1930s >> 1934 >> no-358-june-1934

Ever since Jack Johnson won the heavyweight championship many moons ago, the world has with eagerness watched the coming and going of white hopes. In the more important realm of politics new movements are born and quickly die, the remains creating fertilizers for new hopes to befog the minds of the majority, who so far have shown no desire for a real change in the system.

It is two years since the birth of the C.C.F. in Calgary, and British workers may be interested to know what the mystic letters “C.C.F.” mean, and what the organisation stands for.

The Canadian Co-operative Federation is the fine-sounding title represented by the letters in question, and to those of us who have had the Co-operative Commonwealth, i.e., Socialism, as our objective for years it is difficult to understand the minds which claim that their ultimate aim, but spend all their time advocating something else now.

The outstanding figure of the C.C.F. is James S. Woodsworth, one of the Winnipeg Labour M.P.’s in the Parliament at Ottawa. He is an ex-preacher noted for his radical ideas, and has turned out an able politician, judged by the standards of the capitalist parties.

In the 1921 election to the Federal House, sixty-four Progressives were elected, all with more or less Radical ideas. By 1925 most of them were absorbed by the Liberal Party, and in 1930 (including the Labourites), they only mustered fifteen members, who have since that time cooperated in a loose group.

August 1st, 1932, saw the first meeting and the first attempt at organisation, when a Farmer-Labour Federation was formed. This meeting was attended by delegates of Labour Parties of the four Western Provinces and the organised farmers of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

The movement spread rapidly and culminated in a great Convention, held in Regina, July 19th to 21st, 1933. It was attended by 135 delegates, from Toronto and Montreal in the East to Vancouver on the Pacific Coast, at which the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation was founded.

The affiliations of the Federation consist of the Farmer-Labour Party of New Brunswick, the Labour Party of Quebec, the Labour Conference of Ontario, the I.L.P. of Manitoba, the Labour Party of Saskatchewan, the Canadian Labour Party of Alberta, and the so-called Socialist Party of British Columbia. Next, and perhaps most important, the organised Farmers of Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta joined up, with Manitoba farmers giving half-hearted support, but likely to continue to vote for the Farmer-Liberal Government which has power in this Province at present.

Another group giving support to the C.C.F. consists of a sprinkling of “intellectuals” of the Radical type, mostly college professors, doctors, lawyers and preachers. In addition, the organised Protestant churches have practically blessed the C.C.F. by passing resolutions calling for the “transformation of the present competitive system into a co-operative one.” C.C.F. leaders frequently quote from a recent encyclical of Pope Pius in an effort to link up the powerful Roman Catholic vote to their side.

The semi-feudal background of the peasants and workers of Roman Catholic Quebec will be hard to overcome, and radicalism of the pinkest type has not yet penetrated to that home of what has been termed bush-culture. To illustrate the outlook of some of the farming element of Canada to which the C.C.F. appeals, it has been related that a C.C.F. speaker, after declaiming against the Wages system, had one farmer agree with him in the following words: “Yes, I agree we should abolish wages. Hired men want far too big wages nowadays.”

The economic background of the new movement, therefore, is made up of, first, a very reactionary farm population whose main desire is a big price for farm produce. On the other hand, they demand a low wage scale for labour, not only amongst their hired hands, but also amongst the men who make their farm machinery, and those who on the railroads, etc., transport their produce to the markets of the world.

Secondly, a Labour movement with the regular Trade Union outlook largely imported from Great Britain but contaminated by the ideas of that most pitiful Trade Union movement, the American Federation of Labour, to which most of our unions are affiliated.

There are also groups organised as Social Reconstruction Clubs which are affiliated to the C.C.F., and from the leaders of those clubs flow a constant stream of half-boiled schemes and plans, and a constant fight against anything pertaining to a recognition of the class struggle.

The usual Left and Right Wings are already developing. The reformist S.P. of British Columbia is led largely by some ex-members of the old S.P. of Canada, who could see no possible career in the new Party organised in Winnipeg a few years ago with a programme similar to that of the S.P.G.B. They, along with some young members of the I.L.P. in Winnipeg and a small group of ex-semi-Communists in Toronto, comprise the Left.

The Farmers of Ontario are led by an avowed anti-Socialist, Miss Agnes McPhail, M.P. She has the help of two other fierce opponents of Sodalism, in the persons of Mr. Elmore Philpott, much boosted soldier-orator-journalist in Toronto, and Mr. John McLean, M.A., B.A., L.L.D. (Oxon.), Rhodes scholar and lawyer here in Winnipeg.

We see then that the new Federation represents (a) the wage workers of Canada, whose ideas are as nebulous as the ideas of the same class in other lands, and of course it can well be understood their immediate demands are equally confusing; (b) the farmers of Canada, whose hopes and demands have already been outlined as high prices for farm produce and low wages for the industrial workers as well as the farm labourers.

The C.C.F. have fourteen planks in their platform, subject, of course, to additions and reductions to suit the vote-catching needs of the moment. Some of the planks appeal specially to the wage workers. Plank 7, for instance, calls for “A National Labour Code to secure for the workers maximum income and leisure, insurance covering illness, accident, old age and unemployment, freedom of association and an effective participation in the management of his industry or profession.”

Mr. Elmer E. Roper, one of the Alberta Labour leaders, tells us, in the February issue of the Saskatchewan C.C.F. Research, that this plank is one that “might easily appear in the Election platform of either of the old parties.”

The same could well be said of the other thirteen planks, but we will deal with them as we go on.

Plank 4 deals with “Agriculture” and features as its chief aim “Security of Tenure” for the farmers of Canada. To get what is meant by that elusive term we can refer to the “C.C.F. Agricultural Policy” as outlined by their principal farmer leader, G. H. Williams, President of the Saskatchewan Farmer-Labour group, in his speech at the Regina Convention, July 22nd, 1933. The present real owners of Canadian Farm lands—the Mortgage and Insurance Companies—are to be treated real rough by Mr. Williams and the C.C.F. when they get power. He says: “We will give you bonds for your equity, bonds that will not carry interest. . . . These bonds will be payable over a period of years in the currency of the province as it may be at the date of payment.” Then to the farmer, Mr. Williams says: “All improvements will, of course, increase the value of the land, and the State will guarantee to compensate you for the increase in the value of the land, brought about by your efforts.” Not only that, but Mr. Williams says they are going to supply “through Socialism to the agriculturist, a marketing board, State credit and pegged prices. . . . In industry we guarantee to the worker a job at an adequate wage and we use the production for the benefit of the Canadian people. We will do the same for agriculture.”

So that brings us to a new problem for the C.C.F. What will people use for money? Planks 2, 11 and 14 deal with this absorbing question. 1 Mr. C. G. Coote, M.P., one of their money experts, tells us, in the House of Commons on February 1st, 1933: “The first step is a planned economy,” and the next: “A central bank owned by the State, whose duty it would be to see that sufficient money is at all times available to allow us to distribute among our people the consumable goods which we can produce.”

That, in part, is what the C.C.F. have copied from that enemy of Socialism, Major Douglas. Let us again quote from the organ of the “Saskatchewan C.C.F. Research Bureau,” December, 1933, issue, where we read: “The only shortage is in money, and this artificial shortage is due to the policy of the financiers and is maintained by the powers of the State. The State will then make every man, woman and child an equal partner in the wealth of the country as a going concern. Backed by the inexhaustible resources of the nation the State can issue as much credit as is needed.” Later we read: “There is no shortage of anything, except money, wherewith to purchase the things we produce, and a sane system of finance is all that is required to make things available. Sufficient purchasing power for everybody is merely a matter of accounting.”

Here we have revealed the C.C.F. answer to Socialism. Socialism involves that goods shall be produced for use and not for sale. The C.C.F. say goods will be produced for sale, but that they will provide the people with money to purchase them, an impossible attempt to keep capitalism but escape the consequences of so doing.

The depression of the Seventies produced on this Continent the American Grange or the Patrons of Industry, the Nineties had their Populist Movement, and later we had Townley and his Non-Partisans, and in Canada the depression of the early Twenties produced the Progressives.

The Farmer Movement of Canada has its roots in those old discredited movements, with the same kind of currency cranks leading them, and the British Columbia “Socialists” and Winnipeg I.L.P.’ers trailing behind. Reactionary farmers representing the dog, and confused workers the tail. Why should the gods not laugh?

Plank 1 calls for “Planning,” as if capitalism was not planned beautifully for the capitalists!

Plank 3, on Social Ownership, reassures the most reactionary that confiscation is unthought of. It says: “We do not propose to adopt any policy of outright confiscation,” and again: “We recognise the need for compensation.”

Plank 5 calls for “Import and Export Boards” to deal with foreign trade.

Planks 8, 9 and 10 deal respectively with “Health Service”, “The British North America Act,” which governs the Canadian Constitution, and “External Relations.” Then 12 and 13, dealing with “Freedom” and “Social Justice” bring to a close a programme which is a mixture of decadent Liberalism, Fabian Bureaucracy and Currency Confusion.

Practically every plank and clause is a denial of the purpose of the Federation, which is supposed to be: “The establishment of a Co-operative Commonwealth, in which the basic principle regulating production, etc., will be the supplying of human needs and not the making of profits.”

The attitude of the Socialist Party of Canada towards this Federation is one of unbending opposition. We are opposed to the spurious “Socialism” advocated by their spokesmen and leaders, the Socialism that “recognises the need for compensation,” or a Socialism which is going to issue money “to purchase the things we produce,” or one that guarantees to the worker “a job at an adequate wage.” We do not want a “Co-operative Commonwealth” like the one envisaged by Professor Frank H. Underhill, the head of the Brain Trust, when he says in his essay on Dictatorship: “The direct ownership and operation by government of the great strategic services, such as transportation and distribution of electric power.” We don’t even want our planning done by “public officials.”

No! we are opposed to bureaucracy, to a wage system, to compensation, and not only to Government ownership but to the coercive State itself. When all the people own all the earth and the means whereby wealth is produced, classes will automatically disappear, and if society has no owning and governing class, how can we have a Government, the function of which is to protect class ownership? The kind of administrative organisation then required will be essentially different.

To the young and earnest workers in the Federation we constantly repeat the old truth, that non-Socialists organised on a programme of reforms cannot further the work for Socialism. The changing economic conditions are working for us, disillusion will follow the futile efforts of Woodsworth, Pritchard and Queen to make a coherent movement out of such widely divergent elements as constitute the C.C.F. Some of their leaders will openly join the avowedly capitalist parties, but there will be no place for any of them in the Socialist movement, which has no use for Leaders, any more than it has for the other evil features of a system so detrimental to human welfare as modern capitalism.

Alex Paterson [Socialist Party of Canada]

(Socialist Standard, JUne 1934)