SPC Report April 2018

Greetings Everybody, We hope all is well.



Attached, please find our April 2018 Monthly Report for your review.



On p. 1 - Creation of a new party banner / flag logo attached: please submit your votes and comments to spc@worldsocialsim.org.



If you have news or views to share with readers in the next Monthly Report please forward to spc@worldsocialism.org



Special note: We are seeking articles, opinions, and news submissions for our Summer 2018 Imagine. Submissions are open to all Party members and non-member contributors alike.



Yours for Socialism, John, Mehmet, Steve & GAC members

THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF CANADA

worldsocialism.org/canada | spc@worldsocialism.org | twitter.com/spc_news

PO Box 31024 Victoria B.C. Canada V8N 6J3Secretary's Report for April 2018

Email Report

– WSP (India) EC meeting minutes No. 185, Sunday, March 11, 2018, and REPORT OF THE PROCEEDING OF THE SPRING SCHOOL & TWENTY FOURTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE WORLD SOCIALIST PARTY (INDIA) HELD AT HEAD OFFICE, 3 & 4 MARCH 2018, received with thanks.

Good of the Movement

– Introductory package sent out.

– Toronto SPC Meeting held on Tuesday, Wednesday, March 28, 6:30pm – 8:30pm, The Second Cup Coffee House, 324 Bloor St W, Toronto, ON M5S 1W5.

– Visit Toronto Branch Facebook for further details: https://web.facebook.com/Toronto-Branch-Socialist-Party-of-Canada-1120836671294008/ & our website https://www.worldsocialism.org/canada/ ; Toronto Branch email spc.toronto@worldsocialism.org.

– Autumn 2018 'Word on the Street' public event, Toronto, booked.

– Creation of a new party banner / flag attached: Members please submit your vote and comments (good, bad, indifferent) via our email – spc@worldsocialism.org – in priority of which logo(s) you prefer.

(New SPC Party banners can be seen in the file – SPC_Banner.pdf – which  is found within the Spintcom folder – https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/SPINTCOM/files/Artwork/)

– Comrade Muirhead looking for collabators / peer reviewers for a number of articles he has waiting to go. Write to worldsocialismbc@outlook.com to lend him a hand.

– Summer 2018 Imagine articles, opinions pieces, socialist news needed. First time writing an op ed or topical Socialist article? Send in your draft – we're here to help!

Financial Secretary's Report

PayPal and e-debit are now available on our main webpage and hyperlinked Toronto Branch site for campaign /event donations and membership dues payments. PayPal taking approximately 3% to 10% service fee: e-debit is recommended – remit to spc@worldsocialism.org.

Dues – $25 per year or $2 per month. Funds are used to conduct Party work such as post, photocopies, public meeting expenses and internet url services. All other Party activity is voluntarily run. Members needing dues waivers please contact our treasurer or general secretary to arrange.

F ood for T hought – views & contributions to spc@worldsocialism.org

● So the Ontario P.C.s have, in their infinite wisdom, seen fit to elect Doug Ford as leader and the first thing he said was if he became Premier he would abolish taxes for anyone making less than 30 grand a year. Well way to go Doughy baby, ain't we all a dumb buncha saps by not seeing through that one. Employers would use that as an excuse to not grant a raise. Governments may sometimes pass laws the capitalist class don't like, even if it is their job to run the day to day affairs of capitalism, but they'll find a way of getting round it. So lets scrap this whole damn nonsense and scrap crapitalism.

● In Toronto's ravines, parks and under bridges there lives hundreds of people who are unable to get into the homeless shelters. For Canada's most populous city, where the cost of living continues to rise, the authorities don't keep track of the number of such ''homes'', but do record the number they've removed. In 2017, 313 encampments were removed, in 2016 it was 204, in 2015, 142, and 110 in 2014. The city cited a by-law preventing people from camping in parks overnight. Some ''residents'' prefer the ravines to the shelters because they are within walking distance to the downtown area, so they can panhandle, go to a nearby church where they can get hot meals, and are close to mental health services. There is a feeling of community among them in the way they look out for each other. According to Greg Cook, of the Sanctuary Ministries Toronto, a charity that seeks to help those in desparate situations, ''They don't even know each others names and don't really hang out, but they keep an eye on each others stuff.'' The rest of us should also have such fraternal feelings and combine to eliminate the conditions that make the above possible.

● If there is anyone who believes no Canadians live in conditions that are typical of third world countries they should type in, ''Sanford Apartments Residents Pleading For Help'', on the internet. All your illusions will be destroyed.

“Problems include garbage piled in chutes up to the sixth floor, urine and feces in the stairwells, squatters living in vacant units and a broken entrance door and intercom system.”

● I live in a condo, the residents of which employ a company to manage the rec. center. In our monthly newsletter we read the following, ''The increase in the Ontario minimum wage increased the fees of our contract with Results Lifestyle by $5,531.88 annually. To offset the majority of the increase, the management committee decided to reduce the daily shift of onsite staff by one hour during the week.'' Now this isn't a case of capitalists working their way around some new law, but members of the working class doing it. This just emphases what a crazy system capitalism is and how everything eventually boils down to money.

● The number of Canadian medical school graduates unable to find a residency training program could triple in the coming years wrecking the careers of hundreds of future doctors and depriving Canadians of enough physicians that may be necessary to deal with their medical needs. This is the prediction of the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada in their recent report. From 114 graduates who were not matched to a residency program in 2012, the figure could climb to 330 in 2021, unless provincial government allocate more funds for residency programs. Ah, that money problem again. The funny thing is that critics of Socialism have sneered and asked, ''How could society function without money?'' The above is one of many examples that society isn't functioning very well with it.

● Canadians are borrowing against their houses at the fastest pace in more than five years as home equity lines of credit (HELOC) emerge as the main means of getting funds. Balances of non-mortgage loans to individuals for nonbusiness purpouses, secured by residential properties, a category that includes HELOCs, rose 7.2 per cent in December, the fastest annual growth since 2012, reaching a record $230 billion, according to data published recently on the website of the office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. Borrowers can tap HELOC for up to 65 per cent of the value of their homes and are most often used for consolidating debtaccording to a report by the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada. The press goes ecstatic when the unemployment rate drops a tenth of a percentage point as if everything was great for the average Joe; yes we can see that.

● On March 21, Premier Kathleen Wynne promised an extra $1.2 billion in additional public mental health funding over the next four years, above the annual $3.8 billion they already spend. The new funding will mean that every secondary school in the province will have access to mental health professionals with 400 positions created over the next two years. Next year 12,000 more young people will have community based therapy and counselling jumping to 46,000 by 2022. Up to 350,000 more people suffering from depression or anxiety will have access to advanced therapy and 2,475 new supportive housing units and 15 new wellness hubs will be created over the next four years. All this is extremely pathetic considering its a classic case of using a band aid where a major operation is needed. The very effects of life under this stupid excuse for an economic system cause mental illness. It's no wonder so many are screwed up. Abolish capitalism for a sane system and you'll soon get rid of the above nonsense.

● Despite their shortcomings our friends at the Toronto Star sometimes do something commendable. Such a case was Shree Paradkar's article in the March 10 issue, ''Churchill wasn't just flawed, he was a monster'', (On Twitter@shreeparadkar). The thrust of her article is about the famine the Honourable Gentleman caused in Bengal in 1943 in which 3 million died. Ms. Paradkar mentions briefly his versatility causing milions of deaths in Iraq, Greece, Tasmania and Gallipoli, where he sent 30,000 young men to death on a hare brained scheme, because it would advance his career if successful, which he was quite open about. The author doesn't mention his refusal to bomb the crematoria in the Nazi death camps. In this he may have listened to his protege Sir Antony Eden who said the more Jews Hitler kills now, the less there will be trying to get into Palestine after the war. It is clear Churchill takes his rightful place in the mass murders hall of fame, along with his fellow upholders of capitalism such as Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Some may argue that not all people in positions of power are like that, but wouldn't it be better if nobody got the oppurtunity to commit such deeds?

● At the time of writing it is not known what the outcome of the new NAFTA agreement on tariffs will be, so I'll write about what we do know. The American political joe boys will do as much as they can in the interest of the American capitalist class just as their Canadian counterparts will. If all goes well for the latter, it wont go well for Canadian workers who will continue to be exploited and therefore continue to struggle in this disgraceful apology for an economic system we live under. We also know that in a world where countries did not exist such a situation could not and would not occur.

Musings from the past for Socialist libraries

From Engels' classic text, we learn the vast armies of 19th century wage slaves capitalism had at its disposal for capital accumulation. In this country, as in England, innumerable Irish Navvies dug by hand the canals and railways that facilitated ships and trains of unbridled trade. Workers housed themselves rudely in tents and shacks, living rough, insanitary, untold numbers of them swept aside through death by disease and injury, forgotten to history.

“The wild Milesian features, looking false ingenuity, restlessness, unreason, misery, and mockery, salute you on all highways and byways. The English coachman, as he whirls past, lashes the Milesian with his whip, curses him with his tongue; the Milesian is holding out his hat to beg. He is the sorest evil this country has to strive with. In his rags and laughing savagery, he is there to undertake all work that can be done by  mere strength of hand and back – for wages that will purchase him potatoes. He needs only salt for condiment, he lodges to his mind in any pighutch or doghutch, roosts in outhouses, and wears a suit of tatters, the getting on and off of which is said to be a difficult operation, transacted only in festivals and the high tides of the calendar. The Saxonman, if he cannot work on these terms, finds no work. The uncivilized Irishman, not only by his strength, but by the opposite of strength, drives the Saxon native out, takes possession of his room. There abides he, in his squalor and unreason, in his falsity and drunken violence, as the ready made nucleus of degradation and disorder. Whoever struggles, swimming with difficutly, may now find an example how the human being can exist not swimming, but sunk. That the condition of the lower multitude of English labourers approximates more and more to that of the Irish, competing with them in all the markets: that whatsoever labour, to which mere strength with little skill will suffice, is to be done not at the English price, but at an approxiamtion of the Irish price; at a price superior as yet to the Irish, that is, superior to scarcity of potatoes for thirty weeks yearly; superior, yet hourly, with the arrival of every new steamboat, sinking nearer to and equality with that.”

Thomas Carlyle, in The Condition of the Working Class in England, Frederick Engels,1892.

Socialist texts for the modern rage

– Producers and Parasites (1935). By John Keracher

https://www.marxists.org/archive/keracher/1935/producers-parasites.htm

– History of the Socialist Party of Canada (1973). By J. M. Milne

http://www.socialisthistory.ca/Docs/SocialistParty/HistoryofSPC.pdf

"Making Socialists": Bill Pritchard, the Socialist Party of Canada, and the Third International. Peter Campbell.

http://www.lltjournal.ca/index.php/llt/article/download/4852/5725

– WSM An Introduction to World Socialism – A

Post-Capitalist Society – brief well produced video on the case for Socialism.

Visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZonz0YE50A&feature=youtu.be

– History of Universal Suffrage. INR₹100 / CAD$2.

– History of Economics: A Scientific Investigation into the Political Economy and Its Swindler 'Economics.' INR₹50.00 / CAD$1.

To purchase contact World Socialist Party (India) 257 Baghajatin ‘E’ Block (East), Kolkata – 700086

Email: wspindia@hotmail.com

Website: http://www.worldsocialistpartyindia.org

– Socialist Studies http://www.socialiststudies.org.uk/

Marxian Economics YouTube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXq0kw9sU6xvrr34yezA_Tw

– Socialist Party of Canada Facebook public page https://web.facebook.com/socialistpartycanada/

& members' page https://web.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100012582758245

– Red Lion Press:

 Revolutionary Socialist: Life of the Socialist Party of Canada and the OBU, 1910-1922.

 Fred Casey's Thinking: An Introduction To Its History and Science.

 Method in Thinking: An Introduction to Dialectics.

Costs: $3 for Pritchard, $6 each for the Casey's plus postage costs. Contact E-mail:

redlionpress@hotmail.com or enquire with the publisher: https://web.facebook.com/search/more/?q=Larry+Gambone&init=public

– A Socialist education website for hyperlinking from a WSPUS member http://www.whatissocialism.net/

For socialism, Steve, Mehmet, John & all contributing members of the SPC.