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August 20, 2016 - No. 32 CPC(M-L) Holds August Celebrations Dawn Ceremony Pays
Tribute to
In
Memoriam -- Jean-Guy Allard CPC(M-L) Holds August Celebrations Dawn Ceremony Pays Tribute to the
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With sorrow the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) learned of the death of Jean-Guy Allard, in Havana, Cuba, on August 16, 2016 at the age of 68. CPC(M-L) expresses its sincere condolences to his family, colleagues and friends.
Jean-Guy Allard was born in Shawinigan, Quebec in 1948 and for almost 30 years worked as a reporter and editor with Le Journal de Montreal and Le Journal de Quebec. After his retirement, he moved to Cuba where he resumed his journalistic work and began what colleague and friend Jacques Lanctot described as "his second life." Jean-Guy began working as a French language editor with Granma International in 2001. Before long he switched from translating to what became his passion: investigating and writing about the activities of the Miami-based terror network of CIA-backed Cuban counterrevolutionaries and their mission to attack the Cuban revolution and its leadership.
In addition to writing for Granma International, Jean-Guy was one of the founders of the publication Cubadebate and the creator of Contrainjerencia (Counter-interference), a website in support of the victims and their families of the 1976 terrorist bombing of a Cubana de Aviacion airliner in Barbados, and in defence of the Cuban Five. He was also a contributor to a number of other publications.
Upon learning of his untimely death, many colleagues
and friends wrote
tributes to Jean-Guy
and his work. Gabriel Molina, the editor of Granma International
who hired Jean-Guy
to work for that newspaper wrote that "It was so significant for us to
have found someone
who, despite not coming or arising from our ranks, constantly came to
our defense. [...]
Among those first pieces, I really liked the way he referred to the
murderer Luis Posada
Carriles and his henchmen, specifically the terrorist organization
which was under the
command of one of his agents-mercenaries, Santiago Álvarez
Fernández-Magriñá. Or the
attacks on national territory by the gang who, in their hasty flight,
left behind propaganda
leaflets and a flag with the name Alpha 66. And the indignation with
which he chronicled the
crimes of those paid assassins: 'The whole town was under fire. There
was not a single house
without bullet marks.'"
"His years with us at Granma International were happy ones,"
Molina wrote. "You
could tell he enjoyed the job which matched his ideals." Molina
highlighted his greetings, his
courageous articles, his natural kindness, his enthusiastic affection
for his country of origin and
toward Cuba.
The U.S.-Venezuelan writer, political commentator and former advisor to president Hugo Chávez, Eva Golinger, who co-authored with Jean-Guy the book La Agresión Permanente: USAID, NED y CIA, paid tribute to her friend and collaborator as a journalist who was committed to truth, justice and ethics. He had been threatened many times from Miami, but rather than stopping him, she wrote, this only provided more encouragement and reason for him to carry out the work he had taken up.
"Jean-Guy feared nothing. The hundreds of articles published under his name around the world contain powerful, substantiated denunciations of the conspiracies, plans, actions and plots against Cuba. His book, Posada Carriles, cuarenta años de terror, published in Venezuela in 2006, is the authoritative text on the history of Latin America's most nefarious terrorist, protected today by the United States."
Golinger also makes mention of Jean-Guy's "stellar work exposing supposed NGOs" that "behind a facade of defending human rights or freedom of expression actually carry out subversion, interference and destabilization."
David Urra, his collaborator on Contrainjerencia, writes that Jean-Guy arrived in Cuba as an experienced journalist and "had the heart of one who felt the need to unmask those who hide behind supposed freedom of the press to render meaningless the right to be informed."
The radio station of the Bolivarian government of Venezuela, La Radio del Sur remembered Jean-Guy Allard as "a great fighter committed to the Bolivarian revolution [who] always denounced the interference of the United States against progressive governments of the region such as those of Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba, Bolivia."
Books that Jean-Guy Allard wrote or co-authored include:
Le dossier Robert Ménard: pourquoi Reporters sans frontières (RSF) s'acharne sur Cuba (The Robert Menard Dossier: Why Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Goes After Cuba) -- 2004, with Marie-Dominique Bertuccioli
La filière terroriste du FBI (The FBI's Terrorist Network) -- 2005
Posada Carriles, cuarenta años de terror (Posada Carriles, Forty Years of Terror) -- 2006
Washington -- Miami: la conexión terrorista del FBI (Washington-Miami: The FBI's Terrorist Connection) -- 2008
La Agresión Permanente: USAID, NED y CIA (Permanent Aggression: USAID, NED and CIA) -- 2009, with Eva Golinger
These works and Jean-Guy's many other writings on Cuba are living testimony to his commitment as a journalist to uncover the crimes of the U.S. empire against Cuba, Venezuela and the world, a contribution for which he will always be remembered.
Trudeau Government Escalates War Preparations
Plans for Militarization of Arctic Under U.S. Control
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In the final months of the Obama presidency arrangements are being put in place in Canada by the Trudeau government to give the United States a dominant position in the Arctic. This is being done in the name of so-called progressive values such as environmental stewardship, reducing green house gas emissions and addressing the longstanding social and economic problems which have affected the peoples of the Arctic, especially the Inuit and other Indigenous peoples. All of it is being done to depoliticize the people and disorient their opposition to the destruction of the natural and social environment by U.S. imperialism which will be stepped up under a new U.S. war presidency.
On March 10, on the occasion of his visit to Washington,
Prime Minister Trudeau joined President Obama in announcing "a new
partnership for Arctic leadership." Its stated aim is to "embrace the
opportunities and to confront the challenges in the changing Arctic."
They claim that this will be done through "Indigenous and Northern
partnerships, and responsible, science-based leadership."
It comes at a
time when the United States holds the rotating chairmanship of the
Arctic Council (a two-year term which began April 24, 2015) and has
stepped-up its contention for control of the Arctic. It is taking place
in the context of the opening up of the Northwest Passage as a new
shipping route to and from Asia and the attempts of the U.S. to have
this route declared an international waterway in which it hopes its
military forces and shipping monoplies can do as they please. It is
also taking place amidst moves by the U.S. as well as Canada to lay
claim to the strategic resources in the Arctic, in particular those in
areas claimed by Russia. In this regard, the U.S. is also intent on
placing its aggressive missile defence systems (especially a new
generation of remote sensors to replace those of the Cold War period)
and U.S. forward operating bases in the Canadian Arctic. Much of this
also relates to bringing in new arrangements within the North American
Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Notably, on August 17 the commander
of NORAD, General Lori Robinson, visited NORAD's forwarding Operating
Location in Inuvik, North West Territories to become familiar with
"Canadian NORAD facilities" there.
Change from Harper-Era Strategy
The Harper government had open disagreements with the
particular interests represented by the Obama administration such as
following the 2006 federal election campaign when Stephen Harper
pounced on comments by David Wilkins, U.S. ambassador to Canada at the
time, who reaffirmed the long-standing assertion by the U.S. that the
Northwest Passage is an international strait through which
international shipping has the right of passage. Harper stated, "We
have significant plans for national defence and for defence of our
sovereignty, including Arctic sovereignty; it is the Canadian people we
get our mandate from, not the ambassador from the United States."
The Harper government made a big issue of visiting the Arctic annually and promoting the establishment of military bases and use of the Canadian Rangers in the Arctic. Annual exercises led by the military called Operation Nanook were held. Now under the Trudeau government a new arrangement is being put in place in concert with the legacy President Obama is trying to cement. This includes aspects of its missile defence program that it uses to track activities in Russia, such as the same kind of sensors that the people of Korea are resolutely opposing due to their aggressive nature and risk to the natural environment.
What Is Being Said
Under the new partnership, the two countries are said to be focusing on four areas:
"- Conserving Arctic biodiversity through science-based decision-making;
"- Incorporating Indigenous science [sic] and
traditional
knowledge
into decision-making;
"- Building a sustainable Arctic economy"
(This is described as including "shipping, fishing, and oil and
gas exploration and development"); and
"- Supporting strong Arctic communities" (According to the two leaders supporting strong Arctic communities is linked to trying to assert their control over the Arctic. They state that "All Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic are vital to strengthening and supporting U.S. and Canadian sovereignty claims.")
The areas outlined in the new partnership almost directly coincide with the Arctic Strategy of the Obama administration released in 2013 through which the U.S. sought to assert its domination in the Arctic in the name of preserving the environment, evidence-based decision-making regarding the exploration and shipping of oil and gas, as well as recognizing what they called Indigenous knowledge. This is supposedly in contrast to the Bush administration's Arctic strategy which openly spoke about the Arctic as being important for U.S. national security interests, in particular the placement of its missile defence bases and the free movement of its military in and under the Arctic. Under the Obama administration's Arctic Strategy, the U.S. continues to assert that the Arctic is vital to its national security and in particular that it requires the freedom of movement of its military forces in and under the Arctic. However, this is kept under wraps and talk is all about conservation and environmentalism so as to hide the militariziation taking place and increasing U.S. occupation.
In launching "the new partnership," the Trudeau government seeks to ensure the free movement and control of the U.S. military in the Canadian Arctic. This is what all the talk about environmental stewardship is meant to hide.
Canada to Focus on Inuit
When speaking about "the new leadership model," Canada emphasizes relations with the Inuit and other First Nations. On August 5, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett appointed Mary Simon, an Inuit leader, as the Minister's Special Representative responsible for leading "an engagement" that "builds on the commitments made in the U.S.-Canada Joint Statement on Climate, Energy and Arctic Leadership" and providing advice on the development of this new "shared Arctic leadership model."[1]
It appears Simon has been tasked with getting other Inuit leaders to agree to allow the U.S. a bigger role in their territories in return for addressing various concerns of the people who live in the Arctic -- a tough sell indeed.[2]
Oppose U.S. Militarization of the Arctic!
Environmental stewardship, conservation and development of natural resources to serve the people who live in the Arctic does not require the intervention of the United States. In the experience of Canadians, the U.S. state stands for nation-wrecking and war and talk about the environment is for purposes of pursuing maximum profit for its monopolies in what are called "green industries." The U.S. military is the biggest polluter in the world: it willfully destroys the natural and social environment in order to assert U.S. imperialist domination. The U.S. is an Arctic country given its claims over Alaska; however, in the name of environmental protection, it is now being handed a direct role on Canadian territory without the Canadian people being given any say in the matter.
Arctic
territories
are
occupied
by
the U.S. (Alaska), Canada, Denmark, Russia
and Greenland. The Inuit have lived there since time immemorial. They
have the right to decide what happens in their homeland. The Liberals
are entering into a "new leadership model" with the U.S. behind the
backs of the peoples of the Arctic who are supposed to accept such
arrangements after the fact through "an engagement." This will never
erase the right of the Inuit to decide what happens in their
territories.
Those who live in the Arctic are not favoured by the U.S. placing its missiles, sensors and military equipment there and will surely not accept it as a quid pro quo for the building of roads, schools or hospitals or other infrastructure they desperately require. They have resolutely opposed U.S. imperialism's destructive role in their territories, including U.S. ballistic missile testing, in the past. The same is bound to be the case today if the U.S. attempts to place missile batteries or remote sensors there.
Through "engagements" and "consultations" the Liberal government is trying to present itself as having a better approach for the Arctic and First Nations across Canada than the Harper government, which did not consult or even try to get consent. The Liberals' approach however will not give legitimacy to whatever the U.S. has planned. Embroiling those who live in the Arctic in discussions on how to allow the U.S. to use their territories for its own purposes is what the Liberals hope to achieve, however they are bound to backfire.
Make Canada a Zone for Peace!
Peace-loving people stand against the militarization of the Arctic. Whether by Canadian or U.S. forces or both, militarizing the territories claimed by Canada in the Arctic does not serve the interests of those who live there, or the cause of peace generally. It contributes to the destruction of the natural environment and leads to further militarization and contention -- the conditions for war. To claim as the Liberals are doing that they can reconcile preserving the environment in the Arctic with acceding to the U.S. demand that its military be allowed to operate freely in the Arctic is a fraud worthy of contempt.
Notes
1. Simon was the President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami from 2006 to 2012. She has held many significant positions for the Canadian government and Inuit organizations. She has been President of Makivik Corporation (a Land Claims Organization for Inuit of Nunavik), President of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, Canadian Ambassador for Circumpolar Affairs as well as to the Kingdom of Denmark. Ms. Simon also led Canada's negotiations during the creation of the eight-nation Arctic Council in the mid 1990s.
Simon is currently co-chair of Canadians for a New Partnership. This group was established in 2014 and one of its main spokespersons has been Paul Martin. It was set up before the last federal election to make an issue of going back to the program of more funding for First Nations and Inuit and raised as concerns the unfairness of the treatment of First Nations and the need for "equity." The organization's board is full of members of the Order of Canada and key point people of the Canadian state such as former Prime Ministers Paul Martin and Joe Clark and Justice Frank Iacobucci. Its founder, Stephen Kakfwi, a former premier of the Northwest Territories and president of the Northwest Territories Dene Nation, said he created the organization in response to watching the emergence of the Idle No More movement. This shows the manner in which such groupings emerge out of efforts by the ruling circles to undermine the independent political movements of the people and divert them into giving up their own initiatives in favour of replacing "bad leaders" such as Harper, with so-called "good leaders" such as Trudeau who are then called upon to be "fair."
2. In her capacity as the Minister's Special Representative, Simon is to meet with territorial governments, Indigenous governments and First Nations, Inuit and Métis representative organizations, land claim organizations and co-management boards, non-governmental organizations, youth and youth representative organizations, scientists (e.g., marine, climate), researchers and research organizations and industry. She is to support a "collaborative approach" to advancing a shared Arctic leadership model. Her mandate states, "Given the constitutional standing of comprehensive land claim agreements (treaties), engagement with land claims organizations will be central to this process." In this case it may well be about getting Inuit to give up or "modernize" their land claims so as to facilitate a "collaborative approach" -- which is to say provide a place for the U.S. in the Canadian Arctic.
(Originally presented at the August 14 Seminar on the National and International situation held by the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) in Ottawa.)
Reject Neo-Liberal Ideological Assault
Finding Something Magical about Private
Ownership and Control
of Social Property
Ideological pressure on the people from the ruling imperialist elite is constant. Their star performers, one could say their celebrity ideologues, are constantly paraded on television, newspapers, magazines and the Internet.
A common method of the star performers is to present concepts as unchangeable universal values. A concept is repeated as unassailable giving it a mystical or magical quality. In this way the concept becomes a quasi-religious dogma that cannot be analyzed or assessed in itself or in its relation with the material world because it is irrefutable and accepted on faith with the power of the sincerity or celebrity of the personage or state-organized force promoting and repeating it again and again.
A concept is presented as an article of faith, almost divine in nature. As such, it cannot be analyzed in itself or examined in relation to other phenomena. The people are encouraged either to believe and have faith in a concept's magical powers and the sincerity of the state-sponsored celebrity and accept it without question or oppose it with another article of faith backed by another or competing celebrity ideologue. For the ruling elite, the issue is to have a fight amongst their star performers and their articles of faith, often presented as duelling policy objectives of the cartel political parties or disputes between the left and right wings of the ruling elite. Not allowed is human-centred scientific analysis and thinking, which examines the problems facing the economy, political process and country with objectivity of consideration.
For the ruling elite, the target of the ideological pressure is the working class, the continued seizure of the social wealth workers produce and to promote and maintain class privilege as a necessity of society. To accomplish this they need to convince themselves of the rightness of their ownership and control of social property and to keep the working class from developing its own thinking and theory. The ruling elite are so stuck in outmoded capital-centred thinking that they imagine all problems the economy and politics face can be fixed by reducing the claim of the working people on the social wealth they produce, increasing the amount that flows to the rich and consolidating their class privilege and hold on political power by depriving the working class of its independent organizing, thinking and theory.
An example of a concept that puts ideological pressure on the people is the dogmatic faith of many celebrities in the magical power of private ownership of social property. The concept is presented as a universal value, an assertion that when people own social property directly, they have an interest in its value and tend to take better care of it, in contrast with state ownership where no one cares about the asset or property.
From this mental construct, the celebrity ideologue builds a case for the anti-social offensive, including privatization of public assets and the continued private ownership and control of social wealth and property despite evidence that such ownership and control along with its corresponding aim for private profit give rise to intractable problems and are in contradiction with the social interconnected nature of socialized forces of industrial mass production. The celebrity promotes the mental construct regardless of whether it has anything to do with a problem in the economy or some other issue the people and country are facing. The point is to take people away from viewing the world as it presents itself, as material that can be analyzed in itself and in its relationships with other material within a historical context. The people are meant to marvel at the celebrity ideologue's brilliant dogma and slick presentation and not analyze and think about the economy for themselves.
Calls for private control and ownership of all public property are meant to destroy public social programs and services so that owners of social wealth can take them over as private enterprise. The new owners of the hospitals, schools and other privatized public property will then increase their claim on social wealth and force people to claim less and to pay for everything in user fees regardless of an individual's circumstances.
Experience in all countries has shown that private schools and hospitals are too narrow in their aim to guarantee the modern right of health care and education for all. It may sound simplistic, but to guarantee the rights of all, the broad aim must be to guarantee rights and not some other aim to serve narrow private interests. Once the aim is set to guarantee the rights of all, the problem becomes how to fulfil that broad aim in the best possible manner. Once the aim is set to make private profit for a few in contradiction with the broad aim to guarantee the rights of all, the problem becomes how to fulfil the narrow aim.
User fees are now ubiquitous. People are nickel and dimed to death with fees for everything from "road pricing," bridge tolls, public park fees, education fees, daycare fees, after-school fees for recreation and sports programs, post-secondary education fees, high mass transit prices to park fees etc.
"Fend for yourself" and private charities have supplanted any concept of society, a government of laws, social love and solidarity or resolve to curtail class privilege and monopoly right and guarantee the rights of all. "Might makes right" through the power of social wealth in private hands and state police power to protect and serve class privilege, the status quo and the imperialist system of states.
The ruling elite and their celebrity ideologues deny and trample on the modern principle that people have rights by virtue of being human. They openly call for the suppression of the working class movement and any effort to open a path forward to modern socialized relations of production in conformity with the modern socialized productive forces of industrial mass production. No concrete analyses are allowed in the public domain to explain, deal with and resolve the pressing problems of recurring economic crises and predatory and inter-imperialist wars. The celebrity ideologues spout empty platitudes and calls to arms to serve and protect the class privilege of those who own and control the social wealth the working class produces.
Disappearing the Working Class
For the celebrity ideologues, the actual producers of the social property owned privately or by the state are dismissed or simply not accounted for as important. The "something" owned privately or by the state has no origin, no coming into being through work, no materiality and no historical context wherein the relations of production could be analyzed. The social property owned privately or by the state exists inside their brains as an imaginary concept outside space and time, and that suits the ruling elite just fine because the last thing they want analyzed is the economy and its social class relations in the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. They want the producers of all social property, the working class, to disappear from any discussion of the economy, property, ownership, politics, rights, duties, motivation or relations of production. In capital-centred ideology workers exist only negatively, as costs to social property and a drain on the value that private owners hold so dear, which ironically is the social wealth workers produce through their collective work and which does not exist without them and their work-time on the socialized productive forces.
The celebrity ideologues disappear the working class and present their anti-social concepts with impunity in writing, television and elsewhere because they have the backing of the imperialist state. Their universal eternal values are neither concretized in the material world nor do they exist within a historical context. The ruling elite do not want their mental constructs challenged with an analysis of the world as it presents itself that contradicts the dominant ruling ideology.
In the Fantastic World of the Celebrity Ideologues, the Actual Producers of Social Property Have No Say in Its Ownership or Control or What Motivation or Relations Conform to Modern Social Production
For example, according to the celebrity ideologues' mental construct, the steelworkers do not care for the productive forces on which they produce steel or the broad steel sector in general, as they do not own the mills or the social wealth they produce, regardless whether the steel mill is owned privately or publicly through the state. According to their dogma, the only people who care for the steel mill are individuals who own the mill, and because of private ownership those individuals, as the celebrity ideologue says "have an interest in its value and tend to take better care of it."
Is this true? Do those who own the former Stelco mill in Hamilton take better care of it? Is this how today's world of ownership of social property presents itself or is such thinking really off in some magical world of their own mental construction, spinning ideas out of ideas to suit a preconceived notion? Perhaps they should journey to Hamilton and investigate the private ownership of Stelco during the twenty-first century and analyze and judge scientifically with objectivity of consideration whether the various people who have owned Stelco have had and continue to have an interest in its value and consequently tend to take better care of it or have any interest in the Canadian steel sector and all the factors and infrastructure necessary for it to thrive or at least give it some stability. Broadly speaking, the former owners and now U.S. Steel have had a singular interest to wreck Stelco in ways that serve their narrow private interests and certainly not in ways to take care of and renew it with investments and solve the problems facing the company, steel industry and economy generally.
Every private owner of Stelco has presented its problems in the most self-serving manner to deflect from analyzing and resolving the real problems that require real solutions. The monopoly owners present the problems in two ways both of which are false.
First, they accuse the actual producers, the steelworkers, of claiming too much value from the new value they produce, as present workers in wages and retired workers in pensions. This problem of claims on the value of steel production has nothing to do with the actual production of steel, the organization of the steel industry and its role in the economy. The problem of claims on the new value of production is found in the relations between employer and employee and with the distribution of the new value derived from steel production between the two social forces. A change in how the new value is distributed between the two social forces does not resolve in the present the problems of steel production, the industry generally and its role in the economy. The claims of steelworkers could be reduced to a minimum wage with no pensions or benefits and the problems of the sector would still remain with recurring crises and constant instability.
Secondly, the owners accuse other steel producers in Canada, the U.S. and abroad of producing too much steel and flooding the available markets. One of the reasons U.S. Steel had in buying Stelco in 2007 was to eliminate it as a competitor and to eliminate much of its productive capacity, which it has done. This was done under the plea of too much production of steel everywhere causing prices to fall and leaving steel unsold or mills not producing.
This accusation of too much steel is false and cannot be taken seriously. Where in any country in the world is the need for steel not higher than ever in history and much greater than the capacity to produce steel? Certainly not Canada, where the need for steel is enormous and generally unfilled domestically. What city in Canada does not need steel to house the people, to rebuild manufacturing and infrastructure? The problem is not too much steel or any other social product but the inability of the ruling elite and the market economy to handle the immense productive capacity of socialized industrial mass production. The concern of those who own and control the socialized means of production is not the social product and how it can meet the needs of the people and economy but how to turn the social product into social wealth as money for themselves. Whether the social product is needed or not is irrelevant to the ruling elite who consider only how to turn the social product into social wealth as money in their hands.
The fact that the economy, as presently constituted and divided into social classes with outmoded relations of production, does not have the capability to turn the actual and potential social product into social wealth as money and therefore becomes "too much social product" and "too much capacity to produce social product" is not presented as a problem to be taken up and resolved. Why not, the working people may ask? Because the resolution of the problem entails curtailing monopoly right to control the economy, it entails bringing a different aim and direction to the economy and establishing modern relations of production in conformity with the modern forces of production.
Rather than the current aim of those who own and control
competing parts of the economy of turning social product into
social wealth as money through the marketplace and squeezing from
it the greatest claim possible in increasingly dictatorial,
destructive and parasitic ways, the working people are challenged
by history to organize and bring into being a new aim.
A new aim
for the economy would be to produce social product to meet the
needs of the people, economy and society, to harness the full
power of the socialized productive forces of industrial mass
production to guarantee the rights of all.
A first step in that struggle is to curtail monopoly right of its dictate over the current state of affairs. Free from monopoly dictate, another step is to look at the steel sector and economy as an integral whole with all its diverse but necessary parts from raw material to finished steel product and all the attendant social and material infrastructure functioning together and in harmony with those sectors and enterprises that require steel for the production of means of production or articles of consumption.
Such a step in the steel sector would mean reducing the power of private ownership and investment to one of an annual claim on the total investment determined through a percentage, an average rate of profit, within the price of production. The investment would be separate from the production process and without control over production, prices and the wholesale distribution of the social product. This would require a public authority accountable to the people to oversee production, the determination of prices of production and the apparent domestic demand and wholesale distribution of steel, and its import and export.
Current Private Ownership and Control of Parts of the
Economy Does Not Work
Owners in today's monopoly-controlled economy are
mostly not
located where the productive forces exist, and in terms of the
investment usually two or three times removed. Except for small
and some medium-sized companies, the enterprises of today are not
owned directly. They are owned through trusts, holding companies,
stocks, bonds and derivatives, and various other enterprises of
the financial oligarchy, which together can be characterized as Social
Wealth
Controlling
Funds. (See item "Control
and Ownership of Monopolies"
detailing the
ownership of U.S. Steel in TML Daily, May 5, 2016 available here.
Owners from the financial oligarchy are driven to protect and enlarge the portion of social wealth they own in this and that enterprise, and if this entails destroying particular productive forces, they will oblige. Their goal is not production, enhancing the productive forces or bringing security and stability to the local, regional or national economy but seizing a derivative of production as social wealth in money. Steel as use-value is not their aim. They only want steel as exchange-value, money. Usually the closest an owner from the financial oligarchy gets to the means of production is clipping a dividend coupon, cashing an interest payment or reading a short synopsis of a quarterly financial report.
The ideological construct -- when people own something directly, and have an interest in its value, they tend to take better care of it -- is misleading in an economy the financial oligarchy dominate. It conjures up a romantic vision of ownership of the material productive forces from the early period of the transition from petty to socialized industrial mass production when a single capitalist owner would sacrifice his own personal life and comfort to put his claim on added-value back into the enterprise he owned. The monopolies of today are privately owned but not usually directly but rather indirectly-owned through Social Wealth Controlling Funds.
Private ownership of monopolies cannot be considered direct in the sense of a small family business. Monopoly ownership presents itself as negative and even destructive in many ways. Monopoly ownership representing private interests comes into contradiction with the interrelated socialized nature of modern productive forces. The problems facing a particular enterprise are related to the economy as a whole and require social solutions not just ones that may appear on the surface to be peculiar to a certain enterprise.
Either the private interests are not interested in social solutions unless they serve their narrow private interests for a claim on social wealth or they are not in a position to enact or enforce social solutions because cooperation amongst competitors and with other broad sectors is lacking. But usually, the solutions to real problems in the economy require restricting monopoly right to serve the public interest, and the financial oligarchy refuses even to discuss such a possibility.
As stated, the aim of the owners of parts of the economy is their claim on social wealth as money, a derivative of social product, and not its production either as goods or services. Their attention and concern is to generate and make the greatest possible claim on social wealth as money including fleecing others without going through the hassle of producing and selling social product. Parasitic schemes to seize already-produced value are now so numerous they dominate the imperialist economy with trillions of dollars changing hands electronically, which does not involve any new production. The parasitism and decay of those who control social wealth constantly encroach on and disrupt the actual production of goods and services. The parasitic schemes are accompanied with pay-the-rich schemes for the monopolies using public funds, including outright grants, loans, waiving of fees and taxes, and public-private-partnerships. Other state-organized programs for the monopolies are guaranteed government contracts for public services, pharmaceuticals, medical and hospital supplies and military and police weapons and even the prison system in the U.S.
The private ownership of monopolies is mostly second or third hand. In the minds of the distant ownership, the actual problems of a local facility are of no consequence; they are left to a hired local executive manager but that manager has no power over major investment or other decisions. The real problems for the financial oligarchy are found in amassing social wealth, mostly as money but also as social property, and empire-building. The private owners are removed from the enterprise they own to the extent that its continued existence through reinvestment of the social wealth workers produce is often rejected because the social wealth is needed elsewhere in the monopoly empire or losses somewhere in their global empire require social wealth from the particular enterprise to be drained away.
Essar Steel Algoma is an example of a local enterprise suffering from problems and losses elsewhere in the Essar Global Fund's empire, in addition to the problems of the Canadian steel sector. Essar Global's construction of an iron ore mine nearby in Minnesota has drained billions of dollars from Essar and now is the subject of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy and huge dogfight with a competing U.S. iron ore monopoly Cliffs Natural Resources, which even went so far as to cut off iron pellet supplies to the Algoma steel mill.
The problems at the former Stelco (U.S. Steel Canada) steelworks in the Hamilton region and at Algoma (Essar) Steel in Sault Ste. Marie are not found in the facilities themselves other than they need renewal through reinvestment. The problems are found in the Canadian steel industry itself and its manipulation by global empire-builders to serve their private interests. Canadian steel production and distribution need a national direction to control prices and supply and demand. The problems require broad pro-social solutions serving nation-building but they come into conflict with the narrow private monopoly interests of the ownership groups serving empire-building. The problems need analysis and real solutions across the broad interrelated socialized economy. They cannot be solved by repeating ideological dogma such as "only private owners are interested in the facility." The dogma serves no useful purpose in solving problems and is outmoded in its essence. Such dogma serves private monopoly interests for empire-building in opposition to nation-building, the working class and the public interest.
In the case at Stelco, steelworkers have worked out various alternatives as solutions to the problems in the steel sector, which do not fit into the dogma of the celebrity ideologues. Importantly, the solutions workers propose arise from the actual producers themselves and their analysis of the concrete conditions. They do not start from pre-conceived dogma but from how the situation at U.S. Steel-controlled Stelco, the steel sector and the interrelated economy presents itself. From there, an analysis and solutions have been developed to open a path forward but the pro-social alternatives of the steelworkers have been denied public space to build public opinion and support, and therein lies an obstacle the working class must overcome.
The prejudices and dogma of the celebrity ideologues, together with the power of the state and mass media, overrule pro-social alternatives that do not fit neatly into their mental constructs. A celebrity ideologue's dogma can be thrown into any article or TV show to disrupt and stop the development of thinking and analysis of the material world. A recent example is a star professor in Hamilton who denounced as a "publicity stunt" USW Local 1005's call for a public inquiry into the steel sector and the destructive use of the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act against steelworkers, the public interest and the solving of any problems.
The ruling elite through the state and control of the mass media deny public space for analysis of concrete conditions and discussion of pro-social alternatives. The working class movement is faced with the necessity of building its own media if it hopes to break through the ruling elite's control and domination of public opinion and the direction of the economy.
State Ownership and Private Ownership
Within the celebrity ideologues' construct, they often use a straw man to generalize private ownership as superior to state ownership. They contrast private ownership with state ownership but not in itself and in its relation to the social class forces at work -- the actual producers of a particular historical context -- but abstractly as an assertion without materiality in time and space and without concrete analysis.
They attribute people's sentiment and motivation towards property and productive forces, although mostly unmentioned, according to whether the state or individuals own the social property. The contrast of ownership and sentiment of certain individuals towards property are presented outside any historical materialism and specifically without any context of relations of production, such as serf and landlord, slave and slave-owner or in the modern context of workers and those who own and control social property, the ruling elite of the financial oligarchy.
What Kind of State Do the Celebrity Ideologues Talk About?
Celebrity ideologues mostly speak in broad terms outside a historical context. They often assert in various ways that when the state owns something, no one has an interest in its value or takes care of it. Is this statement factually correct in today's world or historically for that matter during other periods of relations of production when different social classes were dominant? Why would a state under the control of a social class build something, if no person or social class cared about its value or bothered to take care of it? What would be the point of building it? The state exists in a specific historical context of social classes, productive forces and relations of production. The state serves a particular social class or classes during its existence generally to assert their domination over another social class or classes and other states or peoples.
The state is the organized force to maintain control and domination of the ruling class during a particular historical period. Members of the ruling class care very deeply about their state and what the state owns and they ensure both human and material resources are mobilized to build and take care of the state and its property and assets. The most important asset of the state is its armed forces and the property and assets of their standing army and reserves. The ruling class cares very deeply about the human and material resources of their armed forces because the military, or police power, is the main weapon to maintain its domination over internal class forces they exploit and against external forces it may want to conquer or from whom it may wish to seize their territory and property.
The U.S. imperialist state claims $650 billion annually from the economy to finance its armed forces, which are stationed throughout the world waging predatory wars to expand its Empire, suppress the nation-building projects of others and plunder their wealth and to compete and collude with others within the imperialist system of states. The U.S. military, spy agencies and police forces are organized to suppress the U.S. working class and prevent it from developing its own nation-building project in opposition to U.S. imperialism.
The U.S. ruling elite care very deeply about their state, in particular the military, to the point they force members of the country, especially the youth, to swear allegiance daily to the military and imperialist state. The ruling elite stage elaborate patriotic exercises to brainwash the youth into becoming cannon fodder in their predatory wars and not question the role of the U.S. state and its institutions as the greatest weapon of the financial oligarchy to perpetuate its violent class rule and suppress the peoples of the world from opening a path forward.
To suggest as the celebrity ideologues do with their mental constructs that no one or social force gives a damn about the U.S. state institutions and enterprises is ridiculous and utterly wrong. First and foremost, the U.S. ruling elite care deeply about their imperialist state and its public enterprises and institutions. They use the power of their state to expand their imperialist system of states throughout the world, to enrich themselves with tribute forced to flow into their coffers and to deprive the peoples everywhere including within the U.S. of their right to build a modern state with socialized relations of production in conformity with the modern conditions of an interrelated socialized economy based on industrial mass production.
The care of the ruling class for state property goes well beyond the military, spy agencies and general police power. For example, the Anglo-Canadian ruling elite at various stages around the end of the nineteenth century and during the twentieth built publicly-owned hydro-electric companies throughout the country. These state-owned enterprises ensured abundant cheap electrical power for modern industrial mass production, commercial development and the expansion of cities. The ruling elite have long considered the Quebec, Ontario, BC and other state-owned hydro companies as excellent in serving their private interests and nation-building. Other examples of state enterprises engaged in nation-building are the post office, national airlines, railroads and all manner of material and social infrastructure.
State Ownership and Control Has Profound Meaning
Celebrity ideologues use the term "state" very loosely and fraudulently. Someone owns and controls the institutions and enterprises of the state. A public authority, representing those who dominate the state, exercises ownership and control over its institutions. The ruling elite derive benefit from those institutions and enterprises. The classic slave-owners of ancient Egypt held great pride in the value their slaves produced for the state such as the pyramids.
Celebrity ideologues suggest that the ruling class of Canada, who own and control the institutions and enterprises of the state as well as their own private property, do not give a damn about their value; that no one cares about the value of the state property. This suggestion flies in the face of the reality that a state represents and defends the interests of particular social classes. The foundation of the Canadian state is the dictatorship of the financial oligarchy over the producers of social wealth and property, the working class. The Canadian state defends and perpetuates the rule of the financial oligarchy, who own and control social wealth and property, and its integration within the U.S.-led imperialist system of states.
The construct of the celebrity ideologues finding something magical in private ownership of social property is aimed in part at disarming the working class in modern Canada who work either for privately-owned or state-owned enterprises. The construct obscures workers' relationship with those who own and control the workplace and buy workers' capacity to work.
Whether those in control own the socialized productive force privately or publicly through the imperialist state bears little influence on the relationship of workers with those to whom they sell their capacity to work. The relationship at the place of work is governed by the fundamental laws of the capitalist system where those who own and control social wealth and property are bound within an antagonistic dialectical social relation with those who sell their capacity to work. The social relation capital is a dialectic based on the thesis, those who own and control the socialized productive force, the capitalist class, exploiting the antithesis, the working class.
The antithesis sells its capacity to work to the thesis as exchange-value, and the thesis consumes the capacity to work as use-value by putting it to work on the socialized productive force it owns and controls either privately or publicly through the state. The new value produced by the use-value of the antithesis working on the socialized productive force owned and controlled by the thesis is greater than the exchange-value paid for the capacity to work of the antithesis. The difference is the added-value, the profit seized by the thesis, those who own and control the productive force, whether privately or publicly through the state such as Canada Post. The social relation capital is held together and kept in place with the dictatorship of the financial oligarchy, the Canadian state and its institutions.
The struggle to control the socialized material productive forces, whether owned privately or publicly through the state, is at the heart of the class battle within the social relation capital between the financial oligarchy and the working class. The struggle is not over private or state ownership of the material productive forces but over which social class within the social relation controls the use-value of the antithesis, the working class, and controls the socialized productive forces on which the antithesis works. For the working class to be victorious in the class struggle to control its capacity to work, its use-value, the working class must break free from the dialectical social relation capital and emerge as a new working class, a synthesis, in control of the socialized productive forces and its own new state.
All enterprises in modern Canada both private and public consist of social property the working class has produced. The main issue facing the working class is to gain control over the social property it has produced and on which it works and produces new social wealth; to gain the power to deprive the thesis, those who own and control the socialized material productive forces, of its ability to exploit and oppress the antithesis, and through the power to deprive emerge out of the social relation as a synthesis, a new working class with its own state. How to open a path forward to achieve that goal requires great wisdom, organization and powers of analysis, not dogma whether it comes from celebrity ideologues or others.
Workers Do Their Best with the World into which They Are Born
The working class inherits the social relations, means of production, state and thought material of the previous generation. Workers learn through participation in the struggle for production, scientific experimentation and class struggle that something is not right with the country, in particular their relations with their employers. They sell their capacity to work and through their work produce the social wealth and property, the goods and services society needs for its existence yet do not receive in return a guarantee of security and well-being from birth to passing away. The prevailing social relations leave them without a say or control over the socialized productive forces, what they produce and its distribution. The social relations deprive the working class of control over the political, economic and social affairs that directly affect their lives and without the ability to solve society's many problems and open a path forward. The root issue workers face does not lie with the modern productive forces, whether their means of production are privately or publicly owned, but with the outmoded relations of production that do not conform with the interrelated socialized economy and its productive forces, an absence which deprives the actual producers of control over their means of production, the social product they produce and the ability to harness the power and enormous capacity of socialized industrial mass production to produce effectively without crises and interruption to meet the needs of society and the people and guarantee their security and well-being throughout their lives.
Workers want the best for the productive forces where they work whether privately or publicly owned. They want the public interest served and for nation-building to march forward. But they come up against a financial oligarchy that cares only for its narrow private interests and empire-building within the U.S.-led imperialist system of states.
According to a value construct of the ruling elite, the workers do not care for or value the means of production where they work. For the celebrity ideologues, the only individuals who care about the material productive forces are those who directly own them. Workers in both the private and public sectors would vigorously disagree especially now during the anti-social offensive when monopoly right and empire-building have unleashed extensive wrecking of the productive forces, both public and private, under the reactionary banner of making our monopolies competitive and number one in the world. The truth of the situation is that the working class is blocked in its desire to develop and improve the productive forces and have them work collectively for all the people and general interests of society.
The mental construct of the celebrity ideologues suggests that nurses, teachers, postal workers and others in the public sector could care less about the productive forces where they work, and Canadians generally do not give a damn about their public schools, hospitals and other social property owned by the state.
Most public sector workers would vehemently disagree, such as teachers who point out that their working conditions, which include the buildings and tools of teaching, are the learning conditions of students. Education workers care passionately about the conditions at their workplace. They have been in the forefront of defending the right to education for all at the highest levels against the neoliberal wrecking and attacks, and would like nothing better than to have more control over those conditions to improve them with increased investments.
The financial oligarchy deprive public sector workers from exercising control over the social programs and public services where they work especially how much social wealth should be reinvested in their sectors and how the value they produce should be realized (exchanged) with value produced in other sectors and enterprises in the economy.
Workers in the private sector generally hold this sentiment just as strongly although their situation presents itself differently. The common thread is that workers care very deeply about the productive forces because they are the material basis for their survival and the well-being of the people and society. Without modern socialized means of production the standard of living would be considerably lower. Steelworkers would like nothing better than to have owners of their steelworks, private or public, who actually care in practice about the productive forces and ensure that the facilities are constantly renewed with investments from the social wealth workers produce and that problems in the sector and economy are properly addressed in a broad pro-social manner.
If steelworkers met with these celebrity ideologues, they would tell them and show them with convincing facts that the owners of Stelco and Algoma in today's world consider the productive facilities and workers as mere pawns to be routinely sacrificed for the greater good of their empire-building and narrow private interests. Those who own and control the steelworks do not value them for their productive capacity in nation-building. If they did, they would defend them as precious assets and ensure they were constantly renewed with investments and do everything possible to solve the problems in the sector and economy generally. They would view the existence of the steelworks and the human factor as critical within the Canadian economy, which means broad interrelated problems such as pricing, supply and demand and the development of the material and social infrastructure are interconnected with the steelworks and all depend on each other for their security and well-being.
In other words, the problems of the steelworks are not private matters affecting the private interests of those who own particular means of production but public matters and social problems affecting the broad economy and nation-building. They must be addressed as public social problems of nation-building and necessary to resolve in the public interest. But those who own and control the steelworks at various times are fixated on their narrow private interests and view the workers and steel competitors as enemies to be crushed. They refuse to recognize the means of production as social property and interrelated with the well-being and stability of the entire economy, with the necessity of the whole being addressed in a broad public way. They refuse to recognize the rights of the human factor without which no modern society can be built and no modern relations of production can be developed, not even any equilibrium in the present within the social relation between the working class and those who own and control the socialized means of production.
The celebrity ideologues want to embroil the working class and its allies in diversionary nonsense over private ownership versus state ownership because such a discussion has nothing to do with the concrete conditions in Canada today, and nothing to do with solving problems in the modern economy and moving nation-building forward. The ruling imperialist elite do not want the working class developing its capacity to analyze the concrete conditions as they present themselves objectively and subjectively. They deprive the working class of its right to enhance its thinking through conscious participation in finding a way forward to complete the transition from petty production, medieval autocracy, and the outmoded social relations to socialized industrial mass production and modern relations of production where the actual producers control production in conformity with the modern socialized conditions, bring stability to the whole overcoming the recurring crises that are a feature of the present transitional period and empower themselves politically in a democracy and state of their own making.
The working class is gaining the capacity and willingness to denounce the nonsense and prejudices of the ruling elite, and in doing so come to depend on its own organizations, wisdom and scientific power of analysis. The dogma of celebrity ideologues and others in the service of those who own and control the socialized means of production is meant to stop the people led by the working class from developing modern theory to guide actions and relations in the modern world of socialized industrial mass production.
The capital-centred thinking exalting private ownership and control of social property leads nowhere and is totally unsuitable in the modern conditions. Modern thinking and theory must be developed that reflects the changed conditions in the way people work and live. The old prejudices and dogmas from the previous era of petty production and autocratic rule play an extremely negative role in today's world. They must and can be rejected and replaced with a new direction.
Notes
1. Another area of discussion, which
celebrity ideologues dismiss with their dogma, would go into the
relationship between social responsibility of the state towards
its members and the productive forces, and the social duty of the
members of society towards the state and its productive forces
and the work they must perform to produce and reproduce social
wealth and maintain and increase its value. If the productive
forces and resources of the country were organized and mobilized
to defend the rights of all and their well-being from birth to
passing away, the members of that society would gladly and
enthusiastically uphold their social responsibility to work to
produce the social wealth that serves as the material basis for
their rights and well-being. In doing so, the motivation to work
would change from one of being forced to sell their capacity to
work to survive, to one of work as the necessary factor to
guarantee their rights and the rights of all from birth to
passing away. This would recognize the necessity to empower the
actual producers to control the productive forces and the social
wealth they produce and to participate consciously in all aspects
of nation-building especially politics.
2. Perhaps the working class should not judge celebrity ideologues so harshly. Maybe what they really mean by saying "when people own something directly, and have an interest in its value, they tend to take better care of it" is that the actual producers, the working class, should own and control the means of production on which they work. In that way, the working class would be both the producers of all social property and those who own and control it. The problem for the working class is how to organize to deprive the financial oligarchy and their flunkies of the power of their prejudices on the people's thinking and theory, and deprive the ruling imperialist elite of the dictatorship they exercise over the people through ownership and control of social property and the state.
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca