Ask Prof Wolff: Finding Common Ground with Canadian Truckers

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "I would appreciate hearing your thoughts about how this Canadian Truckers movement aligns with the international workers' movements, if, in fact, you believe it does."

This is Professor Richard Wolff's video response.

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“Marxism always was the critical shadow of capitalism. Their interactions changed them both. Now Marxism is once again stepping into the light as capitalism shakes from its own excesses and confronts decline.”

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[democracyatwrk]

A Note From Prof. Wolff:

Let me be clear. I am vaccinated (3 times) as is my entire family. I advocate all to get vaccinated because of the science and the balance of risks in vaccination vs non-vaccination. 

The vast majority of Canadian truck drivers are vaccinated. Most are NOT in the convoy, but they are watching closely. Most probably support protests against government laws, regulations and mandates that have hurt truckers' livelihoods for decades. Most don’t support Nazis, or other right wing extremists. They just want to regain decent livelihoods and job conditions – which the right wing ignores.

Right wingers are attempting to co-opt this protest because it’s directed against the government. They win if the Left reflexively supports the government’s mandates.
 
What the Left should do is support the protests while opposing the right wing for its attempt to exploit protesters’ legitimate grievances. We can applaud the truckers and offer real solutions.
 
Among possible goals for the Left to endorse are these: demand that truckers be allowed to choose between regular testing or vaccination, to be quarantined when testing positive, to provide additional medical facilities for Covid patients so non-Covid health care isn’t compromised. The truckers could be leaders in the national fight for more medical care facilities for all Canadians: a way to build and broaden a coalition around them. Demand that if and when government mandates or testing or quarantines damage workers’ incomes, those workers should be compensated by a corporate tax on “Covid-windfall profits”, as was levied on companies that profited from past wars.

[martinkidwell]

Sorry, Prof. Wolff, but I'm not buying your analysis of this situation. You end your video where you should have started, pointing out what the truckers' real problems are: stolen wages, falling real wages over the last thirty years, deregulation by a government in the hands of the trucking industry, etc. THESE are the real, material issues that truckers face, and yet this small minority of unvaccinated truckers rise up in protest of what? Not simply vaccine mandates, but pretty much any public health measures that will keep the public safe from COVID because they don't believe in any of it. I don't need to remind you that it is the poor and working class who have suffered the most as a result of this pandemic. You're saying we should, in solidarity, support these truckers when they are showing zero solidarity with other workers. I think the compromise you suggested is a non-starter, not only because there would be zero public support for funding COVID sick leave for unvaccinated truckers (I mean, for Christ's sake, nearly 80% of Canadians are vaccinated; unlike Americans, many Canadians still care about the common good so it's hard for me to imagine that many are sympathetic to these truckers' demands), but also because those very truckers would probably tell you to take your compromise and shove it because they clearly don't think - when it comes to public health - that they have any social obligations. Most importantly, however, your compromise has the effect of legitimating a very dangerous and libertarian attitude toward public health that is the antithesis of worker solidarity and throws 100 years of public health science out the window. I've heard the argument that these truckers are petite bourgeois or that their ranks are filled with right wing extremists. I honestly don't know if either are accurate, but it's immaterial to why I don't support the Freedom Convoy. I withhold my support because a) their demands have nothing to do with the fundamental, material problems truckers face and, b) by seeking to eliminate public health measures that protect working people (and not simply vaccine mandates, mind you), these very demands undermine working class solidarity. If, as you suggest, the Left should be willing to dialogue with these truckers, these concerns should be the start and focus of any conversation.

[chadsimmons]

Oops. Looks like you need to look into Max Bernier (Canada’s Reagan). This convoy is PPC, Wexit, and not “working truckers protesting for worker rights”.

You have the right idea about our Conservatives and Liberals gutting the federal transfers for healthcare being the main trigger to “mandates”. Except these “protesters” are absolutely not about fixing that.

[jagged_jim]

Hello Prof. Wolff, I am a long time patreon supporter and also live here in canada, and visited these rallies. While I agree that truckers should be considered working class, I dont agree that this is a working class movement. Thier grievances are no more than our temporary mask and vaccine mandates. There are zero labour demands aside from getting back to work, or opening up businesses to full capacity. They are not making any kind of demands in terms of working class gains or better working conditions (higher wages, better benefits, etc). Thier main concern is freedom, and many if you talk to them will go further and start insisting on 'economic freedom', which we all know just means the free market.. Most of the supporters at these rallies are PPC supporters (peoples party of canada), the alt right libertarian party of Canada. Many of these people will also go on record saying they are anti-union, its hard to believe this is a movement in favor of the working class.

[cvcv]

I think the US media has portrayed the convoy protest as working class too much. The organizers are Strike Busters who have been caught on film driving their trucks through picket lines. There's a large group of Canada's equivalent to the US Sovereign Citizen called Freedom on the Land who were recruiting among the crowds, they are a far right group and have been labelled as an extremist threat for a decade. The mandates they were protesting are US Border Crossing Mandates... enforced by the US Border Guards. The funding is mostly foreign, and what seems to have come domestically involves large donations of 25k plus. Also, judging by how the US media has been portraying the whole, there's definitely American interests at play here.

I agree that the restrictions imposed in Canada were to prevent a flooding of the ICU, that there should be 4 to 8 times more bed and the personnel to operate it all. The conservative politicians have been gutting our health care system for 40 years in the hopes of privatizing it all like the US. As for the methods used to clear them, this is all standard fair for a State, the police have been incredibly cooperative and has let the convoy protest for multiple weeks now. This treatment isn't shown to indigenous protests at pipelines and mines.

[gb]

Prof Wolff. I live in Ottawa. It is a failure of the media that anyone thinks this is a working class movement. With the slightest analysis, it's easy to find the organizers' right-wing racist histories. The convoy is peppered with US Confederate flags and other hate symbols. The movement is quite hostile towards unions and the working class. It was not fighting mandates; it was asking to topple the democratically elected government. Downtown Ottawa residents were terrorized by a bunch of drunken, racists, thugs, who enjoyed the kid glove treatment from police, unlike legitimate protests, for example, indigenous people trying to protect their land from corporations, who were quickly met with military style state violence.

[theresbob]

The original truckers protest here has actually spun out to other grievances similar to the Occupy Wall Street movement. In reality people are just angry at a failing system because Capitalist govt's are owned by corporations.

[georgekostaras]

I’d like to politely disagree. The trucker movement is not a working class movement, it’s an astroturf movement like the tea party. For comparison, the truckers in Ottawa are protesting against vaccine mandates and asking Justin Trudeau to resign. By comparison a public worker strike in Puerto Rico are asking about and making demands for wages, pensions and benefits. The Canadian truckers have made no talk on unions, pensions, workplace democracy or more

[essayeff]

I rarely disagree with you Professor Wolff. The vast majority of truckers and Canadian workers oppose the so called Freedom Convoy, even though a slim majority of Canadians agree that the governments at all levels have failed us through the pandemic. Though not as badly as the US government has failed.

Those of us who've been at least occasionally engaged in anti-fascist work here recognize the names of the convoy organizers. This is more of an uprising among socially conservative evangelicals who think Trudeau is the anti-Christ (another toxic American import) and criminal lumpen elements associated with rightwing "sovereign citizens", rightwing accelerationist gangsters. There are surely some honest and earnest workers in the mass and I think Left formations should be in the streets with pamphlets and information about the truth about this dysfunctional system, but make no mistake. We Canadians aren't all smiles, apologies, and maple syrup. Per capita, Canada's far right is far more organized and effective than the mainstream media realizes.

As something of a Marxist, I've got to say I don't find myself cheering on these events. As the late Canadian Marxist Leo Panitch might have said, we have to look at the balance of forces. The right is winning. We need some white Marxists to be willing to become martyrs in the name of redirecting working class anger, but right now, the streets belong to the right wing.

[rk]

I am a union worker who support unions and the fight for workers rights and improved working conditions. However the truckers are not demonstrating because of working conditions, they are demonstrating against vaccine mandates for crossing borders which has been imposed both by the US and Canada. There were demonstrators who drew swastika on Canadian flags, this is racism for sure and Mr. Wolff I think you know about antisemitism. Recently 11 demonstrators were arrested for carrying fire arms. These people are not demonstrating for better working conditions, and i have heard upstanding truckers say this. So Mr. Wolff I think you are misinformed about the reason for the demonstration. It's similar to Jan.6th in Washington DC

[sammfshields]

Love your work prof but Off base about this imho.

The protests have an aesthetic of a working class movement but it’s just a shroud to make it appear to have a sense of legitimate victimhood.

I have a lot to say but perhaps the most striking situation I saw was this:

In Australia “freedom” trucker protestors (it was/is a copycat of the trucker convoy in Canada) were protesting at the same time a nurses were on strike around the country because the neoliberal privatising cost cutting NSW govt has gutted health care spending.

All the while in Canberra, the “ freedom” protestors are actively protesting for everything that makes it harder for nurses/healthcare workers. There is no coherent ideology and I would posit that the demographic is not working class but a mix of all classes). They are privileged labour aristocrats holding up signs for revolution and solidarity while showing no solidarity with ANY citizens by just getting vaccinated and doing the right thing, especially those on the front lines (nurses, healthcare workers etc) and those who are most vulnerable. In terms of revolution, what would they achieve once their demands are met? Relaxing of mandates.. which are temporary measures anyway, then what. They would fracture back into their individual lives because there is no guiding ideology, organisation or real, legitimate struggle. It is a glorified tantrum which was astroturfed and exacerbated by far right and capitalist interests.

[devinfaux]

...I'm hoping this is about finding common ground with the other 95-99% of Canadian Truckers who have absolutely nothing to do with the protest.

[MikeFrame]

It seems to me that this disruptive protest has been permitted to happen un-impeded in stark contrast to recent indigenous protests. without acknowledging this context, the analysis is lacking.

[jameslatimer]

It is not the "truckers" who are protesting. It is mostly the owners of trucking companies. Just because the media doesn't know any better, or wants to be misleading, doesn't mean that intelligent people should follow them blindly.

I would say that most "truckers" in Canada are Teamsters members. 90% of the Canadian "truckers" are triple vaccinated.

[valerierawlings]

How do you explain the weapons being smuggled into Canada by US supporters of the convoy?

[TedApelt]

You didn't know that most of the "Canadian truckers" are not truckers at all, that the REAL Canadian truckers are one of the highest vaccinated groups in the country, with very few of them having any problems with vaccine mandates?

[otsoko]

As a Canadian subscriber, I am honestly horrified by this take. It is a BAD take. You support a neo-fascist, anti-democratic, movement which the labour union to which truckers belong strongly opposes. Is it because you think it useful to undermine the union movement? Is it because you think that a small minority of right-wingers should be able to overturn the results of a democratic election (held last year - they are calling for the government to step down)?. The vast majority of Canadians -- and Canadian truckers -- support vaccinations (90% of Canadian truckers are fully vaccinated). The only people who are profiteering off this "movement" are those receiving the money from largely US 'donations' -- ALL coming from the hard right.

I personally can never support a movement that carries 'Trump 2024' and confederate flags through the streets of Canadian cities. How can you?

The main effect (by design) of this "strike" is to undermine the truckers' union -- which well over 90% of truckers support, and destabilize the Liberal government (in favour of their friends on the right of the Conservative party - they have been OPEN about this). Whence such strong opposition to the union movement? Whence such support of a right-wing government over a democratically elected centre-left government? (yeah, I'd rather have a socialist NDP government, but it was not in the cards last year.) Why do you support undermining the trucker's union and using US money to cripple the Canadian economy, closing factories, and making life unbearable for innocent residents of Ottawa neighbourhoods?

So PLEASE explain why you oppose unions, why you oppose democracy, why you support the "strikers'" attacks on dark-skinned on the streets of Ottawa, their attacks on homes and businesses that fly rainbow flags, and their harassment of people just trying to live their lives in their own neighbourhoods.

[kaijessen]

Here in Hawaii a telescope project on Mauna Kea was stopped by Hawaiians blocking the road. I’m not for stopping the telescope construction but I appreciate that people organized against it and were successful. I also believe that there are more pressing problems that affect most of us in Hawaii and I would have liked a movement shutting down the roads to protest for affordable housing and livable wages. Protesting against the highest rate of homelessness in the country and for clean drinking water. The protest on the mountain has actually made solidarity a more remote possibility because it has entrenched many native Hawaiians in the fantasy that they will get their land back.

Outsiders see Hawaii as a parasite on America, good only for tourism and military installations but those of us who live here know that Hawaii could be very productive and self sustaining if investments were made towards that goal. The goals of the elites don’t align with that because they are making bank on the colonial structure we have here. I see the protests of the yellow vests and now the Canadian truckers as a structure that the working class has to embrace but maybe we are just too divided and hopeless to demand something better. It seems like pie in the sky thinking that we could start winning because the banks win every stinking time.

[Brawnald]

I get that you're tired of waiting to see your beliefs inspire wide action, but saying we should throw our lot in with openly anti communist, bigotedly conspiratorial followers of the self appointed Queen of Canada is a massive slap in the face.

[JoseLopez-ysoz]

Capitalists running governments. The capitalists say that big government is bad, and that smaller is better. But by smaller they mean, that the capitalists should run the government for the exclusive benefit of the 1% of United States (US) citizens. That is how US capitalists have achieved that 9 of the 10 richest men in the world are US citizens. The problem for the 99% of us is that the US government is run by 1% of US citizens. Therefore, the solution to our problem is to make America great for everyone by having her governed by 100% of her citizens! Make America governed by all of her people for a change!