A challenge to Take a Leap!

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It is well and good that Socialist Project (a Toron­ to-based group led by left academics and former labour bureaucrats) welcomes the Leap Manifesto and the modest new opening to the left that ex­ ists in the NDP—now that the party has effectively embraced Leap and turfed Mulcair. This is a wel­ come departure from the ritual feeding off the sins of social democracy we so often see in the SP epublication, The Bullet. Socialists should engage with real developments in the labour movement and there is a tacit recognition that, like it or not, this includes the NDP.

But given an influx of new activists into the NDP (some are already there), it seems the authors would have Socialist Project stand aside, neither impeding nor encouraging such a development.

That stance would seem to be designed to pre­ serve (at least for the SP) the option of a new “left”

party.

The nature of such a party is not specified. Would it be a re-edition of social democracy from its earlier, rather mythic, heroic days, or perhaps it would take its inspiration from recent new “left” enforce their own laws in their territories. While the pipeline is now essentially dead, the Yinka Dene Alli­ ance continues to push for a ban on oil tankers along the B.C. coast.

TransCanada Energy East TransCanada’s 4,600-kilometer-long Energy East Pipeline would carry 1.1 million barrels per day of crude oil from Alberta and Saskatchewan to refiner­ ies in Eastern Canada. The eastern terminus in Saint John, New Brunswick, would include a marine termi­ nal for loading oil tankers to export tar sands oil to Europe. According to a report by the Council of Cana­ dians, a social justice non-profit, the pipeline puts the drinking water of five million Canadians at risk.

Other pipelines that have met strong opposition in include the Enbridge Octopus (through Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois), the Alberta Clipper, Line 3, Line 61, Line 66, Line 5, and Sandpiper. The Northeast U.S. is seeing a growth of pipeline expansion projects to bring in fracked natural gas from the Mid-Atlantic and the South. A longer version of this article, at www. socialistaction.org, discusses these projects.

The Sandpiper line would carry 375,000 barrels per day of Bakken crude oil from western North Dakota through northern Minnesota to Superior, Wisconsin. On the way, it would pass near dozens of lakes and wetlands and the headwaters of the Mississippi River. Many of the lakes threatened by an oil spill are used by Ojibwe people for harvesting wild rice, a sacred plant and food source. All of the Enbridge pipelines in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan pass through parties in Europe like Syriza, Die Linke, Podemos, or closer to home, Quebec Solidaire? Surely not a Leninist combat party in the tradition of the early Canadian Communist Party!

The authors approach this dilemma with rather excessive delicacy, pretty much conceding every­ thing to process. Not so much a party, but a “proj­ ect of transcending capitalism.”. Not a “genuine storehouse of the truth,” but rather offering “stra­ tegic spaces” to develop “better socialist ideas and alternatives.” Pretty thin gruel. Do we really have to reinvent the wheel?

Vancouver-based writer Roger Annis, in his com­ ment on the article, at least broaches the question of program and strategy. But why have all initia­ tives to form a new party over the past 40 years met with failure? History shows that new par­ ties emerge from important upsurges in the class struggle, or from splits in degenerating reformist parties, whether of social democratic or Stalinist lineage. So far, neither of these apply to Canada, or apply only to an insufficient degree.

Socialists need to be present in all facets of the class struggle, and the NDP is an important are­ na as recent events have shown. Socialist Project should intervene in the NDP as an organized ten­ dency, rather than watch as supporters move back into the NDP as individuals. That is indeed the only way to avoid the perils of entryism and adaptation to opportunism—by fighting for class-struggle policies, and doing so where it really matters. n (Disclosure: I am actively involved in the NDP So­ cialist Caucus. — R.M.) the Ceded Territories, a large portion of those states where Ojibwe tribes retain hunting, fishing, and gath­ ering rights guaranteed by 19th-Century treaties with the federal government.

For An Immediate, Just Transition The movement victories over Keystone XL, the Northern Gateway, Sandpiper, and Northeast Energy Direct pipelines shows the power of an organized mass movement against fossil fuels. The movement is not yet strong enough to directly challenge the ex­ isting oil and gas supply lines, but more victories like these can help build confidence and bring new activ­ ists into the fight.

It is imperative for the many small grassroots groups fighting pipelines see themselves as part of the broad­ er movement for climate justice, and to understand that their backyard is one small arena in a much larg­ er battle against the unfolding climate catastrophe wrought by capitalism.

The call for a halt to fossil fuel production should be accompanied by calls for 100% clean, renewable energy sources now; paid retraining and guaranteed jobs at union wages for all workers displaced by the transition away from fossil fuels; immediate clean-up of communities suffering from environmental racism; climate reparations to impoverished nations suffering the brunt of the climate catastrophe and other key de­ mands of the climate justice movement.

We must replace capitalism with an economic sys­ tem that values the future of humanity over short-term profit. n SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 2016 11

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