Posted on 12/03/2001 6:53:51 PM PST by Proud Canadian
Does National Security Make You Safe?
By Alan Sears
Governments and employers have used the horrible terrorist attacks of September 11 as a pretext to justify a speed-up in implementing their right-wing agenda. They are blatantly using the fear and grief that these attacks created as a cover for hasty moves to strip away rights we have won over a long period of time. They are using their so-called "war on terrorism" to extend the crisis atmosphere to give them a window for rapid moves to consolidate a racist law-and-order 'national security' regime.
They claim they are doing it for our own good. New legislation has been introduced very rapidly that takes away civil liberties, particularly focusing on immigrants and refugees. Anne McLellan, Chretien's Minister of Justice, justified new legislation ratcheting up police powers by saying, "Canadians expect their government to act to protect their safety and security but I do believe Canadians expect us to act in a balanced and fair way." Of course, she tacked on the little bit about "balance" just as they add the obligatory nod to anti-racism. But in reality we are facing a massive attack on our rights that has a specifically racist focus, including overt racial profiling.
The newspapers and television say that everything has changed since September 11. There has certainly been a massive shift in public opinion. Suddenly despised political leaders like Bush are receiving massive approval in the polls. In wartime, capitalist rulers try to turn real fears and anxieties into nationalist team spirit that leaves us more vulnerable to exploitation. But that nationalist boosterism can wear thin very quickly.
One thing that has not changed since September 11 is the right-wing direction of the great ship of state. It is "full speed ahead" with an agenda of cuts, lay-offs, speed-ups, polarization and increased repression. This agenda has been worked out by employers and the state over a long period of capitalist restructuring dating back to the early 1970s. It was designed to restore profitability after the massive economic downturn of the early 1970s.
The road back to profitability has been rocky and uneven. The early 1980s and 1990s saw sharp recessions. By the late 1990s, though, things looked pretty good for the corporate bosses.
Making a Lean World
The profitability of the late 1990s was based on the generalization of lean production methods through the economy. Lean production involves a massive intensification of work based largely on what Jane Slaughter and Mike Parker call "management by stress". Insecurity and constant pressure for speed-up are the mark of the workplace in the age of lean production. This pressure comes from methods of continuous improvement, which aim to pump up productivity all the time in every work process.
Doing things the same old way is suddenly portrayed as lazy and fat. There is a big move towards part-time, contract and temporary workers, eroding the base of full-time secure jobs.
This regime of lean production in the workplace is accompanied by a major shift in social policy at the level of the state. At the peak of the old welfare state, a large section of the working class was offered some degree of security through health care, social programmes like unemployment insurance and social assistance, relatively affordable education and some public housing. Of course, many were excluded from even the limited security of the welfare state, including many immigrants and people of colour, women whose access to security was through a relationship with a wage-earning male, lesbians and gays who were denied full human rights and Aboriginal people.
The ruling class (employers and state policy-makers) came to see the limited security of the welfare state as an obstacle to the spread of lean production methods based on management by stress. It was necessary to strip away the sense of entitlement that many workers had won for themselves by forming unions and fighting for social justice.
The attack on social programmes was connected to a huge increase in the repressive power of the state through policing, immigration controls, harsher laws and increased use of prisons.
By the end of the 1990s, things were looking pretty good for the corporate bosses and the lean world they were creating. Profits were good, stocks were doing well and strike rates were really low. As usual, the ruling class claimed they had found the path for eternal prosperity, though the reality for much of the working class was an epidemic of poverty, racism, overwork, insecurity, homelessness and incarceration. But they had never really overcome the up and down cycles of capitalist profitability and an economic downturn was lurking in the near future.
Turn the Blame Elsewhere
Now they are trying to get us to blame the economic downturn on the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Centre. But this downturn has been in the cards for a long time. They are using the fear created by these attacks to pump up the management by stress and force the pace of lean production restructuring. Large and sudden layoffs, wage concessions, harsh anti-immigrant measures (like identity cards) and a massive increase in police powers all fit with the lean production agenda the ruling class has mapped out over time.
Of course, they are telling us it is for our own good, it will make us safe. They want us to believe that the real threat we face is from others: the terrorists; people from North Africa, the Middle East or South Asia; people who are Islamic; the Taliban regime in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein in Iraq. They are claiming we should all join together for a war on terrorism. As U.S. President Bush said, "Either you're with us or you are with the terrorists."
So, the ruling classes, who have spent the last 20 years using management by stress to make us insecure, are now turning around and blaming our fears on those others over there. Meanwhile, they are using our fears as a pretext to take on massive powers to stamp down on dissent and further polarize society.
The War on Dissent
This so-called "war on terrorism" has two major dimensions. First, it is a massive show of imperialist force by a superpower that is asserting its place in the world. Capitalist globalization is not just an economic process of corporate expansion by transnational companies but also a political and military process of imperialist domination. George W. Bush is trying to consolidate a unipolar "new world order" in which the United States is the unchallenged superpower.
Secondly, this is a war on dissent. The ruling class always claims to be attacking terrorism when it stomps down on dissent. They only recognize the most meek and mild forms of symbolic protest as really legitimate: write a letter to your Member of Parliament, collect signatures on a petition (but get the wording right!), demonstrate with well-behaved parades that politely ask our rulers to reconsider.
Effective mobilization is always suspect in their books, and we get away with it largely by drawing on our collective strength. In the 1970s, the RCMP Security Service (predecessor of CSIS) kept files on hundreds of thousands of Canadians ranging from union activists to NDP and Parti Quebecois members, all in the name of cracking down on "terrorism."</P>
The movements against poverty and capitalist globalization have provided an important model of effective protest over the last few years. A relatively small but crucial layer was beginning to sense it was possible to fight back against the ugly inequalities of lean production on a global scale. Now, that movement faces the threat of a new racialized McCarthyism that is called the "war on terrorism."
There is absolutely no doubt that the increased police powers of surveillance and prosecution are going to be used to repress effective dissent if they can get away with it. And they will get away with it if our side gives up the fight, if we concede that we should not be organizing effective resistance. Sadly, the early signs from some union leaders are that they are backing off the fight. Take the example of the AFL/CIO cancelling support for the protest at the World Bank — IMF meeting in Washington at the end of September.
That makes the movement against war and racism particularly important as we also carry on our ongoing fightbacks. It is crucial to show from the outset that we do not accept their claims to be fighting on our behalf. This is particularly important at a time when the government is introducing special anti-immigrant measures that aim to divide us. Police in Canadian cities and provinces have reported a dramatic increase in hate crimes since September 11. The government claims to oppose these hate crimes, even introducing special legislation to increase punishment for committing these acts. Yet in reality, the anti-immigrant measures the government is introducing encourage us to treat our neighbours as suspects and second-class citizens. The state is fanning the flames of hatred with one hand while dribbling a few drops of water on the fire with the other.
We all need to be afraid of the new pass laws the government is introducing. These will not make any of us the slightest bit safer and will make many of us much less safe. How more often will people of colour (whether landed immigrants or citizens) be asked to produce their papers? Will the crackdown on funding "terrorist" organizations be used to suppress the political organization of people of colour?
These pass laws create the dangerous impression that immigrants and refugees are a real threat. They reinforce the smug notion that racist policies protect some of us from the rest of us. It is particularly bizarre that refugees fleeing the Taliban regime that our rulers claim to oppose are being subjected to increased repression and suspicion. Meanwhile, the corporate bosses get away with massive layoffs, huge cut backs, tax breaks and new police powers to crack down on us if we dare protest.
Building the Fightback
This does not mean that we should simply ignore the changes in public opinion and carry on blindly. We need to be strategic, recognizing how important it is to combine strategies of patient explanation with effective protests that aim to build our capacities to fight back. It really matters right now that we organize teach-ins and discussions to talk about the real agenda behind the "war on terrorism." At the same time, carrying on with protests is an absolutely essential way to claim space for the fightback against the right-wing agenda.
Our rulers may claim that national security will make us safe. In reality, they do not want us to be safe. They want us afraid of the next layoff, police surveillance, anti-immigrant and refugee crackdowns, homelessness and our so-called "enemies" over there (where ever our rulers claim to find them). Our challenge is to find effective ways to build the fight back and to challenge the real sources of insecurity and inequality that threaten our well-being.
Alan Sears teaches sociology and labour studies at the University of Windsor. Alan's piece appears with a dozen others in America's New War Order: Mobilizing Against War, Racism and Imperialism. More selections from this pamphlet will be online soon at the ;New Socialist Website.
A Canadian.
Want your country back? Get guns and scare the hell out of the socialists running Canada.
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