I have commented in my other blog on the recent shift to the right amongst the Quebec bourgeoisie including its Sovereignist arm.Quebec's Right Wing Manifesto.
Even the Federal BQ party has now back pedaled over Quebec Independence being the road to socialism; BQ says Quebecs Future is NOT Socialism.
In the Monthly Review Richard Fidler reports on this phenomena and the failure of the Quebec left to move beyond its sovereignist agenda for an independent social democratic Quebec...not a workers revolution in Quebec.
So I am not alone in assessing the failure of the Quebec Left to mobilize around a class strugle agenda. Instead like their counterparts in English Canada they fail to address the need for a common class struggle in both countries. Instead they opt to renew their faith in sovereignty, as if it was a viable alternative to English Monopoly Capitalism. Except that is the past . Such nonsense died during the Quiet Revolution and Trudeaus election as Prime Minister in 1968. I guess some folks are just late in getting the news.
Others who read the writing on the wall such as former Tory/BQ/PQ/ millionare lawyer Mssr. Bouchard, read it only too well and are now prepared to live with Quebec as part of Canada in the age of Global Capitalism. Quebec has its own bourgeois now, congratulations you are a sovereign capital in the age of global capitalism.
Too bad the Quebec left is still living in the past, time to wake up and smell the coffee.
PQ's Rightward Shift Opens Space for New Left Party in Quebec
by Richard Fidler
In the past, the PQ's support for sovereignty gave it a radical image. Deprived of direct support by big capital, which is unanimously opposed to Quebec independence, the PQ had to pitch its appeal to the unions and popular movements. Today, notwithstanding the hopes of Dubuc's SPQ-Libre, the unions, while generally sympathetic to sovereignty, are much more diffident about the PQ. This offers some important possibilities for the new left party, although there is little indication so far of movement within the labour movement toward a clear break with the PQ.
However, most of the Quebec left, including both OC and (to a lesser degree) the UFP, does not conceive of politics in class terms. Political debate is expressed in terms of conflicting "values," not class conflict. A current example of this is the Manifeste pour un Québec solidaire, a response to the Bouchard manifesto initiated by UFP and OC leaders, which was published on November 1 under the signatures of a wide range of personalities including some PQ and BQ parliamentarians. (See www.pourunquebecsolidaire.org/index.php?manifeste for the text.)
While offering a compelling point-by-point rebuttal of each of the hot-button demands in the Bouchard manifesto, it does not explain the class basis of the program of the "lucides" or present a clear anticapitalist alternative perspective. Its acknowledged inspiration is Scandinavian social-democracy, not socialism. Our vision of Quebec, it says, is "humanist, watchful of the environment and sustainable development, the common good and collective rights." It sees the central economic issue as one of distribution of wealth, not control of its production.
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