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Email from a comrade:
I keep reading all the stuff about Brexit, hoping that one newspaper will have a rush of honesty to the head, and tell its readers – “Oh, by the way, we should remind you that whether the important people decide to Brexit or to non-Brexit, all you gullible commoners who spend your lives working and not owning – you’ll go on working and not owning, and the rich will go on owning and not working – sorry about that!” The debate which fills the press, the radio, and the television, is really among the upper class who are trying to decide whether they’ll be better off if British capitalism continues to be allied to the rest of Europe’s capitalists, or whether they could hope to prosper still more if they could make their own trade treaties and so on. However, if it makes the proles happier turning out and waving banners, the important people don’t mind if they keep doing it – but it won’t make a blind bit of difference.
Extract from the Report of the Proceedings of the Autumn School & Membership meeting of the World Socialist Party (India) held on September 28-29:
“Proposed that Comrade Partha Pratik Mukherjee should read out the chapter he has written on impending climate breakdown for our upcoming new book FUTURE OF MARXISM. Comrade Partha went on reading from his written paper for the School.
Climate crisis and Capitalism Summary
Climate crisis/ breakdown is particularly a much debated issue for last couple of years. Specially following the Climate summit in Poland 2018 when a teen girl Greta Thunberg attracted headlines of newspapers and rapidly became a social media attention following her brave articulate speech accusing world leaders of not doing enough despite alarming inputs from climate scientists from all over the world. Since then, many thousands articles, news feeds have been written or published on the climate issue.
The response of global people is mixed. Few are simple deniers of any sort of climate changes, most are alarmed but do not know exactly how dangerous it is and some are active participant of climate movements, especially young generations and school children irrespective of countries, color, race religions and ethnicities.
The political response to this crisis is mostly frustrating. These climate changes leading to a catastrophic point where the whole humanity and the planet is under threat of extinction has been on the agenda of scientists for the last 50 years but nothing effective has been done by the ruling class and our representatives in the parliaments, moreover despite the alarms global carbon emission has grown beyond the danger levels in last two decades. The much hyped Kyoto protocol practically achieved nothing!
This is expected, considering the present profit oriented economic system we at least, did not expect anything positive for obvious reasons. I will come to this point later. Most important issue is the people who are half deniers and half indifferent to this crisis. The cause of this indifference is that, the main stream Medias owned by the ruling class don’t want us to know the exact dimension for their obvious class interest. The objective of this writing is to present the exact dimension of the crisis in short and why the ruling class is reluctant to take any meaningful action, in fact why it’s not possible to take any meaningful action in the prevalent mode of production.There was a tiffin and tea break from 4: 30 PM to 6:00 PM.”
Three comrades, two from London and one from Bristol, leafletted the demonstration in London. They report that it wasn’t all that different from other “demos” with speakers from the Labour and the Green parties and stalls from the SWP, Militant etc
Here is the text of the leaflet the Indian comrades have prepared for distribution in Calcutta at the event there:
Save the planet, share the Earth
* Climate change is real and is a serious problem for all of us.
* Climate change has resulted from human activities, more exactly the activities of a minority privileged class of capitalists. .
* Capitalism by focussing on the short-term is unlikely to take the longer term, and hence the environment, into account.
* Capitalists and corporations will seek to distort the facts of the matter so they can carry on as usual.
* Capitalists are ideologically blinkered against climate change since it exposes the dangers of capitalism as a threat to the environment.
Therefore, we cannot expect the problem to be solved within capitalism. All the signs point the opposite way. Consider the fact that this has been on the international agenda since the 1970s when scientists first expressed concerns and nothing much has been achieved; emissions have even increased over previous decades. The agenda of all environmental activity groups, who seek to change things without completely scrapping this system, will prove to be futile.
Ultimately the issue of the environment is an issue of power, of who has the power to determine what happens to this planet. Only in a society where we have the power to determine what can and cannot be done will we be able to stop this headlong rush to environmental devastation. That means a world of common ownership and democratic control. Anything else which anyone offers is merely using band aids to seal a volcano.
Radical change is necessary, a change in our thinking leading to a radical change in our socio-economic system. To save the Earth, life and human civilization, we have to replace existing, profit-based, exploitative, oppressive, manipulative, disruptive and dehumanizing capitalist society with long-overdue socialist society. A worldwide association of humans irrespective of nationalities, race, ethnicity, and sex has to be organized, which will function on the basis of participatory democratic principles.
This socialist, resource-based sustainable economy, with democratic control over the means of production and distribution, will produce things as per social needs. Preserving ecological balance is only possible in a world, socialist society. The most serious barrier to doing this is the prevailing capitalist mode of production. It’s the responsibility of the working class, who create and sustain human civilization, to protect it by establishing world socialism democratically with the force of our immense majority.
The exact class which is actively cranking up the global thermostat that threatens to inundate 20 percent of the world’s population currently controls the United Nations and the parliaments of the different nations. So, we, the working class, should expect nothing from the ruling minority capitalist class but should rapidly organize ourselves into a political party of our own on a global basis, with the aim of establishing socialism worldwide, democratically. This is the only way out for humanity.
T HE SOCIALIST P ARTY OF CANADA
worldsocialism.org/canada | spc@worldsocialism.org | twitter.com/spc_news
PO Box 31024 Victoria B.C. Canada V8N 6J3
Secretary’s Report for July 2019
Email Report
– WSP (India) EC meeting minutes No. 200, Sunday, June 2nd 2019, received with thanks.
– Shannon Kennedy re: WSM Website Content 2019-07-02
– Dear Comrades,
As per resolution 2(b)i of the June EC meeting, it has been put to the Internet Committee and our Companion Parties to discuss what content we wish to be present on the new WSM website once we have begun work on it. I shall be forwarding your contact details to the Internet Committee once all parties have responded so that we may work together on this issue.
On a separate issue, in regards to the funding request that was made previously, the EC shall be making a decision this coming Saturday, and in advance of this, I would ask what legal boundaries there are surrounding receiving money from a political party oversees into Canada.
Yours for Socialism, Shannon Kennedy, General Secretary
Good of the Movement– Upcoming Toronto meetings https://web.facebook.com/Toronto-Branch-Socialist-Party-of-Canada-1120836671294008/ & https://www.worldsocialism.org/canada/.
– Last call for submissions for the Summer 2019 IMAGINE – Comrades, forward articles and / or ideas for topics to
spc@worldsocialism.org.– SPC enquiries independent web forum: https://www.reddit.com/r/Canadian_Socialism/
– New – Full archive from the bound official two volumes of Socialist Fulcrum 1968-1984
http://libcom.org/library/socialist-fulcrum-socialist-party-canada
– Seeking editorial collaboration and assistance re: new pamphlet and/or article series: Progressive Thought and
the Materialist Conception of History. Reply to: spc@worldsocialism.org.General Administrative Committee
– One GAC seat remains open: members please forward your nominations (self or otherwise) with a brief profile to
spc@worldsocialism.org.Dues – $25 per year. All Party activities are voluntarily run; dues offset costs of postage, photocopies, public meeting expenses, internet services, etc. Dues waivers available for low and unwaged members.
Food for Thought – views & contributions to spc@worldsocialism.org
● The Hamilton Spectator newspaper will close its printing and mailroom operations on August 24. Printing work will be transferred to TC Transcontinental Printing and other external printers owned by, that champion of the underdog, the Toronto Star. The move is expected to save the Spectator between 4 and 6 million dollars annually. This means that 73 full time and 105 part-time workers will be laid off. To quote, Torstar executive, John Boynton, “The Spectator is a strong news brand with a great history and a great future” – try telling that to the folks who will get laid off.
● The City of Calgary is studying the effects of widespread wildfires on drinking water, which some researchers
say has been overlooked and misunderstood until recently. Water treatment engineers and hydrologists employed by the City said that as climate change has increased the number of wildfires in Canada and that scientists are starting to realize that fires can have a significant effect on drinking water years after the fact. After a fire, rain and melting snow wash ash and other debris into the water, often leading to more sediment, changes in the concentration and type of dissolved organic carbon, and phosphorous. This may lead to different methods of treatment, though at present they are not sure which methods, but are sure that failure to solve the problem would be injurious to people’s health. Harpreet Sandhu, Calgary’s
leading watershed planner, said that: “Though Calgary has multiple sources of drinking water, they are increasingly
at risk due to the changing climate.” The answer should be obvious, stop climate change – and there’s only one sure
way to do that.● Two million people thronged the streets of Toronto on June 18 to welcome home the victorious Toronto Raptors who had defeated Golden State 114-110 to win the NBA Championship. This was the greatest outpouring of joy Toronto has ever seen, far eclipsing VE Day and the Blue Jays win in the world series. It will seem petty and pretty – bad that is, if anyone should carp or criticize such happiness, but the point is to understand it. Such fantastic joy could not merely because The Raptors had won or because it was the first time a Canadian team
had won the NBA, or even that it was a victory over Canada’s
neighbours to the south, who not everyone likes. No Siree, there’s more to it than that. We live in very uncertain times; just about every one of those Two million has his or her worries, whether it be the fear of a layoff, a rent or mortgage default, the car being repo’d, getting accepted into college, paying the tuition fees if you are, health problems etc. etc. So let them forget it all however briefly in one wild delirious day and look forward to the day when we can see it all again, when Socialism is established.● The capitalist class in Canada has made it’s bid to be, ”top of the world.” On May 23 Canada submitted 1,200 pages of scientific evidence to the U.N. in its attempt to prove the continental shelf from the high Arctic Islands extends more than 200 nautical miles from its shore. It includes a contested section of sea floor that stretches from the top of Ellesmere Island along the undersea ridge to the pole and more than 200 kilometers past it. The trouble is that Russia says the same undersea ridge originates from its continental shelf. Therefore it argues all of the sea floor alongside the ridge from the Russian coast to just past the pole belongs to it. The Danes say the ridge is part of Greenland so they have a P.O.V.” All the countries involved recognize that there will have to be boundary negotiations at some future point,” said, Michael Byers, professor of international law at the University of British Columbia. This doesn’t mean it will be settled amicably. The melting of ice in the Arctic means it will be easier to drill down and get the mineral wealth there, which inevitably means the capitalist class of different countries will want as much as they can get. So it’s a conflict just waiting to
happen.● On May 29th an all-party committee in Ottawa issued a report on the metal health issues facing Canada’s farmers, many of whom are regular working joes. The report, based on testimony from producers, mental health experts, and government officials, said farmers struggle with many problems, such as market volatility, debt, long work days, the effects of climate change, loneliness, intimidation, cyber-bullying and threats from people who take issue with their occupations and practices. The committee made ten recommendations, including, ”Ensuring the government considers and mitigates any potential impacts from new policies on the well being of agricultural producers.”
That’s what I like about capitalism – it’s so conducive to good mental health.● Nearly a trillion dollars were moved by Canadian corporations to offshore places, including tax havens,
through legal tax avoidance schemes in 2016. They moved as much as $25 billion from domestic tax coffers, according to a new study by the Parliamentary Budget Office. These findings which were released on June 19, by the Canada Revenue Agency that said uncollected taxes are about $26 billion
each year. The PBO analysis focuses on legal tax avoidance, while the CRA focuses on illegal tax evasion. Together, the two studies suggest Canada is missing out as much as $51 billion in uncollected taxes annually. To quote, Toby Sanger, of Canadian’s for Tax Fairness,” Canadians are being robbed of investments to health care, child care, education and green infrastructure, all of which the government could afford if it were to get serious about cracking down on tax avoidance.” The SPC have always said the capitalist class pays the brunt of
taxes to administrate capitalism, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try to get out of it.● For some time Vancouver and Toronto have had a lack of affordable housing, now politicians in Montreal are facing the same situation. The growing demand for homes in cities has pushed the cost of housing to amazing heights. But Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante has a plan to deal with it. She calla it the 20-20-20 plan which will commence in 2020 – no kidding! It will require 20 per cent of units in new housing projects to be
social housing, 20 per cent to be affordable housing, and 20 per cent set aside for family housing. Already there is opposition; Andre Boisclair, CEO of the Urban Development Institute of Quebec, warned, ”The plan would increase housing costs that, according to one study, could be as high as 16 per cent.” Once again the upholders of capitalism try to solve one of its many problems. It will be a good laugh watching them fail.● Almost one-third of all Toronto Transit bus and streetcar routes exceed the agency’s crowding standards at some point during a typical week, according to the latest statistics provided by the Transit Commission. The figures show that in the first three months of this year 41 bus and eight streetcar routes were overcrowded at some point, some as much as 22 per cent. Lawrence Lui, a senior service planner at the TTC, said,” The goal is to provide safe, comfortable and reliable
travel for our customers, but for the moment the TTC lacks the resources to eliminate crowding”. Of course it does, buddy, because we live under capitalism where resources are limited for all but the super-rich. Speaking from experience I can say that standing on a crowded Toronto streetcar ain’t a lot of fun. Mostly the crowding would be in the rush hour, which with the tremendous and positive changes a Socialist Society will engender will be eliminated and all travelling will be purposeful and fun – not a waste of material and social resources maintaining the wages system.● On June 20, Ontario Premier Doug Ford demoted Finance Minister, Vic Fedeli to the Ministry of Economic Development, and Lisa MacLeod from Social Services to Tourism and Sports. Their places will be taken, not that it means much, by Rod Phillips and Todd Smith. No ministers were dumped, but 12 were moved, Fedeli and MacLeod, being the biggest surprises, and six new portfolios were added. Fedeli’s demotion was probably the result of an extremely unpopular budget which Ford had approved and Macleod’s because she defended cutbacks to autism services. In other words they were
doing the job that Ford had told them to do, but if course it couldn’t be his fault. Ford’s comment was, ”Our message wasn’t getting out”,which is pure genius. To attempt to run the affairs of capitalism successfully is like trying to navigate a sailboat through a hurricane.Socialists Readings in the Modern Rage
– Edgar Hardcastle Archive 1900-1995 https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/
– Archive of Socialist Studies https://archive.org/details/socialiststudies
https://libcom.org/library/socialist-studies– Producers and Parasites (1935). By John Keracher. https://www.marxists.org/archive/keracher/1935/producersparasites.htm
– History of the Socialist Party of Canada (1973). By J. M. Milne http://www.socialisthistory.ca/Docs/SocialistParty/HistoryofSPC.pdf
– W.A. Pritchard address to the jury in the Crown vs. Armstrong,
Heaps, Bray, Ivens, Johns, Pritchard, and Queen: Indicted for
seditious conspiracy and common nuisance, Fall assizes, Winnipeg, 1919-1920. Winnipeg: Defense Committee, 1920.
http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/bibliography/4627.html
– Socialist Studies http://www.socialiststudies.org.uk/ | Marxian Economics YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXq0kw9sU6xvrr34yezA_Tw
Archive of Socialist Studies (except no. 36): https://1drv.ms/f/s!AvbgU4NFjvNHgV9xDR5_Om8AtJjF
Two volume archive of Socialist Fulcrum 1968-1984: http://libcom.org/library/socialist-fulcrum-socialist-partycanada
Kenworthy, John Coleman (1900). The Anatomy of Misery: Plain Lectures on Economics.
https://archive.org/details/anatomyofmisery00kenw
– History of Economics: A Scientific Investigation into the Political Economy and Its Swindler ‘Economics’
published. 50.00 Rupees/CD$1-1.50. Contact http://www.worldsocialistpartyindia.org for more information to purchase.
– Red Lion Press:
Revolutionary Socialist: Life of the Socialist Party of Canada and the OBU, 1910-1922.
Thinking: An Introduction To Its History and Science.
Method in Thinking: An Introduction to Dialectics.
Inquires to the publisher: https://web.facebook.com/search/more/?
q=Larry+Gambone&init=public
– Rosa Luxemburg on Socialism (2019). The Socialist Party of Great Britain. £4.00 https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/product/rosa-luxemburg-onsocialism/
Yours for Socialism, SPC contributing members . . .Actually, that is not the new comrade’s full address. The full address was in the Report as emailed to us but, for the reason you hint at, we shortened it so as to only give the town/city, post code and State where he lives.
Like you say, it’s conspiracy theory plus anti-Semitism. Churchill was into this too:
mosaisk.com/revolution/Winston-Churchill-Zionism-Versus-Bolshevism.php
I don’t think we need to take this stuff seriously, just expose it for what it is.p.s. Imagine if Corbyn had written that but then Corbyn isn’t Churchill.
Autumn greetings Everybody,
We hope you are well and ducking the gloom of any bad bosses.
Please find our October 2018 Monthly Report for your review, provocations, and feedback.
Yours for Socialism, John, Mehmet, Steve & GAC members
Socialist Party of Canada
PO Box 31024 Victoria BC Canada V8N 6J3
https://www.worldsocialism.org/canada/ | https://twitter.com/spc_news[https://twitter.com/spc_news]Another comment sent to Head Office by a reader:
Quote:I haven't seen a lot of letters/feedback in the Standard in recent times, but I thought the June Pathfinders article was excellent, thought-provoking.The writer makes his points well. Never thought of it that way, analogue human beings trying to be digital.Pity we hadn't come across this expression of Marx's view before the World Socialist Party (India) published this 100-page pamphlet which, besides being what it says on the cover, brings together most of the other quotes from Marx and Engels on the subject..Copies arrived from India last week. Can be ordered for £4 (including packaging) from: The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN. Cheques should be made out to "The Socialist Party of Great Britain". You can also pay by Paypal (the address is the same as our email address).
We have received the following email at Head Office from someone in the US:
Quote:Dear SPGB,I was wondering if any of you can recommend some essays or longform articles
putting forward a socialist case against gun ownership? Dispiritingly, more
and more comrades over in the United States, particularly anarchists, have
gone over to the side of the gun lobby. They have convinced themselves that
they can 'better oppose the State' with firearms, apparently forgetting that
whenever the workers in the U.S. have attempted to assert themselves through
the barrel of a gun, the State has always been the victor in such
altercations. The Battle of Blair Mountain is the prototypical example
offered by more historically minded American comrades. There, the State
bloodily suppressed the armed rising, with the greater losss of life being on
the side of the proletariat. Following the insurrection, the State and
Capital went on functioning exactly as before. Meanwhile, commemorative
plaques are placed on Blair Mountain, wreaths are laid, historical societies
reenact the battle, and no one cares to learn from the mistakes of the past.Can anyone help?
This short story has been translated into Bengali by a sympathiser in Bangla Desh for publication in a local paper or magazine there.
Greetings Everybody,
Hoping you are all well as capitalism and its proponents spin ever out of orbit and beyond sane or sustainable life.
Please find attached our November 2017 Monthly Report for your interest and review.
If you have news or views you want to share with our readers, send your correspondence to spc@worldsocialism.org
Yours for Socialism, John, Mehmet, Steve & GAC members
—
General Secretary, Socialist Party of Canada
PO Box 31024 Victoria BC Canada V8N 6J3
https://www.worldsocialism.org/canada/
https://twitter.com/spc_newsThere's a meeting on this at the Party's premises in London next month:https://www.meetup.com/The-Socialist-Party-of-Great-Britain/events/244255066/
WORLD SOCIASLIST PARTY (NEW ZEALAND)Meeting held at 51 Weymouth Road , Manurewa and 15 Tanera Cres, Wellington(by phone) DATE : Sunday 03 September 2017****** CHAIRPERSON: T. Lovatt Moved : C. Malins 2nd : M. Gribble************** OPEN: 2.20pm****** PRESENT: C. Malins M. Gribble T. Lovatt M. Grayson******** VISITORS: none********* APOLOGIES : J. Ryder*********** PREVIOUS MINUTES/ERRORS & OMISSIONS/MOVE & SECOND :*********************************************************Moved: C. Malins Seconded: T. Lovatt DISCUSSION ARISING FROM PREVIOUS MINUTES :**********************************************G. Coffey was asked if C. Matene could help with Radio Station as we need to put new phone number onto station. MOTIONS OF WHICH NOTICE HAS BEEN GIVEN; None******************************************** CORRESPONDENCE INWARD & OUTWARD : None***************************************** RATIFICATION OF MEMBERSHIP FORMS : None************************************** REPORTS OF SUB-COMMITTEES : None****************************** TREASURER’S REPORT AND ACCOUNTS TO BE PRESESENTED.1 : M. Gribble moved report be accepted and accounts paid . 2nd T. Lovatt LITERATURE SECRETARY’S REPORT : M. Grayson apologised for not sending Socialist Standards this month. NEW NOTICES OF MOTION : None************************* GENERAL BUSINESS:*******************1: C. Malins started auto payments for HQ.2 : While M. Gribble was in London (May 2017) he went to visit 52 Clapham High Street. Chatted with several members. Took photos of HQ. Noted that they are struggling for members , as we also are. Commented on a very interesting and massive reference library on site and was well presented.3 : C. Malins put sign out front of HQ advertising Radio station.4 : Although not looking like it, C Malins has plans to get garden going again.5 : G. Coffey returned Radio Station #2 pack (transmitter and aerial).6 : Need to get Radio station on-line as this will reach so many more that way.7 : C Malins needs some help to sort Adverts for Radio station.8 : C. Malins mentioned about making more shelves for library books.9 : M. Grayson recommends Karl Marx movie. NEXT MEETING : Sunday 1st October 2017**************** MEETING CLOSED : 3.30pm*****************
