It is noteworthy that those in the U.S. fighting for their rights against the oligarchs have as one of their slogans “No Kings” and here Carney is going in the opposite direction. It is another indication of the anti-people, anti-democratic aims of this government.
No matter what variant the ruling circles give of nation-building, of significance is that nation-building is not possible today without first settling the issue of where sovereignty is vested: in narrow private interests or in the people? And, along with this, who is “the people”? If “the people” is the ruling class, as those with positions of power and privilege claim, then that settles that — we have the status quo which is in crisis.
The goings on of the new government show by whom and how decisions are to be made and the kind of nation-building the ruling circles are promoting. Carney’s meetings with cabinet and the Liberal caucus, his Mandate Letter to his ministers and the Throne Speech all repeat a narrative for what is emerging from the Privy Council, from backroom deals with the Trump administration, from the initial stages of this five-week Parliamentary session, his tedious news conferences and talk show performances, and, most recently, the love-fest between the premiers in Saskatoon.
Carney’s own liberal arrogance gave us a taste of it when, following the meeting with premiers on March 21, he answered reporters with statements such as: “Look, I could explain to you later but trust me, I’m right,” and “We have discussed these matters among ourselves and we are very serious, not like Poilievre” who, he said, reduces everything to “a slogan” and “Things are much more complicated than that.” Apparently so complicated that he cannot lay it out to the polity.
According to Carney, the state determines society, rather than the ensemble of human relations revealing that which exists. Whatever is in his head, whatever the narrative given, is what exists. A good example of this is found in the Mandate Letter he provided his ministers on May 21. Under the subhead General Challenge, the Mandate Letter says: “At home, our longstanding weak productivity is straining government finances, making life less affordable for Canadian families, and threatening to undermine the sustainability of vital social programs on which Canadians rely.”
Sorting out the problem of weak productivity by making Canada’s economy the strongest in the G7 is one of the aims Carney has set for Canada.
Carney ignores the fact that modern production technique has gone beyond the capacity of today’s financiers, managers and owners of capital to handle. Productivity inevitably puts downward pressure on profits as more past work-time in machinery and material is used in relation to present work-time. You cannot squeeze capitalist profit out of a machine when every competitor has the same machine. Profit comes from active workers’ work-time.
Rather than facing up to the objective situation and finding real solutions and a new direction for the modern socialized economy that can use productivity for the benefit of the people and society, today’s financial gurus, managers and owners of capital are stuck in the old ways of doing things. They deny that the current problems with the economy are the consequence of doing just that since the mid-80s when this current neo-liberal anti-social offensive was first launched by the neo-Conservatives Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and, in Canada, Brian Mulroney. What is occurring today is the result of the recurring crises that approach generated, revealing that the necessity for change is even more urgent today than ever before.
Whatever Carney and his cronies do today promises more of the same as has been done in the past. Forty years ago free trade with the United States and then Mexico was presented as the panacea for every economic woe affecting the monopoly capitalist class in power. It led to nation-wrecking including the smashing of unions, increased state attacks on workers fighting for their rights, criminalization of Canadian citizens and residents from all walks of life expressing their right to conscience and of Indigenous Peoples fighting for their right to be and not permitting the Anglo-colonial state to determine who they are, increased war preparations, support for neo-Nazis in Ukraine, genocide against the Palestinians and much more.
As has taken place for the past 40 years, out of frustration, the Carney government and its provincial counterparts have already made it clear that they will step up their demands for concessions from the working class, stealing, gambling, pillaging the public purse, and engaging in predatory wars.
Despite all the talk about national unity and fast-tracking nation-building projects, the ruling class is incapable of nation-building. It is up to the working class to stop the bourgeoisie from squandering the national resources, the independence of the country and its well-being. Under the banner of using the resources of the country to benefit the collective interests of the people, the working class can mobilize and rally the people to oppose what the bourgeoisie is talking about – that everybody should create an environment for the success of businesses in the global market. It also arouses the people to take into their own hands what belongs to them and to create a society which will favour them.
The program the working class takes up must be set by taking up the needs of society at this particular time. The working class rejects narratives in somebody’s head and the ridiculous idea that gods come out of the machinery as in a theatre to rescue the people from the calamities in which their society is mired. Far from needing the likes of gods like Mark Carney, Canadian society needs an aim. The Canadian people need an aim which can be easily understood and appreciated by everyone. This aim can only be the aim of nation-building.
The main content of this project is that the working class must constitute the nation. In other words, the aim of the working class must become the aim of the nation, just as the bourgeoisie in its ascendancy put its aim, the aim of defending individual interest, private property, as the aim of the nation and even subordinated the nation to this aim. This aim is now long-since exhausted. Oligopolies operate as cartels and coalitions on a supranational basis. They have usurped the powers of the nation-states established to end the English Civil War and the foreign wars in which England and France and countries of Old Europe were mired for 100 years. Societies established to defend private property and recognize rights of the propertied classes on that basis cannot live to see another day because the properties classes themselves seize the land, resources and sovereignty of entire countries by unleashing wars of destruction on any country which refuses to submit to their predatory demands. The banks established to store the gold of sovereign nations now steal their gold to further narrow private interests. Where is the rule of law which defends property today? It no longer exists. Just as the narrow private interests have usurped the powers of the state within individual countries, so too, the International Rule of Law established by the United Nations in the name of “We the Peoples” of the United Nations has shown itself incapable of defending any peoples fighting for their right to be.
The time has now come for the working class to constitute the nation, establishing its own aim as the aim of the nation. In other words, the working class itself must take up the question of nation-building. It must lead the broad masses of the people to take up this aim as well. It is not possible for the working class to channel all its resources at this time without taking up the aim of satisfying the collective interests of society. This is what nation-building is all about.
Carney’s nation-building is a fraud. In Canada, nation-building can mean only one thing: that the working class must provide society with a modern constitution, with a modern political mechanism, with a change in the direction of the economy and with independence.
Let the battle for the working class to constitute the nation, in its own image, start in earnest. Without this battle, grave dangers lie ahead.