In Canada we often equate the state with the government. This leads to great confusion since we always expect that when we elect a government it becomes the state for four years until we can, if we wish, elect a totally different management of the state. This confusion is particularly acute to supporters of the New Democratic Party, since they believe that if their party is elected it becomes master of the state. […] The chief function of the Canadian state system, like of all western political democracies, is to protect and enhance the system of private property and private profit. This is achieved in two broad ways: through use of force and coercion, and through inducement, encouragement, subsidy, or what can be more broadly described as welfare. The coercion need not be brutal (but it sometimes is, as in Quebec in October 1970), and the welfare need not be in the form of direct payment (for example, the stark class bias of the income tax system). It is a major task of the state elite, both elected and appointed, to continuously persuade the mass of the population that the state is neutral and that the business of government is conducted in the interest of the nation as a whole, when in reality it is always the interests of the owning class which the state serves. This Canadian state is a dictatorship of the owning class, however successful may be the disguise which it wears. -- Manifesto of the Saskatchewan Waffle movement 1975
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 03:41:04 +0000