Towards Working Class Environmentalism

 In response to CPC CENTENARY: THE STRUGGLE FOR WORKING-CLASS ENVIRONMENTALISM

Clearly, the separation between working class economic realties and hyper-left environmental radicalism can never be bridged.  No twisting and turning by the Party can ever reconcile the two.  The Party works consciously in the selfless service of workers to arm them in their historic role to command the heights of the nation.  The hyper-left provides theatre, diversion and confusion within workers’ ranks in the vain hope that they will retain positions of privilege within the bourgeoisie.

The only solution to this dilemma is the defeat of capitalism and its replacement with the dictatorship of the proletariat.  In other words, workers must seize power and use all the resources of the nation to consolidate power in the defence of the revolution and our class interests.  Anything short of this is left opportunism.  The struggle against imperialism is precisely the struggle to win and defend socialism in Canada.

Engels also wrote in “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”;

“…Every form of society and government then existing, every old traditional notion, was flung into the lumber-room as irrational; the world had hitherto allowed itself to be led solely by prejudices; everything in the past deserved only pity and contempt. Now, for the first time, appeared the light of day, the kingdom of reason; henceforth superstition, injustice, privilege, oppression, were to be superseded by eternal truth, eternal Right, equality based on Nature and the inalienable rights of man.

We know today that this kingdom of reason was nothing more than the idealized kingdom of the bourgeoisie; that this eternal Right found its realization in bourgeois justice; that this equality reduced itself to bourgeois equality before the law; that bourgeois property was proclaimed as one of the essential rights of man; and that the government of reason, the Contrat Social of Rousseau, came into being, and only could come into being, as a democratic bourgeois republic. The great thinkers of the 18th century could, no more than their predecessors, go beyond the limits imposed upon them by their epoch.”

Party policy built on “environmentalism” as the central issue cannot be viewed as serious or partisan working-class politics.  Such subordination to left radicalism is an abandonment class politics and the real needs of workers into a world of make believe.  It places at the core of workers’ struggles for better living conditions in “the idealized kingdom of the bourgeoisie”.

The Party’s early policies of “environmental sovereignty”, such as an east-west power grid, always recognized the historic role of the working class in the development of the country.  These policies viewed development and expansion on the basis of an independent nation and the struggle for its most important sections of the economy to be subordinated first and foremost in the service of workers’ needs.  Party policies never voluntarily ceded whole sections of the economy to “social activism”.

In fact, Tim Buck clearly articulated the leading position of the working class and the role of communists and “progressive forces” in the struggle for an independent Canada;

“…The battle for unity and class consciousness is the essence of the historical development of the working class. Class consciousness and united action are the keys to working-class leadership of the nation.

“…All the possibilities inherent within the profit system have been developed; it has become now a barrier to continued Canadian development on a rising level to the full capacity of our abundantly endowed country and our productive people. Through its inherent contradictions which are now acute, the profit system leads to economic crisis and imperialist war. For the working class the only permanent solution of these contradictions is through the struggle to raise themselves up from the position of an oppressed and exploited class to the position of the ruling class, and the abolition of the profit system.

“…Canadians will achieve socialism by their own path, which will be determined by the traditions and the then prevailing institutions and class relationships in Canada. It is quite evident, however, that the socialist transformation of our country can be achieved only if the working class and its allies gain real political power. To establish socialism, the state must become an instrument in the hands of the democratic people united around and led by the working class. It must be an instrument of the people for the organization, direction and defence of the new socialist society, instead of, as it is now, the instrument by which the capitalist class maintains its heartless exploitation of the masses of the people and its ruthless suppression of their democratic aspirations.” Tim Buck - Thirty Years – 1922-1952, The Story of the Communist Movement in Canada, Chapter 19: We Fight for Canada!

Early on the Party recognized that pollution (the term used during that period) caused by capitalist industrial production posed a grave threat to workers’ health and happiness.  The Party understood that industry in the possession of the capitalist class posed the central risk to workers’ health and working conditions.  These policies clearly reflected that understanding.

However, the Party did not place the struggle to reduce pollution above the general struggle to control the means of production and exploit the resources of the nation in the interests of workers.  The program of the Party was, and needs to be again, for the struggle to an independent Canada.  In contemporary terminology, “environmentalism” was viewed as a plank in the struggle and not the struggle in and of itself.  The struggle for socialism carries with it the struggle for better stewardship of resources and nature.  The fight for and independent socialist Canada is never subordinated to the struggle for the environment.

One may argue that the conditions have changed.  That the risk to the “planet’s” survival is so great, so urgent because of this new “existential” threat, that all forces must unite and “pull together”.  These theories are similar to the those of “super imperialism” and the new “intersectional” theories that place women’s, First Nations’ and marginalized peoples of colour, etc. as struggles that can be solved within the context of capitalism.  They place the burden of “social justice” on the individual and absolve capitalism and its overarching and singular determining role in the environmental crisis.

This confusion, this separation of the environmental crisis facing workers from the class struggle, as viewing “the environment as a stand-alone issue” leads to all manners of unscientific rational and abandonment of the development of the nation as the basis for solving the crucial issues of the working class– including the environmental crisis.

It is clearly evident that the Party remains a prisoner of the left radicalism, entombed in the idea of building a “people coalition” above the independent struggle of workers as the leading voice.  Defining the environment as a “stand-alone issue” leads to public admissions of the Party’s subordination to left radicalism and theories of “green socialism”.  It leads to statements such as;

“…the lack of discussion about the environment as a stand-alone issue was conspicuous, particularly at a time when public opinion (especially among progressives) was increasingly aroused by issues of environmental degradation.” Dave McKee, CPC CENTENARY: THE STRUGGLE FOR WORKING-CLASS ENVIRONMENTALISM, April 30, 2021.

Viewed from a class perspective one would need to conclude that “public opinion (especially among progressives)” should form the basis of Party policy and class struggle.  No where does the author conclude party policy should be formed from the demands and interests of wage workers who toil in those industries identified as environmental offenders.

The fact that “progressives” are not defined and is a non-Marxist unscientific term that dismisses the leading role of the working class and obfuscates the class struggle into an above class issue of “everyone is in this together” bourgeoise nonsense.  It abandons the wage workers in resource and energy industries to the radical populism of the reactionary right. 

So is the dilemma that Alberta workers are faced with in an out-of-control pandemic where they are forced to work in unsafe conditions and the right has exploited the energy sector workers for their anti-working class causes to the point where energy sector workers are demonized and turned into caricatures of dumb, racist and unkempt.

The author then concludes, as if to reinforce, the above that;

“…these positions were largely reiterations of social movement demands, rather than a set of policies reflecting a Marxist analysis of the environmental crisis. There remained the need to develop working-class environmental policies and use those to engage the environmental movement to give stronger and more radical (anti-monopoly and anti-imperialist) shape to struggles which were increasing in their scope and intensity.”

Again, the Party clearly seeks guidance to “develop working class policies” through engagement of the “environmental movement” without defining who that is, workers who work in the industry are not to be consulted.  By placing in parenthesis “anti-monopoly and anti-imperialist” the author seeks to convince the reader that there is an inherent anti-monopoly character to environmentalism and that radicalism is analogous to working class struggle.  Such are the theories that form in the universities, left radical think tanks and popularized by the “left” social media darlings and lecture circuit apparatchiks.

There is an infinite pool of information that shows that investment capital is moving into “green” technologies.  Billions of dollars are being shifted into new technologies.  These industries are dominated by the same investment houses and capitalists that have dominated the old carbon intensive economies.

To conclude that environmentalism is anti-monopoly is greenwashing the class struggle into cheerleaders for this or that “green” technology.  Workers extracting copper, rare earth metals, those workers that are assembling the planet saving EV’s remain exploited by the same class that were, and continue to exploit, workers in the carbon intensive industries.  It should come as no surprise that the shift to EV’s is met with a $26/hr. wage at GM Oshawa.  But we should be thankful that the existential threat is well under control by concerned corporate citizens.

Similarly, environmentalism is not inherently anti-imperialist in nature.  One only has to look at Unifor’s call to the federal government to conclude the F35 Pratt & Whitney engine contract.  While Unifor calls to “[r]einforce the commitment to the Industrial Technological Benefits Program through the Joint Strike Fighter Capability Project and expand the program to additional military purchases when a Canadian made option is not available” in the same document it calls to “[e]xpedite the details of the new Strategic Innovation Fund – Net Zero Accelerator with specific targets for reducing aerospace related emissions in both commercial and defence sub sectors.”  Canada can now have a green imperialist war.

Then the author makes the claim that the task to identify and develop a working-class environmental policy began in the mid-nineties with the Party’s two “scientific observations”!  While making this claim the author takes a swipe at the Soviet Union and the socialist system placing it on even ground with capitalism;

“The first was based on the experience of environmental degradation in the Soviet Union and other socialist states.”

Clearly the author has not studied the history of Soviet environmentalism, the development and relations of between imperialist states and socialist states during that period nor the legacy of the destruction of the USSR by fascist Germany during the Second World War where the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the losses and made heroic strides in returning its economy to the service of workers.

Such omissions cannot be taken as “scientific” or as a serious contribution to the class struggle.  In fact, such statements only serve to ingratiate the Party with the eco-socialist crowd.  The Soviet Union was the bulwark of the anti-imperialist struggle and lead a movement along with the socialist states that provided the main defence against US-NATO drive to nuclear war and the great environmental calamity of all – nuclear winter and the destruction humankind.

The Soviet Union, while suffering as all nations did in not fully understanding the effects of certain industrial processes and chemicals on the environment, was the global leader in the management, scientific study and technical implementations of environmental stewardship.  The Soviet Union was starved of scientific cooperation with leading capitalist nations but none the less was on the path to solving these issues.  To suggest otherwise is tawdry journalism.

The Soviet Union fought an asymmetrical war that eroded its socialist character and allowed anti-revolutionary theories to take root.  The USSR confronted economic and scientific blockades, it was excluded from trading with imperialist nations on even terms, it was confronted with massive military buildups on its borders, as well as confronting the most outrageous claims of its social system.  Through all of this the Soviet Union and the socialist block of states were subjected to external anti-communist rhetoric in the labour and “progress” left movements in the capitalist nations.

It is evident by the statement above that the Party’s understanding and “critique” of socialism and the Soviet Union during that period is no different then the cheap reactionary Sinophobia of the current period.  Kimbal Cariou is cited by the author, without ever pointing to the source, as observing;

“Industrial and other forms of economic activity cannot expand indefinitely without endangering the biosphere in which we live, and exhausting our finite supply of resources … We need to develop a concept of socialism which is not based on an ever-increasing accumulation of material goods.”

Cariou suggests that the Soviet people should not have been entitled to the development of their country in the manner that they deem beneficial.  Cariou suggests that the Soviet people should not have been entitled to the same standard of living, or aspire to the same quality of life, as capitalist nations, who by the way received the bulk of their privileges on the backs of the exploited workers of the world and the destruction of socialism.  It says very plainly, “If only the Soviet Union would have listened to us Canadian communists, they would have got it right”.  This hubris, this above class attitude remains a fundamental weakness of the Canadian Communist Party leadership which leads to left opportunism and an abandonment of independent struggle.  It leads to radical environmentalism.

It also leads to confusion and imprecise language within the development of the Party’s environmental policies such as the following statement;

“…the Party program that was updated in 2001 specifically identified that resolving the tension between workers’ economic demands and the need to protect the environment was a key area of work to advance the revolutionary struggle”

Clearly the Party’s statement suggests resolving the “tension” of “workers’ economic demands” is the main contradiction between the protection of the environment and the advancement of revolutionary struggle. 

Workers’ economic demands have nothing to do with the degradation of the environment.  It is solely the affects of monopoly capital on the environment as it seeks to extract more profit though the intensification of industrial practices, abrogation of responsibility of basic environmental standards and regulations (won by workers through great effort) and from the unpaid labour time of workers.

To get out of this dichotomy the Party makes the statement;

“…resource-based unions, have bought into the corporate agenda that pits environmental protection against employment.”

Again, the failure “protect the environment” is placed at the feet of workers for not recognizing “that the protection of the environment is in the long-term interests of sustainable employment”.  These “errors” committed by workers “buying in to the corporate agenda” and not defending the environment is a source of befuddlement for the radical left.

How can workers choose their immediate needs of employment to pay for rent, food, clothing, education and medical concerns over the greater existential treat to the planet?  These radical left elements argue that workers economic interests should be put aside for the greater the good.  There is collateral damage and that they should receive “equal work in other less polluting industry with no loss in take home pay.”

What worker would voluntarily give up employment?  These theories are the theories of ideologues who are far removed from the working class.  Ask all of the Suncor workers to go on strike to “shut down the Tar Sands”.  What do you think the answer would be?

Further twisting in attempt to resolve this dilemma the Party suggests that;

“…the greater scale of capitalist exploitation and crises means that environmental concerns are now inescapably linked to working-class living conditions…”.

The conditions of the working class are not linked to “environmental concerns”.  This is a nonsense statement that means absolutely nothing.  The conditions of the working class are the result of monopoly capital’s drive to halt the falling rate of profit at the expense of workers wages, intensification of industrial practices and privatization of public programs and institutions, of which the environment is a part.  The correct formulation would be, “capitalist exploitation results in deteriorating living conditions of the working class”.

Placed in the service of workers all the resources of the country would be managed in accordance with the needs of workers.  This will result in the best management practices of all resources and with the characteristics and needs of Canadian labour.

The claim that the Party’s 2009 “People Energy Plan” has resolved these contradictions by recognizing the “greatly changed economic and environmental conditions”.  The author concludes that;

“Perhaps the most notable element of the People’s Energy Plan was its call for a deliberate economic transition away from fossil fuel use. This includes a moratorium on development of tar sands and shale gas operations and the progressive closure of existing ones, opposition to oil and pipelines, an end to coal-fired and a massive program to ensure a just economic and social transition for affected workers and communities.”

 Again, the statement without context requires the reader to assume that such a program can be implemented within the context of current productive relationships and that all the resources of the country will not be needed in such a “massive program”.  This statement clearly suggests that the author does not fully understand the unbreakable relationship between human labour and the transformation of the environment.  On the basis of exploitation this relationship remains antagonistic, uneven and unresolvable.

Placing a moratorium on this or that resource will not change the relationship between capital and labour.  There is already an abundance of evidence that suggests the transition to less carbon intensive forms of energy production are having unintended consequences.  That the transition to net-zero solutions and the transfers of capital into those industries are leaving huge sections of workers abandoned and without employment, or in more precarious and less stable industries.

Workers free of the burdens of exploitative capital will transform all existing and future productive relationships into sole domain of labour.  This is to say that the scientific and creative capacity of labour will be employed to solve the most seemingly difficult tasks.

Clearly the author has either overlooked or failed to mention that the Party’s policy towards Alberta and Saskatchewan’s oil sands was not the “progressive closure” of existing facilities but, according to the 2015 election platform of the Communist Party of Canada; on the one hand “Adopt a People’s Energy Plan, including public ownership and democratic control of all energy and natural resource extraction, production and distribution” and on the other, “Freeze and reduce energy exports, block new development of the Alberta tar sands, and close these operations within five years…, no to the Enbridge, Kinder Morgan, Keystone XL, Line 9 and Energy East pipelines, and to oil and gas exploration and shipping on the west coast, put a moratorium on the exploration and development of shale gas resources”.

Along with the Party’s call for a moratorium on nuclear power and their opposition to Site C one is left scratching their head understand how the Party plans to implement their “Keep Industrial Jobs in Canada” call.  The Party calls to, “end the sell-out of manufacturing and secondary industry and strengthen the value-added manufacturing sector, expand employment in industry by nationalizing the steel and auto industries, building a Canadian car, and expanding rapid transit production, promote stronger machine tool, ship-building, agricultural implement and household appliance industries”.

Such a policies would mean economic ruin for tens of thousands of workers and destroy whole communities.  These are similar theories to those advocated by Jim Stanford at the Centre of Future Work.  The difference is that Stanford has placed a more serious and science based effort in understanding the real conditions of the resource industries and workers tied to those industries.

The confusion within the ranks of the Communist Party of Canada leadership in respect to the environment, industrial policies, and an independent and sovereign Canada can not be resolved by engaging in left radicalism.

Workers will resolve all these issues.  The impediment to these issues is not “human activity” it is the exploitation of workers by monopoly capital.  There is enough capital and human labour power to resolve all these contradictions.  However, the working class will need to employ all the resources at our disposal.

Socialism in Canada can not materialize without bitter struggle.  Socialism will not be formed without flaws.  The working class faces all forms of hostility from within and without.  Suggesting that Canada should voluntarily give up any resources in that struggle toward socialism is not understanding the nature of the struggle and the real material conditions present in the struggle.

All struggles toward socialism take on the characteristics and historical conditions present at that time with in the capital and labour.  All conditions are prepared by capitalism for the working class to assume power.  It is this power relation that will determine the course of economic development of the nation.

The historical conditions in Canada are characterized by its proximity to the world’s leading imperialist power the United States.  The struggle to break the Canadian working class from US monopoly capital can only be on the basis of independent economic development.  That will require all the tools and resources that the nation can muster and placed in the hands of the leading and most advanced sections of the working class at that given historical period to bring about such change.  It will not occur by the whimsy of this or that left radical theory.

To place the Party on the correct course toward the development of a correct working class national energy, environment and industrial development program the Party would be better served by speaking directly with workers who toil in these industries and abandon the theories of left radical intellectual eco-socialist university crowd. 

Our Fight for Independent National Policies is Our Fight for Peace

Part 2: An Independent Nation of Peace or Belligerent Prop of US Imperialism

Does Canada as a nation chart an independent international course of peace, progress and cooperation with other non-aligned and emerging states or remain entrenched in the monopoly capital interests of G7 states dominated by US imperialism supplying a growing share of our raw natural resources primarily to US value-added industries supporting US policies of war and hegemony?

The answer to this question placed within the context of contemporary world affairs situates Canada either as a nation of progress or a nation of reaction. It places the Canadian people either in solidarity with the overwhelming majority of the world’s people who work for wages and in their majority reject neo-colonial and imperialist policies or within the camp of a diminishing privileged sector of finance, energy and military capital - a belligerent class of wealth and privilege who perpetrate wars, dominance and occupation on the peoples of the world. The outcome of this question makes Canadian workers either the masters of their own destiny or complicit in imperialist wars of conquest and occupation. There can be no middle ground.

The fight for control over the commanding heights of the national economy determining the political and economic direction Canada pursues – either peace and progress, or war and reaction – is ultimately the struggle between labour and capital. It is the struggle for national policies which serve the interests of working people who must rely on wages or policies that serve a small and ever contracting parasitical class of wealth and privilege who rely on the unpaid labour time of workers in one form or another. There is no middle course.

There can be no reconciliation, no alignment, nor common purpose between the interests of labour and capital. There can be no basis for national policies that search for “equitable” distribution and sharing of the resources of the nation other than those which seek to fully subordinate the interests of finance and monopoly capital to those of the labouring people of Canada. This is the only basis upon which the Canadian people can fulfil the vast potential of the nation. It is the only path to be a leader in the contribution toward peace and progress in the world, and which provides all the peoples of Canada the opportunity to live a life free of economic hardship and worry. Canada has that potential and more.

Our Fight for Independent National Policies is Our Fight for Peace

Part 1: Yes to Peace - No to NATO

“Economic planning operated in a capitalist country falls far short of the possibilities of planning under socialism when the working people have political power but, even with the limitations of private ownership, it can be used to produce results for the people until they can establish their political supremacy”

Tim Buck – Put Monopoly Under Control, Progress Publishers, Toronto, 1964, pp 25

For the Canadian people who in their majority are dependent on wages, an expanding economy to provide jobs, income and social and retirement security is vital. A growing economy means jobs and income – it means guarantees for the future of working families. Regional, national and foreign policies of governments are central to that aim. Government policies can benefit workers or exclude them from the productive capacity of the nation, providing benefits exclusively to the narrow profit motive.

The primary factors in determining the level of national income and which sectors of the Canadian economy contribute to and benefit from that goal is the national policy of the nation. Determining the direction, content and whose interests government policies serve, in Canada, is a fight for control over our nation, to place all national resources and its full productive capacity in the service of the Canadian people first.

The importance of this task confronts all working Canadians. The task is of first rate importance, one which will compel the nation to choose a course of independent action or to remain locked into the economic imperialist policies of US monopoly capital.

Recovery For Whom?

From the Smoke Pit returns from a long absence – work gets in the way of writing.

The economy has not improved for Canadian workers despite all the claims of Harper and his speech writers at the Frazer Institute. It is getting worse for Canadian workers where over 1.5 million remain unemployed, wages, benefits and pensions all under attack and 10,000’s others exhausting their EI.

The Globe and Mail reported today in an article entitled “Job seekers faced with wary employers” that “economists are worried” that the “recovery” will be a jobless one. The article says that “It will take at least another year, and maybe two, to recover all of the 280,000 lost jobs in the recession”. The hatchet man Stockwell Day began his efforts to “trim the fat” in the public service by axing 285 GIC (Government in Council) positions.

Meanwhile bank profits are approaching pre-depression levels with the Scotia Bank reporting today that it will post 1st quarter profits of $988 million, up 17% from the year earlier. The Royal Bank reported a 35% increase in 1st quarter profits for 2010 to $1.5 billion. According to the Globe and Mail that is “bank's second-highest quarterly profit ever”. CIBC profits rose from $147 million a year ago to $652 million in the 1st quarter of 2010. BMO posted a $657 million profit, up $225 million from a year earlier. TD Bank profit doubled from a year earlier to $1.3 billion – a record performance.

Canadian families are facing household mortgage debt that is at an all-time high. February 16, 2010 the Globe and Mail reported in an article entitled “Household mortgage debt hits record”, that Vanier Institute of the Family said “debt is the highest level since the annual study began 11 years ago”. The report says that 2/3 of people 18-34 would be “squeezed” if their pay cheque is delayed by one week. The Bank of Canada reported that mortgages in arrears have risen to a 7 year high.

CIBC Economist Benjamin Tal says that, “Consumer bankruptcies have risen significantly over the past year, and they will continue to rise. Clearly, some people are in over their heads, and more will get into trouble when interest rates rise.” According to the January RBC Consumer outlook survey 58% of Canadians are worried about their debt loads. The chartered banks hold $336 billion of the debt up from $292 billion are year earlier.

Anyone who thinks can see that this spells disaster for Canadian workers. In the Federal Budget speech Flaherty boasted, “Our government took immediate action to ensure Canadian banks could keep lending…Because of prudent government regulation, none of our banks failed. None of them required a bailout from taxpayers, unlike their competitors in other countries.”

The Recession is Officially Over

The Bank of Canada has announced that the recession is officially over. Flaherty is a glow with the “sound fundamentals” of the Canadian financial system. Markets are up. Housing starts and transactions are better than first predicted. Canada is poised to emerge ahead of all other major industrial nations. Or so goes the story.

Stats Canada announced today that unemployment is up significantly and the trend does not appear to be changing. The Daily said:

“In May, 778,700 people received regular Employment Insurance (EI) benefits, up 65,600, or 9.2%, from a month earlier, with Alberta and Ontario showing the fastest rates of increase. This rise followed an increase of 3.7% in April.”

Ontario and Alberta are the hardest hit provinces. Since October 2008 EI beneficiaries in Alberta has increased by over 200%! Ontario clocks in at just under 100% increase. Youth unemployment is staggering in the under 25 year demographic with +94% increase.

The official number “eligible” to receive EI benefits is 778,700. Those that are not receiving benefits but cannot find work are not included in the numbers, or those that have exhausted their benefits remain outside of “official” statistics.

Well it seems that the banks and finance speculators are doing alright. For the millions of workers without income the story is different. Hardship still dominates workers’ lives and will remain the central feature for workers as long as the capitalist system of exploitation remains.

Harper, Flaherty, Clements and MacKay and the rest of the rightwing think-tanks, academics and pundits are lying to Canadians. They need to be removed from power at the first opportunity. And those that say that the Liberals are just as bad will get no argument from this writer, however Harper is in power now, we will deal with Igantieff and his ilk when that is required.

Canadian Workers Labour 5 Years for Free!

View the whole article (tables and graphs) at:
http://www.focusonsocialism.ca/random.asp?ID=250

Striking CUPE public sector workers in Ontario are revealing the rapacious nature of capitalism better than any number of ‘exposures’, op-eds and news articles by the academic ‘left’ press. Not only are the courageous CUPE workers fighting for immediate gains against a backdrop of callous and brazen hostility, aimed a breaking the militant union, by the federal, provincial and municipal governments, a reactionary petty bourgeoisie and a venomous corporate media, they are also revealing the economic pillaging of workers wages, the squandering of Canadian productive capacity by corporate Canada and the true malicious nature of the Canadian ruling class towards workers.

Corporate media hacks are hyperventilating trying to out do each other for the most intimidating and argumentative news item. Attempts to ingratiate themselves with their corporate bosses are unwittingly bringing to light concealed and unnoticed information within the seedy backroom world of business council policy makers. Material and data that may otherwise remain obscured from the scrutiny of workers’ eyes is being publicized in a shrouded, but rather dramatic, fashion.

The nature of Canadian imperialism is being revealed not so much in the very evident and real attacks on the CUPE workers, and organized labour in general, by the hired media hack mercenaries of the Miller Toronto municipal council, it is also shown in the anxiety in the economic theoreticians of the Canadian ruling class. The Financial Post (FP) on June 23, 2009 published an article[1] that illustrated the alarm felt in the leading circles of corporate policy makers.

In an unwitting attempt to make a case and “justify” the need to break organized labour and to provide evidence why the Canadian economy is in shambles, the Financial Post in their apparent hyper anxious state does the opposite. The editors at the “Post” in reality expose the real cause of the crisis – capitalism and the irresolvable contradiction between social production and private accumulation. If Harper wasn’t so arrogant and vacuous he would have summoned the editors to the PMO and sternly reprimanded them for their careless “leak”.

Citing the growing strike activity by “public sector” workers, the Financial Post, tries to paint a picture that the “inflexibility” of unions fighting to hold onto “perks” and “fringe benefits” has questioned the “role” and “future” of unions in Canada.

Making a fallacious connection between Canadian labour productivity, workers’ “protected” rights, and wages “linked” to productivity, the FP said, “At a time when workers rights are protected by law and wage increases are generally linked to productivity, competitiveness and the success of the company, the economic downturn has kicked up a storm of dust around the role of unions and their future.”

Thinking workers would howl in jest at such a conclusion if it were not for the sinister undertones in the Financial Post’s remarks. Unions would smirk, roll eyes and shake their heads in collective unison if it were not for the real concessions forcefully extracted from collective bargaining agreements by a vindictive government-corporate coalition. Taken in light of the very real attacks and worsening social and economic conditions of Canadian workers as they, yet again, endure another depression, the FP’s malevolent and deceptive commentary can only be viewed as part of the general coordinated attack on Canadian workers’ living standards by monopoly capital.

The Financial Post attempts to make a case for breaking the “unwilling unions” and defending “flexible” non-union companies. Referring to economist Dale Orr of Global Insight[2], who bemoans that falling trade barriers, “open” and global markets make it more difficult for non-union companies to compete for labour. As the FP paraphrased, “But while a non-unionized company may have greater control over wages, Mr. Orr said this did not necessarily result in lower pay.”

So what is buried in all of this that the striking CUPE workers are exposing? The CUPE workers have agitated the Canadian ruling class to such an extent that the editors of the FP were compelled to counter with the same old tired union bashing trash.

The June 23 Financial Post article leads astute readers to the heart of the matter by quoting a December 2008 Centre of the Study of Living Standards (CSLS) report[3]. Concluding from the CSLS report that, “unions once created value for workers in a protected economy[4] by extracting a share of a company's excess profits for workers” the FP quoting Don Drummond, the senior vice president and chief economist at TD Securities as saying that this will mean that governments will begin to outsource more jobs in an effort to “cut expenses”. CUPE is on the frontline of that fight.

Quoting the CSLS report, the Financial Post asserts, “Unions must therefore accept market conditions or face plant closure. In the longer term, the unwillingness of unions to accept such conditions may potentially lead unionized firms to bankruptcy, while non-unionized competitors increase their market share.”

So then this is nothing more than the same old union tired bashing tirade that the Financial Post, Toronto Star and Globe and Mail regularly engage in. Well to a point. If one is to read and study the CSLS report in more detail a completely different picture emerges. It is a delineation that the Canadian ruling class is most alarmed by. But at the same time monopoly capital is fully engaged and most busily studying the effects and phenomenon described in the CSLS report. That question that is in actual fact posed in the FP anti-union attack is; how can monopoly capital extract more unpaid labour time form Canadian workers to prop up falling rates of profit?

The CSLS not only attempts to assist corporate Canada resolve that obstacle to their “profit dilemma”, they also reveal the extent to which the Canadian capitalist class has brutally exploited Canadian workers over the last 25 years and how they plan to continue to do so.

Piecing together statistics from the CSLS report, Stats Canada and other sources a picture begins to emerge of the depths of wage larceny and the far reaching detrimental consequences on the Canadian economy of decades of shameless labour exploitation by the Canadian ruling class.
The authors of the report in the Abstract openly state the real purpose of the study and reveal the magnitude and mechanisms on which Canadian and United States corporate profits are based. Profits are based solely on the unpaid labour time of Canadian workers. The report reveals the scandalous, immoral and criminal extent to which workers are exploited by the Canadian ruling class for its profits.

The CSLS report Abstract says, “The most direct mechanism by which labour productivity affects living standards is through real wages, that is, wages adjusted to reflect the cost of living. Between 1980 and 2005, the median real earnings of Canadians workers stagnated, while labour productivity rose 37 per cent. This report analyzes the reasons for this situation.” The authors’ suggestion that wages have “stagnated” is a gross understatement.

abour productivity[5] is a favourite topic of discussion amongst bourgeois academia. Hundreds of studies, reports and statistics all attempt to prove that Canadian workers are not productive and that they “lag” many other of the major industrial powers in this regard. Such talk is erroneous. If one is to believe this group of enlightened bourgeois labour economists all that is necessary to increase “lagging productivity” is to do away with unions.

What perplexes the Canadian ruling class and the CSLS authors’ the most is the central question posed and one that has baffled bourgeois economists for centuries; “why don’t workers work harder?” Taken from a Marxist or working class point of view the answer to the question is obvious – workers understand that there is nothing in it for them to work harder, except an early grave.

When viewed from a ruling class point of view the answer to the question becomes more frustrating and is met with a tirade of anti-worker theories that range from being “lazy” to being “uneducated” and “unmotivated”. All of these lead into the same old marsh of idealism and harsher “terms of trade”.

It is plain that the Center for the Study of Living Standards[6] falls into the later category. Founded in 1995 by former Canadian Deputy Minister of Finance, Dr. Ian Stewart, the main objectives of the “independent” CSLS are to:

• contribute to a better understanding of trends in living standards and factors determining trends through research;
• contribute to public debate on living standards by developing and advocating specific policies through expert consensus.

Such lofty goals and noble ideals can only be founded on the highest of principles and moral standing. Therefore to achieve these honourable aims the CSLS is funded by a who’s who of corporate think-tanks, foundations and government agencies which include the Conference Board of Canada, the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Treasury Board to name just a few. Don Drummond TD economist also holds a prominent spot on the board.

The CSLS report intended for policy makers among the ruling elite also poses fundamental and basic questions for the working class. Firstly by defining what labour real wages are and what labour productivity is, in lexicon of bourgeois economic theory, the report poses the question;

“Economic theory holds that at the aggregate level the growth of real wages are determined by labour productivity growth, a relationship mediated by the labour’s share of output and labour’s terms of trade (the price of output relative to the price of goods that workers consume). Neither increases in the labour share nor labour’s terms of trade are likely to be a sustainable way of raising real wages because they fluctuate within fairly narrow bands. Only labour productivity growth can raise living standards in the long run. If short- and medium-term changes in the labour share or labour’s terms of trade mean that Canadians are not benefitting from higher labour productivity in the form of higher real wages, then why should they support policies to increase labour productivity growth?”

A good question indeed!

Secondly, and most vexing to the economists, the report outlines the true disparity and depths to which workers are being fleeced by the ruling class. Attempting to answer the question leads to only one solution for the bourgeoisie – work workers harder, longer! The report goes on to pose the following and most stunning exposition for all labour leaders, activists and progressive to study:

“The release of data from the 2006 Census has sparked debate over the causes and consequences of the finding that median earnings of individuals working full time on a full-year basis barely increased between 1980 and 2005. Adjusting for inflation, annual earnings increased from $41,348 to $41,401 (in 2005 constant dollars), a mere $53 over 25 years. Over the same time period, labour productivity in Canada rose 37.4 per cent. If median real earnings had grown at the same rate as labour productivity, the median Canadian full-time full-year worker would have earned $56,826 in 2005, considerably more than the actual $41,401. These facts do raise an interesting and important question that this report seeks to answer: what accounts for the divergence between the growth of labour productivity and the growth of real wages?”

Indeed! What does account for $53 (0.13%) in real wage increases over 25 years while productivity increased by 37%? Canadian workers have, on average, been swindled out of $8,946 per year! Taken another way, over $268,000 in their lifetime! So what is causing this? It is a very intriguing question that the report fails to answer. Even the authors admit in the report’s conclusions that, “In some sense, this report raises more questions than answers.” What!? A study supported and funded by some of the biggest “experts” in the field of Canadian economics and they can’t answer the question. Or maybe they don’t want to! [7]


The final statement in the report says, “If most Canadians are not seeing the benefits of labour productivity growth in the form of higher real wages, why should they support policies favouring productivity growth?”

Again the bourgeois economists cannot (or refuse to) answer why Canadian workers have not “shared” in the “wealth creation” and return full circle to the initial question posed in the report’s opening paragraph, answering absolutely nothing in the process except to resolve to return to the question at some later day and try again.

It is much the same as the saying that questions the probability of a million moneys pecking away at a million typewriters infinitely…eventually one of them writes a novel. Only we don’t have to wait until our bourgeois economic cousins descend from the trees and begin the slow arduous journey to standing erect and making fire. Marx has answered that question long ago. The real irony in the report is how well they prove Marx. It is remarkable what our economic simian cousins can unwittingly accomplish for the service of workers when given enough typewriters.

The key findings of the report are fully stated in the first paragraph of the executive summary and which any worker with grade school math can figure out after a life time of calculating and studying the miserable pittance of paycheques that are doled out after a week’s work. Workers can answer why! Why can’t the economists?

Well now let’s get to the meat of the matter. The authors’ key findings are summarized as follows.

From 1980 to 2005 annual earnings increased from $41,348 to $41,401, a mere $53 over 25 years. Over the same time period, labour productivity in Canada rose 37.4 per cent. That is all that is needed. With access to some basics statistics from the internet of Canadian GDP and population over the same period a more complete picture can be sketched out to the extent that Canada is being pillaged, ransacked and shipped out.

Our fiscal primates help out a little, however, when they do the productivity calculation for us and arrive at saying; “If median real earnings had grown at the same rate as labour productivity, the median Canadian full-time full-year worker would have earned $56,826 in 2005, considerably more than the actual $41,401.” Actually it is $15,425 more! In other words 1.37 X $41,401 equals $56,826. Projecting that number to 2009, using the same ratios, that number jumps again by another $2,468 per year.

Over the 25 year period that the study examined, real wages increased a total of $53. That averages out to be less then the cost for a 2 litre carton of milk per year at $2.12. If workers would have received the full benefit of the productivity gains over the same period it would have meant $619.12 per year, or a 29,000% increase! And that is in year 1 of the 25 year period.
Taking productivity into consideration, if we start in 1980 with productivity as 1, then productivity in 2005 would be 1.37. Average annual productivity increases would be just under 1.5% at 0.0148 per year over the 25 year period. Carrying that forward to 2009, productivity would equal 1.429.

The population of Canada grew 9,177,722 to 33,694,000[8] over 25 years from 1980. In 2009 the number of Canadians that worked for salaries and wages was over 18 million or just over 54% of the total population.[9] In 1980 the total Canadian labour force was 11,879,400 for workers 15 years and older. In 2009 the size of the labour force was over 18 million workers.[10] The size of the working class grew by 55% in 25 years! Over the same period of time the total Canadian population grew by 37%. Utilizing the total number of workers from the working class that are employed and applying that number for each year, on average, 51% of the Canadian population works for wages or salaries. (Table 1)

Applying the average lost wage of $619.12 per year per worker and adding it to each previous year’s last wage (and projecting it forward for 2006-2009 incl.) results in the total estimated wage that a worker should have received in 2005, which was calculated by the CSLS economists at just under $57,000. (Table 2)

Taking the product of each year’s lost wages and multiplying by the total population we arrive at the total value of unpaid wages for each year of the 25 year period. Summing the total unpaid wages by all wage earners in Canada from 1980 to 2009 we arrive at $3,973,026,443,300.00! Or in other words over $4 trillion! (Table 3)

Finally, taking the total Canadian GDP for each year we can calculate how much of each was spent by Canadian workers working for free. If the lost wages that should have gone to the workers were never paid, but the values created, the actual material goods, and services are realized in GDP as they were appropriated by the bosses and sold as profit.

Dividing the total lost wages for each year by the total GDP for that year we arrive at ratio of time working for wages that are not returned to the worker in wages. (Table 3) On average it results in .14 of each year is spent labouring free for the bosses. The total number of hours that a worker has worked for free over the 25 year period is 8,778 hours. Over 25 years it amounts to 4.2 years. But we don’t really believe our economist experts are really telling the full truth[11] so let’s just say - 5 years!!!

So the question that the CSLS economists pose; “what accounts for the divergence between real wages and productivity?” can now be answered – capitalism. It is due to the massive theft of workers’ wages - 5 years of unpaid labour time. Now that we know the answer our economist friends can get onto something more challenging - like how do Canadians get those unpaid wages back?

Notes
[1] Alia McMullen, “Unions face uncertain future in global economy”, Financial Post, June 23, 2009
[2] http://www.globalinsight.com/AnalystBio/AnalystBioDetail90.htm
[3] Sharpe, Arsenault, Peter, “The Relationship between Labour Productivity and Real Wage Growth in Canada and OECD Countries”, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, Research Report No. 2008-8, December, http://www.csls.ca/reports/csls2008-8.pdf
[4] “Protected economy” is another way of saying sovereign. Therefore if unions “once” created value for workers in a sovereign economy and are “unable” to do so now in a “competitive and deregulated world” the need for Canadian sovereignty becomes more urgent for Canadian workers. Or looking at it from the other way, selling-out resources and Canadian sovereignty to US and foreign monopoly capital or the highest bidder means greater profits for US finance speculators and investors and lower wages for Canadian workers.
[5] Labour productivity in the bourgeois economist lexicon really means higher rates of profits. Profits can only be realized through the unpaid labour time of workers. There is no other way to generate profits.
[6] http://www.csls.ca/about.asp
[7] If it is the former then they are not real “experts” and all the funding by big business is just wasted time and “taxpayers’ money”. If it is the later then they are barefaced liars and petty crooks (well maybe not as petty as we shall see). Either way in the final analysis they only serve the interests of monopoly capital and not workers. These are the lofty goals to which they aspire.
[8] Statistics Canada, Table 051-0001 - Estimates of population, by age group and sex for July 1, Canada, provinces and territories, annual (persons unless otherwise noted) (table), CANSIM (database), http://cansim2.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-win/cnsmcgi.exe?Lang=E&CNSM-Fi=CII/CII_1-eng.htm, (Accessed July 11, 2009)
[9] Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey, Relseased July 10, 2009, CANSIM table 282-0087, Labour force characteristics by age and sex – June, 2009, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/subjects-sujets/labour-travail/lfs-epa/lfs-epa-eng.pdf
[10] Statistics Canada. Table 282-0002 - Labour force survey estimates (LFS), by sex and detailed age group, annual (persons unless otherwise noted) (table), CANSIM, http://cansim2.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-win/cnsmcgi.exe?Lang=E&CNSM-Fi=CII/CII_1-eng.htm (Accessed July 11, 2009)
[11] Depending on which data set is used the numbers vary widely from 6 years down to 4.2 years. Therefore we will let the bourgeois economist prove us wrong!

The Ideological Struggle is a Fight for a Working Class World View

A war is being waged. Canadian workers are being punished in record numbers by monopoly capital for its callous policies of profit first, people second. As the spin-doctors for the capitalist press announce almost daily that the ‘recovery is just around the corner’ or the ‘end is in sight’ the reality for millions of Canadian workers and their families can be farther from the truth. Outrage is boiling over in Ontario where the brave CUPE municipal workers in Windsor and Toronto, resisting the combined efforts of business and government forces to break the union, are fighting to protect decades of hard won working class gains clearly demonstrate.

The class divisions within Canada are more evident then ever. While the majority of Canadians are dependent on wages to provide security for their families a shrinking section of the parasitical classes, holding the commanding heights of economic, political and ideological power, attempt to foment ruptures and turmoil within working class unity.

The thin veil of ‘equality’ is being violently stripped off the working class by the economic realities of the capitalist crisis to expose the real depths of class divides and the ideological and economic basis of these schisms. Newspaper editorial blogs deliberately sow confusion within unorganized and unemployed ‘private sector’ workers. News website reader comment sections are bursting with class confusion, bourgeois parroting and anti-worker hate mongering unwittingly among this section of the working class and maliciously by the ideological agents of business dogma that troll anonymously posting outlandish lies and assertions.

Business doctrine is spread liberally by monopoly capital’s bought-and-paid-for ideological think-tanks, academic stooges and hired management consultants, targeting the least class conscious sections of workers. The main objective of these attacks is to win public sentiment for the profit first policies of monopoly capital, divide organized labour into isolated factions and break unions into compliant and voluntary tools of monopoly capital policy.

Objectively, the only barrier between the open dictatorial rule of monopoly capital is organized labour. This is what the CUPE resistance is primarily about. What started as an ‘economic’ struggle is quickly exploding into a broader political struggle. The deepening antagonisms within the growing capitalist crisis are also revealing more clearly two world views – that of peace and progress which is upheld by labour, and that of reaction and violence which are expressed in the anti-union ideology of imperialism led by the minority Harper conservative government.

The municipal workers strike has also exposed the greatest weakness within organized labour – ideology. While the valiant efforts of 24,000 CUPE workers that walk picket lines is a testament to their outrage and courage, the struggle is hand cuffed because they are not armed with partisan working class theory – Marxism. The fight to infuse Marxist ideology into the labour movement is urgent. The forces of peace and socialism are called upon to make the ideological struggle the struggle of primary importance.