Nevertheless, progressives have been losing ground in many places across the western world, often to the far right, including neoFascist formations like LePen in France, AfD in Germany, MAGA-Trump in USA, Orban in Hungary, even in Scandinavia, with the odd bright light, in Australia for example. The left has not done this by alienating middle class cultural, identity, and environmental supporters. To the contrary, they have lost huge swaths of the working class, their original constituency and raison d’ etre, but whom they have taken for granted for far too long. 

 

If you ask a European how the class system manifests, they are likely to describe three groups, an ownership class, a working class, with a small class in between of high level professionals and shop keepers, so very close to the Marxist analysis of the Bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, and the Proletariat. It’s still, probably, the most accurate description but, outside of sociology classes, Americans have difficulty accepting definitions from Marxism, yet, they still understand that class exists. It is only recently that ‘’working class’’ has been accepted by the media who finally gave up saying‘’lower class’’. 

 

Efforts in the 1960s to describe class, centered on income groups but everybody knew that was very unreliable. In recent years, pollsters, pundits and the media have substituted education - degrees, diplomas or lack thereof, to separate the middle class from the working class when considering voting patterns. Apparently, the middle and tiny upper class both have degrees and the working class does not. It's a crude, derogatory, somewhat insulting instrument, As for congruency, it leaves a lot to be desired. It is, however, convenient, due to the accessible data from the census and from polling. 

 

There is a problem getting various potential supporters of left or progressive politics onto the same page. Degree Diploma  progressives tend to support cultural- identity and environmental politics but have much less interest, and even often, hostility to class based politics, whereas, the non degree working class are only motivated by class based politics and show minimal interest in identity, cultural, environmental politics to the point of hostility when they believe that their class based politics is given short shrift or excluded from progressive debate altogether. In the vernacular, they are made to feel like the unpopular guest at the oppressor-oppression discussions. 

 

Michael Moore talks about the Michigan ‘’Deer Hunter’’ voter, formerly the backbone of the Democratic Party since FDR, in the form of a UAW union activist who likes guns and likes to hunt. This report has discussed this voter before.

 

These voters have been drifting away, first to Reagan, later to Trump, as Democratic  Party conventions focus on race, gender, culture, orientation, and environmentalism but treat class based discussion like the skunk at the garden party. Looking at the most recent Canadian election, NDP workers may be feeling the same exclusion, as Conservative leaders actively court, mainly construction trades unions and really, all blue collar voters. Robotics, now AI, and free trade deals have devastated manufacturing union jobs in both countries. In the USA, Bill Clinton caved to neoliberalism and the free trade agenda, with NAFTA, and progressives seem to have collapsed on the neoliberal economics of privatization, deregulation, union busting, so long as the C suite is more multicultural, and multiracial. The AFL-CIO pleaded with Clinton to abandon NAFTA. He and the ‘’centrists’’ of the Third Way and Center for American Progress threw labor under the bus and seem shocked that unions have turned their backs on Democrats. The anger at Brexit, the Yellow Vesters in France, the gains by AfD in Germany have the same root causes, - the left no longer cares about, or listens to, workers so the Teamsters can endorse Trump. 

 

College students and the Brahmin left discuss ‘’post materialism’’ while the workers live in a materialist world. 

 

Is another move from the left towards the center the solution? That’s what seemed to happen, as voters abandoned the NDP to both the Liberal and Conservative camps. Absolutely not. Progressives should not move to the center. This is a cry to recognize that the largest group of supporters and voters available to the left and other progressives is the working class. This is not an exclusion. This means including black workers, queer workers, female workers, Asian workers, white workers, ALL workers. 

 

According to David Coletto at Abacus Research, 56% of voters have an orientation to a left populist economics POV, (think Bernie Sanders, unions, higher wages, jobs, social programs) whereas only 32% are attracted by a progressive cultural, identity or an environmental POV. Some of the Brahmin left or the very naive, believe you can simply stack these different perspectives on top of each other like building blocks, to form a coalition but this is a very delicate proposition not just of ‘’messaging’’ the classic easy excuse, alongside new leadership. 

 

It’s not so easy. It comes from showing up on picket lines, supporting worker priorities like the BCNDP support for union only public contracting. The Norwegian Labor Party fought its way back to government with a slogan ‘’its ordinary peoples’ turn this time’’ - brilliant. The SDP in Germany used ‘’Respect for Workers’’ but slogans must be backed up by both policy and action. Social programs are great, they are popular and highly cost effective, but workers actually prefer bigger paychecks. There is something in all of us that likes to say with pride, ‘’I did this myself’’. It's time to lead with ‘’wages are just too damn low’’. The fastest way we can possibly close this gap is to relaunch the New Democratic Party as the Democratic Labour Party - DLP. 

 

If you want worker’s votes you need to speak like workers, No workers would use a term like Latinx. Not even Latino workers. Workers don’t use words like ‘’intersectional’’ to describe the situation of a black, female worker. It would set off the eye rolling if not the guffaws, John Fetterman made a fool of Dr Oz in their Senate race when Oz referred to a charcuterie board, saying ‘’here in PA we call it a veggie platter Doc’’. It’s time to ditch the language of the grad student seminar, and return to the language of the union hall, where people call each other sister and brother. 

 

When it comes to climate, Joan Williams advises, to not get trapped in the causes of climate change. It’s like arguing with pro-lifers on when life begins. Focus on solutions, there will be huge opportunities for EV production, wind turbine technicians and solar panel installers. The carbon tax is a neoliberal solution. We need to ask ourselves with each new policy - will this policy hurt workers economically or alienate their voters? If the answer is yes, then get another policy, equally effective but not alienating. . 

 

Beware the regression analysis. When it comes to immigration, racists and nativists will always oppose more immigration, ‘’unless they come from Norway’’ as Trump says. All racists oppose immigration but not all people who oppose immigration are racists. As early in our history as the building of the CPR, the Chinese workers, who were heavily exploited with difficult and dangerous work, were brought in to supply cheap labour and bust the union organizing that was spreading amongst the navies. Immigration is tricky. There is a sweet spot in Canada, between 250 000 and 500 000 immigrants per year. Nobody agrees exactly where that is and it moves but below the sweet spot there are real problems with GDP, clients, taxpayers, pensions, but above the sweet spot, there are real problems with housing and healthcare. 

 

We need to understand that workers and middle class professionals see many things quite differently. A slogan like ‘’Diversity is our Strength’’ is quite appealing to the middle class but strikes the wrong note with workers who look at it and say actually, in our union experience, ‘’Unity is our Strength’’ Unity is solidarity. Most workers today are quite used to working with all races, genders and orientations side by side, on the picket line if necessary. Workers are very weary and provoked by too much change too fast. The middle class left is thrilled that the new Ethiopian restaurant has opened, they love change and excitement. Workers conversely, crave stability. If the left wants an opening to the immigration issue that appeals to their sensibility,  proclaim ‘’ that we are going after the sweat shop employers of illegal immigrants and child labour’’. 

 

In the end, Williams is not advocating an abandonment of the long established human rights tradition of the left, like CCF support for the Japanese internment victims or Tommy Douglas’ total opposition to the War Measures Act and the incarcerations and suspension of civil liberties. What she sees in the USA and we can see in Canada, our party organizations on the left, particularly the NDP, totally taken over by the personnel and priorities of the cultural left, at the expense of working class personnel and priorities. Nobody is asking for a replacement, but for an inclusion of the working class as a whole when we discuss who has been left behind. We might be so bold as to not only include a more class based perspective, but to lead with it, if you intend to win. 

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If we return to education as we conclude, every scrap of educational research we have shows us that we can isolate FN Canadians, inner city children of colour, but when we aggregate the national numbers it is working class children, more precisely poor kids , of all backgrounds, who are falling behind.When Todd Gitlin wrote The Twilight of Common Dreams, Why America is Wracked by Culture Wars in 1995, he predicted that the American left would destroy itself with culture wars, Thirty. years later, this looks prophetic.  

 

If we want an equity and inclusion solution for the tuition problem, short of free post secondary for all, then a simple income based tuition system is available. If your family income is below the median family income you get free tuition, below the 75th percentile, half price and above that full deal. In education, the class struggle becomes the classroom struggle.