SPC Mar 2019 Rep

[Socialist Party Head Office]

Greetings Fellow Workers,

Please find our March 2019 Monthly Report for your review and comment.

This month we have a rather important email correspondence from one of our UK comrades, R. Cox, who hopes to illuminate mysteries of our comrades to our south making report, and among many practical suggestions, charting plans for an international conference of global Socialists in Chicago or Toronto – something this gen sec would like to see and which all SPC’ers should move to vote yeah or nay to make happen. Resolution(s) to all on this list or spc@worldsocialism.org

yfs, John, Mehmet, Steve & GAC members

Socialist Party of Canada

PO Box 31024 Victoria BC Canada V8N 6J3

 

THE SOCIALIST PARTY 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 March 2019
Email Report
– Open Letter to SPC & US Members from R. Cox, SPGB Re: WSPUS, 2019-02-23

Dear Comrades,

At its Feb 2019 meeting, the EC of the SPGB asked me to look into the parlous state of the WSPUS and see what can be done about reviving the organisation. For the past two weeks or so I have been busily tracking down members (and also some ex members) in the US and engaging in email exchanges with some of them. The main problem is that the central administration of the Party has essentially collapsed leaving individuals isolated and unaware of what is happening elsewhere in the States. Needless to say, this sense of isolation has been conducive to apathy, demoralisation and people drifting away from the organisation altogether.

When I started my enquiries I feared the worst – that we are talking about a corpse that could not possibly be resuscitated. However, my mind began to change as I engaged with members in the US. Despite appearances, there has been a small influx of members but of members joining the SPGB – not WSPUS – or of SPGB members who have relocated to the US. Indeed I have been able to identify several areas where there is a strong possibility of activity and a quite obvious enthusiasm for that to happen – particularly amongst the newer members.

I will be outlining these various positive developments in a report which I will be compiling next month for the EC. However, it has occurred to me (and it has also been suggested to me by others) that I should approach the SPC for your possible input into this enquiry process, you being close neighbours of the WSPUS, as it were.

I am wondering if there are any ways in which you could assist in the process or reviving the WSPUS. In particular, do you have a contact list which includes people living in the US who are interested in the WSM? This could be quite useful because, once the WSPUS is restructured and reorganised, it is hoped that an ambitious publicity campaign will commence, with the SPGB’s assistance, to reach out to potential or actual socialists across the country via advertisements in selected journals. Any people on your contact list living in the US would also be included in this. Of course if there are any contacts made as a result of this publicity campaign who happen to live in Canada their details will be passed on to you to contact..

Aside from that, are there any other suggestions you could offer that will help in reviving the WSPUS? For instance, are there any kind of joint projects both organisations could engage in such as a jointly-produced journal, website forum, pamphlet or even weekend conference/school along the lines of SPGB’s annual residential Summer School which, in this case, could alternative between the US and Canada each year (maybe even with one or two SPGB speakers flown in to make up a full programme of talks if necessary). I’m just throwing out suggestions off the top of my head but you may very well have ideas that had not occurred to me at all. If so, I look forward very much to hearing about them.

YFS, Robin Cox

Rejoinder to SPC Gen Sec, 2019-02-26:

Many thanks for your response.

The green shoots of a revival of the WSPUS are appearing in places like Vegas, Chicago and elsewhere. Yes its still on a pathetically small scale but still is happening. If there is any way the Canadian Party can assist , along with the SPGB, that would be very welcome.

The two practical matters I referred which the SPC might like to address are:

1) passing on to the WSPUS the details of any contacts you have based in the US

2) giving serious consideration among your members to this idea of an annual residential weekend school of talks along the lines of the SPGB’s summer school which would alternative each year between Canada and the US. The two most likely venues are Toronto and Chicago. This event could be massively advertised throughout the alternative press in north America
and you could attract visitors by inviting a few big names like Andrew Kliman who has spoken at the SPGB HO to a packed audience. One or two SPGB speakers could be flown in to make up a complete series of talks , film shows and workshops ideally around a particular theme as with the SPGB summer school. And of course you could throw in a social event like a
musical night or whatever to encourage social bonding and networking.

I do believe this could make for a significant boost to boost to both the SPC and WSPUS. The comrades in Chicago are enthusiastic about the idea but the SPC membership needs to discuss it as well. It is going to take a lot of careful planning.

Can you let me know the outcome of your discussions as I would need to mention this in my report to the EC concerning the WSPUS.

And yes is there are other ways the parties could cooperate that would be good too. How about some joint publication like a pamphlet.

Are you in touch with Stephen Shenfield in the US? He would very much welcome collaboration. He would love to hear from you guys . His website is http://www.whatissocialism.net

Good of the Movement

– Socialist Party of Canada meeting, Wednesday, 27 February 2019, 6:30pm to 8:30pm, The Second Cup Coffee House, 324 Bloor St W, Toronto, ON, M5S 1W5 — Cancelled due to severe cold weather and snow.

– 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. 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. Dues waiver – please contact general secretary to arrange.

Food for Thought – views & contributions to spc@worldsocialism.org

● Two unrelated events recently underlined capitalism’s crappy priorities. A fellow school bus driver said to me – ”Commercial drivers get paid twice as much as us and they justify it by saying they are transporting valuable merchandise, but we drive kids, aren’t they also valuable?” You might think $60 billion dollars would help reduce poverty for sum, but that is the amount the Canadian government are going to pay the US war company Lockheed Martin to design a fleet of warships. Great system isn’t it?

● On Feb8, NDP leader Andrea Horwath lashed out at Doug Ford and his
government for screwing around with various beneficial reforms. To quote,
”Ontarians have watched Doug Ford and his government continue their assault on the things we value most. In the past few weeks alone, Doug Ford has taken specific aim at education, including full day kindergarten, clean water, the Greenbelt, help for college and university students, autism services and funding for children and our public health system. None of this is what people voted for. When asked what we can expect from the NDP, Ms.Horwath said,”. . . more bills, ideas and proposals to tackle the things that matter.” This just goes to prove that if a government can abolish or water down good reform measures then its pointless working for reforms.

● First the good news – Stats-Canada said 66,800 new jobs were created in January, but don’t uncork the champagne yet folks: the jobless rate went up from 5.6 per cent to 5.8 because more people were looking for work. So the more things change, the more they stay the same. The youth jobless rate went up from 11.1 per cent to 11.2 — what a great future they have to look forward too. The year-over-year hourly wage growth for ”permanent employees”, was 1.8 per cent, which was up from December’s 1.5, but below its May peak of 3.9. However we must be of good cheer; the geniuses that try to run the Bank of Canada said they are monitoring wage growth ahead of its interest rate decisions as they try to determine how well indebted households can absorb higher borrowing costs. Imagine them trying to run a children’s party.

● The Federal Services Minister Seamus O’Regan said he was working night
and day to come up with proposed welfare legislation to benefit their children, but if he is the Native Canadians aren’t happy. As the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations Chief Bobby Cameron said in an open letter to Justin Trudeau, ”We do not wish to see the federal government put in place a child welfare system that subordinates or places us under a province with no recognition of our right to set our own family policy
and protect our own children and families.” It’s the idea of the proposed bill
allowing provincial intrusion into their affairs that has their panties in a twist. Cameron said it was, ”A renewal of colonialism”. However the matter plays out one wonders when have the effects of colonialism on aboriginals ever ended that they should be renewed. Also we can be sure the political upholders of capitalism won’t do a thing for them if it clashes with the interests of the capitalist class.

● For the average working guy Mississsauga, Ontario was a pretty good
place to live, about as good as it could get under capitalism. Sad to say, it ain’t that way now. The place is well maintained, the public services are
administered well and it was a relatively cheap place to live, though that has
changed recently and drastically. In an effort to encourage the development of new buildings, last fall the Ontario government lifted rent controls from new units unoccupied prior to Nov.15. Now the average rent for a one bedroom condo in Mississauga is $2000 a month, up from $1,794 in October. The amazing thing is that rents there are higher than most parts of Toronto. Only in it’s central zone is Toronto higher, with $2,241 a month. One may well ask how a working class family can cope with these rents. Most probably can’t, nor can they save for a down payment on a mortgage. Good times don’t last very long under capitalism and the only things you can be sure of are hardship and insecurity.

● Most Canadian’s were, naturally, happy to see gas prices go down 8.6 per cent in December, but wait a minute not everything is peachey-dandy – inflation overall in Canada went up 2 per cent, according to Stats-Canada’s figures which were released on Jan.18. Canadians paid 14.9 per cent
more for fresh vegetables and 28.1 per cent more for air fares. The Bank of
Canada’s governor Stephen Poloz kept his benchmark interest rate unchanged at 1.75 per cent as the economy goes through what he described as a temporary period of softness due to the drop in oil prices. At the supermarket shoppers can experience such softness, that it would make them wonder what hardness would be like.

● 900 people were let go without a word of warning from the Cambridge, Ontario based, recreational vehicle maker, Erwin Hymer North America, on Friday 15. I wonder if their ex-boss said, ”Have a nice weekend”. Many of them were very emotional (no kidding!), especially those that had been with the company for 30 or 40 years. They all got vacation pay , but no severance pay. The company filed for receivership weeks after being cut out of a multibillion dollar takeover deal. Don’t expect security under capitalism and you won’t be disappointed.

● Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has bought 10.8 million shares in struggling Suncor Energy Inc. Canadian oil producers have been through a bad patch since last summer after pipeline bottlenecks caused a plunge in crude oil prices. Canadian crude and Suncor have rebounded recently after the Alberta government mandated cuts among the province’s producers. Buffett and his fellow investors may think they’re onto a good thing,
but it isn’t the first time they owned Suncor stock. They previously held a 22.3 million-share stake which it sold in 2016. This gives one some idea of the uncertainty of any investment in a volatile market in an insecure economic system, or should I say fleecing-system.

● Costco Pharmacies have been fined $7.25 million for violating an Ontario kickback regulation designed to keep down the cost of prescription medications. This followed a three year investigation in which Costco were found to have given rebates, or if you prefer to call a spade a spade, bribes to stores to stock their products. The province has said these kickbacks
artificially inflate the price of drugs. How can anyone expect capitalists to behave honestly when the very system is based on dishonesty – the force-law theft of the world’s wealth from the producer class.

Socialists Readings in the Modern Rage

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

– Rosa Luxemburg on Socialism (2019). The Socialist Party of Great Britain.
£4.00 https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/product/rosa-luxemburg-on-socialism/

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

• This topic was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by Socialist Party Head Office.
• This topic was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by Socialist Party Head Office.

[ALB]

Comrades who didn’t read down to the end will have missed these two interesting  SPC calendars :

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

[Anonymous]

All those suggestions were made several years ago and nobody paid attention to them. The WSPUS was built by socialists  members of the SPGB  and socialists members of the SPC , it looks that they are going to do it again

A Brief History of the WSPUS

[Author]

Posts