SPC Newsletter 1st May 2013

The Socialist Party of Canada

Secretary’s Report, May 1, 2013

Email Report

• WSPNZ GAC meeting Notes for March received with thanks.

Good of The Movement

• One Introductory package requested and sent out.

• Coffee House meeting for April realized.

• Imagine Spring Edition in production.

Finances

• Secretary’s expenses for April, $12.13

Karl’s Quotes

• One major fault with the capitalist mode of production is the constant need to grow, consume resources, and despoil the earth by polluting the air, ground and water. Here’s why – “A fall of fifty per cent in the rate of profit is a fall of a half. If the mass of profit is to remain the same, therefore, the capital must double. In general, if the mass of profit is to remain the same with a declining rate of profit, the multiplier that indicates the growth in the total capital must be the same as the divisor that indicates the fall in the profit rate. If the fall in profit falls from 40% to 20%, the total capital must rise in the ratio 0f 20:40 if the result is to remain the same. If the profit rate had fallen from 40% to 8%, the capital would have to grow in the ratio of 8:40, i.e. by five times…If it is to grow, on the other hand, the capital must grow in a higher ratio than that in which the profit rate falls…It must grow so much that in its new composition (constant : variable) it requires not only the former amount of the variable capital, but still more than this, for the purchase of labour-power. If the variable part of a capital of 100 falls from 40 to 20, the total capital must rise to more than 200 if it is to deploy a variable capital of more than 40.” (Capital, volume III, page 329, Penguin Classics edition). We know quite well of course that simply maintaining the profit level is not acceptable, nor wise in a highly competitive system, and therefore the mass of capital employed must constantly increase. Hence more production for production’s sake, more resources squandered, more pollution and waste. That’s the nature of a mad system!

Food For Thought

• Double speak – Faced with a $26 billion deficit, Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, is said to be clawing back $2 billion previously going to the provinces for job training programs. Prime Minister, Stephen Harper hardly seems to be on the same page when he made it clear that upgrading skills training is a top priority when businesses are complaining that lack of skilled workers is preventing economic growth. The hardest hit among the unemployed and in need of skills training is the fifteen to nineteen year-olds with a jobless rate of 20%. It’s easy to talk a good game but as usual, the benefits go to the capitalists and the workers have to suffer the consequences.

• In “Climate Change or Revolution”, The Toronto Star of March 6^th. the Star staff commented on a series of essays jointly produced by The Center for American Progress and The Center for Climate and Security in Washington. The thrust of the essays was to emphasize the connection between climate change, food prices, and politics, and to show that these are the stressors that help fuel uprisings. To quote Princeton scholar, Anne-Marie Slaughter, “…consequences of climate change are stressors that can ignite a volatile mix of underlying causes that can erupt into revolution.” Furthermore, the study argues that climate change played a significant role in the Arab Spring. Troy Sternberg, a geographer at Oxford University, a contributor, wrote that a drought in China, heat waves and floods in other wheat-growing countries, and a wet season in Canada, sent prices skyrocketing which led indirectly to regime change in Egypt. . Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell of the Center for Climate and Security said that from 2006 to 2011, up to 60% of Syria’s land experienced the worst long-term drought ever recorded causing herders to lose 85% of their livestock and the livelihoods for 800,000 people. One may assume the above worthies quoted above are upholders of capitalism. The point is, if they can clearly see the connection between climate change that the effects of capitalism are causing, droughts, floods, and uprisings against governments, then it is to be hoped that the majority of the world’s population also will and organize for the only thing that can prevent global disaster – socialism.

• A recent report by McMaster University (Hamilton) and United Way Canada, funded by The Federal Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, released some amazing facts. It stated that ‘precarious or insecure’ work in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton areas has increased by 50% in the last twenty years and is affecting people’s decisions regarding relations and having children. Barely half of the working adults in the two areas have full-time jobs with benefits and expect to be in the same job a year from now. Half of the insecure workers are earning between $50,000 and $100,000 a year. According to the report, the impact is being felt in the upper income levels. Some of the middle- income workers are university lecturers on contracts and research assistants in hospitals and government facilities. Contracts mean limited-time employment, low wages, no benefits, and no guarantee of further employment when the contract ends. Until recently, poverty and insecurity were thought to affect low-income workers, but not anymore. As Wayne Lewchuk, McMaster University Labour and Economics professor put it, “ …we found that in some cases, middle-income households with precarious work are under more stress than low-income households with secure employment.” One thing is clear – under capitalism, whatever one’s job or income, you are bound, sooner or later, to get screwed.

• In the wake of the horrendous factory collapse in Bangladesh, companies identified as having work done there are scrambling to minimize damage to their brand. Loblaws, a giant food store in Canada that sells clothes as well, has publicly stated that they are having an emergency board meeting to address the sorry state of affairs. The really sad thing is that they and the others have made conscious decisions to use Third World factories to avoid unionized workers and any country that has labour and safety laws that are in any way enforced. The other point is that these companies are doing the right thing as far as profit is concerned. Although individuals in the companies may deplore the conditions and pay of the workers, capital demands that they show excellent numbers on the balance sheet considering the competition is doing the same thing. The coercive laws of capitalist competition demand it. Doesn’t it make sense to end a system that makes this type of situation necessary?

• We are all aware that the highest paid lackeys of capitalism receive extraordinary salaries, often in the millions when one can say that by the mid-morning of the second day of the year they have earned as much as the average worker will earn in a whole year. However, the New York Times reported (Sunday, April 21) that hedge fund titans make much more than this. In fact the four top earners cited earned, $900 million, $1.7 billion, $1.1 billion, and $1.4 billion! Please explain to me how anyone can earn $500 000 per hour! That means that these hard workers earn the average worker’s salary in about five minutes! Just how crazy can this get?

• At the other end of the spectrum we have those on welfare. The Provincial Liberal government is bringing down a budget and looking to decrease its deficit. As usual, it is targeting the most vulnerable in our society. It has proposed that anyone on welfare will experience clawbacks of their allowance if they earn more than $200 per month. They also propose to scrap the special diet allowance for those with chronic illnesses that require special foods. The program costs $230 million a year, not a small amount but piddling in the total budget. How mean can you get? How about getting someone to donate his/her hedge fund salary for a year (at that rate, how many years of earning do you really need?) and keep the food program going for another four years. Maybe the high earners can rotate! Of course, this nonsense will go on as long as we, the ninety-nine percent let the one percent do as they bloody well like.

• But wait! We have a saviour. Justin Trudeau, son of former prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, has been elected new leader of the federal Liberal party to contest the stagnating Tories. David Olive of the Toronto Star exhorts Trudeau to ‘craft a bold agenda’. Olive points out that middle-class incomes have not only been stagnating but actually plummeting and the only thing saving them is the second bread-winner in the family and the credit card. Also for Captain Trudeau to address is the fact that 1.4 million are out of work and almost 900,000 Canadians, 38% of them children, use food banks every week, a 31% increase since 2008. Still, we are being told to wait for miracles from our leaders. Only when we all own the system and we have no leaders will this nonsense end!

• There has been an uproar in Canada during the last two weeks over the hiring of cheap foreign workers. The super rich Royal Bank got caught with its pants down when an employee blew the whistle when he and many others were told to train these imported workers who would then replace the bank’s workers for half the price. The government, properly outraged, has moved to stop this egregious use of their program that ‘was never intended to put Canadians out of work’. Really! Who made up the rules in the first place? Meanwhile in the US, people and politicians constantly gripe about the Latinos in their country but they are quite happy to employ them at cut rates in their homes and businesses and the politicians who rage against illegals and want the border sealed, are strangely silent about enacting laws making it illegal to hire them. (Haroon Siddiqui, Toronto Star, 28/04/13).

Reading Notes

• Why religion is incompatible with scientific socialism – Simon Winchester in “Krakatoa – The Day the World Exploded” tells us that Alfred Russell Wallace, among other things, began thinking about plate tectonics when he followed up on an observation that Indonesia contained two distinct ecological zones, different flaura and fauna. His only conclusion was that the land must have moved bringing hitherto distant lands together. Coupled with evolution and other discoveries, it was the death knell of blind faith in religious doctrine. Winchester writes, “Such a series of hammer blows! Mankind, it seemed, was now suddenly really rather – dare one say it? – insignificant. He may not after all have been, as he had eternally supposed, especially created. The Book of Genesis, believed by so many to be Holy Writ, was perhaps no more than the stuff of myth and ancient legend. And now even the continents themselves, long supposed to be the most reliable and unshifting bedrock of our very existence, had become mobile.” Amen

Happy May Day,

For socialism, John