From: cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,can.politics
Subject: Re: NDP in British Columbia, Canada (was Re: Rush is...)
Date: 13 Oct 92 03:55:05 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Ottawa

In article <1992Oct13.021729.6732@bmerh85.bnr.ca> myhui@bnr.ca (Michael Hui) writes:
>In article <1992Oct12.202557.24775@u.washington.edu> sieferme@stein.u.washington.edu (Eric Sieferman) writes:
>>For an example of a nearby party whose policies are more like what
>>the rest of the world regards as "socialist", look at
>>the New Democratic Party in Canada.
>
>There are many different areas a government may concentrate (in a
>relative sense, when compared to other parties) its use of public
>funds, and the way the funds are used also varies.

Certainly true.

>The NDP advocates self help with dignity...
>...
>If a citizen is lazy, stupid, brought up without a lot of skills, or is
>displaced out of the mainstream due to some reason, whether self
>inflicted or not, public fund is used to help that citizen get back
>into the mainstream work force, by making it financially preferrable and
>also providing the counselling that may be needed to turn that person
>back into a well adjusted, productive worker.

Unfortunately, this is one of the "holy grails" of Economics; finding
a way to make it preferable to "get back to work", while allowing
unemployed people to nonetheless live with dignity.  

Everybody has an idea as to how this should be done; from the
socialist extreme, at which nobody actually "earns" anything, but
rather receives something out of the pot.  At this end of the
spectrum, you can be "unemployed with dignity;" unfortunately, there's
no incentive to be productive.  This has been quite vividly shown in
the experiences of the former USSR.  At this end of the spectrum,
"dignity" is valued over "economic value."

At the other end, we find the "evil-pig-dog-capitalist-pig," that
(validly) recognizes the fact that the most effective way of making it
"financially preferable" to be in the work force is to refuse to pay
people for doing nothing.  We've never actually seen this one in force
in our culture; it HAS been seen under various repressive regimes
 particularly in Africa.  Since various forms of power politics have
been involved in such places, it has never actually been used in any
truly pure form ANYWHERE.

The only conclusions that I've ever seen about welfare programs (which
UI is, because it's certainly NOT a real insurance program) are:

a) Welfare ALWAYS acts as a disincentive towards work 
b) People will NEVER be willing to totally dismantle a welfare system.

>Socialism is not about the above issues. It really deals with the idea
>that state-run enterprises are the preferred route for certain sectors
>of the economy, most notably in natural resources.  I do not think the
>NDP in BC have any plans to convert any sector of the economy presently
>run by the private sector into the public sector.

It is quite correct that the NDP is not a party of pure socialists; I
would assert that the NDP is the party for the unionists of Canada,
and I doubt I'd get many arguments.

The main supporters at high levels in Canadian politics are the
leaders of the major unions of Canada (whether that be the CLC or the
UAW) and those supporters are the constituents to which they are
forced to pander.

Since unions have set themselves against business (as part of their
nature), the policies of a unionist party tend to be unfavorable to
business, and favorable to unions.  (Note the recent Ontario bill
C-40.)

There has been a claim that the NDP was the "honest" party in
politics; this has been disproven in Ontario because of the sheer
numbers of scandals and broken election promises.  They used to claim
that they had no scandals; this was true, because they had
insufficient power to encourage any corruption.  This has, of course,
changed.

There IS a certain correlation between socialism and unionism; they
ARE quite related ideas.

-- 
Christopher Browne                |     PGP 2.0 key available
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University of Ottawa              |
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Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.elections