SPC Newsletter 1st September 2013

The Socialist Party of Canada

Secretary’s report for September 1, 2013

Email Report

• WSPNZ GAC minutes for July, received with thanks.

Good of the Movement

• Two introductory packages sent out.

• We have a booth at Word on the Street, Toronto on Sunday, September 22^nd. from 9am to 4pm. All who can get there are invited, check in with the reception for booth number and location, or check The Toronto Star on the day before the event.

• The Fall Imagine is in the works. All contributions, comments, suggestions, changes are welcome. Send them by replying to this or to the party email (spc@iname.com).

• September is GAC meeting month. Please send in any questions or topics to be considered.

Finances

• Secretary’s expenses for August, $ 10.30

Karl’s Quotes

• Socialist hold that the whole of the working class is exploited by the whole of the capitalist class. While the capitalist class may act in unison, or nearly so when a threat to their profit making is perceived or when there is profit to be shared, when losses are likely, the ranks may break, as Marx makes clear, “ As long as everything goes well, competition acts, as is always the case when the general rate of profit is settled, as a practical freemasonry of the capitalist class, so that they all share in the common booty in proportion to the size of the portion that each puts in. But as soon as it is no longer a question of division of profit, but rather of loss, each seeks as far as he can to restrict his own share of this loss and pass it on to someone else. For the class as a whole, the loss is unavoidable. But how much each individual member has to bear, the extent to which he has to participate in it, now becomes a question of strength and cunning, and competition becomes a struggle of enemy brothers. The opposition between the interests of each individual capitalist and that of the capitalist class as a whole now comes into its own, in the same way as competition was previously the instrument through which the identity of the capitalists’ interests was asserted.” (Capital, volume III, pp. 361/362 Penguin Classics edition).

Food For Thought

• Economics 101 – how to solve your recession woes, Russian style. Apparently, in Russia, a business owner has a better chance of ending up in a penal colony (i.e. gulag) than a common burglar does. More than 110,000 out of a population of small business owners of three million are incarcerated. But with hard times, President Putin has devised a plan – release many of these individuals to kick-start the economy and create jobs. Socialists always knew capitalists were crooks, now we have proof! (New York Times 10/08/13)

• Just a few years after the Ontario Liberal government promised to reduce poverty, and failed miserably, blaming the current recession (of course), the City of Toronto is looking at identifying new neighbourhoods to add to the priority list of needy areas that need cash to provide some services and relief. Spokesman, Chris Billinger, said, “ If we’ve achieved nothing in eight years…then there’s a different set of questions to be asked.” How right you are, Chris, ask away.

• In 1983, 30,000 people, mainly women, filed a pay equity complaint against Canada Post. Thirty years later, they are still waiting, although a settlement worth about $250 million has been handed down. Many, of course have died or moved away. This gives new meaning to ‘the cheque’s in the mail!’

• Columnist, Rosie DeManno (Toronto Star, 17/08/13) while investigating the expense scandal of several senators, revealed how celebrities moonlight for extra money, “Some have made a significant Second Act career out of it, occasionally with hilarious exploitation of repute, and clearly for money. They’re whores of a kind.” For example, General Norman Scwarzkopf took a seat on the board of The Home Shopping Network. Henry Kissinger went for Revlon among his many post-White House gigs. Boxer, Evander Holyfield, was considered a coup for the board of Coca Cola. The Canadian senators are cut from the same cloth and naturally are attracted to money, anybody’s.

• The futility of revolution without real purpose – TheNewYorkTimesreported (25/08/13), reported “Promises of Arab Spring Prove Elusive”. The author writes, “ It is clear that the region’s old status quo, dominated by rulers who fixed elections and quashed dissent, has been fundamentally damaged, if not overthrown, since the outbreak of the Arab Spring uprisings. What us unclear is the replacement model. Most of the uprisings have devolved into bitter struggles over the relationship between the military and the government, the role of religion, and what it means to be a citizen.” The real reason for the apparent lack of success is the fact that there has been no real understanding of the problem, the capitalist mode of production, and the only alternative, socialism.

• The futility of reform – This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King’s famous “Dream” speech. It has been described as a defining moment in American civil history. But Americans are still debating how much of the dream has taken hold – not bloody much! Modern economic realty has got in the way. Longtime labour activist and author, Stanley Aronowitz, who helped to make the march a reality, comments (Toronto Star, 24/08/2013), “On a scale of 1 to 10, Americans as a whole have gone from one in 1963 to minus three in terms of economic well being, and African Americans today are now at minus-five.” We need a lot more than stirring speeches, maybe a class consciousness would help?

• The futility of reform II – Layoffs in Japan have always been taboo. Workers got jobs for life in return for fierce company loyalty and hard work that produced the Japanese economic miracle after WWII. Now Sony are forcing the issue by putting those who refuse early retirement in a special room with nothing to do hoping that the workers in question will be so bored they will be glad to go. This is part of a general movement by companies and supported by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to end the ‘privilege’ of a job for life. A stagnant economy for years has prompted the capitalist class to go after this particular perc and to get a more ‘flexible’ (read poorly paid, no benefits and no security) work force. Easy come, easy go for reforms – time to ditch them and the system where workers must beg for decent treatment and standards!

• A corruption trial in China has revealed a world of privilege for “communist party” officials. Gifts like a $130,000 trip to Africa and a trip to the World Cup were showered on his son, and apparently limitless money given to the wife when requested, so much that it was stuffed into safety deposit boxes. This and other tales of corruption and wealth prove that China is about as far from communism as one can get.

Reading notes

• Describing the district of Lambeth Marsh, London, in the late nineteenth century, author, Simon Winchester writes in, “The Professor and the Madman”, “So it was instead a place of warehouses, tenant shacks, and miserable rows of ill-built houses. There were blacking factories (shoe polish makers, like the one in which young Charles Dickens worked) and soap boilers, small firms of dyers and lime burners, and tanning yards where the leather workers used a substance for darkening skins that was known as “pure” and that was gathered from the streets each night by the filthiest of the local inhabitants – “pure” being a Victorian term for dog turds… Lambeth was widely regarded as one of the noisiest and sulfurous parts of a capital that had already a grim reputation for din and dirt…A hundred years ago it was positively vile. It was still then low, marshy, and undrained, a swampy gyre of pathways where a sad little stream called the Neckinger seeped into the Thames. The land was jointly owned by the archbishop of Canterbury and the duke of Cornwall…(Surprise, surprise!)

Happy Labour Day,

For socialism, John