The Politics of Less

Phil Burpee

Phil Burpee, Columnist
Burpee is a carpenter and farmer living north of Pincher Creek. He keeps an eye on the world from under the big Alberta sky.

August 22, 2011. Jack Layton is dead. Sixty-one years old and in the full flight of political action and discourse, he succumbs to illness and is no more. It is good perhaps to take a moment to consider the passing of a voice from amongst us, a voice which spoke timely and sometimes uncomfortable truths about the way we live and the nature of our corporate and political leadership.
One is reminded of a quote years ago from Ed Broadbent, himself a tireless and determined leader of the federal NDP:

     “We have a political democracy in Canada, ie. the right to vote for or against political parties and a wide range of civil liberties, but emphatically we do not have a democratic society, ie. a society in which there is roughly equal access to power and wealth.”

That pretty much encapsulates what Jack Layton was all about. In a time of deep financial insecurity and political inertia, if not actual deadlock, he offered at least the possibility of a different perspective, the possibility that perhaps the accepted inevitability of inequity and corporate malfeasance might not really be inevitable at all.

The foundation-stone of the ethos Layton projected for all those years lay in the belief that society could indeed achieve a more ethical and better-calibrated balance between personal initiative and collective wellbeing. The Social Democracy about which Layton spoke provided a framework within which a democratically interactive citizenry might seek to bring about that ‘democratic society’ which Mr. Broadbent referred to. This proposes that we might, as an electorate, agree to limit certain egregious tendencies towards excessive personal wealth and power through more equitable taxation and appropriate legislative tools designed to protect those amongst us who are, for various reasons, socially and/or economically marginalized and therefore less well able to defend themselves against the vagaries of changing times. This is hardly a radical idea. It simply presupposes a society motivated by altruism rather than self-service, and a spirit of sharing rather than one of grabbing what you can. It is what has been referred to as the Politics of Less, in a world where the false promise of unlimited More is now shockingly revealed to be nothing more than the Emperor’s New Clothes.

Capitalism is a marvelous economic tool, unparalleled in its capacity to create jobs and wealth. Through personal initiative and access to a floating, open Marketplace, new forms of economic activity can be created out of the accrued capital of prior endeavours. But, like any engine, without appropriate and well-engineered systems of governance, it will rev beyond its design capacity and begin to thrash itself to pieces. Witness the economic collapse of 2008 and the still current queasiness of global markets, especially within the liberal democracies of the West where we are supposed to have both bred and tamed the Beast that is Monetarism, and its ugly sister, Capital Flight, wherein investors grab their money and run, leaving an economy suddenly stripped of collateral. It’s killing us. Through greed and speculation we are squandering just exactly that capital, natural, social and economic, which ought to have accrued to our children. Something needs fixing. In any business operation, if your costs of production exceed your returns, then you are on the road to ruin. That’s pretty much where we are at currently in this country. Our projected wellbeing is increasingly based upon the proceeds from hydrocarbon extraction, with less and less emphasis being placed on innovation and economic diversity, not to mention social justice and a bleeding ecology. We are condemning our kids to economic slavery before trans-global oil and gas corporate entities whose primary motivation is profit and whose allegiances rest not with any political jurisdiction within which they might be doing business, but rather with their shareholders and their unchanging Unholy Grail  -  the bottom line.

Well, Jack Layton had a different vision. He saw a time when perhaps Mammon was not the god of the day  -  when perhaps care and decency and thoughtfulness might be the order of things. He made his moves as a tactician and a realist, but he never lost sight of his goal -  a sustainable world able to provide for all without damaging or depleting either its human or its natural capital, a world in which the condition of the least of its children would set the standard for a general moral culpability. So, the Energizer Bunny has left the building. We are left saddened and impoverished for that. He was a class act who never stepped back from a confrontation with a bully, and who never apologized for his humanness, nor his bright vision. He will be remembered brandishing his cane at the pompous sluggards who currently oversee the piracy that passes for government and business in this country. And he will be remembered as righteously donning the Golden Gloves that old T.C. Douglas won as the Lightweight Boxing Champion of Manitoba, standing foursquare against all comers, dodging, weaving, but never backing up, and confidant in the righteousness and great human beauty of his fight. Never mind the Bunny  -  this was Jack the Bear, ferocious and unyielding, speaking Truth to Power.


Phil Burpee
Pincher Creek, Alberta


Do you have something to say?  The Pincher Creek Voice welcomes your input. pinchercreekvoice@gmail.com