Individual Behaviour Is Not the Problem The carbon tax does not change the motivation and outlook of those in control because the very being and soul of the imperialist oligarchs is self-serving in the extreme. While retaining the motive and outlook of the financial oligarchy in deeds that put hardships on working people through increased taxes, the Trudeau government postures with cynical words to fool the gullible. In some ways the carbon sales tax is similar to
the
levies on
tobacco and alcohol. These taxes attack individual working people
without dealing with the social conditions at the root of the
problems of smoking and drug and alcohol abuse. Certain oligarchs
amass huge profits from the continuation of these problems that
have become worse, such as the opioid crisis. Regarding modes of transportation, a carbon sales tax suggests Canadians should change their behaviour and abandon individual car driving. But the car culture arises from the motivation of the vehicle oligopolies to make money. The design and infrastructure of cities including lack of mass transit promotes the car culture. The problem is particularly acute in smaller centres where a car is a necessity. As far as taxation is concerned, all individual taxation such as personal income tax, sales taxes, payroll and home property taxes, carbon taxes and user fees for social programs and public services such as charging the people for mass transit and tolls on roads and bridges should be abolished. The state power to tax is social not individual or private, especially considering that the vast majority of production occurs within an interrelated socialized economy. For the needs of the state machinery, another criterion must be used to determine the amount the government expropriates from the value workers produce. It could be determined as a rate of taxation or percentage of the old and new value similar to the way profit should be calculated within a modern formula to determine the price of production of all basic commodities, especially means of production. Note1. See: - "Federal
Court
of
Appeal
Overturns
Approval
of
Trans
Mountain
Pipeline," Peggy Morton, TML Weekly, September
8, 2018; Also see: - "The LNG Canada Project and the Natural Environment," K.C. Adams, TML Weekly, October 27, 2018; - "LNG Canada Project in Northern BC," K.C. Adams, TML Weekly, October 13, 2018.
This article was published in Article Link:   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
The carbon sales tax
is
said to be a measure to change
behaviour. But behaviour is not the problem. Behaviour did not
cause the problem of climate change and efforts to change
behaviour will not resolve it; they only result in empty words
and posturing. The cause of human-induced climate change is the
imperialist economic system itself and the motive and outlook of
those who control it. The motive of maximum individual gain in
competition with others while exploiting working people, and an
outlook devoid of social responsibility are in contradiction with
the socialized character of the economy that requires a
motivation and outlook of social responsibility and cooperation
to defend the rights and well-being of all, focus on the extended
reproduction of the collective economy, humanize the social and
natural environment and serve the general interests of society.
Only with a motivation and outlook of social responsibility and
cooperation will the problem be resolved.
For the Trudeau
Liberals to
present themselves as
concerned
with global warming is the height of cynicism and hypocrisy. They
have criminalized opposition to the shipping of bitumen to
Vancouver via the Trans Mountain pipeline, wax eloquent on the
glories of an economy based on exporting raw materials,
especially carbon commodities, and are trampling on
nation-to-nation relations with Indigenous peoples up to
countenancing the dispatch of RCMP paramilitary troops to
northern BC. Also, they are hell-bent on fueling the U.S. war
economy and its military, which is the biggest single contributor
to greenhouse gases.[
Abolishing individual
taxation is one front of class
struggle. The claims of the state to run its unproductive affairs
such as the military should be made directly on private and
public enterprises from the value workers produce and not from
individuals. Enterprises consuming social value from mass
education, health care and other institutions should return the
equivalent social value their workers reproduce directly to the
social institutions that produced the value in the first place,
such as schools, universities and hospitals etc.