SPC Jan 2019 Report

[Socialist Party Head Office]

T HE S OCIALIST P ARTY OF C ANADA
worldsocialism.org/canada | spc@worldsocialism.org | twitter.com/spc_news
PO Box 31024 Victoria B.C. Canada V8N 6J3

Secretary’s Report for January 2019

Email Report
– WSP (India) EC meeting minutes No. 194, Sunday, December 2, 2018 received with thanks.
Good of the Movement
– Upcoming SPC Toronto Branch meetings – Visit https://web.facebook.com/Toronto-Branch-Socialist-Party-of-Canada-1120836671294008/ for upcoming events.
– SPC enquiries independent web forum: https://www.reddit.com/r/Canadian_Socialism/
– SPC involvement re: 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-generalstrike-centenary-1.4669345
– Peer collaborators generating socialist articles and summaries – write to worldsocialismbc@outlook.com.
General Administrative Committee
– One GAC seat remains open. Member nominations forward to spc@iname.com.
Dues – $25 per year or $2 per month. Funds conduct Party post, photocopies, public meeting expenses and internet
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
● The last contract negotiated between GM and the auto-workers union, Unifor, which was in 2016, ensured that the plant in Oshawa would be in operation well past 2019. Imagine their shock and everyone else’s when GM announced it would lay off 2,700 workers there in December 2019. This was all the more amazing because GM had recently made $500 million in improvements at the plant and, to quote Mayor John Henry, ”those trucks are selling like crazy”. Unifor has been informed that, ”There is no product allocated to the Oshawa plant past December 2019. Furthermore it will affect their suppliers and businesses in the Oshawa area. So one minute you think you’ve got a future and the next minute you find out the truth – that’s life under crapitalism.

● A letter came in my mail from Toronto’s Scott Mission, which calls itself, A Christian Ministry of Mercy and Love, asking for a donation to feed the homeless at Christmas. To quote, ”But for those who are homeless and alone, there is no such thing as a holiday. Every single day is a new struggle to find food to eat and a safe place to stay”, which could also be said of many who are not homeless, especially as many parts of major cities are not safe. They also said, ”for the last 77 years we have relied on the lords provision…”, well he’s not doing a very good job. Each meal they said would cost only
$4.25, but what the good folks at Scott Mission don’t say is they’ll be starving the next day and for many afterward. What good is Christmas Spirit to them then? Perhaps Scrooge almost had it right when he said ‘Christmas Humbug”. Almost ‘cos,”Capitalism Humbug, would’ve been better.

● Two motions have been brought before the Ontario Superior Court, by 12,000 former Sears workers who feel they have been royally screwed, having been forced to take a 30 per cent cut on their pensions. The main focus of their ire is Eddie Lampert, a hedge fund billionaire, who took control over the ailing retail giant in 2005 and helped run it into the ground until it filed for bankruptcy protection in 2017. What has upset the plaintiffs so much is that in December 2013 a $509 million dollar dividend was paid by Sears-Canada to its shareholders; you can bet they had a merry Christmas. As Bernie Sanders said, ”Once again vulture capitalists have hollowed out a company to line their own pockets”.

● On December 5, Ontario Auditor General, Bonnie Lysyk, issued a scathing report about the state of elevator safety in the province. She slammed the agency that regulates elevators, The Technical Standards and Safety Authority, for falling down (no pun intended) on the job. Ms. Lysyk said 80 per cent of elevators failed their inspections in 2018 and that their had been 487 safety incidents. The report noted that the agency does not have consistent inspection standards, and ”A number of companies dominate the market and have been failing to make sure elevators meet safety laws”. The report did not add they were probably cutting corners for bigger profits and to hell with safety.

● The Parkdale area of Toronto ain’t exactly a hang-out for the rich and famous, in other words you don’t live there if you can afford not to. Since 1971 the Parkdale Community Legal Service Clinic, has done an amazing job in fighting evictions, rent increases and, as they put it: ”Bad landlords”.
Some residents have said without the clinic they would be homeless or dead. Sadly the clinic itself may soon be homeless. In mid-October it was served with a termination notice by landlord, Martin Usher, ordering it to be out of the office space it has rented for 18 years by Jan 1. Naturally they will fight it, but win or lose, it just goes to show that the more one tries to resist the effects of life under capitalism, the more one is fighting a losing battle.

● The toxic wastes of the Canadian oil patch in Alberta has been spreading in the boreal forest since bitumen mining began there in the 1960’s. The mix of clay, water, toxic acids and leftover bitumen has sprawled into artificial ponds big enough to cover an area twice the size of Vancouver. More than one trillion litres of the gunk called trailings fill these man made waste lakes. It would take five days for the same amount of water to pour over Niagara. The ponds emit methane and other greenhouse gases. They attract and kill migrating birds and are totally inhospitable to aquatic life. No fish and few invertebrates can live in them. According to Jodi McNeill, policy analyst for the environmental think tank, Pembina Institute, ”The ponds have grown and grown over the last five decades. If we continue kicking the can down the road we will be leaving a legacy of ten’s of billions in clean up costs to future generations”. Oil companies are required to return the lands they develop to their natural state, which is a joke, especially when they go bankrupt, which one did last August leaving 4,000 uncleaned wells and pipelines. The Alberta Energy Regulator has estimated it will cost $130 billion to clean up the mess if they can. It may not be so easy considering leakage from the ponds has got into the surrounding groundwater and the nearby Athabasca River. Of one thing you can be sure of – everywhere capitalism sticks its filthy tentacles it destroys life in one way or another.

● The arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver on Dec.6 sent shock waves through stock markets and around the world. She is the company’s chief financial officer and daughter of its founder Ben Zhengfei. The arrest was in response to a request from the US, who want Ms. Meng extradited as part of an investigation of an alleged scheme to use the global banking system to evade US sanctions against Iran. Prime Minister Trudeau said that though he had no prior knowledge of the arrest, nevertheless stated it was made by the appropriate authorities. The Chinese got quiet snotty about it and retaliated by arresting two Canadians in China, a diplomat and a businessman, who have no connection with the matter. Fearing Ms. Mehg a flight risk she was released on bail, but has to wear an electronic ankle bracelet. Whether the lady is guilty or not is hardly the point, which is capitalism is a system based on deceit. No capitalist ever has, or will, say to a worker, ”You are an idiot for letting me exploit you”.

ISLAND MINER
From the ‘Official Organ of Sub-District 9, United Mine Workers of America, Vol. 1, No. 2, May 28th1938,’ we are reminded of the legacy numerous socialists left on our trade unions as organizers, educators, and in the popular imagination of our fellow workers. From the late-19th century to the turn of the 20th socialists like Charlie O’Brien (Member of Alberta Legislative Assembly Rocky Mountain House, 1909-1913), Joe Naylor and Ginger Goodwin (SPC Cumberland unionized miners, Vancouver Island BC, 1910s) regularly educated fellow workers on history, reading and writing, economics and science in the bunk houses after long shifts in the pits. Most workers had little to any formal education beyond rudimentary levels, and the important work undertaken by socialists bore much political fruit. It’s a fascinating era of Canadian working class history and socialist organization, and from this brief example below we get glimpse of socialist influence and working class life.

A United Movement
Every movement aiming to exert an influence on society needs a journal to voice its policy. If such a movement is to become strong, it is a frst necessity that its journal be consistently read by the members. This develops a mutual view-point and a common aim so that the membership is knit together in firm unity. To effectively influence people outside the movement, the membership must consistently express the same message. The public is confused if well intentioned members express inaccuracies which confict with the correct analysis expressed in the journal of the organization. Outside supporters who have learned to respect the movement through reading its journals expect their confidence to be increased when they make contact with one who is actually a member. But this confidence is lessened if the member is not informed on current questions set forth in the official organs. This effect is even more serious if the member occupies a leading position. Thls it is a basic necessity for all members to read every issue of the official organ of the progressive movement. People are vitally interested in immediate issues that arise from day to day and their questions on these current events can be answered correctly only by reading the facts set forth in the official periodicals.
No books or pamphlets on basic theory will explain incidents in the careers of reactionaries immediately involved in some racket to exploit the people. Books and pamphlets on theory are highly important blt they are never a substitute for the daily and weekly publications which give us the correct interpretations on current events and set forth the tactics to insure success.
Contributed.
More readings on this history can be found through works like A. Seager’s, Socialists and Workers: The Western
Canadian Coal Miners, 1900-21, Labour / Le Travail: Retrieved from:
https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/LLT/article/view/2471 ; and his 600+pp thesis on the early SPC and western
Canadian mine unions.

C. O’Brien, Crowsnest Pass
miner, union agitator,
organizer, SPC MLA 1910s
S ocialists R eadings in the M odern R age
Socialist Party of Canada 2019 Calendar £19.25:
https://www.zazzle.co.uk/socialist_party_of_canada_2019_calendar-158951425439478504
Greatest Impossibilists 2019 Calendar £19.25:
https://www.zazzle.co.uk/greatest_impossibilists_2019_calendar-158115142299860432
– Edgar Hardcastle Archive 1900-1995 https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/
– 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
– 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
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
– Ward, O. (1888). The ancient lowly: a history of the ancient working people from the earliest
known period to the adoption of Christianity by Constantine. Chicago, Charles H. Kerr.
The Open Library: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL13490680M/The_ancient_lowly

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

Capitalism: Species Exploitation
Glten Tag, genaedige Fral,
Let’s go out and milk the cow;
If we see a hlman or two,
Let’s go out and milk them, too.
2012 – a.c.

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