Liberal Government's New Cabinet and Politics of the Absurd

- K.C. Adams -

The Trudeau government has created a Ministry of Middle Class Prosperity and appointed Ottawa-Vanier MP Mona Fortier to be the Minister.[1] Interviewed on CBC Radio's The Current, Minister Fortier said she had not yet received her mandate letter from the Prime Minister and as such could not speak to what her Ministry will do. The interviewer asked her to define the middle class and according to a CBC transcript she replied, "Well, we know that we want a very strong economy for everyone. And having a strong middle class will entail the fact that we can continue to put measures and helping those that want to join the middle class to have access to those programs.

"Well, I define the middle class where people feel that they can afford their way of life. They have quality of life. And they can send their kids to play hockey or even have different activities.

"It's having the cost of living where you can do what you want with your family. So I think that it's really important that we look at, how do we make our lives more affordable now?

"And that's, for me, something that we will be putting measures, and really putting efforts, with my colleagues, to have a strong economy."

The gibberish from the Minister of Middle Class Prosperity stems from the self-serving fraudulent ideology of the ruling elite and from the irrelevance of her position other than as window dressing as a woman in Cabinet. Coming from a communications background Fortier is perhaps being groomed as a Public Relations fast talker in the belief that loud propaganda can overcome the reality of recurring economic crises and the fact that the financial oligarchy has mandated the Trudeau government to pay the rich, not to increase the affluence and influence of better paid members of the working class who in fact are being pushed into ever greater insecurity.

Women cannot achieve dignity when they allow themselves to be manipulated in the aristocratic belief that distorting the concrete conditions can make problems disappear, such as the looming cyclical economic crisis or war that will wreak havoc in the lives of all. Speaking nonsense about a so-called middle class to perpetuate a perception of affluent workers, who somehow have achieved control over their lives because they can enroll their kids in hockey, does not help when the financial oligarchy attacks those same workers with demands for concessions or destroys their livelihoods as it has done in large swathes of manufacturing, and now in the forestry industry in BC. Fast talk does not change the reality that the cartel parties, including the Trudeau Liberal Party and its minority government, cannot have the best interests of the vast majority of working Canadians at heart because those cartel parties represent the financial oligarchy and do its bidding.

The cartel party system has concentrated power in the Prime Minister's Office, which acts on behalf of powerful private interests. Canadians saw a crude display of the power of the PMO when Trudeau fired two female Cabinet members, the Minister of Justice and the President of the Treasury Board because they would not keep quiet about what they felt was a developing corrupt arrangement with SNC-Lavalin to avoid criminal proceedings.

The cartel party system is lowering the level of political activity and discourse. The antidote is for workers and their allies to empower themselves and become political in their own right and speak out politically with their own voice, thinking and agenda. Being political in your own right means uniting with others to tackle the economic, political and social problems as they present themselves in their objective reality and fight for solutions that favour the interests of working people and uphold social responsibility and nation-building.

Women face particular problems as the reproducers of life and targets of abuse; they have to defend the dignity of women themselves by being political and informed. They have to join with others in an organized fight to affirm the right of people to exercise control over the decisions that affect their lives. The battle to affirm this right in practice brings empowerment and dignity.

Being political in your own right on those matters that affect your life pushes forward the human factor/social consciousness in the battle for democratic renewal. Being political in your own right shapes in a positive manner the democratic personality of all those actively involved.

For Your Information:
The Canadian Working Class

The Canadian working class is the most numerous social class by far. It exists within a dialectical social relationship with the financial oligarchy. The working class sells its capacity to work to the financial oligarchy. With this sale, the oligarchs take control of the use-value of workers' capacity to work and what they produce. The financial oligarchy is a tiny minority of the population that has become a supranational social class with no particular connection to Canada other than as exploiter of its natural resources, means of production and working class.

Within the oppressive social relation with the financial oligarchy, workers must organize to defend themselves, their rights and well-being. This means they must organize to empower themselves through their own independent political activity for democratic renewal and develop and spread their advanced social consciousness and independent institutions so the working class becomes an unstoppable social force both in defence of its rights and to build the New.

The class struggle within the social relation with the financial oligarchy entails mass political mobilization of working people and their allies for democratic renewal and for a new direction for the economy to stop paying the rich, increase investments in social programs and public services, and to make Canada a zone for peace with an anti-war government.

In building the New, the working class has the historic social responsibility to overcome its oppressive social relation with the financial oligarchy and eliminate it as a ruling social class that acquires its living by buying the capacity to work of the working class.

In freeing itself from the oppressive social relation with the financial oligarchy, the working class creates itself anew with its own democratic personality as the social class in control of the economy and politics of the Canadian nation-building project. The new working class in control of its capacity to work and what it produces has the social responsibility to move society forward to the complete emancipation of the working class and the elimination of class society not only in Canada but also worldwide in unity with all humanity.

Social Relation Between the Working Class and Financial Oligarchy

Social class denotes how a collective of people acquire their living in relation to others during a particular historical period and mode of production, such as during the classical Roman period of slavery with slave masters and slaves or the medieval mode of production and social relation between the landlord and peasant. Social classes come into being and pass away with developments in the productive forces and revolutionary changes in the mode of production.

The specific term "middle class" originated during the medieval or feudal period when in concert with developments in the productive forces a social class appeared that gained the ability to purchase the capacity to work of others outside the strict relations of production and laws of the medieval era.

Advancements in methods of production in agriculture and manufacturing challenged the petty production of the feudal mode of production and its relations. These developments forced many peasants and journeymen to be released or excluded from their traditional relations of production. To survive, those who found themselves without land or a guild began to sell their capacity to work on a daily or longer basis to those who had acquired the material and financial means to purchase their capacity to work. Thus began in its infancy the long social relation between a small social class of those who buy others' capacity to work and the vast numbers of those who sell their capacity to work to acquire a living.

In the medieval period, the feudal aristocracy was referred to generally as the upper class while the mostly impoverished masses including the peasants, guild workers and others were known generally as the lower classes.

The term middle class became attached to those who had gained the ability to purchase the capacity to work of others outside and often in opposition to the rules, regulations and laws of the medieval regime. Members of the emerging middle class were neither upper aristocrats nor lower peasants but rather were considered colloquially as the middle class.

An important feature of this new social middle class was that it only existed in a relationship with a new emerging social class that possessed no land or hereditary position but only its capacity to work. This social class was "free" to sell to the middle class its capacity to work on an hourly, daily or longer basis because it was "free" from the land and any other productive material possession, and outside feudal restrictions.

The new relations of production between those who bought the capacity to work of others and those who sold their capacity to work developed mostly within protected urban areas or market towns that became centres of opposition to feudal control. The towns were known in Europe in various languages as a "Bourg" and the members of the middle class who dominated the "Bourgs" subsequently became known as bourgeois.

With the invention of the steam engine and its application to production, industrial mass production soon overwhelmed feudal petty production and propelled the working class to become the most numerous social class mostly coming from the ruined peasantry. Upon the political overthrow of the feudal ruling elite, the bourgeoisie or "middle class" took control of the state and society and became the ruling class. The upper class of landed aristocrats has since been integrated into either the new ruling elite or working class. The relations of production became simplified into two main classes, those who sell their capacity to work, the working class, and those who buy the capacity to work of the working class, the bourgeoisie, which no longer could be considered middle class.

The early nascent period of the relations of production between the working class and bourgeoisie soon gave way to imperialism. Social wealth became concentrated into fewer hands and the financial and industrial sectors merged into one and spread throughout the world turning the bourgeoisie into a powerful minority of rulers called the financial oligarchy. The working class became educated and experienced in the class struggle, engaging in its own nation-building projects in the Soviet Union and elsewhere and countless battles to defend its interests and rights within the imperialist system of states. The working class is poised to end through revolution its oppressive social relation with the financial oligarchy.

No middle class exists between the two main social classes under imperialism. A small group of people with no stability has one foot in each social class. Extremely vulnerable people who can no longer work for various reasons may suffer what is called civil death, with no means to acquire a living other than through charity, social programs or other means.

The objective conditions exist to resolve the dialectical social relation between the working class and financial oligarchy and move society forward to the emancipation of the working class and the elimination of social classes. This social revolution can only be accomplished through the efforts of the working class itself by preparing the subjective conditions for revolution and thereby resolving the dialectical social relation with the financial oligarchy.

Note 

1. According to information on the government website, the Minister of Middle Class Prosperity, Mona Fortier, was first elected to the House of Commons in a 2017 by-election. Prior to entering politics, she was on several non-profit boards and was the director of communications for a French-language college in Ottawa until 2015, when she started and managed her own communications consulting firm. She was co-chair of the Liberal Party's 2019 campaign platform committee.

This article was published in

Volume 49 Number 29 - November 30, 2019

Article Link:
Liberal Government's New Cabinet And Politics of the Absurd - K.C. Adams

    

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