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Since the 2011 federal election, there have been more frequent discussions on cooperation among the opposition parties: the Greens, the NDP and the Liberals. It is argued by some that had these parties cooperated in the last election they could have defeated Stephen Harper and prevented the dismantling of many important institutions and policies such as the Canadian Wheat Board, gun control, environmental assessment regulation and retirement at age 65.

Pro-cooperation groups like Leadnow have drawn in thousands of supporters across the country, and leadership candidates for both the NDP (Nathan Cullen) and the Liberals (Joyce Murray) have run on cooperation platforms. The cooperationists contend that given the status quo, the Conservatives are likely to remain in power after the next election in 2015 because of ongoing vote splitting.

On the other side, the apparatchiks of both the NDP and Liberals have held steadfast against cooperation. They have claimed that the cultural and political differences between their parties are vast and that cooperation would turn off voters and benefit Harper’s Conservatives. And, on the left, many progressives oppose any collaboration with the Liberals  that will further undermine the already centrist and increasingly corporate NDP.

Historical perspective is useful in judging alternatives. History offers examples of when the left and centre have cooperated and when they have stood apart. The four historical examples below, part of an ongoing series, looks at collaboration between centrist and leftist political groups and interests.

Canadian Welfare State (CCF/NDP and Liberals; 1926-1984)

For many decades, through the middle of the 20th century, minority governments were common in Canada. Beginning in the 1920s when Mackenzie King introduced Canada’s first national pension system, Labour, CCF and then NDP MPs helped prop up Liberal governments in return for modest welfare reforms. Pensions, healthcare, unemployment insurance and federal housing grants are the legacy of this period.

While some of these gains were substantial, progressives voices were the junior partner to Canadian financial and manufacturing capital. Waves of concessions and compromise left workers without an autonomous voice once the system fell apart during the long recessionary period of the 1970s. Workers were unable to organize to defend themselves from wage restraint, free trade and globalization.

China (Communists and the Kuomintang; 1925-1927 and 1937-1949)

Since the early 1900s, Chinese workers, students, the educated middle class and business owners had collaborated against foreign power and imperialist influence in China. Actions included mass demonstrations, boycotts and strikes, by both worker and owners, such as during the May Fourth Movement of 1919, spurred by terms of the Versailles Treaty that gave the Shandong Province to Japan. The strikes and other mass actions succeeded in increasing political consciousness among the workers and strengthening workers organizations.

Nationalism, as an alternative to imperialism, united the people and, by the 1920s, united two political parties: the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) and the Communist Party of China. Sun Yat-sen, a social-democrat and leader of the Kuomintang until his death in 1925, had established a constitutional government in Canton Province, with financial support and advice from the Soviet Union and in collaboration with the Communist Party of China.

The two parties then organizing against the warlords who controlled most of the country outside Canton. Communist and nationalist armed forces led by the Chiang Kai-shek began the Northern Expedition, a march that culminated with the defeat of the warlords and an alliance that brought most of China under the control of the national government. However, once victorious over the warlords, the Kuomintang turned against the Communists. In the Shanghai Massacre of 1927, thousands of workers were killed, wounded and arrested, communists were expelled from the Kuomintang, and workers’ organizations were prohibited. Communists moved into the countryside to begin war against the Kuomintang.

At the time of the Japanese invasion in 1937, the nationalist Chinese government was weakened from fighting the communists and by corruption within the national government and army. Both the communists and the nationalists resisted the Japanese, but the communists were better able to mobilize people’s support than the unpopular nationalist government. The two groups collaborated, in a more limited sense than in the 1920s, in that they tactically agreed not to attack each other while fighting Japan.

Successful resistance to the Japanese strengthened support for the communists, led by Mao Tse-tung. Mao received the support of not only peasants and workers, but also many from the educated middle and business classes who saw him as more effective than Chiang at fighting the Japanese. Militarily stronger and with more popular support by the end of the war, the communists were able to defeat the Kuomintang, despite U.S. interference, and form the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

British Free Trade Debate (Chartists and Liberals; 1840s)

In the 1840s, the antagonism between British workers and manufacturing capital was growing and becoming more visible each passing year. Still, the two classes continued to share common interests against the landlords who politically and economically dominated the country. Landlord hegemony was most powerfully represented in a set of duties on grain imports called the Corn Laws. These duties kept out foreign grain and increased land rents. Workers opposed the high of food the system imposed. Manufacturers realized that augmented bread costs increased the cost of labour and reduced their profits. Workers, through their Chartist movement, had their own demands for political representation, as well as economic demands for a shorter working day. However, in 1846, workers largely supported the manufacturers to help end the Corn Laws.

The end of the Corn Laws meant the destruction of tenant farmers marginal land. In Ireland, agricultural production collapsed as a result, combined with a deadly potato blight. Hundreds of thousands perished in the resulting famine, and millions more fled, while the country continued to export food which the local population had no resources to pay for.

Meanwhile after achieving the repeal of the Corn Laws, Chartism and parliamentary reform faded into the background. Its leaders gave up or became isolated on the fringe of minority politics in England until the socialist revival of the1880s.

France, Second Republic (workers and the bourgeoisie; 1848)

In February 1848, a coalition of workers and small shopkeepers overthrew the monarchy of Louis-Philippe in France. At first, the workers’ demands for full employment, greater economic equality and poverty reduction found common cause with liberal demands for constitutionality including electoral reform and ending court favouritism for privileged sections of the commercial classes.

However, within months, the business owners turned on the workers. Elections on May 4 installed a government favourable to big business. Workers feared their small gains would be erased. When workers in Paris threw up barricades in June, the National Guard, supported by the state and all the workers’ former allies suppressed the movement with force. More than 3,000 workers were killed and 15,000 deported without trial during the repression that followed.

The defeat of the workers also crushed the liberal aspirations of the earlier period, as dictatorial power becomes concentrated in the figure of Louis Bonaparte, the nephew of Napoleon. Revolutionary agitation continued, but the workers were increasingly isolated. Throughout this period, they continued to rely on leadership from the more organized and educated classes to disastrous effect.

“The proletariat … attempts to press forward again on every occasion, as soon as the movement appears to make a fresh start, but with ever decreased expenditure of force and always more insignificant results. As soon as one of the social strata above it gets into revolutionary ferment, it enters into alliance with it and so shares all the defeats that the different parties suffer one after the other.”

Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

Bonaparte was successfully able to play each class off one another. In the end, business was willing to forsake its liberal ideals in favour of economic expediency, while the French workers movement was stalled for 20 years.

We welcome alternative viewpoints and analysis and other examples on the pros and cons of collaboration. Comment below or email mudandwatermail [at] gmail.com.

* Thank you to Victoria songwriter Carolyn Mark for inspiring the title of this essay. Her album, The Pros and Cons of Collaboration, is available from Mint Records.