SPC secretary’s report 1st August 2012
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The Socialist Party of Canada
Secretary’s Report for August 1, 2012
Email Report
– The Bullet: Interpreting The Coup.
– The Bullet: A Brief Sketch of the Politics of Austerity.
– The Bullet: Haiti’s Earthquake Victims Step up Demands for Housing.
– The Bullet: The Fraser Institute’s Global Petroleum Survey.
– The Bullet: The Euro Crisis and the European Fiscal Pact.
– The Bullet: The Jackson Plan – A Struggle for Self-Determination, Participatory Democracy, and Economic Justice.
– The Bullet: Overture – The Conductor and the Conducted.
– The Bullet: Bolivia’s Mine Nationalization of South American Silver.
– The Bullet: Cuba’s Coming Cooperative Economy.
– WSPNZ EC Minutes for June.
– Left Streamed (Video) – Lessons from Quebec.
– The Bullet: Ed Miliband at the Miners’ Gala.
– Please note that The Bullet and Left Streamed are not based on scientific socialism but are available on request for information purposes.
Good of the Movement
– Meeting in Toronto, July 26th.
– The SPC Socialist Forum has been moved to https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/world-socialist-forum. Please visit and comment.
Finances
– Secretarial expenses for July, $8.08
Karl’s Quotes
– Today we are familiar with the way in which the capitalist class uses its authority and that of its government, and its capital to destroy anything that gets in the way of profit making. It has always been so. Marx writes, “In October 1855 Leonard Horner (head of the Factory Inspectorate) was already complaining about the resistance that a very large number of factory owners were placing to the legal provisions for safety devices on horizontal shafts, even though the danger was continually being demonstrated by accidents, often fatal ones, and this safety appliance is neither expensive nor in any way disturbs the work. The factory owners were given open support in resisting these and other legal provisions by the unpaid Justices of the Peace who had to decide on the cases, and were generally factory owners themselves, or friends of factory owners…The factory owners of the time formed a ‘trade union’ to resist the factory legislation, the so-called ‘National Association for the Amendment of the Factory Laws’, based in Manchester…” (Capital Volume III, page 183, Penguin Classics edition). Today’s capitalists come from a long tradition of resisting factory, labour, and environmental laws as impediments to the production of surplus-value.
Food For Thought
– Let’s first look at capitalism in all its glory:-
– Actress Mirs Sorvino was interviewed recently about her 2005 movie, “Human Trafficking”, that focuses on the slave trade. She commented, “ Don’t fool yourself that it’s only going on in the less civilized and less educated parts of the world. Every year there are 300 000 children sold in the US in various forms of slavery and prostitution and the worst part of it all is that in the eyes of many state governments, the kids are the criminals and not those who sell them into prostitution.”
– In July Torontonians were shocked and saddened by the shooting deaths of two people and twenty-three wounded at a street party – the worst mass shooting in Toronto’s history. This hot summer has seen a rise in shooting incidents with no end in sight. Mayor Rob Ford in a moment of pure genius suggested shipping the perpetrators to other cities. Socialists do not condone or excuse violence but understand the conditions that create it – poverty, stress, insecurity, frustration, inequality – all factors that could be eliminated with the advent of socialism.
– Ford’s underlings have taken his cue to come up with some super ideas. Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti has a solution for the homeless people in Toronto – shut down the nine homeless shelters run by the city. Apparently, though, he knows what he is talking about because he says, “I want people to know if they are sitting on this advisory committee, then they agree somewhat with what I have to say.” Keep an open mind, Giorgio!
– With LIBOR (or the London Inter-Bank offered rate) we now have a new banking scandal hot on the heels of Enron, the sub-prime mortgage fiasco and Madoff. This allegation of rate fixing has engulfed Barclay’s Bank, has caused JP Morgan to lose $7.5 billion US, and threatens to involve Citi, UBS, RBC, the Bank of America, and the Bank of England. Furthermore, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said it was aware that Barclays was under reporting borrowing costs for the LIBRO in April 2008. American journalist, Robert Sheer alleged in “The Nation” that LIBOR is the ‘crime of the century’ and, “Modern international bankers form a class of thieves the likes of which the world has never seen before.” A good enough reason, among many, to abolish the capitalist system.
– Somehow, the misery always percolates down to the ordinary guy. An SPC member recently ran into an old work buddy who always looked on the bright side of life. He was confident he would have a prosperous retirement because of his investments. When the stock market crashed, he lost $100 000. His retirement is coming up soon. Under capitalism, anything is possible but much of it isn’t good for the little guy.
– Only in capitalism – in that economic ‘miracle’, India, toilets are in very short supply, but the women have an additional indignity, they have to pay to go. Now they are demanding a right they never before contemplated, the Right to Pee! Next comes the right to breathe! (New York Times, July 2012)
– As of July 28, according to the Toronto Star, Spain’s unemployment rate has reached 24.6 % and is expected to continue to rise. For people under the age of 25, the unemployment rate is now 50%, and some regions, such as Andalusia, are at an overall rate of 33.9%. These are the highest figures since Franco died, 1976. Capital is wary of investing right now and is showing us, if we needed proof, that we work and survive at the whim of capital.
– What to do when you lose your job and face grinding poverty for you and your family? Simple, sell your body parts. The New York Times reports on a Serbian couple who are doing just that hoping to get $40 000 for one of their kidneys when the husband lost his job in a meat packing factory. With apologies to Adam Smith, this must be the ‘silent scalpel of the market’ at work! Great system!
– On the economic front, the province of Saskatchewan is undergoing a boom as its natural resources of oil and potash are in high demand. Unemployment rates are the lowest in the country and workers are being sought as far away as Ireland. So much for the good news, now for the bad – it ain’t going to last. The Irish workers will be able to tell them all about the boom and bust of capitalism and the curse of insecurity.
– Regarding the environment, the Alberta government has still not signed off on the clean-up of the second worst pipeline spill in the province’s history. Environment spokesperson, Jessica Potter, made the comment after Greenpeace released photos that showed heavy contamination at the Plains Midstreams Rainbow pipeline spill. The pipeline leaked 4.5 million litres of oil in April 2011. This clearly shows the physical extent of the problem and the extent that capital cares about the environment in its mad grab for profit.
– Like Saskatchewan, Mongolia is in the happy position of having huge natural resources – enough coal to satisfy China’s huge demand for fifty years, plus copper, gold, uranium and more that the world covets. The bad news is that the country is landlocked between China and Russia who are going to make sure the Mongolians pay for passing the wealth through their countries, quite apart from the underhanded interference in their affairs that Mongolia is going to have to put up with. Where there is wealth, capital comes calling just like rats around the garbage dump.
– Back on the home front, Prime Minister Harper and his government are experiencing flack over decisions to reduce or eliminate science and its data from influencing any decisions made. It’s so bad that scientists took to the streets in Ottawa to protest “The Death of Evidence” and “The Death of Science Based Decision Making”. Harper and his cronies don’t want to be lumbered with the facts and the truth when carrying out their agenda. The most egregious action was to end the ‘crippling’ $2 million annual budget to the Experimental Lakes Area, an internationally respected body of scientists whose environmental work led to changes around the world including acid rain legislation in Canada. Shades of 1984 – perhaps Harper will replace it with a Truth Ministry.
– The Olympics are under way! Stronger, Higher, Faster! The cost rose from an estimated $4 billion to $15 billion. Strangely, that’s just about the amount that PM Cameron is trying to squeeze out of the poor and needy to save the nation from economic disaster. Squeezing $8 billion from working households and $8 billion from social assistance, i.e. the unemployed, the housing challenged, and the sick, and so on. Capitalist economics makes little sense at the best of times, right now it’s downright loony.
Reading Notes
– In “The Third Ape” author Jared Diamond puts forward the theory that the first agrarian revolution that introduced our ancestors to farming may not have been all that beneficial to everyone in society. He writes, “Besides malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic diseases, farming brought another curse to humanity: class divisions. Hunter-gatherers have little or no stored food, and no concentrated food sources like orchards or herds of cows. Instead they live off the wild plants and animals they obtain each day. Everybody except for infants, the sick, and the old join in the search for food. Thus there can be no kings, no full-time professionals, no class of social parasites who grow fat on food seized from others.” (p. 187).
– Although not mentioned as such, it is, of course, the advent of private property that came out of that agrarian revolution that engendered the parasite class, and it continues today.
For socialism, John
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Good report, thanks comrade.
Just had a look around and can I ask would it better to have a dedicated page here on this forum rather than another Google/Yahoo type one which are already horribly outdated?
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