The Western Socialist
Vol. 27 - No. 214
No. 3, 1960
page 16
A Different View
If you will permit criticism of CCF policy and of statements by CCFers in your "Letter to the Editor" column, I would like to say that Colin Cameron is stretching his imagination when he assumes that production can be planned under capitalism. (CCF News Dec. 23, 1959) and that such planning was the cause of wartime prosperity. The cause of the "prosperity" was actually the sudden huge market for war materials (a lot of them exported to the battlefields and paid for out of taxes). Since taxes come mostly from profits and a lot of Canadian profits come from commodities sold on the export market, prewar and postwar, we fail to see how a tax financed boom can last any length of time. Canadian capitalists must still rely on export markets especially since the economy here is not versatile or varied enough to produce most of the things Canadians consume.
In addition Mr. Cameron contradicts all the evidence to the contrary when he implies that :
(1) "The Soviet government can decide how much their own people will be allowed to consume." Wages fluctuate there as elsewhere, even though they are not allowed to strike.
(2) That only Soviet authorities decide what types and quantities of goods they will produce. Private capitalist countries do also. In Russia as elsewhere these things are decided by what will bring the most profit.
(3) That the resources of Canada are "ours." They belong to the few who own the means of production and distribution.
(4) That a Socialist job is to lead the drive for the sort of planned economy that will free "us" from export markets (an impossibility) and support nominal but not actual freedoms that the Russian workers don't have but that we do have. A Socialist's job is to support (not lead) the drive for Socialism, a moneyless, wageless system of society where the means of production and distribution are commonly owned and democratically controlled by and for the people of the earth.
Sincerely,
LARRY TICKNER