Questions and Answers
The Party's Platform Question:
Is there anything you would like to highlight about your party's
platform on any environmental issue? Answer:
The Party advocates the humanization of the social and natural
environment. Once the human factor/social consciousness is in control
of all matters related to the natural environment, CPC(M-L) is
confident they can be solved.  The politics of
environmental conservation deal with how humans and the production of
their means of subsistence relate to nature. All production in one way
or another relates to nature and affects nature. Through the work of
all working people, modern industrial mass production transforms
existing qualities of nature into social product that meets a human
need.
The relationship of humans with nature is
governed by the level of the productive forces, the struggle for
production, and the way humans are organized in relation to one
another. These factors dictate the aim and direction of the economy to
produce, manage, distribute, use and consume nature's bounty and social
product. In modern conditions, the relationships in
the economy revolve around or are governed by three decisive questions
dealing with social production and distribution, and one broad answer:
Whose economy? Who decides? Who controls? The answer to all three in
the modern world must be the "people" and the necessity for the people
to organize a human-centred aim and direction for the economy. The
oligarchs who own and control the economy are blocking the people, the
actual producers, from assuming their rightful place as those who
control and decide the direction of the economy.
Civil Society The current relations of
production are governed by civil society and its economic, political
and social institutions and forms and laws and regulations. Civil
society developed and came into being through revolution to protect and
expand private property in opposition to the arbitrary might, political
power and hereditary right of feudal aristocratic society.
Civil society has run its course and is now dominated by global cartels
that control the economy as their private property and fiefdoms and
enforce their aim to derive maximum profit from their private property
and the work of the people they employ.  During the period
of civil society, the working people generally have developed into an
educated human factor and social force of overwhelming numbers. To
solve society's current economic, political, social and environmental
problems, working people demand a new human-centred direction, aim and
forms for the economy to serve the people and society, which go beyond
the limits of civil society and its control and regulation of private
property in the service of the global cartels and monopolies.
Civil society developed to protect private property from the
arbitrary might, political power and hereditary right of the landed
aristocrats. Through concentration of wealth and private property in
the hands of a few over the last two centuries, natural right has
merged with hereditary right to become monopoly right of an oligarchy
that dominates all aspects of life. Civil society
is now controlled by a global oligarchy of imperialist autocrats who
compete and wage war with one another and the people to defend and
enlarge their private wealth, which originates from the expropriation
of the value working people produce. Civil society
has come full circle replacing landed aristocrats as rulers with
imperialist autocrats as rulers. Civil society is incapable of
affirming the rights people have by virtue of being human. The people
have to bring into being human-centred political forms of governance
that affirm and guarantee their rights and allow them to control the
economy and give it a modern aim and direction to serve the people and
society and humanize the social and natural environment.
Human-Centred Society 
Human rights
include the right of the people to decide and control the economy, the
right to decide and control the relations among humans and with nature.
Civil society has degenerated into police and military power of
autocrats to deprive the people of their right to decide and control
the aim and direction of their economy, politics and society.
Civil society's power to deprive people of the rights they
possess by virtue of being human must be met with the human-centred
power of the people to deprive civil society of doing so. This requires
organizing and engaging in actions with analysis to deal with the
problems the society and the environment face and to bring into being
new human-centred economic, political and social forms that allow the
people to decide and control all matters that affect their lives and
nature. This requirement centres on the issue of empowerment of the
people and specifically political empowerment and bringing to the fore
what CPC(M-L) calls the human factor/social consciousness. To
solve the problems that the modern economy of industrial mass
production has created, including the "politics of environmental
conservation," go hand in hand with the people's need for political
empowerment. By creating a human-centred society
the people can decide and control the modern productive
forces, the relations among themselves and their relations with nature.
Clear Cut Logging and Herbidice Usage Question:
Do you think clearcut logging and herbicide usage should be banned (or
even just on crown land) to protect our forest ecosystems as well as to
save our local forests for future generations?
Answer:
These are issues for the people involved in forestry and who live in
those regions, in particular the working class, to decide. Tremendous
scientific advance has been made on how to log sustainably. These
issues come up against global cartels and monopolies centred in the
U.S. that dominate our forests and exploit them for their private gain.
The workers in the forest towns throughout the country have no power to
decide and control how the forest is managed and exploited or how its
production relates to other sectors and the building of stable and
prosperous communities. In the actual conditions,
change is occurring because the people in the communities
affected by clear-cutting and a self-serving use of herbicides are
demanding safe practices. As the people who do the work and live in
those communities, including importantly the Indigenous peoples, take
control of the decisions which affect the forests, both the life of the
forests and the lives of the people will improve. Regarding
relations with nature and among humans, the issue of the aim of the
economy and outlook of those in control is crucial. The current aim of
the imperialist economy for maximum profit in the fastest possible time
is incompatible with developing a harmonious relation with nature or
among humans generally and solving the problems of the twenty-first
century, something CPC(M-L) calls the humanization of the social and
natural environment. New relations require a new aim and direction for
the economy that serve the people and use the value workers produce to
enhance their lives and communities and deal with the problems that
modern industrial mass production and imperialism have generated. New
relations require the empowerment of the people so they gain control
over the economy, politics and all those affairs that affect their
lives. Marine Ecosystems Question:
What measures/legislation would you support to help protect marine
ecosystems (e.g., increasing the amount of marine protected areas or
reducing trawling)? Answer:
The question includes the suggestion that proposals to increase marine
protected areas or reduce trawling are desirable measures to protect
ecosystems. As a rule, CPC(M-L) does not pronounce itself for or
against such proposals because often they are used to not consult and
listen to those whose livelihoods and well-being depend on the specific
ecosystems referred to. Too often governments pass legislation in the
name of protecting ecosystems when in fact they are siding with narrow
private interests in the name of high ideals. A
serious problem in Canada is the refusal of governments at all levels
to create social and political forms for people to discuss the issues
and problems as they pose themselves, decide what needs to be done,
control the implementation and outcome of the measures they deem
necessary, and hold those responsible to account for their actions or
inactions. The people are discussing these matters which concern those
whose livelihoods directly depend on marine ecosystems and all aspects
of fishing and other production from the sea, lakes and rivers. We have
always found that they know what to do but are not in control of the
decisions taken or the means to get it done, which governments hand
over to narrow private interests. How to deal with that problem is what
concerns them the most. In the world of electoral
manipulations practised in Canada today, good suggestions and policies
are mostly destined to die in Parliament and the Legislatures. The
cartel parties in power and opposition act as gatekeepers to keep the
people out along with their views, demands, concerns and proposals.
Most of the time, suggestions from concerned Canadians end up being
ignored or become policy objectives floated by the cartel parties
during elections. Those electoral policy objectives are usually ignored
or watered down in practice to become unrecognizable or later simply
reversed. Whether the people's suggestions and
proposals are implemented or not becomes the prerogative of the
government, beyond the reach of the people, with those responsible
unaccountable except in the sense of being replaced by another cartel
Party over which the people likewise exercise no control. The
marine ecosystems are under the control of the global oligarchs and
their cartels and monopolies. At this point in time, the ruling elite
decide and control what goes on with those ecosystems. For example, the
way of life of Newfoundlanders who for decades fished and lived in
villages along the coast was wiped out by powerful economic and
political forces that they did not control. The concentration of social
wealth and productive power of the global monopoly-controlled fishing
fleets from all over the world wiped out the inshore fishers. The
resulting unrestrained overfishing eventually destroyed the cod supply.
The forces that presently dominate the marine ecosystems have
the singular aim to exploit it for private maximum profit. When the
people propose solutions they must keep in mind that their proposals
are filtered through this aim and manipulated to suit those in control.
Within the situation, the people must go all out to preserve the
natural environment and not permit attempts to split them on a false
basis of pitting jobs against the well-being of the environment.
The people who do the work and live in the coastal communities
are very capable of deciding what is in their best interests and others
and nature itself. It is in their interest to take decisions which
enhance their relation with the natural resources so that they and
their communities endure, develop and prosper. Many Indigenous peoples
have a culture or tradition of assessing what they do based not only on
how the action affects and serves life now but on how it may affect and
serve seven generations down the road. CPC(M-L) considers this to be a
good guide to thinking and action. Carbon Taxes
and Other Levies and Individual Taxes Question:
Carbon taxes correct market inefficiencies caused by external forces
(like pollution and climate change). Do you currently support the
cap-and-trade system in Nova Scotia or do you think it should be
replaced by something else? Answer:
The first sentence of the question is an assertion of something that
has little or nothing to do with environmental conservation. What are
the market inefficiencies that carbon taxes supposedly correct? These
levies and individual taxes such as property, consumer and income taxes
are methods of the dominant cartels and monopolies to pass the burden
of a problem onto the working people and use the power of the state to
seize back social wealth that belongs to the people by right. The
oligarchs with their control of the state, governments and their
treasuries use the tax revenue to pay the rich in various ways and fund
the police and military powers and governing bureaucracy. The carbon
tax manipulates the very real problem of industrial and other pollution
as a cover to fleece the working people and even small and medium-sized
enterprises.  Carbon taxes and
cap-and-trade are examples of the neo-liberal conquest of official
economic thinking and politics: society is nothing; the market is
everything. The neo-liberals preach that the people cannot and should
not take control of their lives including the economy and its aim and
how it functions. Let the rich decide through their dominance of the
marketplace and ownership and control of the means of production and
distribution and commerce, they chatter endlessly
Industrial
pollution and human-caused climate change are not problems of modern
production that arise from the productive forces themselves as
unsolvable beasts that cannot be tamed. They linger as intractable
problems because they exist in the context of relations of production
that are not in conformity with the modern socialized productive
forces. The problems arising from modern industrial production persist
because the aim of those forces that control modern production is
maximum private gain for their particular cartel and monopoly at all
costs. Their concern does not extend to the broader social and natural
environment unless in some way they can expropriate maximum private
profit for their particular interests, for example in green projects
that receive government payments, guarantees and other support such as
cheap infrastructure and favourable regulations. The
forces now in control of the economy and state developed in the former
feudal society and are products of its way of life, traditions and
thinking based on private and autocratic control of property and the
productive forces. They opposed the ruling aristocratic forces in so
far as they wanted freedom of their private property to exist without
feudal restrictions on production, trade and commerce, and to have
working people freed from feudal servitude and allowed to sell their
capacity to work to the nouveau
riche called the bourgeoisie, who owned the developing
means of mass industrial production and distribution. The
narrow outlook of the emerging dominant class could not and has not
developed to embrace the complexity and interaction of the massive
industrial productive forces and continuing scientific advances that
the revolution against feudal petty production and the aristocracy
unleashed. The imperialists are fixated on their individual wealth and
power and reject the necessity for cooperation for mutual benefit of
all countries, economies, enterprises and peoples for the common good
of all humanity, society and Mother Earth. To solve
the problems of the modern productive forces, the working people have
to gain control over the economy to mould it to work collectively for
the mutual benefit of all, to change its aim from expropriating private
profit to one of serving the common good and society and to humanize
the social and natural environment. The modern working class is the
greatest product of the socialized productive forces and is rooted in
the new forces as a social being and the only class capable of bringing
the relations of production into conformity with the already socialized
productive forces. Cap-and-Trade In
Canada, cap-and-trade is an imperialist fraud. The trading of
derivatives, including carbon credits, is a feature of the parasitical
trend and decay of the imperialist economy. This decay is accompanied
with greater concentration of the economy and social wealth in fewer
hands as the rich become richer and the poor poorer. All of this
accentuates and makes more severe the recurring economic crises and
propels the imperialists into more aggressive and reckless actions such
as the war economy and continuous wars to conquer markets and workers
to exploit, bringing entire regions under their control, and destroying
those that refuse. The trading of carbon credits
and other derivatives involves the redivision of already-produced value
as well as the creation of fictitious value. Traders hope to fleece
others of the already-produced value they possess and to this end
engage in buying and trading everything and anything including
concocted fictitious value such as carbon credits. They manipulate
prices to go up, or even down in some cases in a practice known as
short selling. The totality circulates around the trading of
already-produced value that may or may not have been consumed and
concocted fictitious value such as derivatives and carbon credits and
Ponzi schemes. The oligarchs view the actual
production and selling of goods and services generally as risky and
unable to fulfil their aim of maximum profit unless undertaken with
public pay-the-rich funds and government guarantees of sales such as
with the government war economy and infrastructure contracts and
public-private-partnerships. Recently, especially
during the pandemic, the oligarchs who control global investment
cartels have enticed retail or small individual traders to bring their
money into the stock and commodities markets, creating yet another
source of profits for the oligarchs and greater concentration of social
wealth in the hands of billionaires.  The ruling elite
use the broad concern over pollution and climate change to suck social
wealth out of the economy for themselves and their pet projects, many
of them heralded as "green," which they may well be when compared with
older scientific methods of production. However, the aim of the cartels
and monopolies involved is not to humanize the natural and social
environment but to get governments to channel money to them in
pay-the-rich schemes complete with guarantees such as the Site C dam
boondoggle in BC.
Carbon taxes and cap-and-trade
are framed as methods to deal with environmental problems but in fact
act as diversions from confronting the problems as they exist and
finding solutions for the common good. Real problems require real
solutions not diversions into taxes and parasitical market scams that
end up paying the rich. Concocted schemes such as carbon taxes,
cap-and-trade and the trading of carbon credits are designed to funnel
money and control to the oligarchs and divert from tackling the problem
directly in a human-centred way.
This article was published in
Volume 51 Number 8 - March 21, 2021
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2021/Articles/MS51086.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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