Bank of Canada Sets Anti-Human Economic
and Political Bank Policy
Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem laid bare the anti-human direction of the ruling elite in a recent speech to the Public Policy Forum. Under the rubric "getting back to stable prices and a balanced jobs market" Macklem reduced the working class to things without rights to be manipulated for the good of those in control and ownership of the economy. He said measures are being introduced such as depressing investments through higher interest rates to make workers suffer higher unemployment, compete for available work and dissuade them from demanding higher wages and better working conditions.
Without proof, Macklem implied a
connection between the current price inflation and workers'
fight for higher wages. He said price inflation was connected
with high employment levels and that "the Bank of Canada is
working to cool an overheated economy" and bring back "maximum
sustainable employment."
He said "the best contribution the Bank of Canada can make to the well-being of Canadians is to keep prices low and stable. That's because inflation that is near our two per cent target and what economists call maximum sustainable employment are strongly connected."
He suggested, "When the economy is operating above maximum sustainable employment, businesses can't find enough workers to keep up with demand. As a result, prices go up and inflation rises. That's where we are today. The current environment of excess demand means the economy's need for labour is greater than its ability to supply it. The Bank began raising interest rates in March to cool this overheated economy."
Macklem said, "Price stability and a healthy labour market go hand in hand." He does not openly specify that the price for which he seeks stability is the price of the capacity to work. Nor does he say openly that a healthy labour market to achieve stability of the price of the capacity to work requires a large number of unemployed workers seeking work and competing with each other for the available employment. Imperialist "maximum sustainable employment" requires a certain rate of unemployment so workers are fighting each other for available work, effectively reducing the price of their capacity to work.
The official rate of unemployment is 5.2 per cent and annual price inflation hovers around 6 per cent. According to the economic theory of the ruling elite the number of unemployed is not high enough to achieve a healthy labour market and balance between supply and demand of those things called workers and thereby bring down their price.
Do Macklem's words have any standing in science? Even his sequence of events is highly suspect. Before the current spike in prices, the economy has been in the doldrums since the onset of the pandemic, with many workers unemployed or only partially employed. Wages generally have been stagnant for years under pressure from the anti-social offensive. The current trend of fighting for better pay and benefits is considered a response to recent price inflation, deteriorating social conditions and a lowering of the standard of living.
Speaking for the ruling imperialist elite as Governor of the Bank of Canada, Macklem declares the economy is not for those who do the work and produce the goods and services the people and society require for their existence. Those who are the actual producers are not regarded as human beings with rights but as things without rights that those in control and ownership of the country's economic and political affairs manipulate to serve their aim to expropriate maximum profit and maintain their positions of wealth and privilege within the status quo.
Workers who must suffer the loss of their jobs and incomes as investments dry up are disposable things without rights within the quest of the rich for a "healthy labour market" and lower prices for workers' capacity to work. Their role in life is to serve those who own and control the imperialist economy and its aim of maximum profit, certainly not the people's well-being and humanize the social and natural environment.
Profit is the aim of the economy for those in control, and profit exists in contradiction with wages. The aim of the imperialist economy is not to benefit the human beings who make up the vast majority of the population and do all the work producing the goods and services and generally doing whatever those in control and ownership demand of them. The human beings who do the work are relegated as things without rights to be manipulated in the service of the tiny minority in control who crave maximum profit and the power and privilege it brings.
Macklem feels self-satisfied and smug within his world view when he speaks of balancing human beings and their supply and demand because those workers in his mind are not human beings with rights but things without rights to be coldly manipulated without compassion or compunction. "Cooling an over-heated economy" and deliberately generating an increased supply of workers seeking work and driving down wages make consummate sense from Macklem's reference point of serving those in ownership and control of the economy and their mania for maximum profit and power.
But the world of industrial mass
production and an educated and mature working class has long
passed the reference point of the ruling elite of the rich and
rendered it obsolete. Those who do the work do not see
themselves as things; they demand their rights by virtue of
being human. What they lack are modern economic and political
forms in conformity with the massive development of the human
and productive forces.
The human beings who do the work have a different world view and reference point from Macklem and the rest of the ruling elite. They do not regard themselves as things without rights. They demand a new direction for the economy that is modern and human; they seek to invent the new forms suitable for the current stage of development. They are organizing and developing their individual and collective forces to affirm their rights in the present and create the conditions to build the new where human beings are in control of all those economic, political and social affairs that affect their lives.
This article was published in
Volume 52 Number 11 - November 2022
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2022/Articles/M520113.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca