SPC Newsletter for 1st September 2015

The Socialist Party of Canada

Secretary's Report for September 1, 2015

Email Report

– WSPNZ GAC minutes of July meeting received with thanks.

– WSP India EC meeting minutes for August received with thanks.

Good of Movement

– Two introductory packages sent out

– A booth at "Word on the Street, Toronto" has been secured for Sunday September 27^{th. Any help from members and friends will be appreciated. Please note that the venue has been changed from Queen's Park to Harbourfront. Details are always printed in The Star but email me if you need more information.}

^{– The Fall edition of Imagine will be ready for Word on the Street in September.}

^Finances

^{– secretarial expenses for August, $15.76. A $20 donation received with thanks.}

^{Karl's Quotes}

^{– In discussing the production of surplus-value, Marx comments on the aim of capitalist production, "The product appropriated by the capitalist is a use-value, as yarn, for example, or boots. But, although boots are, in one sense, the basis of all social progress, and our capitalist is a decided 'progressist', yet he does not manufacture boots for their own sake. Use-vale is, by no means, the thing 'qu'on aime pour lui-meme' (likes for its own sake) in the production of commodities. Use-values are only produced by capitalists, because, and in so far as, they are the material substratum, the depositories of exchange-value. Our capitalist has two objects in view: in the first place, he wants to produce a use-value that has a value in exchange, that is to say, an article destined to be sold, a commodity; and secondly, he desires to produce a commodity whose value shall be greater than the sum of the values of the commodities used in its production, that is, of the means of production and the labour-power, that he purchased with his good money in the open market. His aim is to produce not only a use-value, but a commodity also; not only a use-value, but value; not only value, but at the same time surplus value. It must be born in mind, that we are now dealing with the production of commodities, and that, up to this point, we have only considered one aspect of the process. Just as commodities are, at the same time, use-values and values, so the process of producing them must be a labour-process, and at the same time a process of creating value." ("The Marx-Engels Reader, page 351). It doesn't matter what is being produced, then, so long as it contains surplus-value to be appropriated for an augmentation of capital, just as DIY retailer today will have coffee, magazines, candy, or all manner of things to sell that have nothing to do with the purpose of the store, as long as a profit can be made.}

^{Food For Thought}

^{– About four hundred unionized jobs at Sobeys warehouse in Milton will be eliminated by 2017 as the supermarket chain shifts more goods into its new high-tech warehouse in Vaughan. The union can do little to save the jobs. This justifies the socialist belief that unions can only work effectively in periods of high production.}

^{-The British government has approved the expenditure of one hundred and fifty million pounds to renovate Buckingham Palace. They say there is no money for education, health and various welfare programs but they do have it to fix up a capitalist's house. We can call this a capitalist's welfare program. So much for government priorities.}

^{– In a recent cartoon, 'Six Chix' in the Toronto Star, one girl asks, "Is this the hot dog place?" The other replies, "No, it became a bank, then a toy store, now it's just unemployment."}

^{– Pope Francis' approval rating in the USA has dropped twenty-seven percentage points to fifty-nine per cent just two months ahead of his visit there. Three weeks before the poll was taken, Francis proclaimed that climate change was man-made! You can't fool those Republicans. Topping that, The New York Times (July 19) reported, "His (Francis') speeches can blend biblical fury with apocalyptic doom. Pope Francis does not just criticize the excesses of global capitalism. He compares them to 'the dung of the devil'. He does not simply argue that systemic 'greed for money' is a bad thing. He calls it a 'subtle dictatorship' that 'condemns and enslaves men and women'. Has he been reading our web site?}

^{– The British government has pledged sniffer dogs and fences in the effort to keep economic migrants and war refugees from entering its territory. PM Cameron said, "We rule nothing out in taking action to deal with this very serious problem. We are absolutely on it." Too bad he's not 'absolutely on' the major problems facing Britons today. Some world where you have to use dogs, fences, and worse, to keep people from their armed enclaves.}

^{– Some of the world's billionaires are getting a social conscience, according to The New York Times. Johann Rupert a dealer in Cartier diamonds and Montblanc pens 'sounded more like a Marxist theoretician' when he said, that it wasn't good business for the richest of the rich to raid the world's spoils and, "It's unfair and not sustainable." Paul Tudor Jones II, a private equity investor, said that extreme income divides have traditionally been resolved by taxes, wars, or revolution. Then Jeff Greene, a real estate billionaire weighed in with 'the super rich should pay higher taxes to restore the inclusive economy I grew up in.' And Nick Hanauer, a tech billionaire from Seattle warned, "I have a message for my fellow filthy rich. For all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up people, it won't last." Well it has lasted too long already, higher taxes will solve nothing and capitalism never claimed to be a fair system. Chrystia Freeland in her book, "Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else." said that the phenomenon of the socially conscious billionaire is significant. Apparently a few billionaires told her that they agreed that the current system isn't working. All well and good but will they support a system that guarantees necessary goods and services to all humans? Not bloody likely!}

^{– These are some of the captions of the articles in the business section of The Toronto Star recently- "GDP Falls for the Fifth Month, Economists Expected No Change", "Mining and Quarrying Also Down", "Investors Show Caution with Social Media Firms", "Enbridge Earnings Sink as Oil Drops", "GM Jobs in Oshawa in Doubt", "Recession Question Has Economists Torn", "As Election Looms Economy Lurches Toward Recession." Put them all together and you have a great reason to get rid of capitalism. Things are getting so bad even the apologists can't put a brave face on the outlook.}

^{– Under the harsh conditions of Greece's $122 billion bailout, social security will be cut, property taxes will increase, and, if Greece's creditors have their way, there will be price hikes on food. The people hit the hardest will be pensioners on a fixed income. Most of them will not be able to get work, not that there are many jobs available for anyone. All this confirms that no matter how big a mess the effects of capitalism create, it's the working class that will suffer and pay the debts.}

^{– Regarding the ISIS threat, Canadian PM, Stephen Harper stated, "It would be absolutely foolish for us not to go after this group before they come after us." British PM David Cameron said, "This is the great threat of our generation, the battle of our generation, and the fight that we are going to have." Australian PM Tony Abbott opined, "They're coming after us. We may not feel that we are at war with them, but they are certainly at war with us." They must be all reading from the Right Wing play book, probably written by George Bush.}

^{– In Thailand, according to The New York Times, August 2, young men and boys are lured into working in fishing boats as slave labour. Guarded by armed men, treated violently, where the sick are often thrown into the sea and captives sold like cargo, they are forced to work for nothing. The report states, "Labour abuse at sea can be so severe that the boys and men who are its victims might as well be captives from another era. This activity is driven by the demand for seafood across the world and, of course, the money to be made from it. What a different world it would be without money. Illegal activities would be of no use whatever.}

^{Ah communism, how it has failed in the world! Now Vietnam has fallen to the lure of capitalism. The very apartment building where we watched the desperate evacuation of Americans and the Vietnamese who worked for them, is now the centre of a neighbourhood of luxury shops selling $1,000 Rimowa suitcases and $2,000 Burberry suits, for those who can afford them, of course. The statue of Ho Chi Min is sandwiched between a luxury hotel and a Brooks Brothers store. The New York Times comments, "If for the Americans, the war here, in which 58,000 Americans and as many as three million Vietnamese died, was on some level about keeping Vietnam safe for capitalism, it turns out they need not have worried." How true! Like the Soviet Union, Cuba, China et al, they never were communist and we still await the first truly socialist/communist society.}

^{– A way to obscure the main issues facing society today is shown by the selection of a candidate for the Republican party for the upcoming US election. According to David Olive writing in the business section of The Toronto Star, the agenda is dominated by killing 'socialist' Obamacare (Olive says it is actually a Right Wing idea hatched in the Nixon days), the fake crisis of illegal immigration from Latin America (Donald Trump, the front runner to date, has called Mexican immigrants 'drug runners and rapists'), family values as defined by religious right, and whether Obama was born on American soil, (something Trump has railed about since Obama was first elected). There is nothing about poverty, unemployment, the economy, or, most troubling, global warming and tackling the problem, and its consequences. Good smoke screen!}

^{-Heralded as a success story for austerity, Spain reports that it is on track for a 3% growth this year and has created one million jobs since 2014. Critics point out that the majority of the new jobs are part time and low-paid. Spain lost 16% of its jobs and 7% of its GDP and the poorest 10% lost 13% of their real income. For example, a forklift operator recently got called back for one week's work and was shocked to see his pay had dropped 35%. The labour reforms that the government enacted while workers were in a weak position makes it easier to dismiss employees and wages dropped accordingly. There is little to be done to fight capital when a recession is on. Another reason to dump the system.}

^{In Finland, the home of Nokia mobile phones, 10,000 were laid off and the company was bought by Microsoft who promptly fired a further 18,000. These are mainly top IT jobs that we are constantly told are the key to economic prosperity. Although the Finnish government has tried to help with grants and training programs, capital will do what is necessary to maintain the production of profit and accumulation of wealth by the few, no matter what the consequences may be.}

^{In the US, there is a turnaround in the textile business. Manufacturing is returning to that country from China. The reason? Costs have gone up in China due to rising wages, energy bills, and logistical costs and lowered in the US. In South Carolina, companies can locate residents desperate for work, even at depressed wages, and subsidized cotton. Boston Consulting estimates that for every $1 spent on production in the US, China spends 96 cents. Although most of the production moving out of China is going to places like Bangladesh, India, and Vietnam, some is returning to North America. Could it be the patriotic flourish of big capital? Not bloody likely, it's all about money!}

^{Climate scientists say that January to May this year were the earth's warmest five months ever recorded. This follows 2014 that was also the warmest year ever. They issued the following statistics, all in Celsius – 0.09 degrees that this January to May surpassed the same period in 2010; 3.1 degrees, the number that Alaska's average temperature for May surpassed the average from 1981 to 2010; 1976 was the last year that was cooler than the global long-term average; Twenty-one years have passed since a month was last cooler than its long-term average (February 1994); 45 degrees was the temperature in Pakistan in the last week of June – the heat killed hundreds. Still, the apologists for capitalism insist that global warming is a problem secondary to the economy. What will they say when the economy no longer exists?}

^{In June, Statistics Canada released the following figures – In 1975, the minimum wage, expressed in today's dollars, was $10.14. In 2013, it was $10.15, an increase of one cent in thirty-eight years! The number of workers on minimum wage more than doubled between 2003 and 2011, due mainly to free trade agreements killing mostly well-paid manufacturing jobs. Close to one million have lost their jobs since the mid-80s, forcing them into part-time, low-paying, and sometimes dangerous, jobs. More people are living in poverty today, in Canada, than at any time since World War II. There is only one way that workers can feel secure, and it surely is not under capitalism.}

^{Reading Notes}

^{– From The New York Time (August 23), "China is ruled by a party that calls itself Communist, but its economic reality is one of rapacious crony capitalism. And everyone has been assuming that the nation's leaders are in on the joke, that they know better than to take their occasional socialist rhetoric seriously. Yet their zigzagging policies over the past few months have been worrying. Is it possible after all these years, Beijing still doesn't get how this 'markets' thing works." Good to see that others can see that Chinese Communism is an oxymoron.}

^{For socialism, John and Steve}