---
Canadian Dimension Editorial May/June 2005
The Canadian labour movement is and has for some time been at an impasse that it shares with labour movements around the world. The problem is not an absence of struggles; localized struggles, some quite creative, are an everyday event. Yet without a larger vision and strategic orientation to counter the aggressiveness of corporations and the state, such struggles cannot help but be limited, and the demoralization and fatalism already evident threatens to spread.
The defeats of the past years go beyond specific losses — as painful and important as those have been. Rather, their measure lies in the lowering of expectations. The promises made earlier to promote neoliberalism — breaking inflation would bring employment security, free trade would strengthen the base for social programs, greater inequalities were essential incentives towards eventually achieving a higher standard of living for all — have all been exposed. Yet where is the impatience, frustration and anger that we also suggested would correspondingly resurface?
It may be true that some trade-union leaders, comfortable with the lowering of expectations, are part of the problem. But leaving it there ignores the depth of what we are really up against. The collapse of expectations is directly linked both to the weakness of the larger movements, from the socialist Left to the social-justice movements, and to neoliberalism’s success in not just rolling back gains, but affecting the ideology of the working class and its forms of struggle.
In the absence of collective power and support, it is not surprising that people turn to individualized solutions, and neoliberal structures have been there to accommodate, if not lead, that tendency: Your son’s or daughter’s tuition is rising? No point in going