SPC Newsletter for 1st August 2014

The Socialist Party of Canada

Secretary’s Report for August 1, 2014

Email Report

– WSPNZ AC meeting notes for June received with thanks.

Good of the Movement

– One introductory package sent out.

– One new member – welcome Mehmet Onur Sezgun of Ontario.

– Hand out and sales of socialist literature in Toronto

– Discussion meeting held in Toronto

– Plans are underway for the Fall issue of Imagine. If you have comments or suggestions or contributions, please let me know.

Finances

– Secretarial expenses for July, $14.65

Karl’s Quotes

– Marx describes interest as follows, " Let us take the average annual rate of profit as 20 per cent. Under average conditions, then, and with the average level of intelligence and activity appropriate to the intended purpose, a machine with a value of 100 pounds that is applied as capital yields a profit of 20 pounds. Thus a man who has 100 pounds at his disposal holds in his hands the power of making this 100 pounds into 120 pounds, and thus producing a profit of 20 pounds. What he possesses is a potential capital of 100 pounds. If this man makes over his 100 pounds for a year to someone else, who actually does use it as capital, he gives him the power to produce 20 pounds profit, a surplus-value that costs him nothing and for which he does not pay an equivalent. If the second man pays the proprietor of the 100 pounds a sum of 5 pounds, say, at the end of the year, i.e. a portion of the profit produced, what he pays for with this is the use-value of its capital function, the function of producing 20 pounds profit. The part of the profit paid in this way is called interest, which is nothing but a particular name, a special title, for a part of the profit which the actually functioning capitalist has to pay to the capital’s proprietor, instead of pocketing himself."(Capital, volume III, page 460). Interest, then, is simply a part of profit handed by the capitalist to the owners of money advanced to him for which he pays fee. It is, then, free money for the owner of the money paid for by the unpaid labour of the worker.

Food For Thought

– It is clear that Canada Post is intent on stopping deliveries directly to homes and will deliver to community mailboxes instead. (Another service lost). However, some businesses will receive delivery – need we expect anything different? The company says email is taking over from letters yet online shopping leads to an increase in parcel delivery. The bottom line is that 8,000 people will lose their jobs from a company reporting huge profits. Profits before people yet again.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) is foaming at the mouth at Ontario Premier Wynn’s proposal for the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (ORPP). They object that the plan, in which workers and employers would each contribute 1.9% of their annual earnings up to $90,000, would cut into profits of small businesses, forcing some into bankruptcy. It would also cut into take-home pay of workers so everybody loses something – the usual situation under capitalism.

– A recent attendee at one of our discussion meetings revealed that he worked in a fast food joint for $7 per hour. He would often make a sandwich in a few minutes that cost $7, so for the rest of the hour he was working for nothing – the labour theory of theft at work!

– The Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety that includes 26 top brands such as Walmart, Hudson’s Bay Company, The Gap, Canadian Tire, and The Children’s Place, has closed or partially closed seven factories for remediation after inspectors found structural problems and safety concerns. Workers will be compensated for up to four months – commendable but a bit late for many who have already lost their lives or ability to work because of the companies’ blatant lack of concern and blind pursuit of profit.

– Next door, in India in the last weekend of June, there were two building collapses that killed at least twenty-two people. The Toronto Star news reporter said, " Most homes in that part of the capital (New Delhi) were built without permission using substandard materials." Building collapses are common in India because lax regulations and enforcement encourage builders to cut corners, add unauthorized floors, and use poor materials to save construction costs and increase profits. This will not end while the profit system is in place and until the workers end it.

– The first new town built in India after its so-called independence in 1947, Chandigarh, was designed by the famous Swiss-French architect, Le Corbusier. There was just one small problem, his plans did not include housing for labourers who were forced to live in shanty towns outside of town. In 2006, the city government introduced a scheme to construct 25,000 new apartments with water and electricity for the poor folk. The fact that the shanty- towns are being leveled so that the developers can build luxury homes for the rich is merely coincidental. Oh, and just one other small detail – some of the shanty towns are being leveled before the workers apartments have been built. In capitalism, money trumps everything!

– It has been widely reported that Henry La Croix had an accident three days into his intended bike ride from The Arctic to Argentina that prevented him from continuing. La Croix’s plan was to raise money for Alzheimer’s research. One may respect La Croix for his altruism but nevertheless it is a pathetic reflection on capitalist society where one would feel compelled to take such action because of lack of action by governments who should be tackling the problem adequately. In a socialist society such action by individuals would not be necessary.

– The Toronto Star’s "World Weekly Dispatches" included ‘Life Without Running Water". No, this is not a report on a Third World country but Detroit, Michigan. In April, the city set a target of cutting off services to 3,000 customers a week who were more than $150 behind on their bills. In May, the water department sent out 46,000 warnings and cut off service to 4,531, i.e. they exceeded their target! Maybe someone will get a medal, or maybe they will cut off service to 5,000 customers as they get more efficient. The bankrupt city is currently owed $90 million from customers and nearly half the 300,000 accounts are past due. The city is located on the shores of the Great Lakes! Some have been without running water for six weeks and counting. In capitalism, if you do not have enough money, you can’t have, even a basic human right such as clean water.

– "Flummoxed by investment options? So are the‘pros" was the headline in the Toronto Star Business section on June 30. The thrust of the article was, as the heading suggests, that fund managers just do not know where to invest. To quote, " They see treasury bonds vulnerable to the inevitable climb of interest rates and corporate and high yield bonds paying so little interest that there is not enough insulation to protect investors if the economy suddenly weakens, or if the investors get cold feet. After the unrelenting climb of stocks since 2009, the pros see a stock market so pricey that stocks appear vulnerable to any bad news from the economy or companies." The above clearly shows how uncertain the markets are and that no investor can feel secure. The most significant words in the article are ‘cold feet’. Clearly, the economy is based on casino-like practices and outcomes.

– In crisis- ridden Greece that has an unemployment rate of 27% (officially), public fury is directed at the ship owners. Since 2002, 58 special rules that nearly totally exempt shipping companies from taxes or duties has meant that $200 billion has gone untaxed. In 2012, Greek shipowners paid just $22 million in taxes, while the sailors who worked them paid $80 million, according to their union. Do you know who your government works for?

– The Toronto Star asks, "Have we entered the golden age of censorship?" The reason they ask this question is because Prime Minister Harper is again targeting charities that speak out on topics the government doesn’t like to have aired publicly, such as global warming. The latest target is PEN Canada, an organization dedicated to protecting writers from censorship – it gets more Orwellian all the time. The Harper regime has clamped down on dissent far more than any government before it. Coupled with the attack on science by reducing or withholding funding, this government is going after any one it considers an enemy. All governments under capitalism must hide or obfuscate the truth, this one is just more ‘active’.

– More on governments – Many European governments are obliged to reduce debts as a percentage of their economies. So how can we grow our economies so that the debt is a smaller percentage and make us look good? As a spokesman for the National Association of Sex Clubs, Jose Roca soon found out when a government official called to ask him the typical cost of a room in a brothel. Because GDP is such an important number, countries want to ‘better reflect the economic environment.’ Prostitution in Spain generates about 20 billion euros ($27 billion) and thus balloons the GDP. Don’t stop there – countries are also tallying tons of cocaine seized from dealers. Only in capitalism, you say? (New York Times, July 26, 2014)

More on Finance – "Pope Francis Takes on God’s Bankers." Apparently the pope is trying to clean up the Vatican bank known for more scandals than the above brothels. Decades of corruption at the bank reached a new low when a private banker with close ties to the Vatican bank hanged himself under London’s Blackfriars Bridge. The Vatican needs its own bank to manage the massive funds and land holdings it owns. Maybe it could alleviate the world’s poverty problem (New York Times).

Reading Notes

– The so-called elite is talking of the Alien Contract Labour Bill that Would end the importation of cheap labour from Europe to work in mills and factories and undermine the unions and drive wages down, "We all know if alien labour is halted American labour will become arrogant and overweening and demand impossible wages and conditions, and that will be the end of the American progress and wealth. You will not be able to compete in foreign markets."("Captain and the Kings" by Taylor Caldwell). Since this is the nineteenth century when workers toiled for fourteen hours a day for literally starvation wages, one wonders exactly what those ‘impossible wages and conditions would be. The speaker is right, though, when he points out that anyone paying wages above the rest will not be able to compete. Capitalism is always forced to create a race to the bottom. The thing is, it is no different today as, unless wages in the northern hemisphere continue to droop dramatically, more and more jobs will go south.

For socialism, John