…if a country cannot determine its own tax policy or set its level of defence spending through democratic debate but finds itself constantly forced by a more powerful state into adopting or rejecting policies formerly decided its parliament, then the country is not functionally sovereign but a dependent of the neighbour whose interests it must always accommodate. Such is the position that Canada occupies with regard to the United States. On the campaign trail, Mark Carney assured Canadians that his calm technocratic competence could reset Canadian and American relationships on grounds favourable to Canada while at the same time unlocking hidden growth potential within the domestic economy and expanding trade relations with the rest of the world (but not China, the one market which might function as an alternative to the US as a destination for our raw materials).

Two months on from the election the concrete reality of Carney’s plan has become clear: it is the traditional Canadian strategy of talking as if we are pursuing an independent political and economic policy while doing what we are told by the US. Consider: Trump cancels trade negotiations because he was unhappy about the Digital Services Tax, Carney cancels the Digital Services Tax. Trump fantasizes about his own version of Reagan’s fantastical Star Wars missile defense shield, Carney says he wants in on the project. (I don’t have a PhD in economics from Harvard, but I do have a globe in my study. If Russia ever did launch a nuclear attack on the US the missiles would be intercepted over Canada– why should we shell out billions if the missiles are going to be intercepted over the Arctic any way– the Americans should pay us for use of our airspace). Still on defense spending: Trump demands that NATO partners increase their defense spending to 5 % of GDP, Carney promises that Canada will increase its defense spending to 5 % of GDP (150 billion dollars/year) by 2035. He disguises this cave-in as an opportunity to invest in Canadian hi-tech industry. But hi-tech can also improve life, not just supply the military with better ways to kill it. Invest in health care, education, and clean energy. Establish a federal fund for Canadian universities to attract the best American scientists eager to escape Trump’s witch hunts and wishful thinking (As I argued they should before some high profile American academics decamped from Yale to the U of T).

We are supposed to be playing with our elbows up; we are in fact turning away from the check. (For my non-hockey playing readers, going onto the corner with your elbows up is a way of protecting yourself against getting hit. If the opponent checking you follows through with the hit they are going to take an elbow to the head; an illegal, but effective deterrent, especially against larger players- take it from me!) If you do throw an elbow you might have to take a beating later in the game, but if you build a reputation for willingness to keep your elbows up, the opponents will think twice about going into the corner with you.

If Carney, or whomever the Prime Minister is and whatever party they lead really does want to forge a different economic path they are going to have to risk the beating that the US will impose on us. But there is the problem: no Canadian politician will run that risk because the short term damage to the economy- and therefore also their own political future– would be so devastating. Yet, a refusal to run that risk– to pay the price, as Trump would say- means effectively ceding the sovereign right to decide our own taxation policy, military doctrine, investment priorities; to be, in effect if not in law, the 51st state that 90 % of us tell pollsters we do not want to be.

Say what you want about Trump’s political values, no one can deny that he is an effective politician because when he smells blood he strikes. He is a master of recognizing and exploiting weakness in adversary or allies (in practice, there is no difference for Trump, there is only his version of America and adversaries). Trump is not wrong to argue that “America has such power over Canada.” Of course, all American presidents have understood this fact and exploited it in different ways. However, when the overarching goal of America was to construct trade blocs to compete with China, negotiations with others in the Western camp could be conducted as if the goal were a win-win outcome. Trump seems determined to break with the economic strategy of trade blocs for a more ruthless America-first policy. His America will still trade, but only on terms favourable to his goals, and he is not afraid to use America’s still pre-eminent economic and military power to advance his agenda. (The rapid de-fanging of Iran proved that anyone who believes that the BRICS nations are at present capable of acting as a unified counter-balance to American strategy is dreaming). During the Cold War and into the early phases of neo-liberal globalization American bullying was reserved for countries in the Global South. The key difference with the second Trump administration is that he is happy to treat North American and European allies according the principle formerly reserved for smaller economies in the Global South: those who are dependent should be subservient.

Sadly, Canada, with a 1.5 trillion dollar economy proves that the strategy can work. Having followed the path of deeper integration with the American economy since the first Free Trade Agreement in 1987, it now finds itself forced to make a choice impossible for mainstream politicians to make: break the economy free from American supply chains and risk a catastrophic decline in manufacturing, or negotiate on the back foot and make concession after concession. Path-dependencies are real historical forces and act as a conservative and constraining brake on parties of all stripes. Syriza balked when threatened by the European Central bank; the Liberal party has balked and will continue to do so when threatened by Trump. Now supply management in the dairy industry is said to be sacrosanct. But would it remain on hallowed ground if Trump threatened to destroy the Canadian auto industry?

The problem that path dependencies cause is that people’s ability to satisfy their needs depend upon systems which, over the long term, might be unsustainable, but in the short term are the only means of jobs and income. It is easy to argue from on high that we need a global alternative to capitalism, (especially as it now moves towards an overtly totalitarian phase with Trump 2.0), but it is quite another to work out a transitional program that builds on what works and overcomes what does not without laying waste to peoples lives and livelihoods. The problem of fundamental change is that, as Immanuel Wallerstein once succinctly put it, everyone has to eat today, and fundamental social change would take decades. Few whose jobs depend upon the existing system are going to put their faith in academic promises that a better world is possible: they want to know how they are going to pay the bills in the world that is actual.

As I have argued before, Trump is a symptom and not a cause. He has emerged at a crisis point in global capitalism where its growth dynamics and energy mix are destabilizing the natural conditions of human civilization. Climate change and mass poverty are driving the migration crisis that he has weaponised to his advantage. Precarity and uncertainty have generated the social anxieties that fuel political hopelessness on one hand and a willingness to support totalitarian solutions that promise the restore the good old days on the other. These feel-good slogans about making this or that great again provide short term feelings of security, but without addressing, and indeed accelerating, the structural problems that cause the anxieties. Intellectual and political support for alternatives tends to concentrate in groups whose incomes do not depend directly on manufacturing industries, which explains why support for social democratic parties has shifted from the working class whose struggles gave birth to them to highly educated professionals and radical critics are almost overwhelmingly academics.

The argument that the world needs to radically change course is sound, and the underlying values of democratic socialism– voluntary contribution to collective wealth creation in return for need-satisfying resources and relationships for the sake of the free development of the capacities of the human personality– seem to me unassailable and unsurpassable. In a recent essay, former Syriza finance minister Yanis Varoufakis reminded readers of the core humanist values at the heart of Marx’s vision of a socialist future. It was a stirring essay and I agree with Varoufakis’ argument– as a philosopher. But Varoufakis himself knows better than anyone that good arguments do not cut it in the global political-economic system, and the left does not have the power at present to back argument with political strength. Hoping that a genuine global catastrophe will wake people up seems both naive and contrary to the life-values at the heart of socialism. Gaza is an ongoing catastrophe aided and abetted by the supposedly civilized world and no one is a sacrificial victim to be burned by present suffering at the altar of a better future for those who are born after we learn from the disaster.

One can tell a weak political argument when one encounters the qualifier “should.” What people should do and what they do are very different things. Lectures about what should be done rarely have the desired effect. If we want to go back to Marx for his values we must also go back to him for his hard-headed political analyses. He argued in The German Ideology that his version of communism differed from utopian socialisms because it was not a vague ethical idea but a political force driven by the “real movement of history.” Can anyone seriously maintain and support with evidence that history is still moving towards communism? No, they cannot, which is why the left is forced back on poetry and philosophy: ethical values and imaginative evocations of better worlds. Poetry and philosophy are noble arts, to be sure, but they are also expressions of political weakness. I would rather read Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts than a policy paper too, but boring policy papers that lay out a road map for realizable short term changes that allow everyone to eat today and open the door to deeper changes tomorrow are what the left needs.