SPC Newsletter 1st April 2013

[Socialist Party Head Office]

The Socialist Party of Canada

 

Secretary’s Report for April 1, 2013

 

Email Report

• WSPNZ GAC minutes of meeting for February received with thanks.

 

Good of the Movement

• Two Introductory Packages sent out

• April Meeting – Thursday, April 4, 6:30 – 8:30 pm, at Second Cup, located on the north side of Bloor street, four stores east of Spadina Avenue, Toronto. All welcome.

• Production of the Spring Imagine is under way.

• There was no new business for the quarterly meeting of the General Administrative Committee, producing a nil report.

 

Finances

– Secretary’s expenses for March, $12.12.

 

Karl’s Quotes

• On the falling rate of profit, Marx writes, “…then this gradual growth of the constant capital (that part of the capital used for the means of production – raw materials, machines etc), in relation to the variable (that capital used by the capitalist to purchase labour-power), must necessarily result in a gradual fall in the general rate of profit, given that the rate of surplus-value, or the level of exploitation of labour by capital, remains the same. Moreover, it has been shown to be a law of the capitalist mode of production that its development does in fact involve a relative decline in the relation of variable capital to constant, and hence also to the total capital set in motion. This simply means that the same number of workers or the same quantity of labour-power that is made available by a variable capital of a given value…sets in motion, works up, and productively consumes, within the same period, an ever-growing mass of means of labour, machinery and fixed capital of all kinds, and raw and ancillary materials – in other words, the same number of workers operate with a constant capital of ever-growing scale. This progressive decline in the variable capital, and hence in relation to the total capital as well, is identical with progressively rising organic composition, (the ratio of constant capital to variable capital) on average, of the social capital as a whole. It is just another expression for the progressive development of the social productivity of labour, which is shown by the way that the growing use of machinery and fixed capital generally enables more raw and ancillary materials to be transformed into products in the same time by the same number of workers, i.e. with less labour.” (Capital Volume III, p318, Penguin Classics edition). To counteract the falling rate of profit, the capitalist system must increase the rate of exploitation (= the constant drive for productivity that we hear about), produce on a larger scale, and find markets for the extra commodities (= need for constant growth and faster and greater destruction of the environment) and reduce the cost of constant capital (= degrade the product and produce inferior products that don’t last), among many measures.

 

Food For Thought

• A survey conducted in twenty-two countries by Globescan Radar, found that few people considered problems such as air and water pollution, species loss, auto emissions, water shortages, and climate change, to be very serious. As John Smol, chairman of Research into Environmental Change at Queen’s University, put it, Concern for the environment has always been in competition with the economy. When economic times are bad, people’s priorities shift. We have seen this before. When the economy falters, almost always the environment is asked to pay a price.” This is mainly because the loss of one’s job, or the fear of it happening, seem more immediate than the destruction of the environment, despite the fact that the latter certainly affects the former and, despite the fact that the latter is becoming closer to an immediate problem, both should be viewed as matters to be dealt with now and this can only be done with the establishment of socialism.

• For the last few years, Alberta’s economy hasn’t been as badly hit as the rest of Canada, mainly due to the demand for oil by China and the US…now things are not so rosy. The break-even price at which extraction is profitable varies from $65 to $100 a barrel. In recent months it has dropped considerably due to lack of pipe-line capacity to get oil to market, new sources of cheaper shale oil from fracking, and China’s demand falling off. None of this bodes well for the Canadian economy. Under crapitalism it’s the same old story – great today, lousy tomorrow.

• We have all heard enough about the pope but the Toronto Star reported that among the high and mighty Catholics to attend the papal installation was Robert Mugabe, undoubtedly embarrassing the Vatican given that he will likely stand trial one day at The Hague for crimes against humanity. The same article also carries a quote from the ‘red bishop’ Camara of Brazil, “ If I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. If I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”

• The same paper reported that that the largest religious group is those who come under the heading ‘Atheism, Agnosticism, or no religious affiliation (if you divide the Christians into Catholics and others). We have to remember that a very large percentage of the so-called religious are not, do not attend their church, and likely only put down a religion to hedge their bets just in case! Probably Canada’s most religious province, Quebec up to the 1960s, went through the Quiet revolution, i.e. took charge of their lives from the Catholic Church and dropped church attendance from 90% down to 5%. Religion really is an anachronism and most people realize that today.

• The same issue detailed the sorry economic run of Latvia. After its economy tanked in 2008 – twenty per cent contraction – it received a seven billion euro loan from the International Monetary Fund. The usual set of accompanying austerity measures produced praise from IMF managing Director, Christine Lagarde, “ You have pulled through…you have returned to strong growth…you have lowered budget deficits and kept government debt ratios to some of the lowest in the EU..blah, blah, blah. The reality for the average Latvian worker does not match the praise for the economy. As of 2010, 31% are classified as ‘severely materially deprived’, 300 000 people have left Latvia since 2000 looking elsewhere for jobs, and in 2012 the City of Riga served 759,250 hot meals for those with government vouchers. I wonder if Lagarde is cheering those figures!

• On March 5^th, Ontario Tory leader, Tim Hudak, claimed unions and environmentalists are threatening Ontario’s economic progress. We wonder what progress he’s talking about. Hudak said, “ I think it’s just unfortunate that the NDP and Liberals seem to be so singularly focused on appeasing the public sector union bosses – it’s causing a province to go bankrupt and it’s costing us jobs. Nobody is going to invest in a province that has huge debts. What the oil sands are to Alberta, what potash is to Saskatchewan, the Ring of Fire (northern resource exploitation) could be for the province of Ontario. It’s too bad that the Liberals seem to be captured by radical environmental groups.” Hudak’s rant could be a case of trying to pit one group against another or it could be a case of he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. On average, the cost to the capitalist of wages is 7% of the total. Furthermore, if the effects of capitalism continue to wreck the environment, there won’t be much left for Hudak to rant about.

• We’ve recently seen a massive outpouring of grief over the death of Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, a man who, in the opinion of many, did an excellent job. Socialists can agree that he did indeed do an excellent job – of muddying the waters. The improvements he made in nationalizing the country’s largest private electric company and Telecommunications company and the steel making and cement industries were improvements made within capitalism, that are no improvements at all. It’s largely forgotten that in 2002 he fired 18,000 workers in the state-run oil company for striking when he refused to agree to a non-binding referendum on his rule. Chavez was merely another leader to attempt to administer the running of capitalism and calling it socialism. If the minority own the tools of production, the land, and the resources, it’s still capitalism. If the majority must work for wages in order to survive, it’s still capitalism. And what is Chavez’ legacy to the Venezuelan people? A deeply troubled and divided country with high unemployment and crime rate. The fewer “socialists” like Chavez, the better.

• Just in case you were waiting for the unions to bring about socialism, in Toronto the Labourers’ union is suing the Carpenter’s union alleging dirty tactics in the raiding wars going on in Toronto’s construction industry. Obviously, do not expect a united front to end capitalism any time soon. Leave that to the World Socialist Movement!

• Marx is often criticized for his statements relating to the growing immiseration of the working class because things have improved materially for workers in the northern hemisphere though not nearly as much as the capitalist class has improved its wealth. But the real evidence to corroborate Marx is that as soon as the way was paved for liberalizing capital, the owning class rushed into areas of weak laws to reproduce the conditions prevalent in the nineteenth century. Any description of third world working conditions could easily be included in M & E’s descriptions of those times. The New York Times (March 3/ 2013) reports on the conditions of India’s children working in the mines. Despite a landmark 2010 law mandating all children in India between the ages of 6 and 14 to be in school, some 28 million are working instead. One story tells of a seventeen-year-old who has worked in unbelievably unsafe conditions in the mines ‘since he was a kid’ and expects his four younger brothers to follow suit, and lives in a tarp-and-stick shaft near the mine without running water, toilet facilities, or heat. Where are those critics of Marx now ? What do they say?

 

Reading Notes

• How the CIA was funded is revealed in Tim Weiner’s “Legacy of Ashes, The History of the CIA”. He writes, “The mechanics (of acquiring money) were surprisingly simple. After Congress approved the Marshall Plan, it appropriated about $13.7 billion over five years. A nation that received aid from the plan had to set aside an equivalent sum in its own currency. Five per cent of those funds – $685 million all told – was made available to the CIA through the plan’s overseas offices. It was a global money-laundering scheme that stayed secret until well after the cold war ended. Where the plan flourished in Europe and Asia, so would American spies.” (page 32). Nothing to account for, no questions asked! The money allowed the cold war that wasted unbelievable amounts of social wealth that could have provided health care, education etc. to say nothing of the lives lost, to continue its destructive path for decades. Such is life under the madness of capitalism.

 

For socialism, John

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