Labour Day 2020
Workers' Forums Exchange Views on New Challenges in Light of Developments in Canada and the U.S.
On Labour Day 2020, held under the difficult
conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Workers'
Centre of the Communist Party of Canada
(Marxist-Leninist) sends its greetings to workers
from coast to coast to coast. 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 under the difficult
conditions of the neo-liberal anti-social
offensive.
The Workers' Centre of CPC(M-L) is holding
workers' forums so that workers from different
sectors of the economy can exchange views with one
another, via meetings with less than 10 people at
a time, which adhere to standards of physical
distancing, virtual zoom meetings, skypes and
webinars and through its publications during
September, October and November. This
exchange is to help workers analyze the unfolding
events and find their bearings, and provide the
same for all sections of the people.
 We call on workers
to exchange views on the challenges they and their
sector of the economy face at this time, as more
pay-the-rich schemes are put in place in the name
of economic recovery and the well-being of the
middle class.
We call on workers to discuss the challenges they
think the country faces in light of the "palace
coup" which is unfolding in Ottawa and the
elections in the United States. The "palace coup"
has already placed Chrystia Freeland as Finance
Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. The situation
in the U.S. is filled with foreboding as the
rulers desperately seek to perpetuate their
crisis-ridden system of governance while diverting
and crushing the people's striving for
empowerment.
How to tackle the conditions of pandemic, high
unemployment, growing poverty and the drive of the
rich to use the circumstances to benefit their own
narrow private interests while the people are left
to fend for themselves? 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?
The new Finance Minister is putting together more
pay-the-rich schemes in our name under the pretext
of high ideals of peace, freedom and democracy and
that these measures will save humankind and the
natural environment. Every measure is taken to
marginalize, silence and eliminate the independent
voices and initiatives of the working people in
the name of eliminating the danger of "mob rule."
Dogmatic renderings of reality push worn-out
conceptions that what is needed is a
"meritocracy," which will allegedly bring forward
the "best and brightest," to whom we must entrust
our fate. According to this conception, what
society needs is an enlightened strata of rulers
who narrow down the choices for us and then
"nudge" us to make the right choices for
ourselves. There is to be no equal membership
within a body politic constituted to guarantee the
rights of all on the basis of being human. There
is to be no decision-making process which vests
sovereignty in the people, not self-serving narrow
private interests.
The promotion of an allegedly benevolent
dictatorship which concentrates power in the hands
of those the rulers deem to be enlightened is not
a new invention. It goes back to the 17th and 18th
centuries and shows how bankrupt today's rulers
are. Their bankruptcy is such
that, unable to channel the unfettered
development of the productive forces which make
the very conception of private ownership of
property obsolete, they seek to destroy what they
cannot control. Their attempts to control these
forces and, failing that, destroy them, is carried
out in the name of upholding civilized values
against the "populism" and "barbarism" of "left
and right extremes" and making sure the middle
class survives the drive of the rich becoming
richer and the poor poorer.
The federal government's much awaited plan for
economic recovery will funnel more and more of
society's assets to the narrow private interests
which dictate all economic and financial policy.
They are outlining the infrastructure they require
at this time and how it will be paid for. Their
laws are concentrating decision-making power in
fewer and fewer hands so that nobody knows what is
happening and the government cannot be held to
account.
 Within this
situation and the fend-for-oneself incoherence
which prevails, workers' organizations are
supposed to limit their responses to unsuitable
either/or options: either withhold our labour and
be declared illegal, or use the courts, Charter of Rights
and Freedoms with its "Reasonable
Limits," and labour boards to uphold our rights.
Years of experience reveal the proliferation of
rabbit holes used to maintain the unacceptable
neo-liberal status quo while we are more and more
deprived of all that is ours by right.
Everyone is fighting to uphold their rights and
this is increasingly seen as a life or death
matter because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Upholding
the rights of all is more and more considered to
be a social responsibility of governments at all
levels.
The 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 new Throne Speech, the
program of the Official Opposition, and Canada's
integration into the failed U.S. state which is
trying so desperately to reinvent itself.
What do the workers propose the Canadian working
people can do at this time to turn things around
in their favour? It is one thing to recognize that
we cannot go back to "business as usual." It is
another to know what to do to avert the disasters
this "business as usual" holds for the people from
coast to coast to coast.
Together we can work it out. Let everyone lend a
hand by joining and organizing workers' forums,
sharing their experiences and providing their
views. We ignore the significance of analyzing
unfolding events at our own peril.
Join the discussion and exchange of views!
For information or to join, write the Workers'
Centre of CPC(M-L):
workerscentre@cpcml.ca
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 33 - September 5, 2020
Article Link:
Labour Day 2020: Workers' Forums Exchange Views on New Challenges in Light of Developments in Canada and the U.S.
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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