Can you help me in Politics, please ?

John Peters, ed., Boom, Bust and Crisis: Labour Corporate Power and Politics in Canada (Winnipeg and Halifax: Fernwood Publishing 2012)

BOOM, BUST AND CRISIS--an edited volume with eight chapters, along with an introduction by the author--is a wide-ranging and passionate description of the neoliberal restructuring of the Canadian economy, emphasizing "the increasing power and wealth imbalance favouring business and top earners, the declining power of Canada's labour movement and the worsening of jobs and incomes for the majority of Canadian workers." (8) The book is extremely interesting and useful. Its strengths lie in pulling together clear descriptions of the effects of neoliberal restructuring, capitalist globalization, and current state and private economic strategies and policies on the real lives of working people and their institutions; its critical approach to the challenge facing unions in this era; case studies which dispel same of the prevailing mystification and mythology about supposed economic success stories; and its outrage against the economic and political inequality that has resulted from Canada's resource, real estate, and financial boom.

The book's weakness lies in its lack of consistent systemic analysis of the drivers of the neoliberal restructuring of the Canadian economy. Too often it lapses into a kind of populist nostalgia for a postwar era that was supposedly better, fairer, or more equal--where business had less power and markets were "neutral"--and calls for a return to policies that favour the "broad middle class." This essentially social democratic approach muddles the analysis of political parties and governments, and makes it very difficult to pose alternative strategies for addressing inequality and the larger economic and political structures underpinning it. The book offers very few of these, and those it poses tend towards superficiality and naivete.

John Peters' overview "Free Markets and the Decline of Unions and Good Jobs" challenges the claims of governments and business interests that the new economy has brought prosperity, arguing that the reality for working people includes low wages, precarious work, stagnation, and inequality. At the same time, he identifies a panoply of neoliberal policies driving the new economy. His description of the effects of the natural resource, housing, and real estate booms and the relationship between financial deregulation and corporate behaviour is extremely useful and clear. A particular strength of this essay is the way it deals with the defeat of the labour movement. He criticizes unions for failing to collectively resist or go on the offensive. His call for political mobilization of all of the segments of the working class in solidaristic projects around political programs that challenge the neoliberal policy agenda is critically important.

But there are also political weaknesses here. There is no structural explanation of where the neoliberal agenda came from and what drives it. It's almost as if, suddenly, the wealthy were able to sway the electorate and thus gain control over the state, with the help of new forms of lobbying and self-organization. The implication is that before the neoliberal era, the capitalist class never really wielded power. He writes, "Driving all these changes is one fundamental political fact --since the late 1990s, the power structure of Canadian society has fundamentally shifted to favour the affluent elite." (17)

But the capitalist class always wielded dominant political and economic power in Canada. The crisis of the 1970s arose from a series of structural crises that could only be addressed by either dramatic reforms limiting private ownership and accumulation strategies, or a move towards liberalizing markets and attacking the structural gains of the working class. The defeat of the working class and the transformations associated with neoliberalism came about through choices made and power wielded by capital, given the political and organizational weakness of the working class. Neoliberalism has been institutionalized across the capitalist world and can't simply be reformed away without any necessary transformation of the economic (and political) structures underpinning it. The failure to clearly articulate this affects and weakens many elements of the book.

Dianna Gibson's and Regan Boychuk's essay, "The Spoils of the Tar Sands," and Sean Cadigan's "Boom, Bust and Bluster" look at the Alberta tar sands-driven economy and the Newfoundland and Labrador experience with oil and gas extraction and draw similar conclusions. The former describes the tar sands development boom as a disgraceful "business-driven social experiment" that led to inflation, housing shortages, and huge social and environmental problems in the boom area, as well as stagnant incomes and low wages across the non-tar sand areas of the province, along with cuts to social programs. Royalty rates are low, as a result of pressure from oil companies, and provincial finances remained problematic. In neither piece, however, is there any real alternative proposed or considered. The Alberta essay calls for a robust royalty regime, more pacing of resource extraction, addressing of environmental concerns, and redistribution of the wealth created through development. One would have hoped for a consideration of using tar sands bitumen to help ease a larger transition away from fossil fuels in Canada (and phasing out the tar sands), nationalizing resource ownership, and developing democratic forms of planning this transition. None is provided.

"Steel City Meltdown" by Stephen Arnold is an in-depth historical analysis of the evolution of the Hamilton-based steel companies Stelco and Dofasco. The essay does an excellent job of identifying key elements of neoliberal globalization that shaped the dramatic decline and current troubles of the two steel companies, the workers, and the community of Hamilton. But here again, this otherwise excellent essay falls short in its consideration of possible ways forward. It cites Steelworker President Leo Gerard's call for a national steel strategy, but endorses a quixotic notion of a worker co-op, modelled on the Basque/Spanish Mondragon experience. This makes little sense (particularly given the failed experience of partial union ownership at Algoma) and avoids the difficult and protracted political struggle needed to build a movement for a publicly owned, democratically planned, and co-ordinated national steel industry (with all that would entail in challenging neoliberalism and globalization).

An essay by David Fairey, Tom Sandborn, and John Peters, "The Biggest Roll-Back of Worker Rights in Canadian History," provides a rather compelling picture of the Campbell BC Liberal government's attack on labour market regulation, its effects, and the response of the labour movement. This is another of the better pieces in this collection, especially in its descriptive detail, analysis, and broad scope. It critiques the union movement's weak and ineffectual responses and suggests that it find new ways to activate members and build forms of solidarity across unions. It argues for more militant tactics and participatory approaches, and calls on the movement to talk less about building a more powerful and activist movement, and do more actual building.

Peter Graefe's essay "Whither the Quebec Model?" outlines how the corporatist relationship between the union movement, the state, and the capital in Quebec has been hollowed out by neoliberalism. He argues that although Quebec unions have maintained much of their strength in core sectors, they are unable to connect with newer and more precarious workers. With continued austerity and weakening of the social safety net, many of the previous gains that mitigated inequality have been undermined. He notes also that the blue collar unions are part of a kind of "coalition of the haves," and the social forces leading the attack on the right and their neoliberal world view are not being led by the labour movement. Labour has to move beyond defending its core and start defending the entire working class.

The final two essays are rather unique and original. "Precarious Employment and Occupational Health and Safety in Ontario," by Wayne Lewchuk, Marlea Clarke, and Alice de Wolff, explores the incompatibility between the forms of health and safety protection that unions have won through the Internal Responsibility System, and the massive development of precarious work. "Indigenous Workers, Casino Development and Union Organizing," by Yale Belanger, is a fascinating exploration of the contradictions facing union organizing in First Nations-owned casinos. It touches on the interactions between sovereignty, private ownership, and class. It's difficult, though, to see how this essay fits into the larger themes of the book as a whole.

HERMAN ROSENFELD

McMaster University and York University

Rosenfeld, Herman