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This week, another round of high-profile Extinction Rebellion (XR) protests began in Britain. In London, climate activists intend on a ten-day occupation of Parliament Square, as politicians return to vote on the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill (CEE).

The CEE bill will be moved by Caroline Lucas MP, the Green Partys sole representative in the House of Commons. It cites two objectives: to ensure that the UK plays its role in limiting global temperature to 1.5 degrees centigrade and to actively conserve the natural world. The key difference between this bill and other climate emergency motions is that it proposes a Citizens Assembly, a consultative group of individuals selected from the general population, with the intention of being representative of the wider citizenry.

The bill warns of a yellow vest effect, alluding to a similar initiative in France. There, however, President Emmanuel Macron has accepted just 3 out of the 149 recommendations from a citizens commission following the gilets jaunes protests. Although such deliberative democracy has been praised in Ireland, for example paving the way for its reproductive rights referendum it contains an assumption that solutions could be found inside the context of our current neoliberal capitalism, so long as the discussion was participatory enough.

For this reason, XR proposes sortition selecting citizens by lot, as an alternative to voting. Doubtless, it is a nice gesture to have citizens discuss ideas for a just transition. But any serious radical proposal on climate must recognize that the capitalist system requires extraction, commodification, and, ultimately, ecological destruction and thus any effective response to this crisis demands a confrontation with capitalist interests.

The absence of these dynamics is where the bill falls short, and so, too, Extinction Rebellions own political proposals. As Natasha Josette from Labour for a Green New Deal wrote last year, what the movement is missing or not stating clearly enough is that the climate crisis is the result of neo-liberal capitalism, and a global system of extraction, dispossession and oppression. Without this, Extinction Rebellion is more of an organization seeking to make a splash in the media, than a movement as such.

The passing of the bill would fulfill XRs third and final demand, which calls for a Citizens Assembly with the task of mapping out a road to climate and ecological justice. The demand implores us to go beyond politics, but is unclear about what, concretely, is meant to replace it. This slogan, however, is indicative of the movements present limitations as led by a broadly liberal tradition. Ironically, it is reminiscent of Francis Fukuyamas End of History: desiring politics but without the conflict, progress but without revolution, and movements but without the radical potential.

Historically, movements in the liberal tradition that have attempted to be broad and popularist to borrow the language of XRs founder Roger Hallam often find themselves politically unmoored when the initial shine wears off. Movements that operate on an all things to all people basis are at threat of dissolving upon contact with reality.

Evading questions of their class and social interests, and representation thereof strips a movement of its political content. You cannot expect to be politically relevant for very long if being politically ambiguous or apolitical is a fundamental component of a movement. In their recent communications explicitly dismissing the notion that the movement is socialist Extinction Rebellion are again committing themselves to this fate.

Activists that do define their political analysis as originating from socialist thought perhaps should not be surprised by the groups repudiation of the socialism or extinction banners during its protests. When a movement says it is not a socialist movement, it does more than insult the activists within it who are socialists. It strips it of serious radical and political content, and hints at its lack of interest in gaining a working-class majority to its side.

This, indeed, is a constituency the group did much to alienate in its recent past. In an action at a London tube station, Extinction Rebellion activists climbed to the roof of the train, keeping commuters from accessing the (relatively environmentally friendly) public transport. A physical confrontation broke out and was caught on the groups social media livestream.

Extinction Rebellion issued an apology for the action and the disruption to commuters. It further fueled perceptions of the group as white, middle-class, and out of touch with working-class people. A recent Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity study on the class composition of Extinction Rebellion rebels lends weight to this perception.

In Tribunes Politics Theory Other podcast interview from last year, Hallam identifies Extinction Rebellion as fitting into a gap between the radical left and the NGO left, dismissing the former as Calvinistic and the latter as corporatist.

This explanation is not only reductive and simplistic, but it also places the group in the same political no-mans-land that has hamstrung populist movements, from Podemos in Spain to Five Star in Italy. In the interview, Hallam further expanded on this claim to stand against politics per se:

my main orientation isnt really political it is more sociological and structural. Thats the starting point its simply impossible for the main social institutions of a society to be able to adapt quickly to rapid change. particularly, the Labour Party isnt going to cope. What were looking at is a complete collapse in the credibility of the political class. The political class is heading for extinction in terms of credibility. Theres no conception of a mass extinction event. Extinction Rebellion is mainly morally mobilised.

There are potentially some ideological components to be teased out from Hallams thoughts, albeit fairly broad ones. There is a recognition of the limits of electoralism from a populist perspective, as well as an acknowledgement of the need to keep up a grassroots movement with climate breakdown on the horizon. It is telling, though, that Hallam is dismissive of political intervention, and goes as far as saying that the mobilizing force of the movement is primarily out of a sense of morality.

For Hallam, politics is not about relations of power and material conditions, but rather a colloquial understanding of the word that denotes unpleasantness and dirtiness. While unpleasant and dirty it may be, political and ideological clarity that places anti-capitalism and anti-racism at its center will give the movement the maturity it lacks, and help it connect to those constituencies that it has tended to alienate. To borrow a line attributed to Chico Mendes, environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening. Extinction Rebellion without socialism is just mass arrests.

But this also leaves XR open to other, dangerous influences. I was myself one of the admins behind Extinction Rebellions social media presence, and saw instances where activists, or individuals posing as activists, have disseminated eco-fascist propaganda. On occasion, we would receive messages asking whether this was official Extinction Rebellion material. Having to clarify that your group is not in favor of population control laws is probably an indication that the politics of the movement is not as clear as it could be.

The process of ideological and political clarity can develop over time for a movement, through internal and external forces. Internally, by methods of discussion and self-critique. Externally, through contact with other forces and groups in society.

This journey to clarity can be better understood if we imagine movements as having life cycles. Extinction Rebellion is young in age, not just in terms of many of its activists but also insofar as being a movement yet to reach maturity. It has a relatively global reach and identifies part of the existential destruction, which makes it relevant to its supporters.

It would be unfair to expect a movement with broad and populist ambitions to be born into a set of ideologically potent and coherent dogma. To reuse the comparison with Podemos and Five Star, some ideological openness is essential at the start in terms of bringing people on board. Having an activist milieu mobilized on moral grounds is not itself a bad thing but it is certainly not enough in the long term.

While that initial ideological openness is arguably necessary, clarity must be an eventual goal. The analytic framework for arriving at that clarity must accept the existence of classes and social groups, where politically meaningful alliances can and must be made between them, and where interests are diametrically opposed to each other. From there, discussions about dealing with those class and social conflicts at a strategic level can fit in, such as the principle of nonviolence and the tactic of mass arrests.

For example, Hallam stressed in the Politics Theory Other interview that the treatment of protestors by the police is far worse in other countries than the UK. Even if this were true, this hardly makes the police potential allies. XRs call for a nonviolent, compassionate attitude toward the police shows that there is a shortcoming in the understanding of the police, not only as the physical arm of the bourgeois state that has so far prevented climate justice, but also as institutionally racist. It should not even be needed, but these times are as good as any to revisit its ideological framework in the light of the Black Lives Matter movement and Extinction Rebellions relationship with working people of color.

For ecological politics isnt just about raising awareness and thus exerting moral pressure. The giants of corporate capitalism have known of the extent of the climate crisis for years. We can already see that making the ruling class more aware of this crisis and even the human suffering it has and will cause has a decidedly limited effect.

The core assumption that the dominant can be reasoned with or convinced, be it by protests like the ones this week or awareness campaigns, has no grounding in experience. Similarly, trusting a randomly selected group of individuals to take action through a citizens assembly, should the CEE bill pass, seems distinctly insufficient.

Just as the socialism or barbarism phrase could be updated to socialism or extinction, so, too, should a nascent movement move from childhood to maturity. This begins with having a clear sense of political conflict recognizing the need to find allies for a common struggle.

Original post:
Yes, Socialism or Extinction Is Exactly the Choice We Face - Jacobin magazine

Theory September 4, 2020 Alex Demirovi

History teaches us nothing, so said Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Andrea Nahles, to justify discontinuing the SPDs Historical Commission. Long ago, Rosa Luxemburg took the opposite position: history is the only true teacher (GW 4: 480). Perhaps history really doesnt teach us how we should act immediately in our current situation. This is true in general, and also in very specific circumstances. Were we not convinced that the tradition of critical fascist analysis would give us the concepts to resist developments in capitalist society that tend toward an erosion of democracy, toward authoritarian and exceptional state forms which drastically worsen the prospects of emancipation? Didnt we believe that, equipped with this knowledge, with all our historical interrogations, we would be better able to resist and defeat right-wing forces? It appears not to be the case.

But history teaches us something much more fundamental, namely that our present moment is the present of a history. In this present, the struggles and the missed opportunities of the past are condensed in a special way. It is not a question of what might have been, but of concrete decisions, of victories and defeats, of real alternatives. It also teaches us that once decisions have been made, they actually result in long-term developments.

The different attempts made to realize socialism, many of which proved to be wrong or senseless, which failed or were defeated, are all a part of our presents history. Because of these previous attempts, many things associated with the name socialism are now considered historically obsolete, out-dated, or discredited. There are several reasons why this is the case. Socialism was associated with practices that contradicted and discredited socialisms emancipatory ambitions. In many cases it is doubtful that those who acted and spoke in the name of socialist objectives were pursuing anything more than the selfish interests of individual functionaries.

Yet it would be a false consolation to think that an idea that was good in itself was merely abused. Indeed, the ideas and concepts of socialism are the subject of discussion and conflict. Understood in this way, there is no definition of socialism which is valid a priori; rather there are a range of suggestions for how to define it. In many cases, the term encompassed particular social groups who (for a time rightly) believed that they embodied the general will, but who did not understand that the concept of socialism in whose name they were acting was a compromise that enjoyed the support of many people only due to the circumstances prevailing at that moment. They wanted to cling to this moment and this claim to universality, and enforce stability. Unable to adapt to the changes in the social constellation, they denounced different ways of life, perspectives, or contradictions as deviations, or pathologized their critics. In this way, socialism was not an open, free, social organization of collective life, but rather remained limited to certain social groups and their life situations (certain groups of industrial workers, special modes of production, for example large industrial factories in urban regions, and related forms of work organization), which claimed to be universal.

According to this claim, socialism is the only social form through which contradictions are consciously lived and worked out. This is why Karl Korsch was able to say that socialist society needs to be more skilled at processing contradictions, or in other words, that socialism is actually more complex than the capitalist form of social organization. This is because it no longer denies the contradictions and consigns them to anonymous social processes, such as the conflict between consumers and producers over products and product quantities, over working hours or shares in the overall productive output, or over ecological consequences. In this context, Marxs unique contribution to the socialist tradition was to take the objective existence of contradictions seriously, to articulate and analyse them, but without moralizing, sugar-coating, or erasing them through the states claims to universality, or to suppress them by administrative means.

If there are differences and contradictions between the claims to universality and the various social groups, their interests, and needs, then there is a need for forms which can mediate contradictions and tensions between the universal and the particular. Democracy is the process through which this happens. It is a regulated process in which individuals debate about what can be considered universal in a specific situation. Negotiations about universal interests impact the direction in which society as a whole develops. This can involve all aspects of society, including its products, its work processes, educational and qualification processes, forms of housing and town planning, nutrition, and gendered and familial divisions of labour.

Whether due to a lack of effort or other reasons, state socialisms failed to democratically regulate these processes of reconciling universal interests with the diverse interests of particular groups. Although the socialist states saw themselves as democratic peoples republics, hardly any democratic processes of mediating between different interest groups were initiated. Though they often held onto the political form of parliaments and parties, the internal logic of these forms was blocked in order to maintain the Communist or Socialist parties monopoly on power, so that universal interests were not defined through open discussion, but rather by the most powerful working-class party. The workers did not make decisions on matters that affected them. There were no experiments with other forms of democratic coordination (such as those discussed throughout the history of the socialist movement) which would have enabled the workers and the members of society to participate in defining claims to universality.

The bourgeois class can allow its internal differences to find expression by distributing power among several competing parties and political institutions. The left has so far contributed little to the development of a conception of the limitation of political power, or what Michel Foucault called a socialist art of government or governmentality. This is certainly one aspect that has contributed to its defeat. For when it comes to gathering together many different groups and interests under one concept of universality, then it is also necessary that all those involved are able to remove themselves from this alliance without being subjected to negative consequences. They must be able to anticipate this and expect to be able to present a modified, perhaps even different concept of the universal.

It is a very curious thing when people say that socialism has been discredited. Socialism occupies one of the deepest layers of modern society itself. A modern society based on capitalist methods of production would not exist without socialism. This society cannot be separated into an objective reality on the one side and different ideologies and political tendencies on the other, which would include not only liberalism and conservatism but also socialism, which, after it has destroyed its reputation, can then simply be cast aside. Even if there may have been socialisms before modern socialism just as there was class rule and the appropriation of the surplus product by those who did not produce it it was only constituted in modern capitalist society through a series of disputes. It is an aspect of the real movement of this society, not a value or norm that might be added externally to a given reality. Socialism is the name given to those internal tendencies in capitalist society that are necessary to solve the large problems of social development.

These large problems are historically new in this form, because humanity only comes to observe and understand itself as a collective actor under capitalism. People can analyse the exploitation of nature and the disturbance of the Earths metabolism. For example, they know all about fish numbers, oil reserves, the extent of rainforests or whale populations. They are able to understand that economic crises that lead to unemployment, hunger, or migration are not due to unexpected natural processes like a bad harvest, but are caused by humanity itself; they understand that inequality is the result of disparities in education and skills. Humanity is aware of genocides, the global trafficking of human beings, the approximate number of slaves and sexual violence. Each of these major problems calls for concrete solutions: not merely for incremental improvements here and there, but for the problems in each case individually to be surpassed. We need to reach a point where we no longer need to search for solutions, because the problems have simply become superfluous, since they ultimately no longer occur.

Why lump all these efforts together under one single name, the name of socialism? For historical reasons so as not to obstruct access to all the experiences and attempts made at emancipation; so as not to remain naive in the face of all the decisions that have led to the present and which have all contributed to making life better and worse at the same time. But also because socialism refers to a specific moment in modern history. It is the keystone of the whole that holds everything together, since it is constitutively at the beginning of the constellation of the modern, capitalist way of life: wage labour, which makes it possible to produce the historically unique form of social wealth in a specific way money, commodities, means of production, company shares, assets, real estate.

The wage form is the social form which makes it possible to reproduce all other forms of exploitation and domination. It is impossible to change capitalist relations without also changing these forms; in other words, without overcoming wage labour, which refers to the fact that human labour-power is a commodity that must be moulded for the labour market and must strive to find someone who has a need for this commodity at market prices. This entails all the risks for individuals, including being left without work and income, earning too little, or ruining our own ability to work and being unable to actually enjoy our lives.

If socialism appears to be discredited today, then we must count this as a defeat. In light of this, the question arises as to why anyone is happy that this is the case. Because the failure of socialism means the failure of the project of the Enlightenment itself. Understood in this way, it is a matter of people finding the courage to free themselves from their self-inflicted immaturity, that is, from conditions that they create through their own actions and that confront them again and again with the same problems at ever higher levels. Everything progresses except the whole is how Theodor Adorno describes this circumstance. In fact, there is something malicious to criticisms of socialism, since they often misjudge socialisms historical significance.

One of socialisms decisive characteristics is its claim to rationality. The contradictions that permeate society can be openly expressed and, by consciously addressing them, can be avoided, overcome, or transformed into differences and otherness. On the basis of this claim to rationality, all mistakes, all contradictions, all dysfunctions that arise during a transformation of the way of life of a society can be attributed to socialism. Yet this transformation is confronted with extreme forms of nonsynchronism: with regards to peoples level of knowledge and education, their needs, regional developments, the state of production and services, ecological destruction, as well as the production of new, rational cycles of production and consumption. The temporal horizon of socialist transformation is more expansive than that of capitalist processes: this applies both to the past and to the distant future.

The socialist project bears responsibility and must be held accountable for what it tried and what failed in its name. The same does not apply to capitalism. Admittedly, social criticism (particularly that of a left-wing and socialist stripe) attempts to attribute many of our societys problems to capitalism. But these efforts struggle to gain traction; and this is not because there are a host of intellectuals fighting against such an attribution, who work to prevent the formation of such an empty signifier in which violence, wars, and genocides, the destruction of human lives, exploitation, ecological catastrophes, the sexist and racist denigration of human beings is symbolically condensed into the ultimate, morally debased antagonist. Rather the defenders of capitalism point to the complexity of our society, which makes it difficult to attribute these social evils to any one cause.

Nobody seems responsible for the melting of the glaciers and polar ice caps, or if they are, we all are. When it comes to explaining the causes, everything seems to dissolve into a plethora of details: fossil fuels and related industries, agriculture, the automobile industry, container ships, and cruise liners. It all seems fragmented, unplanned, random, uncoordinated the trans-intentional result of many different chains of action for which there is no primary cause. Anyone who tries to identify causes and protagonists, however, is portrayed as lacking nuance or even influenced by conspiracy theories. But the processes are internally interlinked, coordinated, complement each other, and form a constellation. Yet the capitalist reproduction process appears to be an anonymous systemic process for which everyone and no one, and perhaps even the majority the subalterns bear responsibility.

In the socialist tradition, Marx managed to address this perspective most seriously. Despite the fact that via liberal ideas of equality and freedom, of autonomy and the will to justice, a moral criticism of owners of capital is quite plausible and had often been proposed, Marx emphasized that it was mistaken to attempt to morally reproach individual entrepreneurs, capital owners, or politicians. For it is precisely the immorality of social processes that provides the impetus for demanding a transformation of the overall context that is consciously shaped by all. With his remarks, Marx was also able to make it clear that anonymity is not so anonymous after all, since different degrees of freedom already exist in bourgeois, capitalist society.

The bourgeois class is far more capable of determining capitalist relations, of maintaining itself as a social group amidst these relations which it is always reshaping, and of maintaining and changing the relations in its favour than is possible for people who do not possess capital and do not have access to bourgeois consensus-building events such as the World Economic Forum, who are not able to determine public opinion through their media and their cultural industry, who are not included in political decision-making processes, but who are above all objects of administration and useful instruments for the enrichment of fewer and fewer. It is a characteristic of developed modern domination that the wealth of the rich and the power of the powerful appear to be the incidental result of the implementation of practical necessities that supposedly serve the good of all. Only complex conceptual abstractions and statistical studies shed light on the systematic relationships.

Is it even possible for socialism to be defeated and to fail? In her final text, written after the January uprising in 1919 and shortly before her assassination, Rosa Luxemburg answers this question in the negative. The whole path of socialism will be littered with defeats, writes Luxemburg (GS 4: 536f). It is necessary to reflect further on this claim. Strangely enough, for Luxemburg it is not a tragic circumstance, where an unrelenting logic necessarily leads to a hopeless situation. The course of history is driven by its negative side. Defeat is everything that does not contribute to a change in conditions in the sense of a change in the mode of production.

Accordingly, victory is by no means the triumphant victory in a battle, as is sometimes imagined, but the process of implementing a free organization of cooperation, the elements of which are always already present. In this respect, a historical failure is always a moment in an ongoing evolution of understanding and of shaping social relations. This enables the freedom of others, an increase in individualization, where the free development of each person is enabled by the freedom of all, thus creating a dynamic of a continual evolution of freedom, rather than the kind of zero-sum game of freedom that liberalism imagines, under which the freedom of one person can only come at the expense of other people. Such a socialist idea of freedom is only conceivable on the basis of cooperation. For only in cooperation that is, under conditions of a sophisticated division of labour can individuals achieve more and greater things than would ever be possible by themselves alone.

This article first published on the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung website.

Alex Demirovi has taught at various universities, including TU Berlin and Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. He is Senior Fellow of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, editor of the magazine LuXemburg and chairman of the scientific advisory board of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

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Socialism and Accountability - The Bullet - Socialist Project

Evansville Courier & Press Published 10:53 p.m. CT Sept. 3, 2020

I publicly express gratitude to Sen. Mike Braun.Letters and phone calls with Sen. Braun and his staff have opened my eyes. I clearly seethat Sen. Braun and President Trump are spot on correct that the U.S. Postal Service is socialistic, and must be defunded to stop socialism in its tracks. Sen. Braun convinced me of this. Andhistory backs him up.

Reading tells me the U.S. Post Office was created by that pernicious socialist agitator Ben Franklin. Enough said, off with its funding. Sen. Braun has also convinced me that Social Security and Medicare are socialist programs that must be defunded, because they cut into business profits and morally weaken recipientsby making them dependent on government.

Social Security and Medicare, both pure socialism, both werefoisted on America by Democratic presidents, FDR and LBJ, both of whom were openly Democratic Socialists. I'm with Braun and Trump. Social Security and Medicare are socialist evils, off with their funding.Payroll tax deferment is a good first step in killing Social Security and Medicare.

Butwe must listen to President Trump, and permanently eliminate payroll taxin order starve out these two socialist blights. I salute Sen. Braun for the courage to support this defunding. We can't achieve President Trump's vision of a socialism-free America, if we continue to wallow in the open socialism of the U.S. Post Office, Social Security pensions and Medicare, now, can we? Trump 2020!

- Ron Nesler

Letter to the editor(Photo: File)

Read or Share this story: https://www.courierpress.com/story/opinion/2020/09/03/letter-rid-u-s-these-socialist-programs/5713018002/

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Letter: Rid the U.S. of these socialist programs - Courier & Press

READER and veteran SNP activist Hamish MacQueen was mildly criticised by two readers (September 1) for mildly criticising Carolyn Leckies fine article on the NHS. Actually, he merely added an addendum, by saying that the welfare state was more or less instigated by Lord Beveridge, a Liberal, and not a socialist. Whether Bevan or Viscount Earl Atlee or any Labourite was or is a socialist is a different debate and a matter of political opinion. We have had six Labour governments but never had socialism.

What happened to Keir Hardies ILP membership card demanding home rule, abolition of the House of Lords, etc? Ramsay Mac was a great republican socialist in opposition. When he became the PM of a Unionist coalition, he actually said the ladies would be kissing his hand in the morning and Labour have been kissing Anglo-capitalist, monarchist and imperialist warmongers backsides ever since.

READ MORE:Carolyn Leckie: The bold ideas we need to make the Yes movement unstoppable

Sir Winston Churchill, who was no socialist, delivered free milk as a Liberal Home Secretary. This was mainly to enable the British soldier to compete with the German soldier, who was taller, fitter and better educated. He stood on a home rule ticket in Dundee, to be beaten by a temperance home ruler.

England did not receive universal education till the late 1870s due to Church of England dominance. The English Queen is still head of the C of E, making her a god. Scotland had free education since the Reformation. Ireland was not allowed any kind of working-class education, leading to the illegal growth of hedgerow priests. The Liberals split over home rule and all the yoon parties still unite against Scotlands slightest interests or Scottish democracy.

The first welfare state in an industrial society was introduced by the anti-socialist Iron Chancellor of a united Germany, Lord Bismarck in the 1870s. He imprisoned, exiled and executed thousands of socialists. German socialist Car Liebknecht faced the firing squad singing, a mans man for a that. The Chancellors reforms were intended to make Germany a super race. By the Second World War, the GB wartime national coalition also realised that the British sojer was still behind the German super sojer in fitness and education and agreed on a comprehensive, cradle to the grave welfare state, with minor differences. Lord Beveridge resigned in disgust at Lord Viscount Earl Atlees failure to go far enough and Labour has been attacking the welfare state ever since.

One of the criticising readers also mentioned the Highland Free Health Service during the war and Tom Johnston, of Dover House, also hailed as the best Prime Minister Scotland never had. In fact, he was hailed as the precursor of harnessing Scotlands abundance of water to create the hydroelectric schemes. It was due to Winston Churchills desire to create plutonium for the atom bomb that was really responsible.

Tom Johnston was an ILP Scottish Republican who later reversed his position. He was also a millionaire publisher and pulped and withdrew his own excellent books on Our Noble Families and Histories of the Scottish Working Classes.

Hamish MacQueen, who served in Word World Two, is old enough to remember all this from personal experience. As someone who is about ten years younger, I am he was old enough to have fought against Lords Wilson and Callaghans anti-socialist austerity cuts and pay freezes, as a shop steward fighting their pay freezes through unofficial strikes.

They closed the Pilkington Fibreglass factory in Possil, where I worked, after a six-week anti-pay-freeze strike, whilst round the corner in the GKN nut and bolt factory in Mitre Street, Lord Martin of Springburn was also a shop steward, engaged in defending Labour and keeping his workers in.

Carolyn Leckie was a fine MSP who fought Lord McConnells class traitors in the devolved Scottish Parliament, so no criticism of her or the two National readers is intended.

Donald AndersonGlasgow

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We've had six Labour governments but never had socialism - The National

In another column, Ivison quoted one senior government official describing Trudeaus plan as a structural change in the way government in this country operates, and another saying, it is literally frightening. I am very worried about my kids future and their capacity to service that level of debt.

The CBC, likewise, has reported that the Liberals are planning to spend money on a scale that we havent seen before.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Canadians should be incredibly wary of these news reports. Trudeau wants to remake our economy and reimagine our very country. Hes willing to spend any amount of money, to pursue any plans that any bureaucrat or Liberal official can think of.

The truth of the matter is, we already are spending money on a scale we havent seen before. At last count, our deficit for this fiscal year (which were only halfway through) is 10 times larger than it was last year. Our federal debt has surpassed $1 trillion for the first time in our history, and some are projecting that the 2020 deficit will tack on another half-trillion the equivalent of the total federal debt just one decade ago.

In 2015, Trudeau ran on a platform of modest deficits to finance infrastructure spending and an eventual return to balanced budgets.

Instead of his proposed $25 billion in new debt, Trudeaus deficits spiralled and he plunged the federal government into the red by more than $80 billion between 2015 and 2019.

Rather than being held accountable for his broken promises, during the 2019 election, Trudeaus campaign focused on demonizing Conservatives and, with the media on his side, Trudeau squeezed by with a minority government, which he took as a mandate to justify more of the same.

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MALCOLM: If Trudeau's proposing socialism, the people must be allowed to vote on it - Toronto Sun