Labour Day 2024
Only Working People Through Their Actions in Defence of Their Rights and the Rights of All Can Avert the Dangers that Lie Ahead
Prince
George Labour Day 2023
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
Workers,
women, youth and Indigenous Peoples are raising
their voices on this Labour Day 2024 and taking bold actions in
defence
of their rights and the rights of all. Workers in all sectors of
the
economy are calling out the corruption and immorality of the
pay-the-rich schemes of the ruling
class. They are decrying the crimes that those in positions of
privilege and power are carrying out against humanity; they are
denouncing their corruption, genocide and fratricidal war, which
have
become a trademark of those who hold economic and political
power.
On this occasion, the Workers' Centre of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) sends its greetings to all working people from coast to coast to coast. The Centre expresses its best wishes for the success of the endeavours of workers in all sectors of the economy to provide the rights of all with a guarantee. These battles are being waged under the difficult conditions of the decades-long anti-social offensive, which justifies all manner of crimes in the name of defending the economy and democracy.
The Workers' Centre calls on workers across the country to exchange views on the challenges they and their sector of the economy face at this time and smash the silence on their working conditions, how their sector of the economy functions, the role it plays and who it serves. Only in this way can Canadians grasp the need to exercise control over the economy themselves and set its direction to serve their needs and contribute to the same abroad.
As more pay-the-rich schemes are put in place in the name of economic recovery and providing happiness to what is called the middle class, the more all sectors of the economy are either being destroyed or put at the disposal of supranational narrow private interests and the U.S. war economy.
To achieve smashing the silence and enabling the working people to find their bearings, the Workers' Centre calls on Party activists and progressive forces to read and write for the Party press, distribute it, send in reports and help finance it. It calls on Party activists and progressive forces to hold workers' forums throughout the rest of the year to discuss the direction of the economy in their sectors, regions and nationally and exchange views with one another to determine how to intervene and keep the initiative in their own hands. When workers from different sectors of the economy fight and defend their claims and rights, those successes need to be widely discussed and celebrated.
Not to contest the nonsense the ruling class spouts is disempowering and a grave mistake. The spokespersons of the monopolies, oligopolies, their business associations, think tanks and governments have full access to means of dissemination and state-sanctioned media. They speak reams about supply chains, national security, protecting the economy, wealth management, foreign interference and the like. They refer to the members of society in business-terms such as by calling members of the polity "clients" or dehumanize them on the basis of categories they criminalize. They spew whatever they think will help them cling to power. Calling them to account shuts their mouths and forces them to sweat to find new excuses. Why, for instance, are workers essential to the economy and the well-being of society not treated with respect? Why are industrial and service workers, miners, fishers, farmers, teachers, health care workers, Indigenous Peoples, migrant workers, refugees, international students, women and children, denied what belongs to them by right of being human? Why are many left in poverty without secure lodging and even food? Why are the natural environment and questions of war and peace left at the whim and aim of the global rich for maximum profit, with even the established international rule of law including judgements against committing genocide, crushed in the rush to increase war production and control spheres of interest?
It is irrational to call on people to uphold an authority that causes workers to be disposable through unemployment and increases in productivity, an authority that harms workers' interests and denies them their rights while calling them essential, an authority that harms the natural and social environment, an authority that blocks every attempt at democratic renewal so as to deny people a say and control over their lives, an authority that pours billions into the U.S. war economy and genocide yet postures as peaceful and desperately clings to power no matter what? Those who commit and support genocide but claim they defend democracy are clearly not fit to rule.
The situation calls on workers to denounce the self-serving slogans about serving the middle class, greening the economy and doling out billions to global companies to expand the economy. Their scams are used to justify paying the rich while denying investment in the most basic social programs to serve the people. When the representatives of narrow private interests say that pay-the-rich schemes are good for the economy, workers know whose pockets are being lined and at whose expense.
Enough with the irrational nonsense! Enough with permitting ruling elites to establish the agenda for society. Working people must discuss and assess the situation by establishing their own vantage point and mapping their own path forward to reach their destination from there.
The political aim of organizing workers' forums is to exchange views on how to move the struggle forward. The aim is not to describe the imposed conditions that have driven down human standards and dignity and then declare in futility that an alternative is needed. The aim is to elaborate the alternative with working people themselves setting the agenda of discussion from the reality of the lives they face and their own actions, reference point and outlook. The aim is to analyze the unfolding events so that the collectives of workers can find their bearings and intervene effectively in a manner which defeats the aim of the ruling class to disempower them and deny their rights and claims.
How to tackle the conditions of disempowerment is on the agenda for the workers to solve. Resistance to disempowerment and all that is unacceptable is served by defending the dignity of labour. Defending the dignity of labour and its rights and claims opens a path to set a direction for the economy to turn things around in favour of working people.
Unemployment, growing poverty, abuse, racist discrimination, environmental crises and the drive of the rich to use the circumstances to set Canada on a war path and benefit their own supranational narrow private interests are not inevitable. A sense of social solidarity based on the class interest of working people imbues Canadian and Quebec workers, women, youth and Indigenous Peoples in Canada. It informs their striving to defeat those with positions of privilege and power and their demand that everyone should fend for themselves, be self-serving, not see the bigger picture and be satisfied with disempowerment and having the ruling elite dictate their lives and work.
How to hold governments to account when they weasel out of taking up social responsibility to keep people safe and pass more and more laws to make doing so legal is in the hands of Canadian workers from coast to coast to coast. They are taking action and it is up to all of us to popularize the actions they are taking and how they contribute to turning things around.
Today, as workers across the country are given a national holiday on Labour Day, fraud is the name of the game for the ruling class whose politicians are already campaigning for election even though no election has yet been called. It involves the falsification of history, both past and present. Fraud is committed by remaining silent about the role of the working class and peoples of the world in making history. But facts are stubborn things and they show that the world as is has no takers. The world as it should be has billions of makers.
On this Labour Day, the Workers' Centre
of
CPC(M-L) calls on
all those linked to its work to continue to take measures to
smash the
silence of the living and working conditions of the working
class and
plight of the people and put an end to the attempts to
marginalize,
silence and eliminate the
independent voices and initiatives of working people.
Accusations that
when the workers defend their rights they are endangering the
economy
demand an answer. What about the actions of the owners which do
not
provide their workers with the conditions they require to safely
operate the railways, or
carry out construction projects, or teach our children, heal our
sick
or care for the older generation? The working conditions of the
workers
are the living conditions of everyone in society. Dogmatic
facile
renderings of reality repeated by the media must be confronted
by
making the voice of the
workers heard.
People are fighting to uphold their rights and the rights of all. Upholding the rights of all is a social responsibility. Governments at all levels and those in positions of power and privilege must be held to account for not doing so. Workers' forums permit the participants to speak and hear about how the problems are being tackled in different sectors of the economy. They permit the workers to learn from one another and at this time exchange views on what to expect from the Government, the Official Opposition and cartel party system and how to confront them. Canada's integration into the failed U.S. state, which is trying so desperately to reinvent itself must also be opposed. Only the working people through their actions in defence of their rights and the rights of all can avert the dangers that lie ahead.
Together the Canadian and Quebec working class can work it out. Let everyone lend a hand by joining and organizing workers' forums, sharing their experiences and presenting their views. At our own peril we ignore the significance of analyzing unfolding events and establishing our own line of march.
For information or to join the forums, write the Workers' Centre of CPC(M-L): workerscentre@cpcml.ca
This article was published in
Volume 54
Number 46 - September 1, 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/MS54461.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca