Tag Archives: unions

Global warming is caused by capitalist greed

30 Apr

Humans have caused climate change by pumping ever more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and we must quickly cut these emissions.

True, but what has this got to do with unions?

Well, at their core unions are organizations that bring people together to fight for the common good. This essential truth is reflected in the structure, philosophy and history of most unions.

But exactly whose “common good” a union is fighting for can vary widely.

Is it narrowly defined as immediate job interests of local union members? Is it the common good of all those working in a particular trade? All union members in one industry?

Or is it more widely defined as the common good of every union member? Every worker in a particular country? Of all Canadians? All the workers of the world? Every person in the world? Or even wider as the common good of all life on the planet?

The truth is every thoughtful union member, and especially every union leader, must consider the common good from many different perspectives. Everyone has more than one self-interest and therefore more than one common good.

No one is solely a pipefitter, nurse, front desk clerk; or employee of General Motors; we are also children, parents, residents of a city or town, citizens of a country, inhabitants of a planet who are dependent on a common environment, and much more besides.

But unions often find it easiest to fight for the narrowest common good, the immediate self-interest of workers in a particular trade, industry, or company. Higher pay, improved benefits, better job security — members almost always cheer if a union achieves these things. Fighting for all life on the planet or against inequality is a bit more complicated.

But there is another reason as well why unions find it easiest to fight for the narrowest common good. “Looking after No. 1” is what capitalism tells people to do. You are a consumer. Buying more is what life is all about.

In fact, proponents of capitalism argue there is no such thing as the common good, that we are all simply individual consumers and therefore unions are an illegitimate intrusion into the free market. Still, if workers are going to unite for any purpose it had better be limited to stuff like higher pay, something that allows people to buy more and does not challenge capitalism.

So, here’s the reality we face: In so far as a union, its leadership and members have bought into capitalism, the greater the likelihood that union will choose to focus on a very narrow self-interest and ignore such issues as climate change or inequality. Some unions do buy into capitalism despite the fact it does not like workers joining together to fight for any common good, whether narrowly or broadly defined. If it were up to capitalists there would be no unions at all. Capitalists — the bosses — are not our friends. The more people buy into their system the weaker unions are.

And the opposite is also true. The more people come together to fight for the common good, the stronger unions are. The more unions fight for the widest common good, the more people will be on our side and the stronger unions will be. The more unions fight the existing system the stronger unions are.

History shows that the periods of greatest growth in unions were times when capitalism faced widespread challenges and the periods when unions have shrunk, like during the past 20 years, were times when opposition to capitalism was weak.

History also shows that unions have been willing to fight for the widest common good despite opposition from the rich and powerful. Unions were part of the struggle to end slavery and child labour; unions helped win universal voting rights, public education, equal rights, Old Age Pensions, Medicare, the 40-hour work week, paid vacations and numerous other social programs that have benefited society as a whole.

It won’t be easy to stop global warming. Many brothers and sisters earn their living extracting oil, building private automobiles and mining coal, industries that must shrink or disappear to save our planet. Of course this raises difficulties inside the labour movement because it pits narrow self-interest against the wider common good.

But progressive unions were not deterred by similar internal problems in the struggle for civil rights or against sexism and homophobia. As in those battles we must do what is necessary and right. We must demand jobs that do not harm the environment. We must not shy away from battling climate change because there is no more important common good than the health of our environment. We must learn from and work with environmentalists.

But environmental activists must also learn an important lesson from the long history of the labour movement: Capitalism is the problem and certainly not the solution.

The capitalist drive to maximize profits explains the externalizing of environmental costs. Capitalism is a system of small minorities profiting at the expense of others. Private ownership of what are social means of livelihood allows capitalists to make decisions that pass the real costs of industry to communities, workers, future generations and other species.

Capitalism requires growth. But what happens when the environment needs a smaller human footprint? When, at least in wealthier countries, we must learn to live with less stuff?

If a capitalist economy shrinks for a sustained period the system goes into a crisis. Banks crash, unemployment rises and wars suddenly make sense to rich people in order to get their system growing again.

Supporters of capitalism claim the system is based on freedom and choice, but when it comes to the environment for many people this amounts to the freedom to choose between destroying the planet or having a job. The promoters of tar sands, fracking, coal mining and pipelines are explicit about this. The business pages are full of stories quoting the captains of the carbon-industrial complex as telling us: “You must choose between economic prosperity and what is good for the environment, because you can’t have both.”

With capitalism they are correct.

Yet someenvironmentalists, as well as some union members, look to capitalism for solutions. That’s like expecting Toronto Mayor Rob Ford to tell the truth. A sustainable, democratic economy is incompatible with a system run in the interests of a tiny minority that constantly demands more profit.

Science leaves little reasonable doubt that the burning of currently known reserves of coal, oil and natural gas will push atmospheric carbon dioxide levels past a tipping point, after which rising global temperatures will irreversibly undermine the conditions on which human life as we know it depends.

Despite the evidence, today’s capitalism rests on the expansion of fossil fuel production and use.

In Canada capitalist investment is focused on expanding tar sands production. The promoters claim that these developments will create jobs. But every analysis shows more jobs would be produced if equivalent investments were made in solar, wind and geothermal power. Far more jobs could be produced by investing in domestic employment for domestic markets, in the production and distribution of sustainable local agriculture, clothing, etc. Even more jobs would be created by investments in childcare, elder care, social housing, public transit and other green infrastructure.

More jobs but less profit. Capitalists invest in fossil fuels because corporate profits now largely depend on cheap fuel. Equivalent profits cannot be made meeting actual human needs.

So, unions and environmentalists share a common enemy: an economic system run by and for the wealthiest people in the world.

Together we can fight for a different sort of economic system that will prosper in harmony with the environment. Or apart we can fiddle with capitalism as our planet burns.

Gary Engler

From a speech given on the weekend at the Peoples’ Social Forum Assembly on Climate and Oil & Gas in B.C.

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Video: Understanding Capitalism — Idiocy

5 Jan

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Workers suffer while rich profit from oil sands fever

27 Dec

A clear diagnosis of the Oil Sands fever variant of Dutch Disease may be just what the doctor ordered to rally Canadian workers in the fight against global warming.

A rapid increase in natural resource investment and revenue usually drives up a nation’s currency. This generally makes other industries less competitive and can greatly weaken a country’s manufacturing base.

Widely known as the “Dutch Disease” (named after a period of rapid expansion of the natural gas industry in the Netherlands), this well established economic paradox has become a taboo subject in this country. Canada’s highly class-conscious elite is worried that manufacturing workers might make common cause with environmental groups and even some business sectors to challenge the carbon/profit bomb known as the tar sands.

A recent Pembina Institute/Equiterre report titled Booms, Busts and Bitumen argues that Canada’s economy is facing “Oil Sands fever”. The study points out that the Bank of Canada believes one-third of the Canadian manufacturing sector’s decline has been caused by a more expensive dollar, which rose alongside the price of oil from $.61 US in 2002 to $1.10 US in 2007 (and has hovered near par since). The study concludes that 40% to 75% of the currency increase has been caused by rising commodity prices, principally oil.

The higher price has led to a boom in production and export. Between 2002 and 2012 energy grew from less than 13% of total Canadian exports to over 25%. And if plans to double tar sands production over the next decade are realized, this dependence will increase.

A February Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives study gives a sense of the jobs impact of Oil Sands fever. The Bitumen Cliff notes: “The forestry sector lost close to 30,000 positions. And the manufacturing industry, of course, haemorrhaged nearly a half-million positions. For every new job created in the petroleum sector during the past decade, 30 have been lost in manufac­turing. Across all of the export-oriented goods industries… net employment declined by almost 520,000 jobs in the past decade.”

While the precise job toll is debatable, the rapid growth in tar sands exports has undoubtedly hurt manufacturers.

Despite the obvious link between tar sands expansion, a higher dollar and a decline in manufacturing, corporate sycophants denounce any politician or established organization that draws attention to the relationship.

Federal Leader of the Opposition Tom Mulcair was aggressively attacked for raising the issue as was former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty. In response to the Pembina/Equiterre report Financial Post editor Terence Corcoran called the mainstream Pembina Institute “off-kilter … fomenter of oil sands phobia … keen on triggering a nation-splitting debate over the oil sands.” For his part, Sun Media’s Lorne Gunter wrote: “Left-wing environmentalists should just come clean: they hate the oil industry, they hate profits and love big government.”

Both Corcoran and Gunter cited a recent Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters (CME) study lauding the tar sands. It notes: “In recent years, much of the discussion linking the oil sands with manufacturing has included so-called ‘Dutch disease,’ with any supposed relationship being characterized as inherently negative. While the effect of the rising dollar has impacted the competitiveness of the Canadian manufacturing sector, especially exports, the underlying problem was poor labour productivity, lack of diversity among customers, and lower rates of overall capital investment. While increased investment in the oil sands may have strengthened the Canadian dollar, it is by no means the root cause of the challenges faced by Canadian manufacturing. Rather than having a negative impact on Canadian industry, the oil sands are providing a customer base for manufacturers.”

While most sane people would argue it makes little sense for the lobbying arm of Canada’s export-oriented manufacturers to dismiss oil-fuelled currency increases that have added 5, 10 or 30 percent to their costs, the CME is a highly ideological institution. When environmental or labour regulations add a few percentage points to their costs it goes berserk. For instance, before Parliament ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2002 the CME claimed that reducing greenhouse gas emissions 6% from 1990 levels by 2012 would cost the country 450,000 manufacturing jobs. (Perhaps CME researchers should check to see if they didn’t mistake a minus sign for a plus symbol since the trashing of Canada’s Kyoto commitments through tar sands expansion has contributed to significant job losses in manufacturing.)

The CME tends to represent the voice of its biggest members, many of whom have plants in other countries. They can shift operations to lower-cost jurisdictions or use the threat of moving jobs to force wage and benefit cuts.

But that’s only part of the explanation for the CME’s pro tar sands position. That organization is in fact a mouthpiece for capitalists who are more widely invested than ever before and thus less wedded to particular firms. Without too much difficulty they can move their capital from lower margin to higher profit industries. It’s all about chasing profits and damn the negative consequences for workers.

In recent years the tar sands have been a major source of profit making. The Parkland Institute estimates that oil sands operators realized pre-tax profits of $260 billion between 1986 and 2011 (the public owners of these resources received less than 10 per cent of that sum). Over the past decade Canadian resource companies’ profit margins have nearly doubled the service, manufacturing and “nonfinancial” sectors of the economy. According to a late 2011 calculation, the market capitalization of fossil fuel companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange topped $379 billion.

The boom in tar sands profits and stock prices clearly benefits leading Canadian capitalists. A recent Canadian Business magazine profile of the “100 richest Canadians” explains: “Collectively, the individuals on the Rich 100 are worth $230 billion, more than the total gross domestic product of many countries in the world, including New Zealand, Ireland and Portugal. And this year has been one of their best ever. Their combined net worth surged by more than 15% … While the actual economies of Canada and the U.S. aren’t faring particularly well, so long as the U.S. Federal Reserve maintains its stimulus program, stock markets will tick higher.”

The “100 richest Canadians” – and the rest of the 0.01% of top shareholders who control most corporations – dominate corporate lobbying associations such as the CME and they also have significant influence with many think tanks, university departments and news outlets. Like their wealthy patrons, these institutions tend to back whatever generates the most profit (that’s the point of capitalism after all). As a result, there’s little interest in discussing the deleterious job impacts of Oil Sands fever.

But environmentalists and union activists should be making common cause by explaining how tar sands profits that go to the rich and powerful cost Canadian workers hundreds of thousands of jobs. Expansion of the tar sands and the resulting bouts of Oil Sands fever may be good for capitalists but it will further weaken the job market and do great harm to Canadian workers.

 Yves Engler

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Workers and their unions must fight climate change

24 Dec

For those of us in the labour movement, tis the season to ponder what good our unions can do in the upcoming year and to renew our commitment to a key principle: What we desire for ourselves we wish for all.

At this time of year, while many of us focus on gifts, it is easy to desire the latest gadget, that new car or even a remodelled bathroom. But, most of us would agree, in the grand scheme of human priorities, certain fundamentals are more important than simply acquiring more things.

For example, decent housing, nutritious food, public education, a safe and loving atmosphere to nurture every child and access to quality healthcare would all be understood by most union members as essential, rather than as simply “stuff” that would be nice to possess. In other words, when we come together in a union we acknowledge certain basic social priorities. Thus the first unions fought for a living wage, the eight-hour day, public schools, pensions etc., not simply more money. Without the basics of life, being able to buy more things is meaningless.

And that’s how we need to think about our environment and especially global warming.

There is nothing more important than a healthy environment. Without that, all the other fundamentals — food, housing, education, family, leisure, pensions etc. — are at risk. If human activity, in the pursuit of accumulating more stuff, destroys the liveability of our planet, we will have done a great wrong to all creatures, including ourselves.

And the best evidence we have is as categorical as science gets. Humans have caused climate change by pumping ever more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and we must quickly cut these emissions.

Here’s how one leading climate change expert put it earlier this month:

“We need a radical plan for cutting emissions to avoid the radical repercussions of climate change,” said professor Kevin Anderson, deputy director of the Tyndall Centre, based at the University of Manchester in England. “To do this, industrial countries have to cut energy use by around 8-10% each year or 60-70% over the decade, and we have to start now.

“Low-carbon supply and incremental reductions are no longer sufficient to avoid dangerous climate change. We have to have early, rapid and deep reductions in emissions and this can only be achieved in the short term through reductions in energy use.”

Will corporations that dominate the world economy provide us with the “rapid and deep reductions in emissions” that scientists tell us must happen soon to avoid environmental catastrophe? No.

Rather than cutting back on emissions we see corporations invest billions in the tar sands, fracking, offshore drilling and digging up more coal, because all are profitable.

Our current economic system requires ever expanding profit. As a result, if corporations were people they would be diagnosed as psychopaths. They are ruthless in the single-minded pursuit of profit. Psychopaths feel no empathy for their victims. They do not care if the consequences of their actions could soon be the overheating of our planet to the degree that our grandchildren no longer have a habitable environment.

So who will fight to protect our planet?

For 175 years unions have fought for justice, democracy and to make life better for all. We helped end child labour and slavery. We fought for universal franchise and equal rights for all. These battles required enormous sacrifices to overcome opposition of the rich and powerful.

Sacrifices will be necessary as well to stop global warming. Many brothers and sisters earn their living extracting oil, building cars and mining coal, industries that must shrink or disappear to save our planet. This raises difficulties inside the labour movement.

But progressive unions were not deterred by similar contradictions in the struggle for civil rights or against sexism and homophobia. Similarly we must not shy away from battling climate change.

Unions must defend our common interests. There is no more important common interest than the health of our environment.

Gary Engler

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Unions should lead the fight against global warming

4 Dec

What is working class culture?

This question arose as part of a conversation about convincing members of Canada’s newest union, Unifor, to make saving the planet from climate change a priority.

“You’ll run up against working class culture,” said a friend who considers himself an anarchist.

“What do you mean?” I responded.

“Consumerism. High paying jobs with lots of overtime to buy ever more stuff, two cars, a big house in the suburbs with NASCAR and hockey on the two big screens in the basement, plus Housewives of Vancouver on the TV in the kitchen,” he said. “And how many thousands of your members build cars, dig up the tarsands and work in oil refineries? How can people with jobs like that ever be environmentalists?”

The first response I thought of was: “Are you saying soldiers never turn against war? Because history proves they do,” which spun the argument in another direction.

But the subject of working class culture lingered. Is there one and is it defined by consumerism? Or are there many, including ones opposed to the “culture” that TV tries to convince us is how we all live?

And regardless if there is only one, or many, where does it/they come from? Does culture simply happen or is it imposed upon us? Is it something that we can consciously build?

Certainly working class movements in the past have sought to educate themselves in an attempt to create an explicitly anti-capitalist culture. Many social democratic, anarchist and communist groups, including unions, grew into mass movements precisely by challenging the dominant ideology and suggesting an attractive, believable alternative. Rather than bemoan, but accept, the culture that rulers imposed on the working class, social democrats, anarchists and communists instead talked and listened to their fellow workers, convincing them that an alternative to capitalism was desirable, possible and necessary.

Those of us who understand that capitalism is environmentally unsustainable must do the same work today. We must inform people about the importance of immediate action to slow global warming and fix other ecological rifts that threaten human existence on our planet. We must challenge the notion that capitalists will solve environmental problems when in fact they are the ones who profit from mining the tarsands and building the pipelines which threaten our children’s and grandchildren’s future. We must point out that constant economic growth (unsustainable on a finite planet) is at the core of capitalism. But most important of all, we must offer a vision of an alternative to capitalism. This system must be environmentally sustainable, more democratic, provide a comfortable life and be fun to build.

One such alternative to capitalism is economic democracy. This means replacing master-servant relations with workplace democracy, replacing capitalist title with equal human entitlement and replacing corporate ownership with social ownership. The essential ideas of economic democracy are: Expanding one-person, one-vote decision-making into every area where people work collectively, which is the vast majority of our economy; Limiting private property to what is truly private and doesn’t give an individual power over others; Replacing corporations with multiple democratic owning communities based on the appropriate level of government, local, state/provincial, national or international.

In an economic democracy individual greed could not overrule the collective good, which would be determined by democratic means. When the majority of people understand the causes and dangers of global warming, their governments and collective enterprises would become agents of change rather than barriers. Entrenched interests who profit from spewing ever more carbon into the atmosphere would not control them. If workers and communities ran industries, such as the automobile and oil sectors that must change or disappear if we are to make the necessary drastic cuts in carbon emissions, they would be a lot less likely than profit-addicted corporations to blackmail society into supporting private interests that damage the environment. Worker and community owned enterprises would support just transition strategies to move jobs from polluting to sustainable industries. They would also be much more likely to promote an alternative culture of artistic leisure over mindless consumerism.

Environmentalists in and outside the union movement should not cite “working class culture” as an excuse to avoid raising critical issues about the jobs we do. Hundreds of millions of workers have proved capable over the past two centuries of managing the contradiction of opposing capitalism while seemingly dependent on capitalists for their jobs. Pointing out how capitalists use jobs to blackmail us into supporting their interests helps people understand why capitalism is the problem, not the solution. Rather than being a barrier to environmental understanding the fact that capitalism cannot do what is necessary to repair the damage it has already done, is a powerful argument in favour of building a working class alternative to the current system.

Strong, democratic, environmentally conscious, militant unions are one of the keys to success in this project. Such unions do not shy away from difficult but necessary discussions.

Gary Engler

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Interview with Gary Engler

18 Sep

In our final installment of the Unifor Interview Series with union leaders, staff, and rank-and-file members, we speak with Gary Engler, Vice-President of Unifor Local 2000, the Media Union of BC. Gary also recently penned two articles at Rabble.ca, “Thoughts on Labour Day” and “Unifor and the potential rebirth of militant union activism.” He recently co-authored “The New Commune-ist Manifesto: Workers of the World It Really Is Time To Unite“.

Listen here.

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The case for much higher taxes on the rich

10 Sep

High government deficits are being used to justify cuts to public employment and social programs. It is not a surprise that transnational finance, the corporate media and right-wing political parties demand that returns on investments be given priority over employment, workers’ income, and the well-being of the marginalized. Having aggressively supported cuts to business and income taxes, they have reason to worry about the real returns on government bonds.

It is also not a surprise that unions and students in Europe have mobilized millions against these cuts. Unions, public sector workers, pensioners, immigrants and the poor are not to blame. Government deficits are a direct result of tax cuts, capitalist speculation, the 2008 financial crash, government bailouts, and the resulting loss of employment, income and government revenues.

If public deficits were the real problem—not just a pretext—military spending particularly in the U.S. would be drastically cut. Taxes would be raised. Of course, tax increases have consequences. Higher sales and value-added taxes reduce consumer purchasing power, further weakening markets in times of recession. Taxes on enterprise revenues can reduce expenditures for plant and equipment and lead to the failure of more businesses.

Steeply graduated income taxes would upset the super-rich but are otherwise benign. Taxing income over $200,000 a year at rates of 75 per cent, and over $500,000 at 90 per cent would substantially increase government revenues without reducing markets for most goods and services. Taxing profits on the buying and selling of stocks, bonds, real estate, and currencies could raise additional revenues. International agreement to raise tariffs to 15 to 25 per cent from the current average of five to ten per cent would raise more. Although the profits of transnational corporations would be squeezed, the resulting growth in local production for local consumption would expand employment, income, and public revenues everywhere.

Increasing taxes on capitalist income is anathema to the supply-side economists who have dominated government policy for thirty years. They claim that increasing taxes on the wealthy reduces the supply of funds available for private investment, causing job loss, reduced real incomes, and economic decline. Supply-side economics was a wealth-holders’ reaction to Keynesian demand-side policies.

The Keynesian period—from World War II through the 1970s—had been a response to destructive twentieth century wars, financial crashes, prolonged economic declines, and rising support for militant unionism, socialism, and communism. To counter growing opposition to capitalism, to stimulate consumer demand and to revive opportunities for profitable investments, governments increased spending on pensions, unemployment insurance, education, healthcare and income support. Laws were changed to make it easier for unions to organize and to bargain collectively.

Much of the cost of stimulating demand was covered by steeply graduated income taxes. In Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. the highest incomes were taxed at marginal rates up to 90 per cent during the war and after. Although lowered in the 1960s, income taxes remained steeply graduated through the 1970s. The share of total income going to capital as profits, dividends, interest payments, and rent did decline. Nonetheless, investments in machinery, equipment, buildings, infrastructure (bridges, roads, schools, hospitals, public transit), and housing stock rose steadily.

By the 1970s many of the very rich and corporate oligarchs had concluded that the welfare state was not in their interests. Unions were in decline. Communism was clearly not outperforming capitalism economically or militarily. At the end of the decade, neoconservatives like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were winning political office claiming that Keynesian policies had increased demand at the expense of the supply of capital for investments. The result, they said, was not growth, but inflation and stagnation.

In fact, the Keynesian period was a time of steady, impressive growth in investment and consumer income. Inflation rates did reach double digits in the 1970s. Neoconservatives blamed this on rising social spending and government deficits. A more obvious explanation was the combination of rising oil prices and massive inflows of capital from abroad. Oil prices had risen from under $3 to over $30 a barrel, increasing the price of nearly all goods and services. Suddenly awash in revenues, the rulers of oil exporting countries invested billions in the U.S., U.K, Europe and Canada. Governments that were already cutting taxes paid by the rich and accumulating deficits, responded by borrowing more. U.S. government decisions to finance war in Indochina with borrowed money, not tax increases, compounded the problem.

In the 1980s, after supply-side policies became the economic orthodoxy, taxes on corporations and upper incomes were methodically lowered. Industries were deregulated. Laws were changed to make it more difficult for unions to organize and to engage in effective collective bargaining. Public utilities and services were privatized.

The rich did get richer—the super-rich substantially richer—but economies did not flourish as supply-siders had predicted. The quality of public services declined. Social infrastructure was allowed to decay. Employment in manufacturing and service industries fell. The real income of wage and salary workers stopped growing. Markets for consumer goods stagnated.

Supply-side theorists ignored the evidence. Instead, they turned phrases from Adam Smith into a mantra. More income for capitalists, they intoned, meant more savings, more investment, more economic growth. But Smith was not talking of twentieth century corporate oligarchs when he equated capitalist income with savings and investment. He was describing a middle class of prosperous farmers, shopkeepers, and merchants, whose frugality he contrasted with the aristocracy’s fondness for luxury. The middle class, he said, turned their surplus income into savings for investment in the future; aristocrats spent and borrowed for their current pleasure.

Today’s super-rich are more like eighteenth-century aristocrats than the middle classes of Smith’s day. They are mega and giga-consumers who transform revenues from productive assets and social labour into personal wealth—into mansions, yachts, beachfront condos, and winter retreats. As a class, they are obsessed with maximizing returns on their wealth, but they have little interest in productive investment. For them, innovation means new more profitable investment instruments: futures, derivatives, dubious mortgages packaged as collatoralized debt obligations, and credit default swaps (bankruptcy insurance).
Even when pyramid scams and outright fraud are not involved, nothing is added to means of livelihood when one capitalist buys and another sells stocks. Financial entitlements are merely shuffled from one to another. When the rich do invest in actual plant and equipment this is likely to be abroad where labour is cheaper and profits are higher.

The economic argument

Steeply graduated income taxes would make public debt manageable. Unlike taxes on consumption, taxes on the highest incomes would not dampen markets for consumer goods. Additional public revenues could be used to improve education, healthcare, social housing, income support, public transit. As employment and markets expand, enterprises would be encouraged to invest more.

Undistributed corporate profits are the main source of investment in research, development, plant, and equipment. By discouraging the distribution of profits as dividends, executive salaries, and bonuses, confiscatory tax rates on the highest incomes would give enterprises more reason to retain earnings, increasing the funds available for investment in real means of livelihood.

With far higher taxes on capitalist income, the super-rich will have to make do with less sumptuous homes, fewer and less luxurious automobiles, yachts, and vacation spots. For everyone else, the cost of keeping up with the Joneses will be less. People in all income groups are likely to save more, making more funds available for investment in housing and local enterprises.

The democratic argument

Capitalism claims to be a system of individual opportunities. Increasing the revenues for education, healthcare, pensions, and income-support would expand opportunities. Steeply graduated income taxes would transfer control of social surpluses from a corporate oligarchy to elected national, regional, and local governments.

Can governments and elected representatives be trusted to act in the common interest? With steeply graduated income tax, a small self-serving minority would have less money to influence legislation and corrupt politicians. Billionaires, like the Koch brothers—two of the wealthiest men in the U.S. who have bankrolled the U.S. Tea Party—would have less spare cash to dominate and manipulate political agendas in their narrow class interests.

Steeply graduated income taxes alone would not end capitalist entitlement, but as elected governments gain more revenues to expand social entitlements and public employment, people will demand to have a voice in economic decisions. The right of wealth-holding minorities to impose their immediate interests will be replaced with the transparent, democratic right of people to direct economic life in the common interest, in the interests of human and environmental well-being.

The environmental argument

The wealthiest one per cent presently claim twenty per cent and more of total income. If their share were reduced to five per cent, extravagant consumption and the accompanying waste of resources would be greatly reduced.

Governments would have the funds needed to replace dependence on private automobiles with fast, accessible public transportation. Federal, regional, and local governments could be provided with the funds to construct public heating and cooling systems that require less fossil fuels. Investments could be made in local agriculture for local markets. Environmental protection agencies could employ enough inspectors to investigate complaints and to act against corporate damage to ecosystems.

As control of social surpluses passes from the hands of wealth-holding minorities to elected governments, people will mobilize to demand that national, regional, and local communities provide more employment and goods and services as human rights. Fewer people will come to depend on the profitability of capital in general and of transnational corporations in particular. More people will be free to oppose environmentally destructive industrial activity.

As communities replace private corporations as the institutions making economic decisions, industrial and service workers, professionals, the retired, homemakers, students, farmers, mushroom pickers, loggers, and ecologists will all have the right to a voice and equal vote. The interests of major shareholders and top corporate executives will no longer take precedence over the income and employment of common people, or over the carrying capacity of environments.

Al Engler

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We need to demand more than simply more

2 Sep

Why is there so much attention paid to people as consumers, but so little to people as workers?

Is it because the mere mention of our rights as workers brings up all kinds of uncomfortable truths that threaten the very ideological foundations of the current economic system?

As we celebrate Labour Day these are important questions to ponder.

The vast majority of us are wageworkers. Wages are our primary source of income. Or we collect a pension because we and/or our spouse were once workers. Or we are dependents of workers.

In fact a huge proportion of the money spent by consumers in our economy comes directly or indirectly from our wages as workers.

Despite this obvious reality, while the media is jam-packed with material about consumer rights, consumer choice, ads claiming the best price for consumers, stories about politicians claiming “to do what’s best for consumers” and much more focused on consumption, there is almost nothing about work or workers’ rights. Typically what little there is concerns strikes or other “disruptions” to the economy. It’s as if workers are just cogs in a giant machine, only worth discussing when a breakdown occurs. There’s certainly no money to be made promoting workers’ rights; in fact we are seen primarily as a cost that reduces profit.

Yes, there is some lip service given to workers as a resource; words to the effect that “we’re all in this together” might be spoken, but real examples of workplace democracy are few and very far between. If workers were truly valued as people “all in this together” wouldn’t there be at least some semblance of democracy at work?

Instead, under our current economic system, the master-servant relationship is the legal framework that dominates workplaces.

Reality for most workers, which means most people, is a fundamental lack of respect at work. That’s why “the system” prefers to focus on us as consumers rather than as workers.

So what, one might ask? What’s the big deal if we must give up being treated as an equal human being at work, so long as we are well paid? The object of work is to make enough money so that we can consume what we want and enjoy the good life, nothing more.

Aside from the fact many of us are not well paid, the answer to the question “so what?” is that work is an essential element of human identity. When asked at a party, “what do you do?” not many of us answer: “I shop.” And if we did, what would that say about us?

What we do — work — is what defines us, what makes us human. We want a job that is a source of lasting satisfaction, not simply consumption. When the system does not provide that sense of satisfaction at work alienation is the result. This leads to stress, addictions and other forms of ill health.

Even some unions become complicit in this alienation, focusing exclusively on getting more money, which is another way of agreeing with right wing supporters of the existing system that its members are just consumers.

These right wingers want us to only care about more money. They want us to consume more. Smart capitalists are Keynesians. They want workers to demand more and to spend more. But we’ve reached the limit of Keynesianism in two senses: Capitalists have abandoned it en masse so appeals for them to return to some golden era of Keynes is a pathetic dead end. And even if the capitalists were willing to give us more, more has become an environmental dead end.

Instead workers and their unions must learn to dream bigger.

We must learn to demand more than simply more.

Gary Engler

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New union offers promise of new direction

28 Aug

This Labour Day weekend promises to be an exciting time for the Canadian union movement and perhaps a spark for workers around the world.

The Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) are merging to create Unifor, the largest primarily private sector union in Canada with about 300,000 members.

The new union offers the potential of something great for the future of unions and the Left. Many good things will happen if Unifor fulfills the promise of its new constitution. For example, Article 2 — 10 states: “Our goal is transformative. To reassert common interest over private interest. Our goal is to change our workplaces and our world. Our vision is compelling. It is to fundamentally change the economy, with equality and social justice, restore and strengthen our democracy and achieve an environmentally sustainable future. This is the basis of social unionism — a strong and progressive union culture and a commitment to work in common cause with other progressives in Canada and around the world.”

A union that is militant, outward looking, engaged politically and willing to work with progressive people outside the labour movement is exactly what we need to motivate a new generation of activists. The future of unions depends on harnessing the energy, enthusiasm and political sensibility of young people in and about to enter the workforce. To accomplish that unions must be involved with community struggles, seen to be battling injustice and willing to work with anyone who shares our common causes.

I remember being a student at the University of British Columbia in 1972 and walking my first picket line during a SORWUC (Canada’s first feminist union) strike at a Denny’s on Broadway St. in Vancouver. Walking the line was a way of showing support for women’s rights in general, as well as helping the few dozen people actually on strike. And it set in motion decades of further involvement in the union movement.

Unifor’s new constitution has many progressive features. It requires gender equality on the national executive. It commits 10 per cent of national dues to organizing. It calls for “community chapters” that “can help build strong communities and enhance our collective strength in the struggle for social and economic justice by opening our Union to workers who currently have no access to union membership, because they have no collective agreement, or job, or hold temporary contract or other precarious employment.”

The potential for building community chapters that attract a wide spectrum of activists is immense. Common cause could be made with environmentalists, students, open media supporters and many other potential allies, as well as workers in sectors that have so far proven extremely difficult to organize. Someone first attracted to Unifor through a community chapter could one day become a skilled union organizer. The support of community activists who have worked with one of our community chapters could be key to winning a particular strike.

Enemies of unions like to portray us, and our members, as self-interested, greedy and out to get more than our fair share. Of course this is ridiculous coming from supporters of an economic system that glorifies greed, but unfortunately this is exactly what some people believe about unions.

Unifor, through its political action and community chapters, could demonstrate that unions are an essential element of a progressive democracy. The new union has the potential to help build a better society while at the same time building a stronger union.

Of course, as in all unions that exist in an economic system where we are bombarded with messages glorifying individual rights and individual greed, some delegates to the founding convention of Unifor may resist social unionism. Some may argue against broadening the union’s reach through community chapters. Some may want the union to limit itself to simply looking after existing members. But that road is a dead end. History has proven that is a recipe for shrinking membership and ultimate irrelevancy.

The promise of Unifor is in a rebirth of militant union activism. That’s what this delegate is going to the convention to vote for.

Gary Engler

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Capitalism versus economic democracy

26 Aug

Capitalism is a system that gives major shareholders and top corporate executives—one per cent or less of populations—the right to direct means of livelihood in their private interests. The system’s dominant institutions are corporations. Deemed in law to be individual persons, corporations actually combine the capital of numerous shareholders with the intention of dominating markets.

Corporations are privately owned capitalist collectives. The largest control more revenues than most governments.  To maximize profits, corporations expand production and introduce labour saving machinery, cut wages, and move employment to places where labour is cheaper. A recurring result is that the income of majorities who depend on labour falls as production increases. With declining markets for consumer goods, capitalist investment turns to financial speculation. Market crashes follow. Production facilities are shut down. Unemployment worsens, more jobs are lost, wages are cut further. Individual lives are disrupted. Communities are impoverished.

To deal with disaffection, the system relies on repression, militarism, and war. Within countries, surveillance is expanded and tightened. The marginalized, the dispossessed, and the disorderly are racialized and demonized as criminals. More people are jailed for longer periods. Globally, people who actively oppose the system are demonized as terrorists; countries are bombed and occupied. Wars are highly profitable for well connected corporations and divert attention from domestic divisions. Wars also glorify the violent machismo that encourages the subjugation, abuse, and marginalization of women.

Military intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya increased sales of B-52s, guided missiles, helicopter attack ships, aircraft carriers, and drones. In the invaded countries, life was made worse. Power and water plants, bridges, railways, communications systems, schools, neighborhoods and entire towns were destroyed. Tens of thousands have been killed. Millions have become refugees. Invading countries gain no tangible benefits, but for politically influential aircraft and munitions corporations like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing profits did rise substantially.

Supporters of military action abroad claim it is humanitarian intervention. In Haiti the aim of “the responsibility to protect” was to make the poorest people in the western hemisphere so desperate that they would work for even less. In 2004, the U.S., France, and Canada sent troops to remove Jean Bertrand Aristide, the elected and widely popular President. Haiti was occupied in the name of the UN Security Council. Haitian government and municipal institutions were dismantled. Public workers lost their employment. The minimum wage law was abolished; so was public transit. Education was turned over to foreign aid organizations. With no functioning public institutions, Haitians were left with no means to protect themselves from hurricanes or to rebuild after major earthquakes.

Capitalism is at the root of growing environmental crises. Private capitalist entitlement allows corporations to externalize environmental costs, to pass these on to communities, workers, future generations, and other species. Science has convincingly demonstrated that rising carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels disrupt weather patterns, melt glaciers and polar ice caps, and acidify oceans. Still, major transnational corporations continue to fund campaigns of denial.

When the supporters of capitalism concede the seriousness of carbon emissions, they propose profit-making schemes (scams) like cap and trade, or they insist that consumers are to blame and should pay. Here in BC, corporate business supported the Campbell government’s carbon tax—paid by final users of gasoline and heating oil. This ostensibly green policy fits neatly with neoconservative plans to shift the tax burden from business to working people. Meanwhile, the government increased tax-breaks and write-offs for oil and gas exploration and development.

In capitalist rhetoric, unions, public sector workers, and local communities are reactionary vested interests, opposed to change. From a human perspective, capitalists are the most socially and environmentally destructive vested interest. They shamelessly use their wealth and political influence to increase their wealth by impoverishing others and blocking changes that undermine the profits made from fossil-fueled production and trade.

The working-class alternative

The working class—everyone who depends on labour not capital for their income—has the capacity to challenge the right of capitalists to direct social labour for their private profit. The working class includes wage and salary workers and the self-employed—shopkeepers, owner operators, farmers, and self-employed professionals, all whom depend on income from their labour. Those without capitalist entitlements also include most artists, artisans, full time parents, pensioners, students, the unemployed, and those unable to work.

Being the overwhelming majority—everyone but the one per cent, 0.1 percent or 5 percent who control and live off capital—the working class frees itself only by freeing all. So long as some are exploited and oppressed, the wellbeing of everyone who depends on income from labor is threatened. A world of human equality requires the replacing of capitalist title with human entitlement, corporate ownership with social ownership, and master-servant relations with workplace democracy.

With equal human entitlement, residents of owning communities will replace shareholders as the legal beneficiaries of means of livelihood. Social labour will be motivated and directed not for private profit but for general wellbeing. When all inhabitants including people whose livelihood depends on tourism and organic agriculture, berry and mushroom pickers, scientists, educators, parents, and students as well as manufacturing and resource workers have a voice and equal vote in economic decisions, communities will limit industrial activity to the carrying capacity of environments.

With social ownership means of livelihood will no longer be bought and sold for private gain. Social ownership must be distinguished from state ownership. State ownership as it exists continues the top-down command structures of corporate capitalism.  Social ownership means ownership by towns, neighborhoods, cities, regions, nations, and perhaps international communities. Social ownership means democratic and transparent planning by inhabitants for their wellbeing.

With workplace democracy workers in all occupations—machine operators, clerical workers, trades people, administrators, professionals—will have a voice and equal vote in the direction of their labour time. All occupations will be self-regulated professions. Assembly line workers will have a voice and vote in the direction of assembly-line work. Skilled trades people, clerical workers, engineers, and administrators will democratically direct their labour time. General assemblies of workers in all occupations may elect managers; owning communities will elect or appoint auditors and perhaps the directors of enterprise boards.

When capitalism is replaced with economic democracy, social labour and economies will no longer be directed in the interests of capitalist profit. When everyone is equally entitled to participate in economic decisions, communities will aim to provide acceptable employment opportunities for all available labour. No longer pressed to give priority to private profit, communities will be freed to balance industrial activity with the carrying capacity of environments.  The financial costs of social services will be balanced with revenues generated in exchange. The cost of needed imports will be balanced with exports.

Capitalism is based on market exchange, but capitalism should not be confused with the latter. Markets flourished long before capitalism. Ending capitalism does not mean abolishing market exchange. The working class has an obvious interest in democratic control of means of livelihood and labour time.  Majorities have an equally obvious interest in expanding social entitlements—employment at decent wages, education, food, housing, health care, child care,  leisure. However, people who depend on wages and salaries cannot reasonably be expected to support the abolition of market exchange. Half and more of working people are employed in the production and distribution of goods and services for exchange.

The right of individuals and communities to freely exchange goods and services with others—subject to democratically agreed taxes and regulations—is and will remain a basic human right. The widest practical access to supplies and markets is a major source of material wellbeing. Perhaps when capitalist entitlement has become a distant memory, exchange values and market forces will be anachronisms. Until then, communities from the local to the international will aim to base trade on the exchange of equivalents in labour time.

Three twentieth century dogmas have obscured the working-class alternative. The first narrowly defined the working class as blue-collar industrial workers. The second held that the alternative to competitive capitalism is centralized state control. The third is that ending capitalism requires armed revolution to seize state power.

Factory workers have a vital role in production and in mass movements against the system, but production workers alone do not provide an alternative to capitalism. The working class is far broader. It includes blue collar, pink collar and white collar wage and salary workers—service providers, skilled trades people, clerical workers, and professionals as well as assembly line workers. When the self-employed are included, the class of people without capitalist entitlement unquestionably does everything necessary to initiate, plan, produce, transport, distribute, and sustain the production of goods and services required for human wellbeing.

In the twentieth century, top-down centralized state control was generally viewed as the alternative. The collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s adoption of capitalist policies, did embolden corporate oligarchies. From a working-class perspective the demise of what was called actually existing socialism was not entirely negative. We no longer have to answer for external alternatives that divide people. We can look for the alternative within, in the working class, in the collective capacities and human aspirations of overwhelming majorities everywhere.

The twentieth century identification of fundamental social change with armed revolution did not inspire working-class opposition to capitalism. Violence and disorder damage immediate and long-term working-class interests, undermining employment, democracy, and human rights. Young men are maimed and killed. Women and children are victimized, terrorized, and killed.  An anti-capitalist working class will look not to armed struggle but to strategies and tactics that rely on the energy, spirit, and knowledge of men and women, on workplace organization, political action, and community mobilizations

Extremists among wealth-holding minorities may initiate or provoke violence to protect and advance their privileges. While people have an inherent human right to defend themselves and their interests, the working-class response is to look to mass support and to winning soldiers and police—who are themselves wage and salary workers—to the side of working-class majorities. Venezuela, Bolivia, Egypt, and Tunisia provide recent evidence that police, soldiers and officers can be won to the side of majorities.

From gross production to human wellbeing

So long as capitalism is unopposed, the working class appears dependent on capital, but it is capital that depends on labour. Capitalists as capitalists are drones; their function is to appropriate values produced by others. Every activity required for human wellbeing is now done by the working class—including the self-employed, as well as wage and salary workers. What the working class lacks is the understanding that capitalism is a house of paper entitlements that rests on the acquiescence of majorities.

Ideally, people who depend on labour for their livelihood would overwhelmingly refuse to accept rule by, and in, the narrow interests of a wealthy minority. Everyone would continue doing the work they now do, but instead of submitting to master-servant relations, people in all occupations—production, transportation, distribution, and sales people, professionals, managers, day care workers, service providers, teachers, accountants, nurses, and doctors—would democratically direct their labour time. Instead of working for the profit of shareholders, they would work in the interests of their communities.

Realistically, so long as capital is dominant substantial numbers will believe that their relative wellbeing and status depend on capitalism. Many will ignore capitalist privilege and see the enemy as the state, big government, foreign countries, unions, the poor, minorities, immigrants, liberals, Ivy League elites, feminists, older white men, communists, anarchists, criminals, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus.

Seeing human equality, cooperation, and democracy as a realistic alternative will encourage the disaffected to look to human solidarity, to respect diversity and each other. It will deepen opposition to a system that gives the interests of wealthy minorities priority over human and environmental wellbeing. It will encourage community mobilizations, workplace organization, and political action for gains and reforms that weaken capitalist title and strengthen human entitlement. As such gains are made, more men and women will be inspired to mobilize against the system.

In the second half of the twentieth century, a time of virulent anti-communism, Keynesian reforms that improved living conditions did dampen opposition to capitalism.  When motivated by visions of economic democracy, movements for reforms that improve the quality of life can convince more people that opposition to capitalism is practical.

The exact issues that will inspire mass mobilization against the system cannot be predicted. We can start by campaigning for steeply graduated income taxes. Rates of 75 per cent or higher on incomes over $250,000 a year could increase government revenues by an equivalent of five per cent or more of gross national income. The revenues raised would eliminate government deficits and provide needed funding for social services, health care, education, public transit, and renewal of needed public infrastructure.  Higher wealth and inheritance taxes can be similarly beneficial. Tobin taxes on financial transactions and the re-regulation of international currency and interest rates would reduce the negative impact of financial speculation and raise more public revenues. Increasing tariffs enough to encourage domestic production would further increase government revenues and weaken the power of transnational capital over markets.

Supporters of the system claim that attempts to increase taxes on the rich inevitably backfire because capital will move elsewhere. In fact, capitalists invest where it is profitable. Capital does move in response to marginal changes in profitability, but wherever we are, we are not alone. Raising taxes on capital can inspire similar movements elsewhere, potentially limiting the threat of capital flight and weakening the power of capital to play regions and countries against others for their private benefit.

Public ownership of banks would direct savings away from speculative manias to socially useful investments. Reversing privatizations, renewing public ownership of utilities, transportation and communications systems, and natural resources could methodically weaken the power of capital and strengthen democratic control of means of livelihood.  Reforming political campaign finance rules, lobbying regulations, electoral laws would reduce the control capital now has over political agendas.

Local communities can take initiatives to set up cooperatives and community owned financial institutions, social housing, electrical power and communications utilities. Public support for local food production can make people less dependent on the vagaries of capitalist markets.  Environmental action can help ensure a better human future. Local, national, and international mobilizations can help reduce dependence on fossil fuel and replace automobiles with public transit and bicycles. Cities can be reconfigured so that walking once again is a pleasant, healthy mode of daily transportation.

Community and workplace mobilizations in solidarity with First Nations, racialized minorities, the marginalized, women, and immigrants will build human bonds and help expose the mean-spirited divisiveness of wealth-holders’ privilege. Support for policies that are intended to reduce disparities increase global human cooperation. These include the right of people to democratically direct their domestic markets as well as international funding with no strings attached for education, housing, health care, and infrastructure. Development should be directed not by foreign agencies but people themselves. The aim is to help provide people with capacity to help themselves.

The capacity of capitalists to use violence against working-class gains can be reduced. Vocally supporting the work police do in protecting persons and property, while exposing covert politically motivated policing, demanding public accountability of the criminal justice system, and mobilizing against police assaults on opponents of the system can help win police to the side of the people. Supporting soldiers in the sacrifices they make while opposing militarism and war can expose capitalist profiteering at the expense of soldiers as well as of people abroad.

Unions will have critical roles in movements against capitalism. Workers not represented by unions have no means to formulate their workplace interests independent of capitalists.  Unions were organizing centres of campaigns for freedom of assembly, association, speech, and the press, as well as the right to vote for men and women. Unions are largely responsible for the wages and working conditions that allow capitalism to claim it provides rising living standards. Now in a time when capitalist interests are eroding collective bargaining rights, unions have been preoccupied with conserving past gains. Still unions have provided critical support for First Nations, racialized minorities, women, gays and lesbians, and immigrants.

Revived opposition to capitalism may begin with the unemployed, marginalized, dispossessed minorities, immigrants, or students. Wherever it begins, rising opposition to capitalism will encourage workers already organized for collective bargaining to join in solidarity. As opposition to capitalism grows, more wage and salary workers will demand collective bargaining rights. Revived unionism will convince more people that a working-class alternative is practical.

Mass protests over the past few years in Brazil, Egypt, Tunisia, Wisconsin, Greece, and Israel show that people will rally against repression, privatizations, public sector layoffs, cuts to social programs, rising food costs and the high cost of for-profit housing.  Immediate results may be disappointing, but as people come to see that they are not alone in opposition to a system directed by and for super-wealthy minorities, mass protests can turn into general strikes and workplace occupations as well as into electoral gains for democracy and equality.

Al Engler

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The power to build economic democracy

19 Aug

It makes perfect sense that capitalists would promote the idea that workers are not capable of running the world. For the same reason capitalists and their supporters claim a few rich people “own” the collective means of production: These are ways to justify minority rule. In effect, the one per cent minority is telling the 99% majority: “Our money gives us the power to run the world and you’re too stupid to do anything about it.”

Bullshit of course, but there’s a question to answer before rebutting these two piles of propaganda poop: Why would workers want to run the world?

And this is not just some rhetorical question. It is a summing up of dozens of questions and statements that I hear everyday from people around me, all workers who should know better. Here are a few:

“Let the managers manage — it’s their right.”

“The world is so messed up, it’s too late to do anything about it, anyway.”

“We’d fuck it up.”

“There’s no collective solution, the best we can do is look after ourselves.”

“My friends and family, that’s all I care about.”

“I’m not here for a long time, just a good time.”

“Go back to the land.”

“I can barely look after myself, let alone run the world.”

“It sounds good, but it will turn out bad. It always does.”

In other words, why even consider the project of the vast majority of people, who are workers, getting together and trying to make a better world?

The easiest answer is: We’re screwed if we don’t. The one percent who currently rules the world is doing what small ruling classes have done throughout history — run the economic and political system in their self-interest. If they get rich from war, there will be war. If they get to choose between health care for all or more profits for themselves, they’ll choose profit. If lots of money is to be made by pouring ever more carbon into the atmosphere, global warming will get worse and worse.

Workers must take power away from the greedy one percent and run the world in the interests of all because if we don’t things will keep getting worse.

And workers, organized together, are the only people with the potential power to create a democratic economy. If we don’t do it no one will, because only workers have the possibility of taking over the factories, offices, warehouses, railways, ships, stores and other places of work that make up our economy. Only workers acting together can create an economic democracy.

“Is that the best you can come up, a negative reason?” some might ask.

But in fact there’s lot of positive reasons. I can think of a few right off the top of my head:

Changing the world to make it a better place will be fun. All those who participate will have the time of their lives.

Your grandchildren and their grandchildren will love you for doing it.

It is the right thing to do.

Imagine a world where everyone was actually given an opportunity to develop all their potential and be the best person they could be. Trying to achieve a world like that is a very good thing.

I’m sure others can come up with a lot more positive reasons why workers should want to change the world.

Think of these reasons as the tools we need to build the foundation of a movement.

You’ve got to start someplace. A trip to a new world begins with a single step.

Ernie Peshkov-Chow 

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Why would workers want to change the world?

9 Aug

It makes perfect sense that capitalists would push the idea that workers are not capable of running the world. For the same reason capitalists and their supporters claim a few rich people “own” the collective means of production: These are ways to justify minority rule. In effect, the one per cent minority is telling the 99% majority: “Our money gives us the power to run the world and you’re too stupid to do anything about it.”

Bullshit of course, but there’s a question to answer before rebutting these two piles of propaganda poop: Why would workers want to run the world?

And this is not just some rhetorical question. It is a summing up of dozens of questions and statements that I hear everyday from people around me, all workers who should know better. Here are a few:

“Let the managers manage — it’s too much of a headache.”

“The world is so messed up, it’s too late to do anything about it, anyway.”

“We’d fuck it up.”

“There’s no collective solution, the best we can do is look after ourselves.”

“My friends and family, that’s all I care about.”

“I’m not here for a long time, just a good time.”

“Go back to the land.”

“I can barely look after myself, let alone run the world.”

“It sounds good, but it will turn out bad. It always does.”

In other words, why even consider the project of the vast majority of people, who are workers, getting together and trying to make a better world?

The easiest answer is: We’re screwed if we don’t. The one percent that currently rules the world is doing what small ruling classes have done throughout history — run their world in their self-interest. If they get rich from war, there will be war. If they get to choose between health care for all or more profits for themselves, they’ll choose profit. If lots of money is to be made by pouring ever more carbon into the atmosphere and capitalists are running the world, global warming will get worse and worse.

Workers must take power away from the greedy one percent and run the world in the interests of all because if we don’t things will keep getting worse.

And workers, organized together, are the only people with the potential power to create a democratic economy, which is the only way of taking power away from the ruling minority. If we don’t do it no one will.

“Is that the best you can come up, a negative reason?” some might ask.

But in fact there’s lot of positive reasons. I can think of a few right off the top of my head:

Changing the world to make it a better place will be fun. All those who participate will have the time of their lives.

Your grandchildren and their grandchildren will love you for doing it.

It is the right thing to do.

Imagine a world where everyone was actually given an opportunity to develop all their potential and be the best person they could be. That would be good, wouldn’t it? Trying to achieve a world like that is a very good thing.

I’m sure others can come up with a lot more positive reasons why workers should want to change the world.

Think of these reasons as the tools we need to build a movement.

You’ve got to start someplace.

Ernie Peshkov-Chow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Rant: Idiot capitalism

8 Aug

You know one of the things I hate most about capitalism? How it turns people into idiots.

You want proof? Advertising.

What’s the fundamental underlying principle of advertising? That people are idiots.

Drink lots of beer and you’ll get the girl. What do people watching learn from this? That young men are idiots.

You need to zoom zoom around in a fast car that costs the average yearly wage to buy and third of your monthly income to maintain to really enjoy the good life. Men of all ages are idiots.

You’ll never get the guy unless you buy that perfume and this skin cream…  Women are idiots.

But advertising is just the tip of the idiot iceberg sticking out of the capitalist ocean.

Cut taxes on the rich, slash social services and we’ll all be better off. Who’d buy that nonsense? Rich people and idiots.

Let’s go to war against those bad guys. And these bad guys too who just happen to have a lot of oil. And those very bad guys who also just happen to have a lot of oil. And these very, very, very bad guys who are mean to women. They don’t have any oil. Oh, but they do have a lot of other resources and just happen to control the route where we want to build our oil pipeline. Who’d buy this transparent bullshit? People who profit from war and idiots.

Be proud you live in a democracy. Except at work, where you must accept the dictatorship of the boss, or in the economy where capitalists run the show. And don’t complain that money buys the few elections we do have. Who’d accept this state of affairs? Capitalists, their sycophants, and idiots.

I know what you’re thinking. Capitalism treats most people like idiots because it works. That’s what most people are.

Not you or me of course, but most people. Right? That’s what you believe: Most people are idiots.

The truth is capitalism requires us to think that way. A system in which less than one percent of the population makes all the important economic and political decision functions best when most people think most people are idiots. If the 90 per cent of us who do all the work actually believed we were smart and capable of running the world ourselves, it would not be good news for the ruling class. We might take over and say: Hey capitalists, it was swell, but we don’t need you anymore. Or, at the very least, a lot of us might ask why, instead of how high, when the boss tells us to jump.

Throughout history ruling classes have justified their rule by claiming superiority over the rest of us. Five hundred years ago they were mostly concerned with convincing each other this was true. They didn’t care what the peasants thought. Sure, they had the church to keep us in our place, but mostly they relied on military might. Now, with the limited democracy we have won, it’s become more complicated.

The best situation for capitalists today is when workers are smart enough to do all the work, but stupid enough to think other workers are idiots.

This explains the right wing attacks on public education, the mindless trash on TV and all the other brainwashing, which the system calls popular culture.

You know what I hate even worse than capitalism trying to turn us into idiots?

That we let them.

Ernie Peshkov-Chow

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