his description of what anarchists and anarchism are stuck with me ever since. Since then I have had several friends that were communists of one sort or another, though I really thought they were wasting their time even if I agreed with much of what they said. So I set about trying to make my way in a capitalist world, playing by capitalism's rules. I had some successes and some failures, but despite all my efforts and training I never acquired the financial or social capital to "make it."

When I finally decided to abandon capitalism I remembered what my friend from Victoria had said. Still not convinced I took some political compass tests and found that my political traits put me in the Libertarian Communist side. It wasn't the first political test I had taken, but even when I was my most conservative my political inclinations were always left. I took a few more such tests and decided that there was a rough semblance of a consensus leaning towards Libertarian Communist so it might be worth my time checking out this political viewpoint. I read some anarchist literature, watched some videos by popular anarchist YouTubers, and even voluntarily cracked open some Noam Chomskey. Much of what I read struck a chord within me and I hungered for more.

At this point, I turned to reading Marx and the works of several Marxist thinkers, watching Marxist YouTubers, and found Michael Parenti's works. Suddenly, I wasn't sure that I might be an anarchist after all. As time wore on I've realized that I'm more of a Marxist-Leninist.

Conclusion

While I'm probably not a very good revolutionist, I do my bit to raise the class-consciousness of myself, my kids and my coworkers. Having been raised in a working-class family, class struggle is an obvious and readily apparent dynamic. I'm not entirely surprised that my kids have clued into it almost on their own as they've also grown up with working parents. My coworkers, at least those I've spoken too about it, seem to see it too albeit they may be resigned to their roles. Sometimes the UCP or the Conservative Party of Canada try to ferment the electorate over this or the other thing to stir up anger against the government in power. These are opportunities that I try to use to point out how the parties play off of each other, not for the benefit of the citizens, but for themselves, and those whose interest they're protecting. Perhaps, someday, we can get some real, well organized and thought out demonstrations going and everyday, working people might again feel their latent power.

The future is worth fighting for, don't you agree?