This week for political science was all about the national policy of Canada and free trade. This was an interesting lecture because it talked about American businesses and investment in Canada despite the national policy. It was a way to allow US capital to get into Canada. Something similar is happening now. Let’s get through this quickly:

Regarding tariffs, US is protecting its own economy, so Canada will do the same

Canada to build its own industries to catch up to everyone else. Canada is still behind the US here

There is a lot of US ownership of the Canadian economy; Apple, many restaurants, vehicles, etc.

Canada is uniquely Americanized compared to other countries

A news clip was played: Carney wants to unlock trillions of dollars over 5 years., pitching over 150 projects. The AB pipeline, renewable energy, data centres, etc. Protestors are against US investment, when the woman chanted something anti-billionaire, some of the students in my class laughed. The government states that it needs US money because we don’t have it. History repeating itself

post-war era saw Canada fully embrace Keynesianism alongside the rest of the Atlantic world

Keynesianism was embraced to fight communism

by 1970s, Keynesianism came under pressure and was replaced by neoliberalism. This was because they thought labour was too powerful, high wages meant higher business costs. Which meant higher prices. Western economies noticed that the people saw the state as the problem, state involvement n the economy was blamed. Because back in the day when the state didn’t do anything the economy was “good”

A belief of neoliberalism is free trade

Students asked if businesses are efficient. One said that they are efficient in profit seeking, not much else. Second student said it is unfair to compare businesses to governments as governments are supposed to serve the people and businesses serve their own. A third student said that businesses are somewhat efficient, h would buy a desk from a business rather than the government, but businesses don’t care about the people

Neoliberalism is a caricature of government. Economists say that the market is good at knowing what is wanted, people vote with their dollars. Uncoordinated voting in the market is efficient in allocating resources

Anyway, unions declined

Professor sees neoliberalism as a political tradition that took on so much confidence, almost to a religious amount, especially in Washington DC

Professor is not convinced of neoliberal arguments (thats cool)

History of free trade discussed regarding the US and Canada. Mexico joined a little later. NAFTA in 1993 and then the US-Mexico-Canada agreement in 2018

Free trade was to allow markets to decide who was the better producer so competitors would up their quality. (Seems like a naive thought)

Apparently introducing Mexico to the agreement changed the nature of said agreement because Mexico was, and is, part of the Global South which has very different labour—the wages are lower than in Canada and the US

the FTA gives the US leverage over Canada , there’s a sovereignty argument. NAFTA brought forward social justice issues regarding the exploitation of the Global South and offshoring jobs to Mexico

At the time of the agreement there were intense protests in Mexico. Critique against Mexico’s elites was very rare/limited at the time. Mexico’s democracy is young. There were oppositions to reforms that needed to happen if Canada and the US were going to agree. (If Canada forced reforms in Mexico then it technically shouldn’t complain about EU changes, not that I agree with the EU bureaucracy)

Free trade is embrace on the right but critiqued on the left in both Canada and the US

Quebec nationalists complicate things as the provincial party is fairly left-wing, Free Trade allows Quebec to remain sovereign

Those critical of NAFTA, usually left wing academics and politicians, spoke about how it would exacerbate inequality and threaten sovereignty

Only a small group of right-wingers at the time were skeptical of free trade

As neoliberalism rose, the identity of the proletariat shifted into a consumer identity. Workers do not see themselves as workers anymore, they see themselves as actors in the economy, as consumers

Now we have the precariat instead of the proletariat. Basically gig and contract workers

Ralph Nader (or however you spell it) was referenced as THE left-wing politician back then, he was left of democrat, and when he spoke about the people, he used the identity of the “consumer” rather than “worker.” The NDP in Canada would shift to this rhetoric as well (it is frustrating that the NDP is the only “legit” left-wing party in Canada)

The 2008 crash shook confidence in markets. The world nearly broke but instead countries banded together

This is when populism began to grow

Populism on the right revolved around anti-immigration politics, left populism was all about inequality

Populist tendency was anti-technocratic, re-reshaping agenda rose in the US under Trump

Professor brought up a brexit quote that said something like “people are sick of expert,” people laughed, but the best reading you can make about that quote is that the voice of the people matter too. An expert must demonstrate why they are an expert. This was an opposition to unearned prestige, you have to put in the effort to work with the people rather than just saying “i am an expert so just listen to me.” Again, this is a very generous interpretation of the quote, in reality it was probably a guy just saying nothing

Elites just assume that people will go along with what they say

Trump’s first campaign embodied right-wing populism. He was on the left regarding Free Trade (what?). He campaigned on protectionism, not anti-exploitation of the global south

Second trump admin made a more assertive agenda around re-shoring, messing up trade agreements and creating severe tariffs

Although people’s support of trump was really bad, especially regarding racism. There was an actual problem with offshoring as it did leave American communities destitute. There was blue collar alienation and this helped trump win. NAFTA was seen as part of the problem. But free trade agreements are more about capital mobility rather than trade, which is weird because trade is in the name. Until Trump’s populism came up, left-wing opposition to Free Trade was hard to find. Now free trade is being more threatened on the right than on the left. Now the left thinks tariffs are absurd. This is probably because people are doing team politics, anything that trump likes is bad and anything that he hates is good.

Sociology this week dealt with different sociological frameworks, I will only focus on the Marxist one because this is getting long:

The Marxist framework is actually called the Conflict framework. It is a macro-level perspective and explains the role of power in capitalism. The core of the framework is that the unequal distribution of resources leads to conflict. There are the two groups: the ruling elites (bourgeoisie) and the workers (proletariat).

They went over the main ideas of both these groups that we already know so I will not state it here.

The goal of the conflict framework is social justice via actual system change, to overcome capitalism and replace it with socialism.

It is a critical approach

Capitalism is inherently unjust and unequal, capitalism is not about markets as those have existed in every system, including socialism! Capitalism just organizes markets in a particular way.

Exploitation and inequality becomes more pronounced under capitalism

Conflict is the logical conclusion and consequence of capitalism

Conflicts exist between the classes, the core is between the bourgeoisie and proletariat. The elites prevent revolution with strategies designed to reinforce capitalism and protect their interests. They develop norms, values, and views to serve dominant interests.; prevent the proletariat from rising up; they are able to do this because inequality is built into capitalism, it has an elevated influence on institutions. The legalization of tax havens, bribery, tax evasion, etc. contributes to this. They manufacture consent to accept subordination. “Capitalism delivers equality” is false, capitalism is totalitarian!

False consciousness: the workers accepting a system that is actually detrimental to them. It is the illusion that they are in charge of capitalism, that capitalism is natural. The focus on our own individual actions and how we look to others distracts us from thinking about systemic changes. This is a very exploitable mindset, it leaves us unthreatening to the elites. Any awareness of inequality is undermines by the false consciousness. “It is your fault that you are failing, not the system.” It also blames minorities for systemic problems.

You are probably not interested in my creative writing class, but too bad I am going to talk about it. We had an anti-DPRK day at the end of the week. It was brief but it pissed me off.

We were introduced to the writer Paul Fischer, who wrote an entire book about the DPRK kidnapping a South Korean filmmaker and they forced him to make propaganda films. I looked it up but obviously the sources aren’t great. Was this guy actually kidnapped? What happened there? I hate these anti-communist comments made in this fucking class, what is the purpose?

Anyway, that was week two. Look forward to week three where I completely crash out (not that bad) and more anti-communist shit is spewed in my creative writing class although it is more subtle.