|
November 30, 2010 - No. 205
Time to Rebuild Stelco
- Information Update, Local 1005 USW -
Picket line of locked out
Hamilton steelworkers and supporters, November 19, 2010.
• Time to
Rebuild Stelco - Information Update, Local 1005 USW
British Columbia
• Taseko Mines Open Pit Gold Mine Rejected
• Brief Review of BC Mining
Discussion on Nation-Building -- The Necessity to Restrict Monopoly
Right
• Part Three: How the Problem of Prices of
Production Poses Itself - Workers' Centre of CPC(M-L)
Time to Rebuild Stelco
- Information Update, Local 1005 USW -
U.S. Steel's lockout of 900 Hamilton steelworkers is an
attempt to blackmail the union into selling out 9,000 pensioners and
any new hires. It is also very destructive to the community.
In his letter to the Hamilton Spectator
November 7, 2010, Hamilton resident Robert H. Thompson, former
treasurer for Stelco, Inc. who retired in 2006 after 31 years in
finance positions with Stelco, pointed out: "The closing of this
facility's production will mean the end of hundreds
of millions of dollars in raw material flowing through Hamilton's port;
it will mean the loss of salaries and wages in excess of $100 million
annually; it will also mean the loss of millions of dollars in property
taxes and utility purchases which will have to be made up by others in
Hamilton; and it will mean the loss
of hundreds of millions of dollars in purchased goods and services from
local suppliers throughout the community. Some of these local suppliers
of goods and services will not survive without the steel plant, and as
a consequence, there will be jobs besides those lost at U.S. Steel....
The economic fallout in Hamilton
from this plant's closure will be serious and long lasting. This city
can ill afford the loss of $1 billion in economic activity and the
permanent loss of high-paying industrial jobs.... The risk for Hamilton
is that even if U.S. Steel is successful in securing these concessions
from 1005, there is no guarantee that Hamilton
Works will ever reopen."
 
Hamilton, November 19,
2010
In the opinion of Local 1005, all of this raises the
serious issue of the necessity to rebuild Stelco as an integrated steel
producer. The dismantling and stripping of assets away from Stelco
began under the influence of neoliberal globalization. This has to be
reversed with nation-building.
U.S. Steel has proven itself unwilling to be a
participant in Canadian nation-building as it has its own "U.S. First"
agenda of concentrating manufacturing in the United States, taking over
steel markets in Canada and eliminating steel competition in this
country. U.S. Steel even admits in a submission
to the Federal Court that it closed Stelco mills in Hamilton and Lake
Erie to manipulate steel prices in North America for its own and other
global producers' narrow benefit. Price manipulation is still a crime
and so are violations of the Investment
Canada
Act. U.S. Steel admits to both. Such a rogue should not
have control of a vital part of a key sector of the Canadian economy.
Obviously, with the shutdowns and lockouts at Stelco, U.S. Steel is not
a factor for nation-building. Neoliberal globalization for U.S. Steel
means wrecking manufacturing in Canada, destroying the competition and
securing a global market base.
The wrecking and dismantling of Stelco right from the
beginning was a crime against the well-being and economic security of
Canadians in which our community is most affected. Governments at the
federal and provincial levels should have seen integrated Stelco as a
national treasure and defended
it and prosecuted all those who schemed to profit from its destruction.
But they let it happen and are now standing idly by claiming it is U.S.
Steel's right to do as it pleases.
U.S. Steel is so corrupt it is capable of saying and
doing anything to further its empire-building. Why do our governments
allow it to continue attacking us? Shame on them.
It is not too late to reverse the wrecking but the
federal and provincial governments must be held responsible because
they are the only force strong enough to enforce the survival and
growth of this necessary manufacturing facility as a fortress of
Canadian self-reliance, prosperity, security and economic
well- being.
Keep
Stelco
Producing!
British Columbia
Taseko Mines Open Pit Gold Mine Rejected
Tsilhqot'in Aboriginal
Nation and supporters demonstrate outside Taseko Mines' Annual General
Meeting,
Vancouver, June 16, 2010. (RAVEN)
The federal Cabinet November 2 rejected Taseko Mines'
proposed open pit gold-copper mine located 125-km southwest of Williams
Lake, BC in the traditional unceded territory of the Tsilhqot'in
Aboriginal Nation. This reckless proposal, fiercely opposed by the
Tsilhqot'in people, was a by-product in part
of the high price of gold, which has spawned an imperialist "gold
fever" scramble throughout the world.
The Taseko Mines' proposal was particularly irrational,
calling for the destruction of Teztan Biny (Fish Lake), Y'anah Biny
(Little Fish Lake) and portions of Teztan Yeqox (Fish Creek). The
portions of this crucial watershed to be destroyed, which flow to the
Dasiqox (Taseko River), were designated as tailings
(mine waste) impoundment areas, which would poison and kill fish and
other life forms. Ironically, a federal Cabinet order allowing mining
companies to circumvent the Fisheries Act and turn lakes into
"tailings dumps" instead of building safe impoundment areas gave Taseko
Mines a "legal" financial
incentive for its socially irresponsible proposal.
The mine was broadly opposed by not only the Tsilhqot'in
National Government and its allies but also many from the nearby
community of Williams Lake and throughout BC. However, workers and
businesspeople from the region were subjected to enormous pressure to
support the project particularly in the
face of the forestry crisis, as the development was loudly hailed as
bringing "prosperity" for approximately twenty years.
Xeni Gwet'in Chief Marilyn Baptise of the Tsilhqot'in
Nation said, "According to reports, the company spent $100 million
pursuing this mine despite it being made clear since the beginning that
neither our First Nations nor the federal government could accept this
proposal. That money, the tax dollars wasted
by the Province to promote this doomed proposal, and the scarce
resources that First Nations were forced to use to defend against it
could have been far better spent creating real economic opportunities
and jobs. It is time to put an end to this waste and futility."
The Liberal Party in power in BC approved and promoted
the mine proposal even though a review panel of the federal Ministry of
Environment denounced it saying, "The Project would result in
significant adverse environmental effects on fish and fish habitat, on
navigation, on the current use of lands and resources
for traditional purposes by First Nations and on cultural heritage, and
on certain potential or established Aboriginal rights or title."
Vancouver, June 16, 2010 (RAVEN)
|
Tsilhqot'in National Government (TNG) Tribal Chair Chief
Joe Alphonse said, "Taseko's proposal is dead and any variation that
involves Fish Lake and its environs are non starters. If we want jobs
and economic opportunity, we need to move on and find ways to work
together to identify projects that can work... First Nations also want
good jobs for our people and a future for our
children and we want them to prosper, but we do not want to destroy our
environment, values and future generations to achieve this... If we are
to identify and work on projects that will stand the test of existing
Aboriginal rights, future determinations
of Aboriginal title in BC, and environmental responsibility, then we
all need to work together on land use planning, decision sharing,
reforming the online staking system, and creating a credible and valid
environmental assessment process."
TML congratulates the TNG and Tsilhqot'in
people for their courageous struggle against this dreadful project and
its political backers in the BC government. TML also notes
that even though workers in the Williams Lake area came under
tremendous pressure to "get behind" this "prosperity"
project, no great groundswell of support ever materialized, especially
as the destructive details began to emerge and widespread discussion
took place throughout the province led by the Tsilhqot'in people.
To combat the power and control of the mining monopolies
and their narrow interests, a Workers' Opposition needs to coalesce
around its own perspective and alternative program for sovereign
economic development based on self-reliance, the needs of the people
and general interests of society. Allowing the
monopolies to dictate and control the economy is at the root of the
economic problems faced by the people and Aboriginal Nations in the BC
interior. The issues of "whose economy," "who decides" and "who
controls" are central not only for Aboriginal Nations but also for the
working class.
Brief Review of BC Mining
Most of BC lies within the Western Cordillera, a
geological zone known to contain a wide variety of valuable minerals.
The complex geological history of BC has provided the province with a
rich and varied mineral endowment.
Over the past three decades, the production of minerals
has significantly increased due to technological advances in
exploration and mining, new domestic and foreign markets and higher
prices. BC produces and exports copper, coal, gold, zinc, molybdenum,
silver, lead and a growing variety of other industrial
and structural minerals. Since 2001, twelve metal and coal mines have
opened or reopened in BC. Statistics Canada reports the value of
mineral sales in BC more than doubled over the last 7 years reaching
$6.6 billion in 2008, up from $2.9 billion in 2001. Investment in
mineral exploration was nearly $367 million
in 2008, a 1,266 per cent increase over the 2001 investment level of
$29 million. Exploration stage projects for minerals, coal, industrial
minerals and aggregates totalled 388 throughout BC in 2008 with the
number having budgets in excess of $1 million reaching 98. Sixty per
cent
of Canadian exploration companies
are based in BC. They raised $2.9 billion in equity capital for mining
and exploration in 2008. That year, there were 10 metal mines, nine
coal mines, and more than 35 major industrial minerals quarries and
mines in
operation in more than 50 BC communities. Approximately 28,000 workers
such
as miners, electricians, mechanics,
machinists, geologists and engineers work to transform ore into useable
minerals.
The upsurge of the mining industry in BC during a period
of crisis in the forest industry, especially its manufacturing sector,
highlights a negative trend to turn Canada into a source of raw
materials and a captured market for imported manufactured goods. Mining
does not support a diverse stable self-reliant
manufacturing sector either in BC or in the rest of Canada. Ownership
and control of mining reside in the hands of the international
financial oligarchy and are mostly annexed into the U.S. Empire. This
imperialist control has an agenda narrowly centred on return on
investment for owners of capital not on the interests
and needs of BC's economy and its people. Ownership and control
of mining and the precious natural wealth mine workers produce are not
in the hands of BC workers and Aboriginal Nations, which is a
contradiction that workers and their allies and Aboriginal Nations must
resolve.
Owners of mining capital exert enormous economic and
political power in BC. For example, the Liberal Party in power in
Victoria approved Taseko Mines' irrational proposal to destroy Fish
Lake under pressure from the imperialist "gold fever" of owners of
capital who have become even more desperate and
reckless than usual with the price of gold reaching $1,400 per ounce.
Monopoly ownership, power and control also extend over mining
communities and the thinking of mine workers, as their livelihoods
depend on continued and extended mining production. An independent
working class view on mining and a self-reliant
economy rooted in diverse manufacturing comes into conflict with many
community members who are pressured or even terrorized into a narrow
short-term capital-centred outlook on mining. This retrogressive
perspective pursues imperialist projects no matter what the cost to the
human factor, environment, right
to be of Aboriginal Nations and the sovereignty and long-term economic
security of Canadians.
Discussion on Nation-Building
The Necessity to Restrict Monopoly Right
to Control and Manipulate Prices
Proposal
for
a
Modern
Formula
to
Determine
Prices
of
Production
- Workers' Centre of the Communist Party
of Canada (Marxist- Leninist) -
TML is
posting below Part Three of "Discussion on Nation Building -- The
Necessity to
Restrict Monopoly Right." Part Two was published in TML Daily,
November
24,
2010
-
No.
201. Part One was published in TML Daily,
November
23,
2010
-
No.
200.
Part Three
How the Problem of Prices of Production Poses Itself
The working class must investigate and take stern
measures to defend itself and society, and solve the problem of prices
of production under monopoly capitalism. To find a solution to this
problem has become a pressing necessity for a Workers' Opposition. This
can be seen in the monopoly prices for pharmaceuticals
that threaten to bankrupt and wreck the national health system. The
problem poses itself as one of mass political mobilization to put the
working class in motion behind its own program, a program that it
discusses, develops, adopts as its own and fights for with conviction.
A tendency within the capitalist system towards a
falling rate of profit exerts unconscious pressure on owners of
monopoly capital to manipulate prices to overcome this tendency.
However, by doing so they cause harm to the socialized economy and the
people's interests such as can be readily seen with pharmaceutical
prices. In response to the $25.1 billion total Canadian market price
for prescription drugs in 2008, the Centre for Policy Alternatives
(CPA) suggests savings can be found by folding all existing
pharmaceutical plans into a universal public drug plan. CPA writes:
 "The premiums for such
plans (private drug insurance
plans) soared by 15% annually between 2003 and 2005, while drug costs
rose 8% a year. The reason for the steep rise in premiums is simple:
most of the private drug plans are managed by insurance companies which
are usually compensated in the form
of a percentage of expenditures. As a result, their financial incentive
is not to try to stem the growing costs, but to increase them. Also,
private drug plans' formularies welcome all new expensive drugs even if
they are no more beneficial to patients than cheaper existing drugs.
"Private insurance is clearly less efficient in terms of
administrative costs. The administrative fees for public plans in
Ontario and Quebec were estimated at 2%, whereas they were 8% for
private plans. In total health spending, Canada's public program had
administrative costs of 1.3% compared to costs of 13.2%
for private plans. We can conservatively infer that at least 6% of
costs for drug insurance coverage could be saved if this coverage were
provided by a universal Pharmacare program, which would have resulted
in savings of $560 million per year.
"Private insurance plans receive tax subsidies on the
order of 10% of their expenditures. Every year, about $933 million in
tax subsidies could be recovered through a universal Pharmacare program.
"Private drug insurance plans also pay more for drugs
than public plans, especially in the case of generics, because of the
public plans' superior bargaining power. The private plans usually pay
7% more for generic drugs and 10% more for nonpatented brand-name
drugs. Private drug plans normally reimburse
for any type of drug without making any pharmaco-economic assessment of
cost-efficiency."
(See CPA's proposal Universal Pharmacare for
Canada: Costs and Benefits of Publicly Funded Universal Drug Coverage
at their website http://policyalternatives.ca.)
This proposal is worthy of discussion, especially on the
social front of extending drug coverage to every Canadian. The weakness
is the unwillingness to confront monopoly right over the control of
prices. Without conscious public control over prices, Canadian Medicare
will remain a source of super profits for
the drug and hospital supply monopolies, whose egocentric greed may
very well bankrupt and wreck our public healthcare program. The
projected savings with the proposed universal drug plan mostly come
from reductions in administration costs and not from lower prices. The
plan still leaves prices of production
and market prices of drugs almost entirely in the hands of the global
pharmaceutical monopolies. The Workers' Opposition should discuss a
more comprehensive program to mobilize the people to take public
control in a conscious manner of not only drug prices but all prices at
the wholesale level. This could be
done in concert with other measures such as changing the tax system,
establishing not-for-profit public financial, pharmaceutical and other
enterprises, imposing control over the movement of capital in and out
of the country, and restricting both the use of third party currencies
in international trade and trading of
the Canadian dollar. The key issue is that these problems in the
economy should be addressed and discussed without prejudice through
acts of conscious participation in finding out. The Workers' Opposition
should propose solutions to these pricing and other problems that stem
from the type of economic system
Canadians have inherited. For example, a proposal to renew the tax
system would have most government claims made at the point of
production in conjunction with Statistics Canada and Revenue Canada
establishing prices of production at every major employer in the
country. If this were done, all individual taxation
such as sales and income taxes, payroll deductions and user fees for
public services could be abolished while making a greater amount of
social product available for social programs, public services and the
general interests of society. A proposal for renewal of the taxation
system is discussed in more detail in Part
Four of this series.
People should not confine their thinking to what is
acceptable to the monopolies and neoliberalism before they start
investigation and discussion of this problem of monopoly prices or any
other problem for that matter. Most intellectuals and organizations of
the middle strata when dealing with economic questions
unfortunately begin from a premise that is capital-centred and under
the dictate of monopoly right. They conciliate with monopoly control of
the economy and consequently end up discussing policy objectives within
a very narrow parameter that does not restrict monopoly right or touch
the basic interests of the rich,
their monopolies and their dictatorship over Canada's economic and
political affairs. A regressive habit has been inculcated into the
brains of many Canadians to conciliate with monopoly right and hope to
find harmony within the capitalist system where no harmony exists, only
contradictions and conflict. The issue
is to resolve contradictions through struggle to open a door to
progress and not conciliate with those powerful forces that continually
block solutions and alternatives from being discussed let alone coming
into being.
 The problem of prices of
production revolves around the
constant effort of owners of monopoly capital to reverse the tendency
towards a lower rate of profit from increased productivity. This
tendency is established by history in the transition from petty
production to mass industrial production. Owners of capital
try every means to reverse this tendency set by history. Their
self-serving efforts disrupt the economy, and intensify and prolong
economic crises. Some examples of these efforts to reverse the tendency
include: manipulation of prices of production and market prices;
schemes for big scores through manipulation of
sectors of the economy including importantly the financial system;
forcing concessions from workers through lowering their overall
standard of living; intensifying and lengthening the working day;
permanent mass unemployment that increases competition among workers
for available work; manipulation of currencies;
stoking war fever and spending on military preparations; and
significantly, using the pooled public resources of the state to
guarantee profits that defy the tendency of a falling rate through pay
the rich schemes such as government subsidies, guaranteed contracts,
public infrastructure for private companies, low corporate
taxes and other means.
In opposition, the working class should welcome the
falling rate of profit as normal and part of the transitory system
preparing conditions for the new. This tendency of a falling rate of
return on investment or falling rate of profit should be allowed to
play its historic role. A falling rate of profit is an important
spontaneous factor to end capitalist profit on social product and bring
into being something qualitatively new. This new profit could be
characterized as socialist profit, which is not the preserve of
individuals claiming profit of enterprise, interest, fees, rent or
executive compensation. It essentially serves to extend
reproduction of the socialized economy at the level of the enterprise.
Socialist profit is available to enhance productivity at the workplace
through mobilization of the human factor and the application of science
and technology and to extend cooperation of particular enterprises with
other enterprises and the socialized
economy as a whole. Socialist profit is distinct from the claims of
government (taxation), which are necessary to defend the general
interests of society and guarantee the rights of all. Claims of workers
and government should be taken from revenue before profit is
established and claimed. (A proposed modern formula
for setting prices of production and a general rate of profit is
discussed in Parts Six and Seven of this series.)
Brief Note on Use-Value
versus Exchange-Value
Productivity enhances the contradiction between
use-value and exchange-value, which is the root of the tendency for a
falling rate of profit. Use-value grows both in quantity and quality as
petty production crumbles before the advance of mass industrial
production and the increasing application of science and technology to
all aspects of the socialized economy. Use-value grows in the form of
products and services as exchange-value falls in relative value. The
mass of products and services and their use-value constantly increase
while their relative exchange-value
continually falls. This spontaneous process intensifies the tendency
towards a falling rate of profit as the socialized economy conquers all
vestiges of petty production and the concentration of ownership becomes
global.
The total use-value expressed in available products and
services grows while their relative exchange-value falls. This is a
spontaneous gravitation of the modern economy of mass industrial
production towards socialism and the gradual victory of use-value over
exchange-value especially the most important use-value --
human beings and their capacity to work and be productive.
Monopoly right and the old relations of production based
on private ownership of competing centres of capital try to block this
spontaneous gravitation towards a system under the control of
socialized humanity. They devise scheme after scheme for big scores to
increase through monopoly right the exchange-value
of those commodities under their control, and disrupt and violate the
tendency towards a falling rate of profit and the law of value. This
results in more severe and prolonged economic crises and seemingly
irrational practices such as the wrecking of manufacturing and mass
unemployment where millions of workers
are not allowed to create social product because owners of capital
cannot transform it into exchange-value. Canadians should grasp the
truth of the capitalist system that previous production in the form of
factories, mills, mines, buildings and machines does not exist to serve
workers as means for new production of
social wealth. Under this system dominated by monopoly capital, workers
serve those factories, mills, mines, machines etc., as a means to
multiply the exchange-value and social wealth of the owners of capital.
If exchange-value cannot be multiplied, the owners of capital will
destroy previous production and let workers
sit idle.
The Workers' Opposition through restricting monopoly
right can consciously allow to play its historical role the spontaneous
gravitation of the economy towards resolving the contradiction between
use-value and exchange-value. By exercising control and decision-making
over the socialized economy, the Workers'
Opposition could organize increasing amounts of products, especially
those produced within Department One of the socialized economy destined
as means of production, to be transferred within the Canadian economy
according to cooperation and agreement without the necessity of
transforming their use-value into
exchange-value. As well, through increased investments in social
programs, those products within Department Two, which are destined as
articles of consumption or services would be increasingly available
socially according to need through social programs and public services
and not have to be turned into exchange-value.
Resolving the contradiction between use-value and
exchange-value of the human factor requires eliminating the existence
of human beings as commodities for sale on the capitalist labour market
and its replacement with a free association of the actual producers. A
free association of workers would uphold as paramount
the use-value of every worker and take measures to eliminate its
negation as exchange-value.
***
Karl Marx explains the two departments of social
production:
II. The Two Departments of Social Production
The total product, and therefore the total production,
of society may be divided into two major departments:
I. Means of Production, commodities having a
form in which they must, or at least may, pass into productive
consumption.
II. Articles of Consumption, commodities
having a form in which they pass into the individual consumption of the
capitalist and the working-class.
All the various branches of production pertaining to
each of these two departments form one single great branch of
production, that of the means of production in the one case, and that
of articles of consumption in the other. The aggregate capital employed
in each of these two branches of production constitutes
a separate large department of the social capital.
In each department the capital consists of two parts:
1) Variable Capital. This capital, so far as
its value is concerned, is equal to the value of the social
labour-power employed in this branch of production; in other words, it
is equal to the sum of the wages paid for this labour-power. So far as
its substance is concerned, it consists of the
labour-power in action, i.e., of the living labour set in motion by
this capital-value.
2) Constant Capital. This is the value of all
the means of production employed for productive purposes in this
branch. These, again, are divided into fixed capital, such as
machines, instruments of labour, buildings, labouring animals, etc.,
and circulating constant capital, such
as materials of production: raw and auxiliary materials, semi-finished
products, etc.
The value of the total annual product created with the
aid of this capital in each of the two departments consists of one
portion, which represents the constant capital "C" consumed in the
process of production and only transferred to the product in accordance
with its value, and of another portion added
by the entire labour of the year. This latter portion (added by the
entire labour of the year) is divided in turn into the replacement of
the advanced variable capital "V" (wages, benefits and pensions) and
the excess over and above it, which forms the surplus-value "S" (profit
of enterprise, interest and rent, and
government claims as taxation). And just as the value of every
individual commodity, that of the entire annual product of each
department consists of C + V + S.
- Karl Marx: Capital,
Volume II, Chapter 20: Simple
Reproduction, Part 1 #2 (emphases and words in parentheses added)
(Next: Part Four -- Taxation or Claims of Government
on Social Product)
Read The Marxist-Leninist
Daily
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
|
