[URBAN NOTE] "Why isn't Parkdale like Rexdale (politically)?"

[rfmcdonald]

Livejournaler jsburbidge wonders why, politically speaking if not economically or socially, the left-leaning Toronto neighbourhood of Parkdale is so different from the right- and Ford-leaning neighbourhood of Rexdale. It's a nice piece of analysis where the author suggests that the Canadian Left is just not socially distinctive enough--not compelling enough--to take root in newer environments and communities.

The elements that cut across the Parkdale social fabric are historically conditioned by the left -- the presence of small social initiatives and an originally working-class matrix. The immigrant communities of Rexdale tend to be more inward-looking and more conservative. (Modulo the issue of poverty, the Italian immigrant community in Trinity-Spadina riding is similarly more conservative and inward-looking than the overall average of the rest of the residents.)

But I'm not sure that this would make a difference if it weren't for the changes which have taken place in the Left.

Back in the days when the working-class communities along Queen in the Parkdale and Trinity-Bellwoods areas were being established, the Left was "aspirational" almost to the point of being millenarian. It held out a goal of transforming society in ways which would benefit the people at the bottom of the heap (the proletariat).

Several things happened to that. First, the promise of Marxism as being a "science" of history collapsed when the "inevitable" conflicts of class struggle were averted by factors such as technical advances which Marx had failed to anticipate. Secondly, the collapse of the soviet bloc left socialism looking rather tarnished (although it would be fair to apply to the practice of Marxism in that bloc Chesterton's dictum re Christianity: "it has not been tried in the balance and found wanting; it has been found difficult and never been tried").

There were, of course, all sorts of non-Marxist forms of socialism, some of which still inform the more social democratic states in Europe. These seem to have been let go in North America. (Socialism used to be an accepted model even on the mild left. "We are all socialists now", said William Harcourt, Chancellor of the Exchequer under Gladstone.)