SPC Report June 2018
- This topic has 0 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 5 years, 10 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Greetings Everybody,
Please find for your review the June 2018 Monthly Report.
We are seeking additional articles, opinions, news & illustrations for our Summer 2018 Imagine - July is our target month for publication.
Submissions are open to any Party member and non-member contributors alike with high Socialist content.
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 6J3
Secretary's Report for June 2018
Email Report
– WSP (India) EC meeting minutes No. 187, Sunday, May 6, 2018 received with thanks.
Good of the Movement
– Introductory package sent out – Toronto.
– Toronto SPC Meeting held Wednesday, May 30, 6:30pm – 8:30pm; The Second Cup Coffee House, 324 Bloor St.
– 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. Awaiting word on Socialist banner/logo/flag.- Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: 100th anniversary of Winnipeg's 1919 General Strike will be marked with monument, movie, books – http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/1919-winnipeg-general-strike-centenary-1.4669345
– Comrade Muirhead seeking peer collabators for socialist articles and summaries. Write to worldsocialismbc@outlook.com to lend him a hand.
– Summer 2018 Imagine – submit articles, opinions pieces, news! First time writing an op ed or topical Socialist article? Send in your draft – we're here to help!
Financial Secretary's Report – no report
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
● While watching a recent program about Leonardo Da Vinci I found out something I had missed at the time. In October 2017, at an auction in New York, a Saudi prince bought his,''Salvatore Mundi'', for 400 million American dollars. Some may defend this on the grounds that it will be in a museum for all to see, but , nevertheless, it says something very loudly about an economic system, where such lavish and totally socially useless spending can occur when millions live in abject poverty.
● The latest from Stats-Canada is wage growth in April reached its highest level in six years and unemployment rate stayed at 5.8 per cent, its record low. The report issued on May 11 said wages were 3.6 per cent higher than this time last year, but the economy lost 1,100 jobs. You may wonder how this didn't change the unemployment rate; this was explained away by saying that, ''the decline in jobs last month was too small to be statistically significant.'' So according to these brilliant federal employees everything is just great. However we still have unemployment and wages which limit how much of the world's wealth one can enjoy. Why not a society where neither would exist?
● On May11 Justin Trudeau and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard announced plans to build a 12.8 kilometer by-pass at Lac-Megantic. In 2013 a train carrying crude oil came of the track, exploded, killed 47 people and destroyed most of the downtown area. This was in blatant violation of safety regulations so they could save a few bucks. The bypass has been estimated to cost $133 million; the federal government will pay 60 per cent and the provincial one 40 per cent. A typical capitalist situation caused by putting a price tag on everything and then having to pay more money because an ounce of prevention wasn't worth a ton of cure. Boy! what a system.
● The worlds debt has reached a record $164 trillion dollars(US), that will make it harder for some countries to deal with the next recession. The International Monetary Fund, in its semi-annual report, said Global public and private debt swelled to 225 per cent of global domestic product in 2016, the last year for which they had figures. High levels of national debt will make it diffucult for governments to refinance when their debts reach maturity, especilly if financing conditions tighten, the IMF said. This is just another insane situation created by an insane system and hardly causes any feelings of optimism for the future.
● The Beaches area of Toronto, ''known as,''The Beach'', once indirectly played a prominent part in the history of the SPC. It was there in the sixties that a thriving and enthusiastic local was founded. The Beach is again in the news but not in such a positive way. It is now being called a retail ghost town. Along its main street, Queen Street West, there are 30 vacant stores. Nor is the Beach a low income neighbourhood, but it is a high rent one, so much in fact, that retailers are moving out. These are regular working people who just wanted to get ahead and, in some cases, worked longer hours than many members of the working class. One, a Parlour Salon, who also owns one in Toronto's west end said, ''The Beach is beautiful, I love it here, but the rent is three times higher than I pay for my other store.'' The rents are high and thanks to a City of Toronto tax rebate policy there is an incentive to landlords to keep them high, and if it comes to that, keep the businesses vacant. If one is vacant for more than 90 days the owner is entitled to a rebate. This causes problems for the local residents who now have to travel out of the Beach to get what they want. Whoever said capitalism and sanity go hand in hand?
● Toronto teen William Leathers was thrilled earlier this year when he received his acceptance letter to the prestigious Julliard School in New York. Leathers is one of only three students accepted in Julliard's trumpet program. There was just one slight problem, though. Given the stature of Julliard in the music world fees don't come cheap; only a little matter of $91,000 dollars, U.S. Not to be stymied Leathers took to crowdfunding and by May 2 had raised $80,000. Some may say he is well on the road to making his dream reality, but nevertheless it does hammer home how everything has to be bought and paid for under capitalism. Think how many people talented in so many ways never realize their full potential.
● Walkerton is in the news again. Its been 18 years since a deadly E.coli outbreak devastated this rural town, 150 kilometers northwest of Toronto. Seven people died; 2,500, which is half the town, became ill. Walkerton's water supply became contaminated. A heavy rainstorm washed cow manure carrying a strain of E.coli into a town well and because of improper chlorination the bacteria was not destroyed. Many were sick with gastrointestinal issues like bloody diarrhea and were given a 30 per cent chance of high blood pressure and kidney damage. Twenty two children had permanent kidney damage, but treatment stopped the illness from getting worse. This was one of the worst public health disasters in Canadian history. On May12 the Toronto Star focused on its front page the plight of ex-Ontario Police Officer Robbie Schnurr, who visited Walkerton on a hot day 18 years ago and had the misfortune to drink some water and has been deteriorating ever since. He said the infection destroyed his immune system and led to a neurological disorder that causes the body's immune system to break down and destroy the sheath that covers the nerves. To quote Schnurr, ''There's nothing to look forward to, there's no goals in life, there's nothing''. Therefore Schnurr fulfilled his wish for a doctor assisted death. The whole Walkerton tragedy was caused by 2 men on the walkerton Public Utilities Commission who did not have sufficient training for the job – something that saved money, one supposes, but to emphasize that under capitalism there is a price tag on everything.
● June 7 is the date of the Ontario provincial election with PC leader Doug Ford leading in the public opinion polls. The NDP, under Andrea Horwath are second and incumbent Premier Kathleen Wynne Trailing them. Already the childish behaviour of the participants are coming out with Wynnes campaign manager David Herle speaking of Ford as, ''a bit of a dick''. The main issue is the opposition of the PC's and the NDP to the Liberal government's privatization of Hydro One, which raised $9 billion to pay of debts and build infrastructure. Horwath has been particularly outspoken promising to buy it back bit by bit. However, whatever the issues might be they have one common thread they are all matters of attempting to run capitalism and therefore are fundamrntally of no benefit to the working class. Whoever wins on June 7 it will mean a continuation of capitalism, which causes the issues that will decide the result. There is only one issue worth voting on: “Fire your boss, dump the swindlers, and run civilization in the interests of yourself and All!”
● At the time of writing, May 18, there are further delays on any NAFTA agreement. Justin Trudeau said, ''A deal is very close''. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, disagreed, ''…there are gaping differences on intellectual property, agricultural market access, energy, labour, rules of origin, geographical indications and much more'', but he promised to continue negotiating. At this time there seems no end in sight — other than the main bozo in American power with his tariffs fettering the 'deal,' and things likely going from bad to worse for many Canadian workers. Though for Socialists this is not the point. There are two delays we are concerned about: The more important of the two is the delay in establishing Socialism, which would mean the previous delay, the horror(s) of suffering under capaitlaism, is moot. Hasten the Day!
Musings from America's past . . .
Labor's Untold Story: The Adventure Story of the Battles, Betrayals and Victories of American Working Men and Women, by Richard Boyer & Herbert Morais, (1955), is an illuminating walk through the United States of America's rather checkered past of robbing the working class and plundering the land, (along with all Indigenous peoples while they were at it). Violence is no stranger to the United States' (like all nations') capitalist class, and the authors make plain with countless notes just how America was “Made Great in the First Place” (D. Trump style, most naturally!). Pick up a copy of this superb history and apprise yourself of yet another example
of Capitalism functioning in a disgustingly healthy way: Making mayhem, poverty, and war in its wake — because that's just what capitalism does best!
III. “The Iron Heel”
“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”
JAY GOULD, RAILROAD MAGNATE, BEFORE THE 1886 STRIKE ON HIS SOUTH-WESTERN SYSTEM
'These great American trusts whose only politics was the politics of business had by the early ninties grown into Frankenstein monters. Their gigantic size was indicated by Henry D. Lloyd in his celebrated work Wealth Against Commonwealth published in 1894.
“Not less than five hundred million dollars is in the coal combination . . . that in oil has nearly if not quite two hundred millions. . . . Hundreds of millions of dollars are united in the railroads and elevators of the Northwest against the wheatgrowers. In cattle and meat there are not less than on hundred millions; in whiskey, thirty five millions . . . in sugar, seventy five millions; in leather over a hundred millions; in gas, hundreds of millions . . .”
With the bugeoning of corporations into pools and pools into trusts, the speedup of industrial workers increased greatly. As an official government body, the Industrial Commission put it: “Various authorities cited by Mr. David A. Welles in his Recent Economic Changes, published in 1889, show that the productiveness of labour in the industires was multiplied, on the average, not less than three or four times, and in some departments many fold in the brief period from 1865 to 1889.'
Socialist Texts in the Modern Rage
– 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
William A Pritchard Reminiscences of the old Socialist
Party of Canada – (w/ hand notes on type from the author . . .)
Kenworthy, John Coleman (1900). The Anatomy of Misery: Plain Lectures on Economics.
(With Introduction by Count Leo Tolstoy & Appendix of Correspondondence on the Present Political-Social Situation between Dr. A. R. Wallace and the Author)
https://archive.org/details/anatomyofmisery00kenw
– 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
More on the 1919 Winnipeg Strike Trials – visit http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/books/notabletrials.pdf
– 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
– Socialist education website for hyperlinking, from a WSPUS
member http://www.whatissocialism.net/
For socialism, Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.