Carole James is a socialist but that's not good enough

The left complains that Ms Carole James, NDP BC leader, is not a socialist. (http://www.marxist.ca/content/view/615/1/) But a socialist is no longer enough: we need a new kind of person and a new kind of politician. Someone to usher in a new electoral system and usher out fossil fuels.

Carole James is a socialist. She lines up with the big three union bosses in this province, and tells everyone else to shut up or leave caucus. That is socialism of the Stalinist type that ruined the potentially magnificent Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union, remember, abolished money. It guaranteed everyone a job, an apartment, cheap drink and cheap books. It kept the entire cultural apparatus (ballet, choirs, theatre) of each member state going (bar the Church) and published in dozens of languages. It was a genuine alternative to capitalism, and paid the price when Hitler launched all Europe against it.

Compared to the Rt Hon Mr. Campbell, Ms James certainly is a socialist. A friend of unions, an advocate of better pay and services for the poor, she would have been thrown into a concentration camp in Hitler's national-socialist paradise.

The problem is that socialism is no longer enough. It's an idea that was already developed when the French Revolution occurred 221 years ago. At that time, the three "estates" were the aristocracy, the clerics, and the rest. The first two constituted only seven per cent of the population. Ninety-three per cent of the population were the rest. Do those figures remind you of any figures published today?

Socialist, maybe, but today the very fabric of our environment is being torn apart. Human greed is in the driver-seat, and ecologists are hiding penniless in cabins. The Green party finds it almost impossible to penetrate our outmoded democracy and exercise real influence. Fact is, that both socialists like Ms. James and capitalists like Mr. Campbell hate ecologists.

We urgently need a new democracy. A changed voting system that reflected our modern reality would definitely be a step in the right direction, but how long do we have to wait for that?