SPC Report July 2018
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Greetings Everybody,
Please find for your review the July 2018 Monthly Report.
We are still 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.
Of note are additional concepts for an SPC banner for public events; if you have an idea or sketch in mind please send in your suggestions.
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 July 2018
Email Report
– WSP (India) EC meeting minutes No. 188, Sunday, June 3, 2018 received with thanks.
Good of the Movement
– Introductory package sent out – Toronto Branch.
– Toronto SPC Meeting held Wednesday, June 27, 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.
– Comrade Whitehead (SPGB) email that 'Edmund Hall is willing to produce a banner for the Socialist Party of Canada. Seeking SPC input advising whether we have designs or need ones creating. Many thanks Comrades Whitehead and Hall.
– 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
– Summer 2018 Imagine – seeking member articles, opinions pieces, news submissions.
– Comrade Muirhead seeking peer collabators for socialist articles and summaries. Write to Comrade Muirhead at worldsocialismbc@outlook.com.
Financial Secretary's Report – Pay Pal accounts are undergoing merging to single account.
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
● In its edition of June 14 the Canadian Jewish News ran an article about a company run by its workers. The California-based Morning Star Company, the world's largest tomato processor has no managers, but has shown a rapid increase in profits. Decisions are made collectively by the biologists, farmhands, factory workers and accountants who work there. This doesn't mean they are all paid equally, in fact, ''The highest paid employee receives only six times more than the lowest''. Some folks on the left would say its an example of socialism at the point of production, but its no such thing. The workers still work for wages and the company still have to realize a profit in the market. That they are not exploited by a capitalist as such means nothing because they are exploiting themselves. Although workers at this operation may experience less of the crasser edges of capitalism's worst behviour towards workers, the whip of necessity in a for-profit society requiring the cash nexus to live is not our idea of equal social access to the means of life. We, of the SPC, want to do away with all forms of exploitation.
● Stats-Canada reported that Canada's economy lost jobs for the second month in a row in May. 7,500 jobs were lost, but don't worry folks, according to our friendly record keepers, it wasn't a blip on the radar, as the unemployment rate held steady at 5.8 per cent – go figure – no pun intended. The trouble is, according to Thomson Reuters Eikon economists, who are supposed to know these things, predicted an increase of 17,500 jobs! Robert Kavic, senior economist at the Bank of Montreal, is very happy saying the economy is running near potential and predicts the Bank of Canada will raise its key interest rate in July; to quote, ''We think the bank is still good to go''. I don't know how the redundant 7,500 feel about that, but if anything is good to go, its capitalism and right into the garbage bin of history.
● We all have this image of capitalism as a tremendously dynamic system constantly inventing new products, including the tools of production, and improving on existing ones. However true that maybe there is another side to it. With the success of the Tesla car there is a renewal interest in the life of Nikola Tesla, the inventor of the type of alternating current we use today. The recent TV series on his life mentioned that for a time he was financed by the most powerful man in the world, J.P. Morgan, the head of the Bank of America. Tesla told him that if the induction cable he was working on was a success, copper would no longer be needed as a means of induction. Morgan cut off Tesla's funds, because he owned thousands of shares in copper mines. How about a society where no such stupid barriers will exist?
● Justin Trudeau said recently he will apologize for the Canadian government's refusal in 1939 to allow the Jewish refugees aboard the ship, St.Louis, to enter Canada. Trudeau said nothing about why his government won't allow refugees in from Syria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Myanmar and the Congo, who are also fleeing from Genocide. Canada is a world leader in developing and using methods of keeping refugees out, such as visa requirements, electronic travel authorizations, carrier sanctions migration officers posted abroad, working with other governments to detect and stop migration networks and the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement. Nor has Trudeau said anything about the laws his government does not abolish that prescribe lenghty prison sentences for transporting asylum seekers into Canada. That all this is blatant hypocrisy isn't the point. If it were in the interests of Canadian capitalism to allow refugees in then Trudeau certainly would. We Socialists do not say, ''let them in'', or, ''keep them out'', because, and again, that isn't the point. We are not going to be drawn into taking sides in any of the stupid and inhumane problems that capitalism causes. Nor do we lack compassion, in fact we urge the most compassionate suggestion of all which is the abolition of the system that causes refugee crises in the first place.
● Regular readers of this column will know that Toronto has become a city plagued by gang warfare. In some ways it resembles Chicago of the 1920's. There is a shooting nearly every day; gang warfare is open and blatant; whereas in Chicago it was over alcohol, in Toronto it's narcotics. The major difference being that Toronto's police and politicians are not on any mobsters payroll, though since they cannot cope with the prevailing orgy of crime it doesn't mean much. If someone is the target of a killing, anyone in his immediate vicinity could be shot as his enemies spray bullets at random. Such was the case on June 16 when two girls ages 5 and 9 were shot and wounded in a playground in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, leaving a whole city shocked and disgusted. When a society is in he process of breaking down it makes a lot of sense to replace it with one that won't.
● Chief executives at the biggest U.S. companies got an 8.5 per cent raise last year bringing the average wage for CEOs to $11.7 million according to Standard and Poor's recently released figures. For the first time the American government required companies to show how much more bosses make than their workers. On average they make 164 times as much. At Yum Brands, CEO Greg Creed's pay of $12.3 million was 1,323 times higher than their average workers. "High pay ratios send a dispiriting message to the work force'', said Liz Shuler, secretary -treasurer of the AFLCIO.'' Companies are asking their employees to do more with less, at the same time that CEO pay is on the rise'' Doesn't this suggest something is very wrong in a society where such inequalities exist. The mind boggles . . .
● On June 7 the PCs won the Ontario provincial election taking 76 ridings, the NDP took 40, the incumbent Liberals 7 and the Greens 1. Doug Ford said his first act as Premier will be to take Ontario out of the carbon capand-trade system saving Ontarians 4.3 cents a litre on gasoline. He is also planning a $30 million court fight to block the federal government from imposing carbon taxes in Ontario. The cap-and-trade system was implemented by outgoing Premier Kathleen Wynne; it imposed a ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions by specified industries. This clearly shows the pointlessness of any government passing ''good laws'', when they can be overturned by a new one. The only positive thing about the election is that 42 per cent of the electorate did not vote, presumably thinking it's a waste of time voting out one bunch who cannot ''deliver the goods'' in favour of another who can't either. This does not mean elections are in themselves a waste of time. The electorate comprising mainly working people could spend their time very usefully voting capitalism out altogether and running civiclization in entirely their own interests.
● Things are changing day after day concerning NAFTA with Trump,Trudeau and their counterparts getting their panties in a twist over its implications. All these guys are really saying is, ''I have to look after the interests of capitalism in my country, so screw you buddy if that conflicts with your plans.'' It certainly highlights the insanity and anarchy of capitalism. Imagine a world where there were no countries to squabble with each other, no trade, and where all could partake freely from the common store of wealth. Then you wouldn't have this nonsense. The funniest part of it is that critics of Socialism say, if established it would degenerate into chaos.
Socialist musings from Canada's past . . .
The Slave of the Farm (1914) By Alf Budden
Our work is plain before us, the masters hold their place because they hold political power, they are few, we are many, we must then join hands with our brothers of the factory, mill or mine and workers all, go to the ballot and grasp political power; Send our own men to parliament to rule as we shall dictate. The Socialist Party have this aim in view, not to dally with reform but to go straight to the goal and sweep the master class from power. Farm slaves, your case is desperate. The minutes are flashing past into hours, the hours into days, the days into years. The new form of society – Social ownership (not to be confounded with Government ownership), is ready to burst the cramping shell of the old. It awaits but the effort of a united working class. How long will you dally? Knowledge is power. Read, study, think and then act. For things will go from bad to worse until you have sense enough to call a halt. http://www.worldsocialism.org/canada/slave.of.the.farm.htm
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 . . .)
1919 Winnipeg Strike Trials – visit
http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/books/notabletrials.pdf
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
– 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 toDialectics.
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.
And repeated links to an organisation mostly comprised of individuals who were expelled from the SPGB for persistent undemocratic behaviour is a thorn in the side for some of us.
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