SPC Newsletter 1st October 2013

The Socialist Party of Canada

Secretary’s Report for October 1, 2013

Email Report

• WSPNZ GAC Minutes for August received with thanks.

Good of the Movement

• The new Fall issue of Imagine has been completed and printed. Members will be getting copies very soon.

• The booth at Word on the Street, Toronto was run and proved fairly successful. It seems to be our best way of meeting the public although sales never match cost.

Finances

– Secretary’s expenses for September, $16.23

Karl’s Quotes

• That the market cannot regulate the flow of goods in a common sense way is obvious to socialists, but not to vulgar economists. Marx writes, “If it is said that there is no general overproduction, but simply a disproportion between the various branches of production, this again means nothing more than that, within capitalist production, the proportionality of the particular branches of production presents itself as a process of passing constantly out of and into disproportionality, since the interconnection of production as a whole here forces itself on the agents of production as a blind law, and not as a law which, being grasped and therefore mastered by their combined reason, brings the productive process under their common control.” (First point = the anarchy of production.)

“It is not that too many means of subsistence are produced in relation to the existing population. On the contrary. Too little is produced to satisfy the mass of the population in an adequate and humane way.” (Second point = the market only measures and addresses effective demand, i.e. those who can pay.)

Food For Thought

• Thomas Walkom, writing in The Toronto Star details the failing ‘faith and hope’ in president Obama – he promised to close Guantanamo and didn’t;he promised a short sharp war to defeat the Taliban, never happened; he authorized drone strikes; he permitted the National Security Agency to snoop on American citizens, among others; he promised openness but went after whistle blowers like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. As the Socialist Standard said at the time if his election, “Welcome to the New Boss, Same as the Old”.

• The New York Times reported “Factory Inspections Fall Short” (Sep 8, 2013) and tell us how a Walmart factory was inspected and approved the goods destined for Xmas sales, except the goods were, unknown to the inspectors, made in another factory (uninspected) and shipped there for the occasion. In February, 2012, just ten months after a Bangladesh factory had been inspected and stamped “Working conditions – no complaints”, workers rampaged through the factory demanding better conditions. ‘Check the box’ fast inspections do nothing to root out and solve problems whatsoever and the companies using the cheap production know it and try their best to hide it – difficult to do when your factory collapses!

• The same paper critiques a new book about Jeffrey Sachs entitled, “The Idealist – his quest to end poverty”. Sachs started ‘The Millenium Villages Project” in 2005, imposing interventions on seven sub-Saharan villages in agriculture, health, and education, to show how Africa could ‘loosen the grip that extreme poverty had on so many of its people’. He spent $120 million but refused to compare ‘his’ villages with others outside the program. However, Michael Clemens, a senior fellow at the center for Global Development did, saying, “ There is zero evidence that the Millenium Villages Project is meeting its goals”. If only he had subscribed to the Socialist Standard or Imagine or Socialist Review, he could have saved himself time and money and the futility!

• Once again, we can point out the futility of revolution without clear socialist understanding as the Arab Spring continues to run into problems. The New York Times reports, “ 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 is unclear is the replacement model. Most of the uprisings have developed into bitter struggles over the relationship between the military and the government, the role of religion, and what it means to be a citizen, not a subject.” Well, actually we could help with that replacement model.

• The futility of reform – A proposed bill in the Ontario legislature would nullify a fifty-five year-old agreement between the unions and EllisDon, a giant construction company. A company spokesperson commented, “ If the bill does not resolve the outcome of a recent board decision…it would have a negative impact on EllisDon’s ability to remain competitive.” In other words, the company wants to hire a ‘flexible’ workforce that works for much less, has no benefits, and can be let go easily as capital dictates. That the government is pushing this bill is no surprise.

• A Toronto meat packer works fifty to sixty hours a week to make ends meet on minimum wage, $10.25/h. A Call Centre worker cannot afford new clothing or other personal things on $10.25. Last week, York University students staged a flash mob dance (?) in support of a $14/h minimum. This would undoubtedly help somewhat but why stop there? Surely if this situation has always existed and always will, why not get rid of the wages system altogether? Too much common sense?

• In the continuing debate about chemical weapons used in Syria, horror is the usual reaction-‘ against the rules of war’, say some. It is a truly diabolical event but does that make blowing people up or developing bullets that rip a body apart, legitimate? Let’s get a real perspective on the whole business of war here!

• The BRIC countries are in something of a slump. The New York Times wrote, “ India’s once booming economy is sliding into a deep slump. The country grew just 4.4% this summer, a far cry from the 7.7% average for the past decade.” Capital is flying away to better fields and, at least for now, the dream of plucking millions out of poverty is on hold. Just another day in (capitalist) paradise!

• Recently, singer Neil Young compared Fort McMurray, Alberta, the home base of Keystone XL Pipeline to an atom bomb strike, “ The fact is it looks like Hiroshima. Fort McMurray is a wasteland. The Indians up there and the native people are dying. The fuel’s all over, there’s fumes everywhere. You can smell it when you get to town.” Young’s comments came the same day that Canada’s Natural Resources Minister, Joe Oliver, was in Washington talking up Canada’s environmental policy and the Keystone project designed to carry Alberta Oil Sands bitumen to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. “This is truly a disaster and America is supporting this” Young said. In short, money rules and to hell with the environment and people’s lives!

• Quote of the month – as reported in the Toronto Star, August 17 – when John Larson, the former chairman of the House of Congress Democratic Caucus, was asked why the Democrats did not make minimum wage and election issue, he replied, “They think they’ll raise less money from the Walmarts, the fast food industry etc.”

• On September 3, The Toronto Daily Star reported that 100,000 kilograms of dead fish have been scooped up from China’s Fuhe River. The Hubei province’s Environmental Department blamed the Hubei Shuanghuan Science & Technology Company. Officials said that a sampling of its drain outlet showed an ammonia density that far exceeded the national standard. Other incidents this year involving dead animals in rivers have added to public disgust and there are suspicions about the safety of drinking water. It is well known that, as China grows economically, inadequate controls on industry and lax enforcement of existing laws have worsened China’s pollution problem. If this is the price we pay for capitalist development, then let’s stop paying for it and opt for socialism.

• High in the Himalayas is the kingdom of Bhutan, the prototype of the mythical Shangri-la, a country, due to its isolation, was free from the turmoil and strife that beset the rest of the world. It survived for centuries without paved roads and electricity and with barter for currency. It wasn’t enough for Bhutan’s king to leave well enough alone – in the early sixties he decided to bring his happy land into the modern world. By 1999, it was decided that Bhutan needed something they never had before, a psychiatrist! Since then, Dr. Chenco Dorji has treated more than 5,300 depressed, anxious, psychotic, alcoholic, and drug-addled Bhutanese. Welcome to the modern world! Welcome to capitalism!

• Economic advisor to the Indian government, Jayati Ghost, recently co-authored a book titled, “Economic Reform Now: A Global Manifesto to Rescue our Sinking Economies.” As Ghost points out, “ China is suffering from a banking crisis and in India the situation is even more dramatic. Economic growth has almost halved and panicking investors are abandoning the rupee. Is the Asian era over before it has even begun?” – No comment needed.

• It’s nearly fifty years since Ralph Nader wrote his sensational book, “Unsafe At Any Speed”, his expose of the auto industry and their ignoring of car safety in return for sales – hence profits. Recently, his autobiography, “Told You So”, was published and it shows Nader has changed little over the years. To some he may seem uncorrupted (he refused the services of a prostitute hired by General Motors to way(lay) him, he doesn’t own a car (too unsafe) or real estate, and lives on $25,000 a year. Nader has campaigned for anti-pollution laws, founded several public interest research groups, made public a forgotten study on the appalling conditions in the meat processing plants, founded a national anti-nuclear umbrella group, put all his income into his advocacy groups, campaigned for health care, attacked corporate crime, attacked NAFTA and the decline of democracy, and the list goes on. It’s easy enough to say we need people like him, in fact, we need him as long as we need capitalism, which is not at all. In the final analysis, Mr. Nader is a corrupt man. Like most of us, he was corrupted into believing capitalism was the best of all economic systems. Nader’s great failure is in thinking it would be better for all if greed and dishonesty at the highest levels could be eliminated. The plain fact is that capitalism is a profit-oriented system that thrives on, and is based on, greed and dishonesty. It would be much better if Nader were to pour his vast efforts into working for the abolition of such a system.

• And proof of this greed and corruption , if more were needed, comes from Heather Mallick’s column in the Toronto Star, September 28. She writes about how banks pay massive fines as part of the price of doing business and then keep on doing whatever they want to. JPMorgan Chase, she writes, is negotiating the fine it will pay US regulators re mortgage -backed securities. The figure is around $11 billion, and comes after a $920 million fine last week for its London Whale loss. In Britain, the PPI (payment protection insurance) scandal has caused banks there to set aside sixteen million pounds (more than the cost of the London Olympics). Yet we are in the middle of austerity measures that seek to strip or modify every benefit the workers have gained for sixty years and health, education, and social programs are starved for money. Time to put this lot to bed!

• For socialism, John