Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre recently published an op-ed in the National Post, titled “Adam Smith was right. Free markets are moral.”
In it, he argues that “top-down” government policies are what has been making life so much harder for working class Canadians.
“In a government-run economy,” he argues, energy and food costs go up as monopolies are protected, and “corporate welfare enriches those with lobbyists at the expense of taxpayers who have no one to speak for them.” In summary: “when corporate and political power merge, the public loses.”
It’s no wonder that Poilievre’s rhetoric resonates with a layer of workers today. For decades, governments have subsidized and bailed out giant corporations. It’s also obvious that the government operates at the beck and call of these corporate masters, and there has been a constant transfer of wealth upwards as the rich get richer and the rest of us have gotten poorer.
Poilievre is capitalizing on this anger and has even correctly diagnosed part of the problem—that the governments are in the back pocket of the corporations. But his so-called solution is just a libertarian fairytale about some fairer, freer version of capitalism that doesn’t exist, and never has.
The symptom or the disease?
Poilievre argues that if the government just left the market alone, it would “restore the meritocratic, bottom-up free market competition; an economy where businesses must compete for workers through higher wages and for customers through better products and prices, rather than rely on handouts, carve-outs and bailouts.”
The model he wants to “restore” is the capitalism of about 250 years ago, when Adam Smith was writing. But this was not the idyllic time Poilievre insinuates it was. Actually, as Marx explained, left up to itself, wages don’t get “higher,” but tend to be reduced to mere subsistence.
Workers were subject to Dickensian conditions and child labour was rampant. Workers had zero protection under the law and had to work as hard and long as the bosses demanded. Twelve or 14-hour work days were common as the eight-hour day did not exist.
The birth of capitalism also required heavy state involvement. In Britain, the state passed Enclosure Laws to rip commonly held lands from peasants and put it in private hands, sending starving peasants into the cities to join the newly formed working class.
This led to great struggles, through which the workers eventually established unions and earned basic protections—against the efforts of the state, which did not leave its hands off the market but intervened on the side of the bosses, clubs in hand.
And while capitalism was not yet characterized by the type of monopolization we see today, it was definitely not some “free market” of small producers all competing with each other. Britain’s East India Company, for example, imposed its rule across vast swathes of India in concert with the state, and with a military twice the size of Britain’s! They didn’t compete with anyone. They physically smashed India’s nascent industry and took over.
This original, pure “free market” Poilievre speaks of is a myth.
And it’s precisely market competition which inevitably leads to monopolies. As some capitalists win, producing more efficiently and taking more market share, they push out others, and eventually concentrate massive amounts of capital in their hands.
Today, Canada’s banking, telecommunications, grocery, energy and resource sectors are all under the stranglehold of a few corporations. These giant corporations dominate the economy, gouge consumers and control the politicians. Everyone knows this at some level.
Therefore, by complaining about the death of the “free market” (which never existed as such), Poilievre is complaining about a symptom of capitalism, without even bringing the disease into question.
Serving the oligarchs
But what does Poilievre propose we do?
In his crusade to restore this mythical “free market”, he argues that the government should “get out of the way.” To do this, he proposes to slash all types of regulations and corporate taxes.
The irony here is extremely obvious. While claiming to fight against the “financial elite,” his proposals are engineered to help them. Unsurprisingly, it is precisely these proposals which saw CEOs from big banks and other oligarchs support him during last year’s election.
And in his desire to help the corporate elite, Poilievre is just like Mark Carney. Since he was elected, Carney has gutted environmental regulation and corporate taxes, even leading Poilievre to complain that Carney is “stealing” his ideas.
The only apparent difference between Carney and Poilievre is that Carney believes in using state intervention to prop up and guide capitalism while Poilievre criticizes corporate welfare.
But why have successive governments, including the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, used corporate welfare policies?
The Canadian ruling class is too small and weak to compete on the world market against big powers like the United States or China. This is why Canadian industry has relied not on free market policies but robust protections as well as state support. The bailouts to Bombardier, auto manufacturers, softwood lumber, and steel and aluminum have not been one-offs but recurrent phenomena over the last few decades.
Poilievre seems to be arguing that in addition to cutting taxes and regulations, the government should step aside by removing corporate welfare policies. But this is where his utopian, free market fantasy really hits a brick wall.
For Marxists, instead of corporate welfare, we propose that companies which cannot survive without state support should be nationalized and run under democratic workers control. This way, working class people can democratically decide what we do with the wealth that we produce.
But as Poilievre bases himself on capitalism, the situation is entirely different. Either he supports retracting the subsidies, letting entire industries go under—or he opts to continue these supports, just like his Conservative predecessor did.
The state is a state of the capitalist class and the state exists to protect the interests of the Canadian capitalists. If in power, Poilievre would therefore likely maintain state subsidies and protective policies in some form—and sadly set aside his copy of Wealth of Nations.
Austerity: the elephant in the room
As a part of his “free market” crusade, Poilievre claims that the “Conservatives must be the party of balanced budgets and sound money.” With the government running the highest deficit outside of COVID and with massive amounts of money needed for military and infrastructure spending, balancing the budget would mean cuts, and deep ones—there’s no way around that.
That would mean cuts to employment insurance, pensions, public service jobs, and funding for healthcare and education. In fact, both the federal and provincial governments have already announced public sector layoffs and cuts to various social programs.
While Carney did implement cuts in his fall budget, Poilievre criticized the massive $78-billion deficit, calling it “out-of-control spending.” But even the Conservative party platform admitted that they would run deficits at least until 2028. This shows that despite his bluster, Poilievre is the same as the Liberals in every way that counts: he will maintain the support the capitalists need; taking from the “hardworking many”, as he puts it, to “enrich the privileged few.”
It would be hard to find a more clear example of the “merger of corporate and political power” which Poilievre claims to be fighting.
The working class
Part of Poilievre’s support comes from his frequent appeals to workers against the rich. For example, one of his slogans during the election was “the have nots vs the have yachts.” He readily talks about the “working class” and how they are at the mercy of the “financial elites.”
But this relates to another question which Pierre Poilievre leaves unanswered. In his op-ed in the National Post, he defensively argues that Adam Smith “did not preach the supremacy of capital over labour.” Instead, Poilievre tries to claim that what’s good for capital is good for labour.
But the reality is much different. If Poilievre wants to be consistent with his free market ethos he would have to undermine the ability of workers to fight collectively for their interests.
This is actually imperative if the Canadian ruling class wants to be competitive in this disintegrating world market. If Canadian commodities are going to be competitive, they will need to not only cut taxes and regulations but also lower wages and cut benefits. But this brings any Canadian government, regardless of the party in power, into direct conflict with the labour movement.
Already in the Conservative Party program they state that they “support right to work legislation” and that “mandatory union membership and forced financial contributions as a condition of employment limit the economic freedom of Canadians and stifle economic growth.” In other words, they are opposed to the unions, as they exist.
But of course, Poilievre, if he wants to get elected, cannot state this openly all the time. Therefore, last August, Poilievre criticized Carney for legislating the Air Canada flight attendants back to work. Does this mean that Carney is more anti-union than Poilievre? This is simply opportunist political posturing. Both Carney and Poilievre claim to support unions while in practice attacking union rights.
‘No wonder some people are tempted by socialists’
Throughout his article, Poilievre seems to be on the defence against socialists. Discussing the impoverishment of the working class, Poilievre says: “it is no wonder that some people are tempted by socialists whose answer is to redistribute existing wealth to the poorest.”
No wonder indeed. But genuine socialists are after much more than the redistribution of wealth. We aren’t peasants begging for sacks of grain. There has never been more wealth in the world, all while the majority of Canadians—up to 85 per cent by some estimates!—live paycheque to paycheque.
We propose the full expropriation, without compensation, of the parasite monopolies. We have no delusions about turning back the clock to small-scale production, nor do we want to destroy the efficiency afforded by large-scale industry. But we demand that this industry be democratically owned and controlled by the workers who make them run.
The “merging” of corporate and political power—which Poilievre claims to be fighting against—is a product of the capitalist system. The fact is, the government has served the rich as long as they’ve existed. That’s not a Liberal versus Conservative problem; that’s the way capitalism works.
The only way to end this is to end capitalism, to do away with the capitalist state, and build a democracy by and for the working class. On this basis, we could take the wealth of these monopolies, put it toward meeting real needs, and create good jobs for all of society.
Poilievre’s rhetoric has an impact because he at least gestures to the most dire problems actually facing working class people—cost of living, jobs, and housing. But in response to these problems he appeals to a utopian free market fantasy which exists only in the minds of deluded libertarians.
Poilievre is right to be looking over his shoulder at the socialists. We are the only ones with a real answer to the crisis of Canadian capitalism. We will mobilize working class people against the “financial elites,” against the “have yachts” and against the ruling class as a whole.
