Serious Matters of Concern for the
Working Class Movement
Narrow Private Interests Demand Government Pay-the-Rich Schemes
 
A lot of noise is filling the airwaves, and
monopoly-controlled and social media about what is
called the federal government's "prescription for
the COVID-19 pandemic" which claims "spending is
the best medicine." Finance Minister Chrystia
Freeland -- who is also the Deputy Prime Minister
-- is "signalling that approach will continue (if
in much smaller doses) when she delivers a
detailed fiscal update in next week's economic
statement," CBC News reports. The report quotes
what Freeland told the House of Commons this
week, "Our plan will continue to support
Canadians through the pandemic and ensure that the
post-COVID economy is robust, inclusive and
sustainable."
Her fiscal update will be the first since March
2020 when the pandemic hit Canada.
"The update will include new but time-limited
spending measures to deal with the pandemic's
economic impact on specific industries and
vulnerable Canadians, while laying the groundwork
for the policy priorities listed in September's
speech from the Throne," CBC News writes.
Enough spin and counterspin swirls around the
issue of government spending during the pandemic
to sink a battleship. All of it ensures the
working class and people wish a pox on all their
houses as they do their best to steer clear of the
anxiety created by these forces which are clearly
unfit to rule. Nothing proves this more than their
pay-the-rich schemes, which they try to disguise
in honey-coated pronouncements of their high
ideals.
Quoting "[g]overnment sources (who are not
authorized to speak publicly)," CBC News reports:
"While they would not set out exact details, the
measures in the update are expected to include:
"Support for airlines and the tourism and
hospitality sector, which have yet to recover from
border closures and ongoing lockdowns.
"Money to help long-term care homes control
infections.
"Support to help women return to the workplace.
"Some infrastructure projects tied to the
government's commitment to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions as part of the economic recovery."
 Already, the
working class movement has raised the important
demand that social programs not be for
profit. Canadians want publicly owned, managed and
controlled operations which put the well-being of
the people at the centre of their operations. In
fact, the pandemic has exposed the necessity for
universal social programs even among some of the
staunchest defenders of private enterprise and --
what they like to call -- "small government." A
feature among the oligopolies which have seized
control of competing parts of the socialized
economy is their realization that individual
enterprises, no matter how vast, cannot alone
sustain the necessary social programs for their
own workers and still maintain their desired level
of productivity and private profit. This
realization is in addition to their need for
public infrastructure as social means of
production without which private companies cannot
function.
The New York Times recently carried an
article titled "The Private Sector Can't Pay for
Everything." The author bemoans the fact that the
November 3 U.S. election delayed a second
"pandemic stimulus" to aid struggling businesses.
"Employers have been left to fend for themselves,"
the author complains.
The article underscores an issue for the ruling
elite: how to fashion social programs that both
remove a particular burden on private enterprises
to pay directly for such necessities as health
care and child care for their employees and at the
same time have those programs generate private
profit for their specific narrow private
interests. The ruling elite look to the past to
social welfare solutions that did just that.
Besides justifying their current pay-the-rich
schemes, they do this to embroil the working
people and their organizations in schemes to
reorder a system whose hallmark is that it is
crisis ridden because it no longer has a
nation-building aim.
Governments promote their pay-the-rich schemes
couched in language about helping Canadians based
on the neo-liberal argument for social programs
which, expressed succinctly, amounts to the
plea that not having them "is bad for business."
This self-serving approach favours narrow private
interests in vicious competition with one another,
obsessed with the aim of maximizing the returns on
their investments (more often than not, also
provided to them through pay-the-rich
schemes).
Whether the rich agree with social programs or
not depends on how a particular program affects
their private interests and business. If the
imperialists can benefit in some way, for instance
by lending money to the government, fine, they
will allow it. If it assists in preventing the
working class from coming to power, fine. If it
introduces confusion into the ranks of the working
class, disrupts its organizing and hinders the
development of the human factor/social
consciousness and working class practical
politics, then all the better. Otherwise, if it
means increased investments in social programs
that truly assist the working people and do not
pay the rich, they will throw up every conceivable
roadblock.
 The problem rests
not with the socialized productive forces but with
those in control and the outmoded private
relations of production that are in contradiction
with the modern forces of industrial mass
production. The working class is the only social
force capable of socializing the relations of
production, putting them in conformity with the
productive forces and giving full rein to the
potential of the socialized economy with the
modern aim to serve the people and society.
The working class must take up the battle to
increase investments in social programs and stop
paying the rich with its own reference point to
bring into being a nation-building project of its
own making with socialized relations of production
in conformity with the already socialized forces
of industrial mass production.
For the working class movement, the issue remains
to fight for increased investments in social
programs, human services and enterprise
accountable to the people, to stop paying the
rich, to defend the rights of all and for working
conditions and a claim on the value workers
produce acceptable to workers themselves.
In this issue, TML Weekly is publishing
several articles by K.C. Adams that address these
matters.
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 46 - November 28, 2020
Article Link:
Serious Matters of Concern for the
Working Class Movement: Narrow Private Interests Demand Government Pay-the-Rich Schemes
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
|
