While I can't spell worth a damn, I am fond of keeping useful simple words around. Mike Campbell made the following statement on his well written - if somewhat politically divergent from this local norm - blog which I cannot let pass:
While Coady may have used the word 'socialist' to describe his activities, he was not a socialist. A 'populist', yes. His classic book on the Antigonish Movement is "Masters of their own destiny". The title says it all. He wasn't looking for a central body/agency to take care of everything, but rather for the people to do it for themselves. To put in their own money and labour into the enterprise, and to reap the rewards, as well.
This is exactly what socialism is. Collective control of the means of production. Socialism plus a military or bureaucratic tyranny is another matter just as capitalism so encumbered is. Nobody wants any of that - except those made rich off these dictatorships whether as seen in your 1978 Chiles or your 1958 Bulgarias. Populism better describes social credit or reform party voodoo economics. My other grannie was a municipal politician, slightly left of Stalin and Dad would say, and some of here best work in industrial Scotland in the mid-30's to mid-50's was fighting in the interests of private capital to ensure collective capital could do its good work - clearing out slums despite lobbying of shop keepers unhappy with seeing the population move to better housing, supporting adult education through the trade union movement, even arranging access to cheap camping in the countryside for the urban poor.
In a world which the language of politics is more and more defined by the influence in by the right, let's use words like liberal, socialism, capitalism, tyrant and citizen in their plain, historic and real sense. Use a park, a library or a non-toll highway and you are reaping the rewards of our perhaps less radical but still socialist forefathers.
Comments
Mike - August 24, 2003 10:55 pm
Hmm, ok, maybe my lingo is a bit off. I guess my point is that the co-op movement, or 'socialism' (or 'populism') as represented by Tompkins/Coady, was/is in opposition to state controlled socialism; as you say, socialism plus military or bureaucratic tyranny.
Alan - August 25, 2003 7:59 am
Gee. That's no fun. I was hoping for a linguistic standoff.
The most improtant thing, however, is that Coady did great things through the co-operative movement and if the "Three-P" and privatization proponents were to take a side seat sometimes to his ideas, we might had had more reliable public utilties over the past couple of decades.
Mike - August 25, 2003 8:52 am
Well, I will add that if we're to invoke the historical/real usage of terms, then (and I had to look this up) Populism was a Russian political movement c.1870-71 where revolutionary socialist political ideas were spread among the peasantry. So, 'populism' could apply to Coady et al -- I guess the question is 'what revolutionary socialist ideas'?
From my reading, though, I don't think modern 'socialists' would have much to do with the ideas that Coady was spreading. Perhaps people in modern socialist political parties should really be calling themselves 'state socialists'.
Alan - August 25, 2003 9:03 am
There does seem to be at least two kinds of socialists. The misuse of language by communists - the DDR for example - is just as bad as misuse of liberal by Rush. My related disinterest with the NDP is largely due to the disconnect with real problems and real solutions, though I do like sound of Ontario's Howard Hampton on that regard. Coady pushed for entering the marketplace and being a fair player in the days of local corporate/business oligarchies. There must be something in that to be learned in these days when we have learned what happens when the accountants move from the CFO office to the CEO's.