The Great Deception, Chapter 8: What the Social Gospellers Get Wrong About the Social Gospel
Jesus's lessons on poverty and debt are more literal than people realize - but "Social Gospellers" were fiscal conservatives in Government - austerity, tax cuts, and balanced budgets on the poor.
Above: Christ Expulses the Money-Changers from the Temple: Caravaggio, 1610
The role the “social Gospel” played in informing public policy and the policy of the CCF and NDP is well-established. It should be clear enough that the CCF’s support for eugenics is at odds with Christ’s teachings – complaining about the cost of the poor, the sick, and the disabled to the taxpayer.
The change in economics beliefs that happened in the 1930s – when in the U.S. Franklin Delano Roosevelt redefined what it meant to be “liberal” by pursuing a New Deal of regulation, public investment and full employment. It is not unusual for people to claim, or assume that Keynes is the favoured economist of socialists – meaning that left-wing, socialist, or social democratic governments are more likely to borrow in a recession.
Contrary to articles like these by Geoff Mann - Centre for Global Political Economy, Simon Fraser University, who claims that Keynes is “socialism’s biggest hero” many socialists and social democrats never really embraced Keynes, or Keynesian policies.
In fact, there is considerable evidence to the contrary - that socialists, self-styled social democrats, and purported progressives in Canada and around the world rejected Keynes and embraced austerity and fiscal conservatism, including the Communist Soviet Union.
Ha-Joon Chang wrote of the Soviet Union’s policies in the 1930s, after Stalin abolished the free market, that the basic framework of economic policy remained the same. Stalin’s Soviet Union ran the same “trickle-down” supply-side economics currently favoured by right-wing economists and fiscal conservatives. In the Soviet Union, instead of the workers’ surplus going to capitalists, it went to the state - but
the effect on workers and people at the bottom is the same: poverty and oppression.
“…ardent free-marketeers like Ricardo meet ultra-left wing communists like Preobrazhensky. Despite their apparent differences, both of them believed that the investible surplus should be concentrated in the hands of the investor, the capitalist class in the case of the former and the planning authority in the case of the latter, in order to maximize economic growth in the long run. This is ultimately what people have in mind when they say ‘you first have to create wealth before you can redistribute it.”
In Germany after the colossal market crash of 1929, social democrats tried to balance the budget, and their austerity helped further radicalize a suffering populace. The history of the economic crises that led to the rise of the Nazis and brought Hitler to power is dangerously wrong. As Mark Blyth wrote in his book Austerity: History of a Dangerous Idea, it was austerity in Germany and Japan that led to radical nationalism. In Japan, there were military assassinations of Prime Ministers and bankers.
After the hyperinflation in Germany of the early 1920s was tamed, between 1925 and 1929 Germany had been the fastest growing economy in the world. For people who were prospering, the collapse was painful. However, the economic response from ostensibly progressive, left parties like the social democrats was austerity, which further plunged the country into unemployment and destitution - that is what led to the Nazi takeover of Germany.
When the Second World War ended in 1945, the UK elected their first Labour Government. While Labour launched social programs like the National Health System (which the government had recommended and been developing plans for several years) they also embarked on an austerity program from 1945-51, and rationing lasted until 1958. Britain endured nearly two decades of rationing.
This is similar to the kind of fiscal conservatism - not Keynesianism - practiced by CCF/NDP governments.
In Canada, Toby Sanger, an economist for CUPE found that when in power at the provincial level, the NDP party had run fewer deficits over their years in provincial government in Canada, compared to other parties in power. In the 2015 federal election, this had the national NDP boasting about their skills at “good fiscal discipline” while delivering social programs.
The reality on the ground is that that “fiscal discipline” involved budgets that decimated social programs, especially in the prairie provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan from the 1990s to the 2010s.
Social democrats may object to borrowing on the basis that they don’t want government to be on the hook for debt and interest, or to be controlled by private financial interests, banks or powerful lenders. This resistance may not be an outright rejection of Keynesian stimulus, but it is certainly not an enthusiastic endorsement.
Social democrats – supposed progressives - have routinely chosen austerity, because they are operating from a position of fiscal conservatism – which in both theory and practice is incompatible with social democracy, and, one can argue, with the economic teachings of Jesus, whom the social gospellers - often as preachers - extolled.
The history of debt, debt forgiveness and its relationship to both politics, democracy and religion traces back millennia. What is remarkable is how much of the story has been lost, despite the fame of the historic figures involved and their role in shaping global events.
Beware The Ides of March: Debt and the Death of Democracy
Julius Caesar is portrayed as a tyrant - yet his murder marked the point at which Rome ceased to be a Republic and that the Oligarchs took over for good.
Without realizing it, we’ve been reading accounts of Julius Caesar that were written by his enemies - the people who murdered him and their allies. The reason they did so was that Caesar was planning a debt jubilee - a widespread debt forgiveness, and the people who particularly despised this tended to be Senators, who were oligarchs and Creditors. They were making money in their sleep from the debt and rents they earned - and Caesar was about to mess with their racket.
Caesar’s plan was to announce that instead of people repaying their debts, people wouldn’t have to, that year. In response, Roman Senators murdered him.
The Ides of March is the date in the Roman Empire when debts are to be repaid. That is the reason for the timing of Caesar’s murder.
The interpretation of Caesar as a “tyrant” was written by his political opponents, who as Roman oligarchs, were able to live lives of wealth, power, and ease without ever working. That is because they lived off debt payments, which kept growing on their own because of interest. As people defaulted on their debts, they could seize the property, and rent that out. By that process they managed to grow richer, expanding their holdings and rental income, while peasants and farmers lost their money to rent and, in a crisis - or bad growing season - they would lose their land to debt.
If the debts had been cancelled, the oligarchs would still have owned most of the property they had, and they would have kept whatever money they had. Debt Jubilees also involve letting farmers return to the property they lost. This allowed the economy to revive again, because the many were able to return to productive work without the burden of excessive rents and debt payments.
Jubilees sometimes occurred when a new ruler came into power - and oligarchs and creditors would refer to them as “tyrants” - for challenging their power.
For that, Caesar was murdered, and the people of the Roman Empire remained indebted to a murderous cabal at the top. There have been many theories floated to try to explain the collapse of the Roman Empire –slow lead-poisoning from tainted wine, while ignoring the quite explicit ways in which the historians and commenters of the day described it – which is that the empire was collapsing because of debt. Landowners and lenders grew estates but could not tend them, and the poor farmers lost everything.
Caesar’s attempt at debt forgiveness was part of an ancient near east tradition stretching back for millennia – of occasional jubilees allowing debt forgiveness, freeing of indebted slaves and the return of small landholders to property so they could become self-sufficient and productive.
Because most debts were owed to the palace - or temple - it was possible to forgive them. They had to be forgiven because these ancient rulers and civilizations recognized something that we do not: that the interest on debt will always grow faster than the ability of economy to produce income to pay it back.
Those societies did not have our idea of time being a straight line, with things getting better with the “march of progress”. Rather, these societies, being agricultural, recognized the repetitive cycles of life. The jubilee year was an opportunity to reset and go back to the beginning. It was an opportunity for a clean slate - a literal one.
When people unearthed writing in the ancient near east, they discovered enormous numbers of clay tablets. When they translated them, they found that they were accounting books, tracking people’s purchases and debt. The clay was soft, so you could add to it and change it over time - but it was also possible to wet it and wash it clean - erasing the debt that was written there - hence, a “clean slate” or “wiping the slate clean.”
The Rosetta stone, which was a stone dating from 196 BC that had the same text carved in three different languages - two versions in Egyptian, and a third in Ancient Greek. It is currently in the British Museum in London. When it was discovered in 1799, it caused a sensation, because it offered the possibility of cracking the code of Egyptian hieroglyphs - and in fact did so. The term “Rosetta Stone” has come to mean a generic term to cracking a code or to translation.
Less attention has been paid to what was actually written on the Rosetta Stone. It was a decree - carved in stone, in three languages, proclaiming a new contract with the people of Egypt: debt forgiveness.
The Rosetta Stone is not the only stone of this type. The Hammurabi Code is a carved stone with a series of judgments and decrees, dating from 1762 BC.
“Hammurabi proclaimed the official cancellation of citizens’ debts owed to the government, high-ranking officials, and dignitaries. The so-called Hammurabi Code is thought to date back to 1762 BC. Its epilogue proclaims that “the powerful may not oppress the weak; the law must protect widows and orphans (…) in order to bring justice to the oppressed”
These debt jubilees were a regular feature of society in ancient Mesopotamia. They were recognized as a necessary reset because debt would polarize societies - a few rich getting richer while the many poor get poorer - driving people into to poverty and off their land. The debts that were cancelled were personal in nature. Business debts - which were loans on productive enterprises - were not cancelled. And there were detailed rules to prevent people from gaming the system.
What changed? Michael Hudson argues that we were cut off from the Biblical tradition of debt forgiveness, which was replaced by Roman laws and expectations that debts would always be repaid, or that land would be seized as a consequence. Over time, rich landlords in the Roman Empire could grow ever-larger estates by foreclosing on poor peasants. There is little question from historical sources, that debt contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire.
There is a period that Hudson describes that sounds like our own:
“In addition to its military and debt problems, the ecological situation was worsening. Population growth led to over-cultivation and over-irrigation of the land, silting up of the canals and abandonment of alternate fallow seasons. An urban exodus ensued “toward the freedom of open and unpoliced regions,” concludes Oppenheim: “The concentration of capital within cities produced urban absentee landlords for whom tenant farmers worked; furthermore, it led to increased moneylending which, in turn, drove farmers and tenant farmers either to hire themselves out to work in the field or to join outcast groups seeking refuge from the burdens of taxation and the payment of interest.”
Wealth concentrated among a few in cities, absentee landlords, ecological problems, tenant farmers, tax avoidance and crushing debt. Does this describe the country where you live? Because the passage refers to Babylon in the 17th century BC - 3700 years ago.
A jubilee year was one where people were freed from the bondage of debt. It was a reset and allowed people to return.
All of this is important, because Biblical debt jubilees were also not taken seriously by modern interpreters and economists. Debt forgiveness is seen as impossible, or immoral, and someone who finds themselves in debt is often chastised for “living beyond their means,” or it is assumed that they were reckless or lavish. Since some people are diligent and either avoid debt, or pay them back conscientiously, it is considered unfair to forgive the debts of those who can’t pay them back.
This is a clash between Roman and Judeo-Christian principles - and in Christian countries, these Roman principles have supplanted Judeo-Christian ones.
Forgiving the Debts of the Poor: Paying Your Debt to God
Hudson argues that many laws of the Bible that have been interpreted as being about sexual morality are actually rules around debt contracts that defined people’s relationships to one another. For example, when people did not pay their debts, they could be enslaved, or people’s family could be used as collateral, and some laws need to be read in this context, includes some of the Ten Commandments.
“Thou Shalt Not Take the Lord’s Name in Vain,” for example, it is not about speaking the name of the Lord, or cursing – it is an admonition against lying on debt contracts. It is saying that it’s wrong to swear out a false oath – you shouldn’t be forging your signature or lying in a debt contract, because when you sign it, you are swearing to God that it is true. This is telling people to be honest in their dealings, and not swear a false promise to God.
Hudson argues that “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife” is also about debt, rather than adultery. That is because, husbands in need of a loan might use their wives as collateral – they would be sent to live with the lender, essentially as a hostage, who would be released when the debt was repaid. The admonition was that the lender should keep their hands off the woman.
All of this matters because when we read the Biblical accounts of the last days of Christ’s life, it is very clear that his overriding focus is on relief for the poor, and in calling for a debt jubilee.
It’s important to understand this additional context. As spelled out in Proverbs 19:17 helping the poor is a way of repaying your debt to God,
“He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD; and that which he hath given will he pay him again.”
Another way of putting it is if you to do the right thing to get to heaven, you need to do a couple of things. If you are wealthy and successful Christian or Jew, then God is asking you to be humble enough to admit that He played a bigger role in it than you may be willing to admit.
Because God played a role in your success, you owe Him. And you pay Him back by giving relief to the poor. For lenders, that debt relief means ending debts, and no longer collecting from people. That way, if they can go back to work – especially with their old land back – when they work, they’ll be working for themselves, instead of just working to pay off debt. So it results in renewed local prosperity from the ground up.
When Christ returns to his wilderness and goes to his synagogue in Nazareth, he stands up and reads from a part of the Torah. Luke 4-16 – to 4:20 reads
“And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.
And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.”
Jesus shocked the congregation by reading from Esaias – and calling for a jubilee year.
The congregation is stunned and angry, by his audacity – and because he is shaming them. He is challenging them to follow their own rules and live their beliefs. Clearly, they have not been, because otherwise, He would not have to ask. That’s why he follows with two phrases that have endured for millennia -
“Physician, heal thyself,” because he expects them to take their own medicine, and follow their own rules and practice what they preach. He also realizes why he is getting resistance: “No prophet is accepted in his own country.”
The reaction to Christ’s action is fierce. An angry mob gathers and threatens to throw him off a cliff, but he escapes, and keeps preaching in synagogues, spreading the “Good News” which is proclaiming the Jubilee year.
We get the word “Gospel” or “God Spell” from Norse words for “Good story.” In Norse, “good” is “God” and “spell” means “news” or “story.” That is the “good news” or gospel that Jesus is spreading - that he is declaring a Year of Our Lord, a Jubilee, according to the ancient laws of the Torah.
After leaving his old synagogue behind him, Christ travels to Jerusalem and to the temple. Passover is coming – and so are the Ides of March, which as mentioned above was the regular date in the Roman Empire when taxes and debts were due – or, in the rare case, forgiven.
On the way to Jerusalem, Christ meets two men, who are both rich and who want to ensure they go heaven and are saved. The first one says that he is doing all the right things – he’s following all the commandments. He wants to know that this will ensure him eternal life. Christ asks whether he gives to the poor, and the man balks at it.
This exchange is the source of one of the most famous biblical quotations, and mistranslations, of all time, when Christ is quoted as saying, “It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the gates of heaven.” It’s a mistranslation – instead of camel, a word like cable. That makes more sense for the metaphor – “it’s easier for a cable to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to pass through the gates of heaven.”
Then Christ meets another man, who tells him he is giving half of his money to the poor, and Christ assures him that he will be saved.
During this time, Christ is aware of the danger of what he is going to do. He knows he could be killed, if the local Roman Authorities think that he is stirring up trouble or a Rebellion against the Empire. But Rome is not what Christ is focused on – he is focused on the hypocrisy and the corruption in his own faith and his own temple.
Christ arrives at the temple, where there are peasants gathered with animals, interacting with the moneychangers and moneylenders inside. At that time, temples were also often banks. It’s a misunderstanding that the peasants are offering their animals as a sacrifice. They have no money of their own – and very little else – and they are having to bring in these few animals as a repayment of their debts.
This is part of what enrages Christ, and we see the only time he committed violence. In his eyes, and in his faith, Christ believed that the poor should be freed of their debt, so they wouldn’t have to drag their last few goats or a couple of handfuls of pigeons to their lender, because they had no money left of their own.
In his eyes, what was happening was the ultimate corruption of His faith – instead of paying their debt to God by forgiving the debts of the poor, they were taking from the poor – turning the temple into a “den of thieves”.
That’s why he thrashed the people gathered – they knew the scripture just as he did – but they were breaking a holy law, and they were doing it in the very temple of their faith. It is why he flipped over tables – which would have had accounts of people’s debts, he might well be breaking tablets of people’s debts – effectively creating a jubilee through vandalism. He is enraged at the both the dishonesty and the injustice of what is happening. The very people who are supposed to know and preach the law, and God’s Laws, are breaking that very law in the worst way. Instead of paying their debt to God, by refusing debt relief, they are stealing from the poor.
In terms of spiritual law and the scripture, Christ is in the right. Immediately, the moneychangers turn on him – and try to trap Christ into incriminating himself with the Roman Authorities.
Since Jesus believes that the poor shouldn’t have to pay their debts, they try to paint Him into a corner. They ask Jesus whether he also thinks that poor people shouldn’t have to pay their taxes to Rome? They are trying to make him look like he has a double standard or that he doesn’t really care about the poor. The trap they are setting for Jesus is a deadly one– because if he says the poor shouldn’t pay their taxes, it can be seen as fomenting rebellion against Rome, for which he can be executed.
Instead, Christ pulls out a Roman coin – the currency in which taxes to Rome were paid – and asks whose face is on it. The answer, of course, is Caesar. And Christ stays true and consistent: “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”
Christ expected adherence to the laws of faith and the laws of the civil authorities. You would be a responsible law-abiding citizen of Rome, and pay your taxes, and you would be paying your debt to God by either giving to the poor or reducing their debt, and in doing so would be to faithfully following the tenets of your faith.
Christ avoids being arrested, but the moneylenders aren’t done with him. They are the ones who give Judas the 30 pieces of silver to help identify Jesus so he can be arrested. Who else but moneylenders and moneychangers would have easy access to that kind of money?
Marvin L. Krier writes
“Biblical scholars and preachers have a number of interpretations of Jesus' cleansing of the temple. A standard interpretation is that Jesus was angered over the cheating by the moneychangers. The people who came to offer sacrifice at the temple had to exchange their coinage to use temple money to buy their sacrifice.
An uneducated peasantry could easily be taken advantage of by the unscrupulous moneychangers.
“The action of Jesus is a spirited protest against injustice and the abuse of the temple system. There is no doubt that pilgrims were fleeced by the traders.”
While this is a fair interpretation of the text, Jesus is also challenging a deeper injustice.
William Herzog argues that we cannot appreciate the meaning of Jesus' charge against the temple without some understanding of the economic role played by the temple in Jerusalem.
“The temple cleansing cannot be divorced from the role of the temple as a bank.
In the time of Jesus the temple amassed great wealth because of the half-shekel temple tax assessed on each male. Historical evidence supports the fact that large amounts of money were stored in the temple. The temple then was able to make loans on behalf of the wealthy elites to the poor. If the poor were not able to pay their loans, they would lose their land. "The temple was, therefore, at the very heart of the system of economic exploitation made possible by monetizing the economy and the concentration of wealth made possible by investing the temple and its leaders with the powers and rewards of a collaborating aristocracy.”
As evidence of this role of the temple funds, Herzog notes,
“It was no accident that one of the first acts of the First Jewish Revolt in 66 C.E. was burning of the debt records in the archives in Jerusalem.”
Though he was executed by Rome, Christ was not fighting Rome – he was fighting corruption in his own faith, for having forgotten, or suppressed, or ignored the rite of Jubilee, as a way of resetting the world, and the economy - and of doing so in a way that could be peaceful. It could even be democratic.
Debt, Forgiveness and Democratic Renewal
Solon of Athens is concerned the father of Athenian democracy. There are stories of his wisdom as a ruler, one of which he wrote a law that could only be changed with his say-so, then left on a sea voyage for a number of years. When Solon came to power, Athens was being divided by inequality and economic instability. Solon launched a series of economic reforms, called “Shaking off the Burden” which cancelled debts – and since debtors could be imprisoned or enslaved, they were freed from imprisonment and slavery as well.
There were practical dangers even then – a couple of Solon’s his friends who knew about the plan ahead of time, took advantage of their insider knowledge, and ran up a lot of debt before the announcement. It was an embarrassment for Solon, but he made up for it since he was making a sacrifice himself – as a creditor, he would lose future income, because the debts owed to him would be cancelled too.
Western Democracy was created with a sacrifice - wiping the slate clean of people’s debts.
The Judeo-Christian biblical tradition of jubilee debt forgiveness was real, and regular. As a new ruler ascended the throne, they would often forgive personal debts to families and farmers. Proclaiming the Jubilee Year was to proclaim, “the Year of the Lord” and because most debts were owed to the palace, it was possible to forgive them. They had to be forgiven because these ancient rulers and civilizations recognized something that we do not: that the interest on debt will always grow faster than the ability of economy to produce income to pay it back.
Those societies did not have our idea of time being a straight line, with things getting better with the “march of progress”. Rather, these societies, being agricultural, recognized the repetitive cycles of life. The jubilee year was an opportunity to reset and go back to the beginning. It was an opportunity for a clean slate - a literal one.
It’s also worth mentioning two architectural discoveries that non-experts may be aware of.
When people and archaeologists unearthed writing in the ancient near east, they discovered enormous numbers of clay tablets. When they translated them, they found that they were accounting books, tracking people’s purchases and debt. The clay was soft, so you could add to it and change it over time - but it was also possible to wet it and wash it clean - erasing the debt that was written there - hence, a “clean slate” or “wiping the slate clean.” - it’s at once an act of forgiveness and liberation - often as the first act of a new ruler.
The other very famous historic example of debt relief is the Rosetta stone, a stone dating from 196 BC, currently in the British Museum in London, that had the same text carved in three different languages. When it was discovered in 1799, it caused a sensation. Because it had the same text with two versions in Egyptian, and a third in Ancient Greek, it offered the possibility of cracking the code of Egyptian hieroglyphs - and in fact did so. The term “Rosetta Stone” has come to mean a generic term to cracking a code or to translation, though it is one of the most famous examples of a government putting out an announcement in the multiple languages of its citizens.
Less attention has been paid to the actual content of what was written on the Rosetta Stone. It was a decree - carved in stone, in three languages, that there would be debt forgiveness in Egypt.
The Rosetta Stone is not the only stone of this type. The Hammurabi Code is a carved stone with a series of judgments and decrees, dating from 1762 BC. “Hammurabi proclaimed the official cancellation of citizens’ debts owed to the government, high-ranking officials, and dignitaries. The so-called Hammurabi Code is thought to date back to 1762 BC. Its epilogue proclaims that “the powerful may not oppress the weak; the law must protect widows and orphans (…) in order to bring justice to the oppressed”
These debt jubilees were a regular feature of society in ancient Mesopotamia. They were recognized as a necessary reset because debt would polarize societies - a few rich getting richer while the many poor get poorer - driving people into to poverty and off their land. The debts that were cancelled were personal in nature. Business debts - which were loans on productive enterprises - were not cancelled. And there were detailed rules to prevent people from gaming the system.
Socially Gospel, Fiscally Conservative: The CCF and NDP’s long tradition of Fiscal Conservatism
It should be clear that the biblical tradition of jubilee, which Christ was seeking to proclaim, is not part of fiscal conservatism, which is what is actually practised by the NDP in Canada. They campaign on it, and in office they deliver on it, because they always have.
This creates a practical problem once they get elected, which is that they can’t actually pay for promises on a fiscally conservative budget. It’s just financially impossible to make some of these investments under fiscal conservatism. That’s a problem for any party that is social democratic, much less having a socialist wing.
From a genuinely progressive and Keynesian economic point of view, the real constraints imposed on government by fiscal conservatism make it impossible to achieve any progressive goals. Lifting people out of poverty, even adequate investments in education, health care and infrastructure and the climate are not possible under orthodox fiscal conservatism, because on the grounds of austerity alone, fiscal conservatism does not work.
Fiscal conservatism is not a mathematical, or economic formula that creates shared prosperity for all. It’s a formula for giving more to those who already have, from those who don’t, so it always leads to failures and breakdowns, because progressive policies can’t make up for the lack of money.
This is another example where Prairie Giant, the CBC mini series about Tommy Douglas continued to get history wrong. It painted Liberal Jimmy Gardiner as a villain, in ways that distort the truth – especially on economic and fiscal policy. The myths around the CCF and Douglas have had a marked impact. The CCF got elected in Saskatchewan in 1944, in part by playing to voter anxiety about public debt, which had risen under the Liberals – hardly surprising, given the Depression and the Second World War. At that point, Gardiner had become an MP.
During the Depression, all three prairie provinces were at risk of defaulting on their debts. The Federal Government not only prevented default on an ongoing basis, but cancelled Depression-era debt on a province-by-province basis.
In 1947, the Federal government passed a law that shared resource revenues with provinces and helped cancel provincial Depression-era debts. It was under these circumstances – debt cancellation for provinces, farmers, and a post-war oil boom – that Tommy Douglas and the CCF could boast of “balancing the budget.”
As propaganda, Prairie Giant is a triumph. As history, it is a betrayal.
It is accurate, in one very important sense - that Douglas - and the NDP more generally - have the same fiscal policies as conservatives in government. They rail against and reject Keynesian stimulus - routinely choosing austerity instead, often citing Douglas as their inspiration.
From the point of view of "political founding moments” the NDP had the same basic economic framework as the conservatives – as fiscal conservatives, not liberal Keynesians.
After 1990, for a combined total of 25 years in government NDP governments in Saskatchewan and Manitoba ran austerity governments – frozen welfare payments, and a legacy of corporate tax cuts and hospital closures - and while the provincial governments claimed federal cuts forced their hand, austerity in both provinces began before the federal Liberal government was elected in late 1993.
In Manitoba in the 1990s, the PC government claimed that changes to federal transfers had forced their hand to make crossing cuts. This was false - as one of the country’s poorer provinces, the federal government had increased equalization.
When the Manitoba NDP were elected in 1999, they maintained many of the PCs policies without changing them. The NDP were fiscal conservatives – as Tommy Douglas had been, and they were seen as setting the example for other NDP parties across the country.
During the 2008 financial crisis, Marc Lavoie, who is a professor of economics, ran into then-NDP leader Jack Layton at the Ottawa airport.
The NDP have always seen Liberal as the real opponents, not conservatives, because that was their history. It’s also because the NDP have routinely found the way to electoral success is by outflanking Liberals to the right – and, incidentally by appealing to old conspiracy theories and hatreds of Liberals in Western Canada, hatreds whose bitter origins have been buried.
Into the 1990s and 2000s, NDP governments in Saskatchewan and Manitoba focused on balancing budgets while cutting taxes for business and top earners and offering deregulation.
“Small corporations” are frequently used by high-income earners to set up shell companies they can flow their income through. In Manitoba, the NDP dropped the tax to 0%. There were sweetheart subsidies and tax deals for oil companies – the ultra-right wing Fraser Institute praised Manitoba because it did less to regulate or tax oil and mineral exploration than almost every other jurisdiction in North America. Even conservative Alberta made sure to take more from oil companies than Manitoba did under the NDP.
Manitoba has had shocking levels of poverty for a long time, and no province has done less to help. Employment Income Assistance (EIA), or welfare payments, are the same they were in 1986, 36 years ago. Under the PC government of Gary Filmon, EIA payments were frozen in 1992 and cut back to 1986 levels. When the Manitoba NDP took power in 1999, the rates stayed frozen for another 17 years, until the PCs were elected again in 2016. They are still the basically the same today, in 2023.
At the same time as they accelerated inequality, the NDP also embraced tough-on-crime measures as a way to motivate suburban voters. The NDP paid to hire more police, built more prisons, and pushed successfully for tougher criminal laws. They refused to call a provincial inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and when the Conservative Government of Stephen Harper introduced a draconian omnibus crime bill, Bill C-10, the Manitoba NDP supported it.
It's worth pointing out that none of these policies – none of them – would be considered centre left, or even centrist. The Manitoba NDP’s policies on justice were as far right as the Harper Conservatives, and their policies on oil (there is an oil patch in Manitoba) were to the right of Conservative Alberta.
Look, Don’t Think: Why Don’t People Accept the Present?
To many observers, this will be perceived as being “out of character” for the NDP – as if it must be some kind of mistake, or an aberration, because it is so totally at odds with public perception and reporting. But these were the some of the defining social, economic, and fiscal policies of a supposedly “socially democratic” progressive party of the left. It wasn’t – so why didn’t anyone notice?
There are a number of reasons for this.
One is these polices are seen as strategic and necessary for the “practical” purpose of getting and maintaining power. As a result, there is a sense that even if the NDP are implement right-wing policies, that they don’t really believe in them. Or, that it is it is acceptable or excusable when the NDP do exactly the same thing as the PCs, because they have better intentions.
Why? Wouldn’t that excuse everyone? Isn’t everyone convinced of their rightness? Doesn’t everyone think that they are trying to do good for themselves?
William Blake wrote that “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” Are we going to have to accept an essentially partisan view of Canadian history, where we make excuses for the politicians we admire?
The tough reality of life – not just politics – is that people we like and admire, and who may be very nice to us and our families, have beliefs and ideas which if converted to into government action would be disastrous. The ideas may be obviously bad, they may not have been thought through, or they may have unforeseen circumstances when they actually have to be enforced, because they focused on one point of view, and ignores the needs of others. That is at odds with good government.
Human beings may, on a personal level, be unable to accept the seriousness of what they are doing, or the harm they may have done. If they are in a position of power, there will be people who will comfort them, and work to protect their reputation.
That is politics – but it is only very one-sided politics. We shouldn’t confuse it with history.
[1] An example here in Foreign Policy by a Canadian academic: “Socialism’s Biggest Hero Is a Bourgeois British Capitalist” https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/12/05/keynes-keynesian-socialism-biggest-hero-bourgeois-british-capitalist/