Hello all:
The latest issue of Synthesis/Regeneration, No.
40, A Magazine of Green Social Thought, has just
come out. The overall theme of the issue is
"Salvaging Democracy." This mag. is published in
the States. There is a list of all the articles
in this issue on the web site. The magazine has
the following article by me on the NDP, plus an
edited version of a press release we put out in
our area in the last federal election on Canada's
energy policy. This article, along with several
other articles, is available on line
at: http://www.greens.org/s-r/ Please feel free
to reproduce my article should anyone so desire.
A short extract is given below.
Best and for the Earth,
David
*******
Synthesis/Regeneration 40 (Summer 2006)
Some Critical Thoughts on the NDP
by David Orton
Some members of the Green Party become quite
excited when people associated with the New
Democratic Party of Canada (NDP) make various
criticisms of the party. I believe one should
always be open to hearing criticisms and looking
at one’s own practices, to see if some
rectification is needed. I make a distinction in
my own mind between those who criticize the GP
from a position of fundamental opposition to what
Greens stand for, as opposed to those who believe
in the overall Green agenda but who raise various
points of disagreement with what we are doing and how we are going about it.
I think sometimes that GP policies are all over
the map and that, perhaps, a particular
environmental policy of the NDP may be more
progressive than that to be found in the GP. It
is only within our Party, however, that a certain
kind of debate is taking place about the
fundamental shift in consciousness needed in how
we humans should relate to the earth. We need
this debate as the existing industrial capitalist
societies, in Canada and worldwide, are
destroying the very conditions of life, not only
for humans but for other species and the earth itself.
The GP, theoretically, sees itself as a voice for
those species that have no representationhence
our stated support for deep ecology and our
welcomed stand finally, after long internal
struggle, on opposing the annual seal slaughter.
This debate cannot take part in the NDP, a
capitalist human-centered reform party, but a
party which does have a record of bringing social
justice concerns to the foreground. This past
social justice contribution should be
acknowledged by GP members engaged in debates with NDP opponents.
The NDP has nothing to do with socialism. It is a
capitalist reform party and has always upheld the
parliamentary road. The NDP is opposed to serious
extra-parliamentary struggle and has not
hesitated to remove or neutralize more radical
voices who were seen as threatening in some way
the electoral acceptability of the partythe
Waffle, and later the so-called “Green Caucus”
within the NDP that both failed to realize that
more economic growth, unionized jobs, and rising
consumerism will always win out in this Party
over long-term environmental concerns, or the
ecological justice concerns of non-human species.[1]
...
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