CKNW Editorial
for September 5, 2001

As one travels in Britain one cannot help but see castles all over the place. They are so commonplace that we tend to forget what they were built for, namely, to protect a nobleman’s fiefdom. For back in those days the control of the government, namely the King, was pretty tenuous. For much of the time the nobles paid little more than lip service to the monarch who, from time to time, had to raise an army to deal with a nobleman who had got too big for his britches. And I thought, as I saw some castles last week, things haven’t really changed all that much. And I don’t think it’s too much a stretch to equate the large international corporations of today with the stronger fiefdoms of a half a millennium ago. Then, as now, there were nobles who needed the King and his influence and that made them pretty good citizens. But the big and farther away ones could largely act as they pleased. The desire of the government, be it the medieval King or the modern version, to have control over powerful elements in the society it governs is the glue that holds that government together.

The purpose of this dissertation is not to condemn the corporate world. Not at all. What it is to say that where the ambitions of the large corporations clash with the perceived need by government to exercise control, trouble ensues.

It wasn’t that long ago that governments could, if they wished, exercise very stringent controls on corporate citizens. There were political constraints, of course, but if a government wanted, it could take whatever measures it thought it could get away with politically to enforce their will.

This was done in a lot of ways only one of which was taxation. It could control the corporation’s ability to obtain the foreign capital it wanted, for example. It could and often did restrict the ability of the corporation to import or export. It could pass laws which protected industry or exposed it to competitive danger.

Governments now have almost no such powers. They do subsidize but this is very much limited by international trade rules. As to the rest – and this is an overstatement but only just – corporations can avoid the government with impunity. Governments have lost the ability to enforce currency controls. No longer can a government force corporations to follow certain policies – such as locate in a certain place – because the corporation is elsewhere and if it isn’t, soon will be.

This has bred, in government, the same sense of frustration facing medieval monarchs whose nobles got independent but with this difference – in olden times the government was the monarch whereas today, in theory at least, the government is controlled by the people.

This brings a new dimension to the problem for the frustration born out of the computer age is now being expressed by some of those people, alienated from the process, who are often young and always aggressive and getting more so.

Thus far this popular frustration hasn’t meant very much in a real way. It has had an impact to be sure, whether it was Apec in Vancouver, the Battle In Seattle, the riots in Quebec, Washington or Genoa. But the impact has been mainly a media event with most of the public simply staying on the sidelines sure that there really isn’t very much they can do.

There is, however, one immutable rule in politics as there is in nature – both abhor a vacuum. Something is going to happen and all we know is that it will be big. For the public throughout the western world is going to become, day by day, year by year, frustrated by their feeling of helplessness. And if this feeling isn’t harnessed into a viable, operational and effective political movement the protests will get bigger … and more violent. Much more violent.

There are no more parties of protest through which the angry can vent their spleen. The NDP is dead – in Europe the Social Democrat or Labour parties have become beacons for the status quo. The Naomi Kleins of the world are leaders with a following but leaders with a following without a political vehicle. If they don’t get one the protest stays on the street and grows.

The trouble is, forming and building a political party takes time and today’s pace does not encourage patience.

There is nothing to be feared from political protest becoming a political party and active in the traditional political way, for the establishment, down through history, has always been able to make that protest part of that establishment. Radical governments seldom last. The British Labour Party has done almost nothing radical in its history that the Tories weren’t about to do anyway. The Communists in Russia simply replaced an inherited aristocracy with one that came out of party loyalty.

And that’s probably the real dilemma – the leaders of today’s world wide protest groups don’t want to form a political party nor support one like the NDP because they know that by doing so they will be co-opted by the very system they want to topple

There are no communist ideologues any more – at least none that have anyone listening to them. That’s because their rhetoric, like that of the traditional left, is so badly out of date. But just because communism is dead doesn’t mean that revolutionary activity is passe. It isn’t and just what form it takes over the next few years will be both interesting and not a little frightening to watch.