This is taken from the Monitor, published by the Canadian
Centre for Policy Alternatives (http://policyalternatives.ca)


EDUCATION FIRST, THEN MOBILIZATION: Creation of an informed
electorate has to be No. 1 priority  By Ed Finn

In predicting dire consequences for humanity if the current
unsustainable economic system continues much longer, Edward
Goldsmith, founder of the influential magazine The Ecologist,
concludes on a note of optimism. If the public becomes
sufficiently informed, he says, it will react "more and more
strenuously, and in this way the necessary public pressure can
be applied on governments to come to their senses."

This was his underlying assumption in launching The Ecologist
nearly 30 years ago--and it was the same assumption that
motivated the founders of the CCPA 20 years ago. If people
knew what was really going on, we reasoned, more and more of
them would join in the fight for a better world. And
eventually an informed electorate would generate the political
clout needed to make politicians govern in the public rather
than the corporate interest.

Goldsmith takes heart from the growing public awareness
displayed in the protests against the WTO, the IMF and
the World Bank. He also hails the success of the battle
against genetically modified food, although so far it has
been effective mainly in Europe. Here in North America,
Monsanto and other big agro-chemical firms continue to
ride roughshod over public health concerns.

Like Goldsmith, we at the CCPA are also encouraged by
the growing number of people in Canada who have
refused to be brainwashed by the corporate media.
Recent polls indicate that in some cases and on some
issues--health care, for example--dissent against the
neoliberal agenda has even attained majority status. The
CCPA's membership has been growing by an average of
about 100 a month for the past five years. The Monitor's
circulation has increased to 6,500 and our web-page is
receiving about 8,000 visits a month, with downloads of
material averaging close to 12,000.

Other NGOs on the left report similar gains in membership
growth and public support. The Council of Canadians has
rocketed to the 100,000-member level, a truly phenomenal
height for a non-establishment organization. Groups engaged in
fighting poverty, income disparity, homelessness, and other
social ills are also finding more concerned Canadians rallying
to their side.  The question that still bothers me, however,
is whether this growing public disenchantment with right-wing
policies will actually bring them down. If we had a genuinely
democratic political system, it undoubtedly would. But in a
political system dominated and controlled by big business--in
the U.S. and Canada, at any rate--does public opinion really
matter? Does the wish of the majority (let alone the interests
of the majority) necessarily guide government decision-making?
We need only look back over the past decade to find examples
to the contrary. Most Canadians didn't want free trade, didn't
want the GST, didn't want funding cuts to health care or
education, didn't want environmental safeguards weakened,
didn't want more tax breaks for the rich. In every case,
however, the wishes of the majority of Canadians were
overridden by the wishes of a small minority of corporate
CEOs, bankers and investors. Even when a majority (or
plurality) of voters decided to throw out a government that
ignored their concerns and priorities, they got another
government that was just as determined--perhaps even more
so--to serve the CEOs rather than the citizens of Canada.

I don't mean to imply that this government disdain for the
public interest invalidates our efforts to inform and educate
people. It is still vitally important to open people's  eyes
to the realities that the commercial media studiously hide
from them. But included in those realities, surely, must be
the reality that we no longer have a real working
parliamentary democracy. As long as that illusion is
maintained, our success in exposing the greed, the barbarism,
the danger, the unsustainability, the sheer insanity of the
prevailing out-of-control capitalist system will be undermined
by people's futile attempts to change it at the ballot box.

In most continental European countries, as Goldsmith points
out, there are still political parties that remain sensitive
to public needs and that, if elected, will defy the big
corporations and even curb their depredations. This is partly
because of the deeply rooted traditions of democratic
socialism there, but also because the commercial media in
Europe have not come entirely under the ownership and control
of big business, as they have in the U.S. and Canada. Indeed,
some daily Obviously, we who toil on the left in Canada have a
greater uphill struggle to counter the neoliberal propaganda
are further handicapped by the absence of a political outlet
for the public interest, even when it is adequately informed.

Nevertheless, we have to stay true to our first assumption
that, as difficult as the restoration of democracy may be, it
requires as its first prerequisite the dissemination of a fair
and workable alternative to neoliberalism. We are making
great strides toward that objective. Let us take heart from
this achievement.

Ed Finn can be reached at [log in to unmask]

Taken from The CCPA Monitor, October 2000.
http://www.policyalternatives.ca