Workers Require Greater Understanding

Many changes have occurred since the last posting of FSP. The absence of commentary on this blog has been precipitated by the collapse in the Canadian economy and the curtailment of oil sands projects in Alberta. This has forced thousands of oil sands workers from all over the country to find alternate sources of income as indirect and direct labour is cut, idled or shifted into other areas.

Workers have been laid off, transferred into other jurisdictions or onto EI or “back on the books”. Thousands have gone back home to eastern Canada or in search of employment in other provinces. Temporary foreign workers have been sent back to their country of origin. Engineering houses have reduced staff, service and consultant contractors have had contracts terminated. Families are under severe economic pressures as the expansion of oil sands extraction and production has shifted into a phase of “wait and see”, consolidation and combine.

This is the situation that this commentator has had to confront which has been the cause of the absence of any commentary on this blog. The necessity for ongoing discussion, commentary and analysis from the perspective of energy sector workers is needed to an even greater degree than has been achieved to date. Rapidly changing conditions within in the energy sector as reflected in state-monopoly relations, the Canadian economy and Canada-US relations dictate that a more consistent and critical approach is applied to this task and with greater urgency.

Workers require greater understanding of the political and economic relations going on within the nation from a Marxist analysis. It is not good enough to comment on the situation in the energy sector without vetting it through close working class scrutiny based on Marxism.

This is to say, how do the rapid changes and the complex relations emerging within inter-monopoly and inter imperialist affairs affect the Canadian working class? What are the critical developments within the industry that affect workers? How can we as workers understand these changes better to move towards regaining control of our nation and nationalizing key section s of industry for the benefit of all Canadian people not just the finance, oil and military speculators, investors and parasites?

Analyzing the relationships between the state and the oil monopolies is of particular necessity. Canada-United States economic and political relations over attempts to further bind Canadian production, extraction and exploration within the “North American” reality requires deeper study. The growing antagonistic relation within competing energy interests are of particular concern as competition for control of markets requires to some degree a “decoupling” of current development strategies to change in anticipation of these new markets.

Further, federal-provincial relations requires greater understand by workers to prepare us for guiding our actions and relations within our own class, to defend our own class interests and to guide our actions and attitudes towards our organized labour bodies to assert a greater and more decisive influence on the nation’s affairs.

All these questions and more require ongoing study, discussion and analysis. To date this blog has not achieved these requisites. It has not approached the level that the sharpening class antagonisms are demanding of the left for ideological and theoretical understanding. Moving forward it is critical that this analysis is guided by partisan approach to the working class.