PolEconAnalysis

May 1919: When the workers ran Winnipeg

2009-05-15T14:48:00.003-04:00

Ninety years ago today, May 15 1919, at 11 a.m., the Winnipeg General Strike began. Until the Quebec General Strike of 1972, the 1919 strike stood as the most profound class confrontation in Canadian history. The article here is based on a talk delivered 10 years ago, on the 80th anniversary of the strike. • Workers’ power – the working class of the world sweeping away the corporate directors, the financiers and the back room boys of the state apparatus – workers running the world without the bosses. It is an inspiring vision. And when we examine a page of Canadian working class history, it is clear that, in the right conditions, the vision can become a reality. Eighty years ago this month that page was written in the 41-day Winnipeg General Strike.

It began Thursday May 15, 1919, as a near-unanimous show of support by the workers of Winnipeg for their co-workers in the building and metal trades.[1] The demands of these tradesmen were very humble. The Metal Trades Council struck May 2 for shorter hours (a 9-hour day!), a wage increase and union recognition. The Building Trades Council had struck a day earlier over similar issues. The economic demands were modest enough in a situation where wages, throughout World War One, had not kept pace with inflation. Canadian socialist Ross Dowson, writing 31 years after the strike, said that between 1914 and 1919, wages had gone up only 18 per cent, while prices had skyrocketed by 80 per cent.[2]

But for the employers, it was not the economic issues that were central. This was the first attempt by both the Building and Metal Trades Councils to represent building and metal workers industry-wide. Industry-wide bargaining gives the workers much greater power than bargaining shop by shop, plant by plant and was to prove one of the biggest issues in the great industrial unionizing drives of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) in the 1930s and 1940s. The Winnipeg metals and trades employers wanted to end industry-wide bargaining before it got started, so they refused even to negotiate with the two councils.

GENERAL STRIKE

So the two trades struck, and on May 15, all 12,000 unionized workers in Winnipeg went on a sympathy general strike in their support, to be joined within a few days by all other 15,000 wage-workers in Winnipeg – organized, unorganized, women and men. Virtually every working person in the city went out on a general strike; 35,000 workers who, with their families, represented the vast majority of Winnipeg's 170,000 people. "It wasn't just the trade unionists who threw down their tools and walked off the job," said Fred Tipping, socialist and one of the strike leaders. "It was workers everywhere. There was no strike pay for anyone. They had nothing to live on,"[3] and still they went on strike.

The breadth of the strike is difficult for us to imagine whose only experience with a general strike is the one-day variety of October, 1976 or the series of one-day rotating strikes during Ontario’s Days of Action. Even the police, by a vote of 149 to 11, joined the strike. But with that vote began a new dimension to the strike. The police voted to go on strike, but stayed on the job at the request of the newly constituted Strike Committee. This committee was composed of the executive of the Winnipeg Trades and Labor Council (TLC), five rank and file members of the council, and three delegates from each and every union in the city, and as the strike progressed, it began to function more and more like the city's government.

At the request of the Strike Committee: waterworks employees went back to work to maintain sufficient pressure for domestic use; staff was supplied to the hospitals; and after they met with the frightened (and powerless) members of the old City Council, milk and bread delivery carts made their rounds through the city with large signs on their doors, BY AUTHORITY OF THE STRIKE COMMITTEE.

The Women's Labor League set up a kitchen financed by donations and collections taken at mass meetings to feed women strikers free and supply them with funds for room and rent. Anyone without funds and with a ticket from the Strike Relief Committee was given free meals – 1,200 to 1,500 meals were served daily. By authority of the Strike Committee, a daily paper, the Western Labor News was started up. Without the authority of the strike Committee, nothing moved in Winnipeg.

In these events is one of the most significant lessons of the strike. The working class downed tools and closed down the city of Winnipeg in defiance of their employers and the law. And then, through their own committees, their own organizations, began to open the city up again. For over a month, the city of Winnipeg was effectively under workers' control: not to the extent of challenging political power – the Winnipeg workers never attempted that – but to the extent of keeping a city functioning and alive in siege-conditions.

CLASS and the STATE

Through the Citizens' Committee of 1,000 the employers began to regroup. David Jay Bercuson describes this committee as mainly comprising members of organizations such as the Board of Trade, the Manufacturers' Association and the Bar Association. They represented Winnipeg’s social, economic and political elite.[4] Their first tactic was to try and divide the ranks of the strikers. They called a meeting of the war veterans (who looked like likely allies – two months previously they had rioted and raided the Socialist Party headquarters in the city). The Citizens’ Committee tried to get the veterans to oppose the “alien, bolshevik” strike. Instead, the veterans used the meeting to declare their support for the strike and elect delegates to the Strike Committee.

This made it very clear that such attempts at "divide and conquer" were fruitless. Increasingly, the employers turned more and more to various levels of government for support.

First the municipal government stepped in. The Police Commission instructed police to sign a pledge indicating that they would not join any sympathetic strike or affiliate to any labour body. None signed, all were fired. Next the federal government stepped in. Throughout 1918, a hotly debated issue had been whether or not public employees should have the right to strike, an issue, 80 years later, with which we are all too familiar. Senator Robertson, acting on the authority of Tory Arthur Meighen (then Minister of Justice, soon to be Prime Minister), called a meeting of all postal employees, all of whom were on strike. But in good postal worker fashion, the meeting was boycotted. Undaunted, Robertson still managed to hand them an ultimatum to return to work on May 26, to never again take part in a strike, to sever all connections with the Trades and Labour Council – or lose their jobs, their pensions and their right to ever again work on a government job. Only 16 returned to work. A similar ultimatum was handed to women strikers at the Telephone Exchange with similar results. Once the strike was smashed, the state held true to its word – 403 postal employees, 119 telephone workers and 53 firemen got the sack.

But that is jumping ahead. While the strike was on, as other tactics failed, the various levels of government more and more resorted to force. The fired municipal police were replaced by some 2,000 vigilantes. On June 6, these were reinforced through the federal government by units of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police (RNWP), predecessors of today’s RCMP. That same day, an amendment was passed to the Immigration Act by the Ottawa government, in such a manner, that it should forever put to rest the impression that our bureaucracies can only move at a snail's pace. The amendment made it possible for Canadians not born in Canada to be arrested on charges of sedition, tried in secret without being present at the enquiry without access to a regular court, trial by jury or appeal to any court or judge, and deported to the land of their birth. The amendment (directed at the strike leaders, some of whom were British immigrants) was given the necessary three readings and given the Governor General's assent in an unheard of 45 minutes.

With the weight of the federal government thrown into the balance, the strike was defeated. On June 16, ten leaders of the strike were arrested in line with the Immigration Act amendment. On Saturday, June 21 – after a nation-wide storm of protest – six of the arrested strike leaders were released on bail, the last victory the strikers were to have. In Winnipeg: that same day, 10,000 veterans massed to stage a silent, peaceful parade in support of the strike. The peaceful parade of the unarmed veterans was to turn into the strike’s “Bloody Saturday.” It was dispersed by the armed forces of the special constables and the RNWP. Armed with clubs, the mounted police charged the demonstrators, and were met by a hail of stones. The next time they charged, they used guns, killing one demonstrator and injuring 30. With clubs and baseball bats, the “specials” finished the mopping up. The Western Labor News was banned and on June 25, the Strike Committee called off the strike. It petered to an end about one week later.

But if the strike was defeated in terms of its immediate demands, in another sense it was a great success. It was a magnificent school for tens of thousands of young workers.

The strike showed that when militant action is taken, there could be massive support and sympathy all across the country. On May 20, organized labour in Toronto voted 17,700 to 6,250 in favour of a sympathetic general strike in support of Winnipeg (which was unfortunately, never called). On May 26, 41 unions in Calgary walked out. On June 2, 42 unions went out in Vancouver. Within days, the whole city was shut down, a general strike with its own strike committee and aspects of workers’ control not unlike those in Winnipeg. On June 23, 5,000 Victoria metal trades workers struck in sympathy with Winnipeg. On June 18, New Westminster went out in a general strike. General sympathetic strikes of at least some duration occurred in “...all other Western cites, the Lakehead, Toronto and some Nova Scotia points.”[5] In Calgary, workers called for a Canada-wide strike. Union after union, local after local, called upon the Dominion Labor Congress for one-day strikes, or for an indefinite general strike.

The strike showed that unity could be created between the “two solitudes” of English-Canadian and Québécois workers. “On May 28, a mass meeting was held at Maisonneuve market in the East End of Montreal, bringing together English-Canadian, immigrant and French-Canadian workers. Many of them were strikers from the Canadian Vickers plant.” The 2,000 in attendance unanimously passed a motion, read first in French and then in English, which pledged “... moral and financial support to our brothers [on strike in Winnipeg] in order that they may secure a complete victory in the present struggle; and in the event of a general strike being called in Montreal, all here present are prepared to bear their share of the burden.”[6]

But the strike also revealed a stark divide between ordinary workers in the ranks of the movement, and the union bureaucracy which dominates the movement. A nation-wide general strike was possible, and could have led to victory for the Winnipeg strikers. But in spite of repeated calls for solidarity action, Tom Moore, president of the Canadian Council of Trades and Labour (CCTL), remained silent, and then two days after Bloody Saturday in a letter addressed to the Winnipeg Council, “formally withdrew his support for the general strike.”[7] Some of the leaders who didn’t remain silent, probably should have. M.T. Provost, a union leader in Montreal, justified his refusal to call a sympathy strike saying: “We are not Bolsheviks nor anarchists. What the others are complaining about doesn’t concern us ... As far as we are concerned, there will be no sympathy strike. We will fight that till our death.”[8]

It also showed the class nature of Canada and the reality of its “impartial” state. It painted in clear letters the word PROFIT over the democratic façade of society. It showed, when it came to the crunch, democracy, freedoms, living standards, even human lives would be sacrificed to maintain the sacred profits of the capitalists and their state. The 1919 strike showed, in other words, that to win workers were going to have to challenge not just economically, but politically as well.

This lesson was learned in different ways by different people. J.S. Woodsworth was one of those arrested in 1919. Two years later, he was elected to the House of Commons, and would of course go on to be central in the founding of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), predecessor to the NDP. “When the Meighen Government arrested me,” he said, “it nominated me for Ottawa.”[9]

Less well known are the young workers who went through the school of Winnipeg, and became part of the early years of the Communist Party of Canada, a party which was to be a the centre of the great industrial union drives of the 1930s. There is no question that without the deep political lessons of Winnipeg 1919, there would have been a much weaker foundation for the radical left of the 1920s, and the unionization drives led by that left in the 1930s.

The society we have today is one where profit still trumps democracy, where union bureaucrats still sit idly while workers’ suffer, and where it is still necessary to forge political alternatives based on the self-activity of the oppressed. We should learn well the lessons of Winnipeg so we will be ready for the Winnipegs which lie ahead.

© 2009 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] Information for the article comes from three main sources. Norman Penner, ed., Winnipeg 1919: The strikers’ own history of the Winnipeg General Strike, (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 1975): David Jay Bercuson Confrontation at Winnipeg (Montreal: Queen's University Press, 1974): and Bercuson, "The Winnipeg General Strike" in Irving Abella ed., On Strike (Toronto: James Lewis & Samuel, 1974). See also articles in Labour/Le Travail 13, Spring, 1984 and Paul Jackson, History of the General Strike: Winnipeg 1919 (Montreal: Red Flag Publications, 1979).
[2] Ross Dowson, "The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919", in Labor Challenge, June 1950, p. 4.
[3] Fred Tipping, interviewed in Canadian Dimension, June 1969, p. 11.
[4] Bercuson, Confrontation at Winnipeg, p. 121.
[5] H. Clare Pentland, "Fifty Years After", in Canadian Dimension, June 1969, P. 16.
[6] Cited in Jackson, p. 3.
[7] Jackson, p. 3.
[8] Cited in Jackson, p. 12.
[9] Cited in Penner, p. viii.

Norman Penner – A life for the struggle

2009-05-07T12:11:00.003-04:00

May 3, close to 200 people crowded into Glendon Hall in Toronto to pay tribute to the life and work of Norman Penner, who sadly passed away April 16 at the age of 88.[1] There could not have been a more appropriate month for such an event. May is after all, the month where every year we celebrate May 1, International Workers’ Day. It is also the month where the great Winnipeg General Strike began, 90 years ago, a strike that remains the defining moment of the Canadian working class movement, and a strike which was brought back to life for a new generation, in large part through the efforts of Norman Penner. For this alone, Penner’s life would be worthy of commemoration. We were reminded May 3 that there was so much more – a life genuinely lived for the struggle.

Penner’s father, Jacob Penner, had been a leading socialist in his own right, and as one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party of Canada, an opponent of conscription during the slaughter of World War I. When the Winnipeg General Strike erupted in 1919, Penner was one of the strike leaders.[2]

Norman – born into a family of the left – carried on the tradition from a very early age. We heard, at the memorial, of his 1930’s activism as a teenager – speaking to mass audiences, campaigning in defence of among others, his father, when the city of Winnipeg was trying to strip the now communist Jacob Penner, of his elected seat on Winnipeg’s city council.

Norman himself would become a leading member of the party. But he would not let organizational loyalty trump principles. When the supposedly “communist” Russian tanks moved in to crush the workers’ uprising in Hungary in 1956 – the same year that Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev exposed the crimes of Joseph Stalin to a stunned international left – Penner resigned the Communist Party, even though that meant leaving behind his employer in a decade of intense anti-communism.

He found a way to make a living as probably the only Marxist electric heating salesman in Canada. In the mid-1960s, he set out on a university career, acquiring his degrees, and from 1972 until his retirement 24 years later, teaching in the Political Science department at Glendon College, part of York University in Toronto.

It was at Glendon as a professor, that Penner had his biggest impact. In 1973, he edited a riveting book on the Winnipeg General Strike, bringing back to life, in the words of the strikers themselves, that defining moment in Canadian labour history. In 1977 he wrote a careful and balanced assessment of the Canadian Left, that remains indispensable reading for any who aspire to fight for social change in this country. Perhaps more important than his books, however, were his classes, where with patience and intelligence – and humour – he would genuinely engage with young people from a new generation, tell them about the lessons from the past, and most importantly, listen to the new insights that every new generation brings to the social movements.

It is this latter quality that set Penner apart from many in his generation – the capacity to listen. While many from the old left, shaped by the Russian Revolution and the Great Depression, were too often suspicious of the long-haired radicals of the 1960s and 1970s, Penner found real joy in their company. He would have loved the fact that in Toronto, the day before his memorial, young radicals of this generation, members of No One Is Illegal, had led a spirited May Day march through the streets of the city, taking over Yonge Street for a period, draping banners off the Eaton Centre, and then joining up with members of the Tamil Community, demonstrating against the terrible genocide underway in their homeland. He would have known that today – as in 1919, as in the 1930s, as in the 1960s – the future of the social movements is in the hands of the impatient youth, much more than it is in the tidy offices of this or that union or party bureaucracy.

His grandson, Dylan Penner – himself an anti-war activist in the tradition of Norman and Jacob – in one of many moving tributes given by family and friends, gave us all the proper framework in which to remember the life of this remarkable man. In the words of Industrial Worker of the World activist and songwriter Joe Hill – “don’t mourn, organize.”[3]

Books by Norman Penner, available from online booksellers

Winnipeg 1919: The Strikers’ Own History of the Winnipeg General Strike (1973)
The Canadian Left: A critical analysis (1977)
From Protest to Power: Social Democracy in Canada 1900-Present (1992)
Canadian communism: The Stalin years and beyond (1988)

© 2009 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] See “Professor Emeritus Norman Penner was a Glendon mainstay,” YFILE, April 24, 2009 and “Norman Penner,” The Toronto Star, April 25, 2009
[2] There is some information about Jacob Penner on wikipedia. His story, and the story of his wife Rose Penner, has been documented on video (Cathy Gulkin, “A Glowing Dream: The Story of Jacob & Rose Penner,” Episode 33, A Scattering of Seeds: The Creation of Canada, Season III, White Pine Pictures, 1999)
[3] See “Joe Hill, (1879-1915),” AFL-CIO: America’s Union Movement; and “The Joe Hill Project,” www.joehill.org

Coalition gives Harper new life

2009-01-08T00:21:00.002-05:00

We now know that there was nothing spontaneous about the coalition gambit initiated by Jack Layton and the NDP in the dying weeks of 2008. Far from the “grass-roots” affair as it was painted by the NDP press room, the coalition idea was nurtured “on secret NDP ‘scenario committees’ during the past three federal campaigns.”[1] The fact that it was a backroom deal has now exploded in Layton’s face.

Had it been driven from the grass-roots, the NDP would have been looking down, responding to its base. But the NDP was doing the opposite. Layton was looking up, to a deal with the Liberals – indistinguishable from the Tories as a corporate-backed party. Part of the deal he had to strike was to put on the shelf both the war on Afghanistan and increasing corporate taxes. This made it impossible for the NDP to appeal to its base – because the base of the party is anti-war and anti-corporate.

But while Layton was looking up and disorganizing his base, Harper was doing the opposite. He knows his base precisely, and in unleashing a vicious Quebec-bashing campaign, he suddenly had an army of reactionaries ready to do battle.

And then Harper found out he didn’t need these bigots. A much bigger wave was coming his way, a wave of revulsion. Ordinary people instinctively dislike secretive backroom deals. The smell of opportunism was all over the coalition, and suddenly, this translated into an evaporation of support for the NDP and the Liberals in English Canada, and a sudden surge in support for the Tories.

Three polls done in the immediate aftermath of the coalition announcement had Harper sitting in majority territory. The Strategic Counsel had the Tories at 45 percent nationally, Ipsos Reid had them at 46 percent, and an Ekos poll gave the Tories a crushing 20 point lead over the Liberals. Just weeks before the Tories had managed to win only 37.6 percent of the vote.[2]

The scary thing is – this surge in the polls was in spite of a collapse for Tory support in Quebec. The Quebec bashing in the first Tory counter-attack had the effect of destroying the Quebec base Harper had been trying to build. According to the Strategic Counsel, while Tory support was down to 18 percent in Quebec, it had soared to 53 percent in the rest of Canada, including 61 percent support in the West, and 50 percent support in the previously Liberal stronghold of Ontario.[3]

These numbers won’t last. Stephen Harper is unlikely to stay at these levels of support for very long. But what this Tory surge exposes very clearly is the folly of the Coalition strategy. A backroom deal with one of Canada’s corporate parties did not build the NDP – it built support for Harper and his Tories.

© 2009 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] “Inside a crisis that shook the nation,” Macleans.ca, December 12, 2008
[2] “Canada’s Harper has crushing poll lead on crisis,” December 5, 2008
[3] Strategic Counsel, “Harper’s Conservatives versus Liberal-NDP Coalition: What is the State of Canadian Public Opinion?”, December 4, 2008

Gaza: Occupation is still the issue

2009-01-07T23:53:00.001-05:00

The war in Gaza is a completely unequal contest. Israel – receiving billions of dollars in military aid every year from the United States – has one of the most sophisticated killing machines in the world. Gaza is an open-air prison, whose only outlet to the outside world for months has been through tunnels dug deep beneath the border with Egypt. Rockets fired from Gaza have killed a handful of Israelis. Israel’s offensive has killed more than 600 – including the slaughter of 40 at a U.N. school.[1] Yet in spite of these facts, the NDP official statement on the war acts as if both sides are equally to blame.

Canada’s New Democrats “condemn the unacceptable escalation of violence in the Middle East,” the statement begins. This escalation is about “airstrikes by Israel” and the “ongoing rocket attacks”.[2] Not a word about occupation. Not a word about Israel’s strangulation of Gaza. Not a word about Hamas being democratically elected. Not a word about Harper being the first to jump on a boycott of Hamas, giving a green light to Israel.

Israel, Stephen Harper, the United States, F16 fighter planes, tanks, artillery, pilotless drones – against a few hundred Hamas fighters with some rockets. In what way are these two equal sides? Israel has stolen the homes of the Palestinians, forced them into a strip of land by the sea, is now mercilessly pounding them, but “New Democrats believe that Canada must pursue a balanced approach to the Middle East crisis.”

So let’s have a balanced approach. Let’s always tell the truth when we talk about the war in Palestine – the balanced, careful truth. That truth is that Israel is occupying Palestinian land, is expanding its settlements illegally, is carving up what remains of Palestinian land in a way little different from the way South Africa carved up the Bantustans under apartheid, and that until this illegal occupation ends, there will be no peace.

© 2009 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] For facts on the war, see Electronic Intifada
[2] “New Democrat statement on the situation in the Middle East,” December 29, 2008

Dear Jack: Do you really want this war?

2009-01-07T23:13:00.005-05:00

Open Letter to Jack Layton, federal leader of the NDP • Everywhere I go they are burying Canadian soldiers. Walking down Donlands Avenue December 12, there were the cameras and the men in uniform – waiting outside the Metamorphosis Greek Orthodox Church for the funeral of Private Demetrios Diplaros, killed in Afghanistan the week before.[1] Back at work in Peterborough, preparations were underway at Calvary Church for the funeral of Private Michael Freeman, killed in Afghanistan.[2] But this is the war that you say you want to inherit.

Your only Quebec MP, Thomas Mulcair has told the press, "the NDP is putting aside its differences that have existed historically with the Liberals on such issues as Afghanistan."[3] And Jack, your coalition government – if it gets its way – will stay in office till 2011. Will there be another 100 Canadians killed on its watch? Another 200? And how many thousands of Afghanis?

Knowing that the NDP was calling for an immediate troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, was an enormous boost of confidence for thousands. Your actions have completely betrayed those thousands.

Last election, young people – the young people I see every day as a teacher, the young people that you and I both saw when we were both teachers at Ryerson University – just didn’t care about a choice between Harper, Dion or yourself. They didn’t see themselves in any of the parties. But I was able to tell them – in good conscience – that there was a big difference between your party and the others. Your party was committed to bringing the troops home – the troops sent to war by the Liberals, and dying in increasing numbers under the Conservatives. That argument worked. Young people hate this war. So when they were told that there was one party calling for an end to the war, they voted for you.

You have now lost their vote. You have sent them the message that principles like stopping a murderous, barbaric war are not as important – as what? What exactly did you get from your deal with the Liberals? Afghanistan is on the shelf. Taxing the corporations is on the shelf. The only thing you seem to have “won” is the promise of six cabinet seats. A religious man who greatly influenced me – an anti-war minister of the United Church – would have known what to call this – a mess of pottage. Look it up.

The coalition gambit was a top-down bureaucratic, back-room deal – and has been perceived as such by millions of ordinary Canadians who are recoiling in horror. The terrible effect of this backroom coalition adventure has been to bring Stephen Harper back from the dead – he’s soaring in the polls – and to accelerate the arrival of Michael Ignatieff as head of the Liberals – the same Michael Ignatieff who supported George W. Bush’s war on Iraq. Do you really want to sit at the cabinet table with Michael Ignatieff in the chair?

The war has come home, Jack. That funeral on Donlands was in your riding in Toronto, the riding that has time and again come out to the polls and sent you to Ottawa. If you say “troops out now” you have something to say to those folks. If you say “we’ll talk about it in 2011,” you have nothing to say that is any different from the Harper Tories.

Whatever. The movement goes on without you. We’ll be demonstrating April 4 in Toronto and in dozens of other cities chanting “troops out now!” You’re welcome to join us. There will be thousands of other NDP members there with us. But don’t expect a very warm welcome. On those marches, being against the war is a principle, not a bargaining chip.

© 2009 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] “A hero’s farewell,” Toronto Sun, December 12, 2008
[2] “Holidays delay Peterborough soldier’s funeral,” thestar.com, January 2, 2009
[3] Murray Brewster, “NDP will not oppose Afghan war while in coalition,” Canadian Press, December 3, 2008

Is there space for peace?

2008-12-24T21:39:00.004-05:00

Letter to host of “Q,” submitted to CBC, Dec. 24, 2008 • You opened your Christmas Eve show with a flashback to 1968, the Apollo 8 flight, and the astronauts reading selections from Genesis, the first book of the Bible, while floating in space. “Peace on earth” you speculate could be brought a wee bit closer if we told the Apollo 8 story every Christmas, helping us to see our earth in green and blue perspective.

Many of us remember that flight like it was yesterday. Many of us, as children, were enthralled by the space program, by NASA, and by its celebrities – chief among them, Wernher von Braun.

As adults, many of us learned the truth. Von Braun was a veteran of Hitler's Germany, scooped up along with dozens of other Nazi-era scientists, a prize catch for the United States.[1] The Apollo program was the direct descendant of von Braun's Nazi-era rocket research, designed to deliver payloads of death and horror to civilian populations in Britain. We know now that he used slave labour in these activities.[2]

And NASA? The furious pace of its progress in the 1960s was not motivated by the desire to put astronauts in space to read the Bible. That was just window-dressing. The whole program was completely embedded in the arms race. Rocket technology is not about romance and religion, but about mass murder and war – a technology necessary for the delivery of nuclear warheads to whomever might threaten U.S. hegemony.

The Apollo space flights are a poor vehicle with which to bring peace on earth, their roots deeply planted in slave labour, fascism, and the desperate search for the construction of weapons of mass destruction. If the Apollo astronauts had wanted to quote the Bible for peace, they should have stayed away from Genesis and chosen Isaiah instead. To get peace on earth we will have to “beat our swords into ploughshares,” so that “nation shall not lift up sword against nation.”[3] Among the biggest swords to be re-engineered are the rockets of the U.S. space program.

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] A fact known for years – see Tom Lehrer’s bitter spoof, available on youtube.
[2] Tony Paterson, “Germans at last learn truth about von Braun’s ‘space research’ base,” The Telegraph, June 14, 2001
[3] Isaiah 2: 4

Afghanistan is still the issue – anti-war movement in convention

2008-12-14T16:43:00.002-05:00

December 6, on the second day of the biennial (every two years) convention of the Canadian Peace Alliance, 100 or so delegates and observers gathered in the bitter cold on the sidewalk outside the student centre at Ryerson University in Toronto. Behind a massive banner and carrying dozens of placards saying “Troops Out of Afghanistan” we marched to join the 3,000 strong anti-Harper rally taking place that day at City Hall. We took the streets, and as our little contingent turned the last corner before arriving at City Hall, we took up the chant, “Harper Out of Ottawa, Canada Out of Afghanistan.” The message couldn’t have been clearer – no matter what government is in office, there is a movement on the streets telling any who will listen, Afghanistan is still the issue.

Most in the crowd greeted us with enthusiasm. Thousands of NDP members have been central to the anti-war movement. But Jack Layton has told them that the Afghanistan file is on the shelf while he pursues the increasingly forlorn project of coalescing with the Liberals. Suddenly, it is not at all clear that the NDP federal leadership considers it “legitimate” to be against Harper and against the war at the same time. The CPA contingent gave voice again to the crowd that was in its vast majority anti-war. The reception was fantastic (except for some disgruntled senior Liberal Party members). It was a moment when all present were very proud to be part of Canada’s anti-war movement. Opposing the war in Afghanistan is not a bargaining chip to be used in parliamentary coalition negotiations. It is a non-negotiable matter of principle. The troops must come home. The killing must stop.

The convention was an intense three-day event, December 5 to 7, which brought together elected delegates from 39 anti-war and peace organizations from across the country. Together with observers, more than 100 people attended.

The central decision of the conference was the adoption of a two-year “Campaign Goals, Strategy and Actions.” The delegates unanimously agreed that for the next two years, the war in Afghanistan and the War Resisters Campaign would be the strategic focuses for the CPA. The plan commits the CPA to two bi-national demonstrations against the war in Afghanistan each year, one in the spring, one in the autumn. The first one in 2009 will be held in the first week of April to coincide with the call from anti-war groups in Europe to mark the 60th anniversary of the creation of NATO – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is prosecuting the brutal war in Afghanistan.

One of the most intense discussions occurred at a packed workshop centred around the war at home, and the attack on civil liberties. Matthew Behrens from Homes not Bombs said “the biggest losers from the Coalition have been the people of Afghanistan.” He and others expressed the fear that along with the war taking a back seat, so would campaigns around Islamophobia and the attacks on racialized communities. Delegates from the Tamil Youth Organization talked about how their community has been harassed and labelled as “terrorist”, and the implications that has had on community members. There was considerable enthusiasm for the idea of organizing a conference centred on the defence of civil liberties.

The issue of the changing political terrain and the war in Afghanistan was a recurring theme throughout the convention. On the opening panel, Maude Barlow from the Council of Canadians said of the coalition, “we don’t agree with the concession around Afghanistan,” but nonetheless said that the coalition gave us “an opportunity to have our voices heard.” You can support the coalition, she argued, without agreeing with all its policies. On the Saturday panel, “Thinking Strategically: Building the movement to end the war,” Susan Spratt from the Canadian Auto Workers Union made a similar point. “Without a coalition” she argued, “we’re going to end up with a fascist regime that won’t budge on the war.”

But the overwhelming sentiment at the convention was that the anti-war movement had to steer an independent course. The CPA has a responsibility to keep the issue of “Troops Out of Afghanistan” in the public eye, by keeping the anti-war movement active and on the streets. This is even more the case when the political party with an official position calling for Troops Out – the NDP – has shamefully traded the push to end to the war for the promise of six cabinet seats.

The coming months will not be easy. In Canada, the Afghanistan issue has become confused because of the actions of the Coalition. In the United States, the election of Barack Obama has rightly excited millions. But while Obama is committed to winding down the war in Iraq, he is equally committed to a major escalation in Afghanistan. He is using his massive popularity to argue that Afghanistan is the “good war,” an argument that will confuse many people.

Raymond Legault from the Quebec based “Collectif Échec à la guerre” – attending the convention as an observer – argued that we had to face the fact that “fewer people are at our protests and rallies, not more.” This doesn’t mean an end to organizing, it just means that organizing has to take a different shape. “We don’t hear much about the reality of the war,” he said. “We need to bring this reality to people.” To that end, Échec à la guerre is organizing a Peoples’ Summit in Quebec for the autumn of 2009, to provide a forum where the bitter reality of war can be made more visible. The CPA delegates voted to organize a similar Peoples’ Summit in English Canada.

The convention was a real success, a coalescing of local anti-war organizing that revealed the framework around which our movement can continue to organize and build in the coming months – challenging Canada’s war both abroad and at home.

For more information, check out http://www.acp-cpa.ca, http://www.aqoci.qc.ca/ceg/ and http://www.resisters.ca/

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

Breakthrough for Québec solidaire

2008-12-09T13:16:00.005-05:00

Amir Khadir, one of the two spokespersons for Québec solidaire (QS), has won a seat in the Quebec National Assembly. Among the many excellent aspects of the Québec solidaire platform, is a call for the Quebec government to pass a motion opposing “any Canadian imperialist intervention in Afghanistan.”[1] The QS success represents an important advance for the social justice and anti-war movements in both Quebec and English Canada.

Khadir’s victory was not just the victory of one individual. In his riding of Mercier, QS won 8,861 votes, 38.06% of votes cast, defeating Daniel Turp, a star candidate of the Parti Québécois (PQ) by 872 votes. But in the ridings surrounding Mercier, QS also did extremely well. In Gouin, the other co-spokesperson for QS, Françoise David, came a very close second to the PQ winning 7,987 votes (31.95%). In ridings adjacent to either Mercier or Gouin, QS won 2,963 votes (13.01%) in Laurier-Dorion, 2,228 votes (11.43%) in Outremont, 3,009 votes (15.22%) in Saint-Marie-Saint-Jacques, 2,502 votes (12.91%) in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, and 2,470 votes (8.24%) in Rosemont – more than 30,000 votes in total in these seven ridings on the Island of Montreal.

There were also important results in other parts of Quebec, QS candidates polling 2,241 votes (8.42%) in the Quebec City riding of Taschereau, 1,995 votes (8.78%) in the Outaouais riding of Hull, 439 votes (5.04%) in the vast northern riding of Ungava, 1,413 votes (5.77%) in the “near-North” riding of Rouyn-Noranda-Témiscamingue, and just shy of 2,000 votes (6.46%) in Sherbrooke, the riding of Liberal premier Jean Charest.[2]

QS was formed at a convention, February 3, 4 and 5, 2006. Institutionally, it was the coming together of l’Union des forces progressistes (UFP) and Option citoyenne (OC). What this fusion accomplished was to provide a space for the expression of the hopes and dreams of two generations of struggle in Quebec. Those who attended the 1,000 strong opening rally, will never forget the emotion – a video showing the history of struggle in Quebec reaching back through the tumultuous decades of the 1960s and 1970s, from the War Measures Act of 1970 and the General Strike of 1972, to the women’s movement of the 1980s and 1990s, and the anti-globalization and anti-war movements of the 21st century.[3] There was a feeling of history being made.

With a seat in the National Assembly, QS has a new tool to add to the historic commitment of the UFP to be a “party of the street and of the ballot box.”[4] The visibility that comes from having a sitting member will propel QS into the public eye in a new way.

There were some other encouraging results from the election. In particular, the right-wing Action Démocratique du Québec (ADQ), which had soared to second place in the 2007 election, saw its vote collapse by a stunning 694,487, leading to the election night resignation of leader Mario Dumont.

But there remain many challenges, of which QS members are very aware. Celebrations of Khadir’s victory were tempered by disappointment over Françoise David narrowly failing to join Khadir in the National Assembly. In addition, the overall result was a majority government for Jean Charest and the Liberal Party, a leader and a party who are a known commodity in Quebec politics – committed to defending the interests of corporate power.

More worrying, in an election which saw 720,000 fewer voters turn up at the polls than in 2007, it was the two traditional parties – the Liberals and the PQ – which saw their votes increase, 49,137 for the Liberals and 13,639 for the PQ. While QS saw its overall percentage increase slightly (from 3.64% to 3.8%), and while it displaced the Green Party as the fourth party in the election, its overall vote total actually declined by more than 20,000, dropping from 144,418 to 123,061.[5] (See table here for complete figures.)

The spectre of an economic crisis is a factor in this. Fear of recession in the absence of mass struggle means many in the electorate are looking for “safety” in the face of a stronger Liberal government. And it is probably the case that an increased number of people turned to the PQ in disgust at the federal Tories Quebec bashing in the context of the current national political crisis.

Given these huge currents in the economy and in mass politics, it is remarkable that QS did as well as it did, and that Khadir was able to win a seat. There is now a more visible progressive voice that can express the concerns of working people in the face of recession and layoffs, and be a voice against war in the face of parties like the federal NDP quietly putting Afghanistan on the shelf as the price for its coalition with the federal Liberals.

The story of QS needs to be given much more visibility in English Canada. Our sisters and brothers in Quebec have taken up the challenge of forging a united alternative to the traditional parties of politics, and have had some real success. Sometimes it seems that in English Canada we know more about events of this sort in Germany, Britain or France than we do about events down the 401, just across the Ontario border. Hopefully the presence of Amir Khadir in the National Assembly will give QS more visibility, not just in Quebec, but in English Canada as well.

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] “Engagements 2008 de Québec solidaire,” www.quebecsolidaire.net, English version available here
[2] All electoral results from Le Directeur Général des élections du Québec, "Cartothèque: Cartes individuelles des 125 circonscriptions électorales provinciales," www.electionsquebec.qc.ca
[3] Québec solidaire, “Historique”, www.quebecsolidaire.net
[4] Richard Fidler, “Canada: Quebec’s new united left party,” Green Left on line, December 10, 2003, www.greenleft.org.au
[5] Figures for 2007 from “Tableau synoptique des résultats pour l’ensemble des circonscriptions,” www.electionsquebec.qc.ca, for 2008 from “Élections générales: Résultats préliminaires,” www.monvote.qc.ca

Harper out of Ottawa, Canada out of Afghanistan

2008-12-05T15:20:00.005-05:00

(Article 4 of 4) Of all the compromises that might happen to keep a coalition alive, by far the most troubling is the one that is brewing on the war in Afghanistan. As news of the coalition began to surface in the last week of November, The Globe and Mail reported that “a senior NDP official said that no policy issues are considered deal breakers” including that of the war in Afghanistan.[1]

This above all else has to be a “deal breaker.” The NDP has been the one major party that has been committed to ending the war in Afghanistan. As this is being written, news came across the wires that three Canadian soldiers have been killed, taking the military death toll past 100.[2] We don’t know how many Afghanis have been killed in the war – there is no official attempt to keep track.

No compromise is possible on war. You are either for it or against it. The Liberals began this war. The Liberals voted to extend it to 2011. We all know that it is an unwinnable war, fought for corporate profits and geopolitical power, not for democracy and human rights. An anti-war party cannot stay anti-war and enter a cabinet with a pro-war party. Layton and the NDP leadership have to face up to the fact, that were the coalition to take office, the war in Afghanistan would become their war, and the deaths and injuries suffered in that conflict would be their responsibility.

Some will say that were the NDP to insist on this point, then the coalition would not be possible. That is probably true. But a coalition that includes “compromise” on Canada’s military adventure in Afghanistan is not a coalition worth having. Canada is engaged in an imperialist adventure in Central Asia – part of the long slow re-militarization of Canada begun by the Liberals and continuing under the Tories. Opposition to this war is a matter of principle, not one of political expediency. Were Layton and the NDP leadership to compromise on this issue, it would do immeasurable damage to the anti-war movement in Canada – and ultimately to the NDP itself.

There is fear among millions in the face of an unfolding economic crisis. There is anger at the arrogance of a Tory minority that is pushing full steam ahead with neoliberalism at home and militarism abroad.

But it is no solution to replace Harper with a coalition government led by the other party of corporate power and of militarism – the Liberal Party of Canada. All that would be accomplished would be the burying of the independent voice of Canadian labour – the voice of the NDP – behind the pro-corporate voices of Michael Ignatieff and his colleagues.

If the coalition does not take office, we know the way forward. We need to build social movements against war in Afghanistan, against the militarization of Canadian society, against sending off working class men and women to die for corporate profits. We need to build inside the workers’ movements, unions with the muscle to challenge the agenda of the corporations. Don’t bail out the auto companies – nationalize them and convert the jobs to green jobs, building public transit, building the infrastructure of a sustainable green economy. If the coalition does take office – the way forward is exactly the same.

We will be told that raising Afghanistan is divisive. So be it. We will demand that the coalition withdraw the troops immediately, even if that means the Liberals abandoning the coalition and the government falling. The only lasting basis for gains for working people and the poor is in building social movements that do not rely on manoeuvres at the top of the system. The Liberals will say “but we are a party of peace, we didn’t go to war in Iraq.” We will remind them that they were going full speed ahead to war in Iraq in 2003, until 400,000 people took to the streets – including two massive, beautiful demonstrations in Montreal – demanding that Canada stay out of that conflict. The Liberals reluctantly stayed out of the Iraq war because it would have been political suicide for them to join the Coalition of the Killing.

That is the way we will win progress whether it be a Harper government, or a Liberal/NDP government – by mobilizing on the streets and in the workplaces, whether the Prime Minister is Stephen Harper, or Stéphane Dion, or Bob Rae, or Michael Ignatieff.

Previous articles:
Harper’s Tories: Attacking Quebec to Save Neoliberalism
Are the Liberals an Alternative?
Liberals and Tories – parties of corporate power

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] Brian Laghi, Steven Chase and Gloria Galloway and Daniel Lebanc, “Harper buys time, coalition firms up,” The Globe and Mail, November 29, 2008
[2] Graeme Smith, “Canada suffers 100th military casualty of Afghan mission,” The Globe and Mail online, December 5, 2008

Liberals and Tories – parties of corporate power

2008-12-05T15:09:00.006-05:00

(Article 3 of 4) It is not news to many in the social movements that we have had trouble with both the Tories and the Liberals while in office. Nonetheless, there is considerable enthusiasm for an NDP-Liberal coalition being able to offer real change – change that could not happen under the Harper Tories. But we have to be very sober about what is possible. We cannot judge political parties by their momentary positions, by their style, by their individual leaders. Parties are reflections of class power in a class-divided society – and in Canada, there is no question that the Liberals, like the Tories, are a party of the corporations, a party of the capitalist class.

This used to be quite easy to demonstrate. Until December 31, 2006, political parties could receive open contributions from corporations and unions. This changed with the passing of the “Federal Accountability Act” in 2006, which restricted donations to “citizens and permanent residents of Canada” and expressly forbade “corporations, trade unions and unincorporated associations” from making these donations.[1] This does not mean that corporations and unions do not have parties of their choice – it just makes the links between parties and classes in society more obscure.

But the readily available information we have before the passing of this act makes one thing very clear – there is little difference between the Liberals and the Tories from the standpoint of the boardrooms of Canada’s major corporations. In fact, through much of the last generation, their preferred party has been the Liberals, not the Tory/Reform project of Stephen Harper. The chart here documents this clearly.[2]

While the Tories were in office under Mulroney, they were lavished with funds from Canada’s corporations. But once the Liberals replaced them, corporate funding for the Tories collapsed, and the corporations increased their donations to the Liberals, year after year preferring them to either the Tories or the Reform/Alliance, in some years sending many millions more into the Liberal coffers than into those of Tory/Reform.

We know that the economic crisis is seen differently from Bay Street than from Main Street. We know that the corporations will seek to solve the problems of the economy on the backs of working people. We know that attacks on wages, attacks on union rights, attacks on social services – we know that all of these are being prepared in the corridors of corporate power, their usual arsenal when faced with a crisis of their system.

And we know from the data on this page, and from years of bitter experience, that the Liberal Party of Canada is at its core, a party of these corporations – a party which will bend its effort to rule in the interests of these corporations.

Jack Layton is hoping that the NDP will be able to set the terms of the coalition. There is no chance of this happening. The NDP was committed to funding social programs by rescinding the corporate tax cuts made under Harper’s watch. During the election campaign, this was one of the strongest part of the party’s platform. It wasn’t only Harper who opposed it. Stéphane Dion called it a “job killer.”[3] One of the first casualties of the coalition was this NDP campaign promise. Liberal finance critic Scott Brison said that “corporate tax cuts set to kick in next year would remain in effect as part of a Liberal-NDP coalition government.”[4]

What will it mean for working people of Canada if, in order to get into office, policy after policy from the NDP campaign book has to be sacrificed in order to try and align themselves with Canada’s party of Bay Street?

Previous articles:
Harper’s Tories: Attacking Quebec to Save Neo-Liberalism
Are the Liberals an Alternative?
Read next:
Harper out of Ottawa, Canada out of Afghanistan

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] Elections Canada, “Backgrounders: New Rules for Federal Political Donations”
[2] Compiled from Elections Canada, “Financial Reports: Registered Party Financial Transactions Returns,” various years
[3] Mike Blanchfield and Juliet O’Neill, “NDP to tax corporations to aid families,” Edmonton Journal, September 29, 2008
[4] David Akin and Paul Vieira, “No rollback on corporate taxes: Liberal’s Brison,” The Financial Post, December 1, 2008

Are the Liberals an Alternative?

2008-12-05T14:20:00.010-05:00

(Article 2 of 4) Harper and the Tories are unfit to govern, and should be shown the door. Unfortunately, the alternative we were offered December 3, after Harper’s broadcast to the nation, was not very promising. The Liberal-NDP coalition would be headed by outgoing Liberal leader Stéphane Dion. Along with Harper, Dion was offered ten minutes of air time on national television to present his position. In a strange piece of melodrama, Dion’s tape was delivered late – so late, that it only appeared on CBC, and was not aired by CTV.

For those who saw the video, the effect was depressing. The message Dion put forward was confusing and hesitant (as well as looking as if it had been produced by a webcam). Many who watched it and had supported the Liberal-NDP coalition, had second thoughts after seeing his performance.

Dion is a lame-duck leader of a Liberal Party that was deeply wounded in the last election. The Liberals received their lowest percentage vote ever, getting the backing of just 26% of the electorate.[1] It is only because they are so weakened that they have been forced to turn to the BQ and the NDP for support.

The role of the NDP and the recently ex-NDP is in fact extremely important in this drama. The origins of the coalition idea seems to have come from current NDP leader Jack Layton in consultation with former NDP leader Ed Broadbent. Layton – far more popular with the electorate than Dion – is centrally important in giving the coalition credibility. And in the dramatic radio coverage of the decision to prorogue Parliament, the CBC had Ed Broadbent on the phone for the NDP, and for the Liberals – former NDP premier of Ontario Bob Rae, and former NDP premier of B.C. Ujjal Dosanjh, both of whom are now senior members of the Liberal Party of Canada, one of whom (Rae) is a leading candidate to replace Dion.

But make no mistake – if the NDP is central to the formation of the coalition, this will be a Liberal government. The prime minister will be Liberal. The finance minister will be Liberal. Most of the cabinet seats will be Liberal. And these Liberals are a known quantity, a party little different from the Tories in both their fiscal and foreign policies.

Harper is hated because of his neoliberal policies. But the bitter truth is, there is nothing to choose between the Liberals and the Tories in terms of neoliberalism. One way of measuring this is in the support given by the federal government to the provinces. In the Canadian system, it is the provinces that deliver the bulk of Health, Education and Welfare. But given the much greater taxation powers of the central state, they are very dependent on transfer payments from the central state to finance these “social wage” activities. One of the key aspects of neoliberalism is launching an assault on this social wage. The chart on this page shows the record here for both the Liberals and the Tories.[2]

The neoliberal era in Canada is usually seen as beginning with the Mulroney Tories in the 1980s. The chart shows that social wage transfers did stagnate through much of the 1980s under Mulroney’s watch. But the years of devastating cuts were 1995 to 1998, years of a Liberal government. The critical moment was the 1996 budget authored by then finance minister Paul Martin, working with then prime minister Jean Chrétien. That is the budget which collapsed long-standing programs for delivering money to the provinces (Established Program Financing and Canada Assistance Plan) into the Canada Health and Social Transfer. Disguised in this bureaucratic shuffle were cuts in billions to the transfers necessary to sustain the social wage – more than $1 billion in the first year, more than $2 billion in the second and almost $3 billion in the third. In Ontario in those years, we could see the open neoliberals – Mike Harris, Jim Flaherty and Tony Clement – launching horrible attacks on hospital and public school funding. But their open neoliberal attacks were made possible by the “silent” neoliberalism of Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien. The fact that those transfer payments go up in the last years of the Liberal tenure should give none of us comfort. The first years of the 21st century saw an unprecedented world-wide economic expansion, which filled the federal coffers with billions of tax dollar windfalls. So transfer payments increase in the last years of Chrétien and Martin – but they have also increased in the last two years of the Harper Tories. This is not because either became wedded to protecting Canadian workers – it is because of the economic boom, a boom which has now come shuddering to a halt.

This division of labour between the Tories and the Liberals has long defined Canadian politics. Their policies are virtually indistinguishable – Liberals playing the soft cop as a counterpoint to the Tories’ hard cop. Social policy is not the only place where this is visible. In foreign policy, the Liberals love to portray themselves as the party of Lester Pearson, the party of peacekeeping – contrasting themselves to the hawkish Tories. And in fact, Harper’s Tories have openly relished increasing the militarization of the Canadian state. This year, Harper has boasted about his plans on these lines. In May, the National Post gave a “sneak preview” of the plans.

Over the next 20 years, the Tories want to commit Ottawa to spending $30-billion more on the military. Mr. Harper foresees an expansion of our Forces to 100,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen. Troop strength will include 70,000 regular forces, up from 65,000 today, while the reserves will expand from 24,000 to 30,000. Ageing warships will be replaced, and new transport aircraft and armoured vehicles wibe purchased. New medium-lift helicopters will be bought immediately to ferry our troops over and around roadside bombs and snipers in Afghanistan.[3]

This was confirmed on the evening of Thursday June 19, 2008 – “the night before Parliament adjourns for the summer”[4] – a major document appeared on the National Defence web site, announcing a 20 year, $490-billion “Canada First” Defence Strategy to steadily upgrade Canada’s military capacity over a generation.[5] But the chart here documents that this increase in spending on war did not begin with the Tories – it began with the Liberals.[6] Under Liberal Paul Martin’s watch between 2003 and 2006, military spending increased more than $1 billion, in real terms, every year. Under Harper, those increases actually slowed for two years, before returning to Martin era levels in 2007-08. There is nothing to choose between the Tories and the Liberals in terms of Canadian militarism.

The “Canada First” increase in Canada’s militarism, builds upon a generation of moves by both Tories and Liberals to move away from the peacekeeping moment. In 1991 under the Tories, Canada was a full participant in the first Gulf War. Canada’s 1993 intervention in Somalia looked to the Somalis more like occupation than peacekeeping.[7] In 1999, under the Liberals, Canada was one of the principal contributors to NATO’s bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. And from 2001 to the present, it has been a central component of the war in Afghanistan. It was not the Tories who sent Canada into this overseas adventure – it was Jean Chrétien, and John Manley, and Paul Martin, and John McCallum, and Stéphane Dion – the very Liberals we are now told are an alternative to the Tories.

The Harper Tories are a threat to peace, a threat to social programs, a threat to the interests of working people in Canada. But the record of the Liberal Party over a generation should make us soberly assess the chances of a coalition – a coalition they dominate – being any better.

Previous article:
Harper’s Tories: Attacking Quebec to Save Neoliberalism
Read next:
Liberals and Tories – parties of corporate power
Harper out of Ottawa, Canada out of Afghanistan

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] According to Nodice, www.nodice.ca
[2] Department of Finance, Canada, “Fiscal Reference Tables, September 2008: Table 11 – Major transfers to other levels of government,” adjusted into 2008 dollars based on Statistics Canada, Canadian Socio-Economic Information Management System (CANSIM) “Table 3260020 – Consumer Price Index, 2005 basket, monthly” accessed December 5, 2008.
[3] “Bolstering our Forces,” National Post, May 14, 2008
[4] David Pugliese, “Parliament in the dark on major weapons purchase,” Canwest News Services, June 19, 2008, accessed June 20, 2008
[5] “Canada First Defence Strategy,” National Defense, Canada, June 18, 2008, accessed June 20, 2008.
[6] Department of Finance, Canada, “Fiscal Reference Tables, September 2008: Table 7 – Budgetary expenses (millions of dollars),” adjusted into 2008 dollars based on Statistics Canada, Canadian Socio-Economic Information Management System (CANSIM) “Table 3260020 – Consumer Price Index, 2005 basket, monthly” accessed December 5, 2008
[7] Sherene H. Razack, Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004)

Harper’s Tories: Attacking Quebec to Save Neo-Liberalism

2008-12-05T14:07:00.009-05:00

(Article 1 of 4) Stephen Harper won a seven week reprieve December 4, the Governor-General granting his request to prorogue Parliament until January 26. But the events of the past week have pushed him into a corner and he is fighting for his political life. The fight has revealed something many people already knew. Behind the fuzzy sweater donned during the last election, behind the “fireside chat” chumminess that he was trying to cultivate, behind this façade of polite civilized behaviour, there resides the same man who was cadre for the Reform Party and Canadian Alliance. That political formation built itself on a combination of polarizing attacks on Quebec and neoliberal dogmatism. Harper in a corner, with his fangs bared, has showed himself not to have changed one iota.

The anti-Quebec politics he has unleashed are appalling. In Question Period December 3, Tory member after Tory member repeated the same two words over and over again – “separatist coalition” – 36 times to be exact, if the official record is to be believed.[1] Harper used the same language in his address to the nation December 3, saying that a time of crisis is “no time for backroom deals with the separatists.”[2] At various times, Tories were using the words “treason,” ” and “deal with the devil” as they carried their polemic against the proposed coalition.[3] This was clearly a planned, coordinated strategy, the most blatantly open anti-Quebec politics to come from the federal stage in years.

Just a few months ago, Harper was trying to woo the voters of Quebec, hoping to re-create the Brian Mulroney coalition of the 1980s. He had surprisingly supported the idea of calling Quebec a nation – something that angered many of his old Reform Party comrades. But pushed into a corner, he needs to rally his base – and nothing energizes the old Reform Party more than attacks on Quebec.

“In the space of just a few days” said one commentator, “the phobia of ‘separatists’ has reappeared in Ottawa and in English Canada, with a force we haven’t seen in years, since the referendum in 1995, since the Meech Lake controversy.”[4] It has become legitimate again to speak about Quebec with outright hostility and bigotry, made legitimate by the irresponsible rants of Harper and the Tory caucus.

Harper is aware just how inflammatory is his language. In the French version of his address to the nation, he translated the loaded word “separatist” into the much less value-laden “souverainiste”.[5] But this transparent ruse is unlikely to fool the people of Quebec, who are rightly recoiling in shock at the display of venom coming from Harper and his followers. As one radio commentator put it, the price for Harper rallying the troops to his anti-Quebec flag, was to put “scorched earth” between the Tories and what had been their developing base in Quebec.

Harper’s target is the Bloc Québécois (BQ), which has indicated it would support the proposed coalition between the Liberals and the NDP. Harper’s attack is ridiculous. First, the BQ is not part of the coalition – it has only indicated that it will give the coalition 18 months to govern. Second, this is not unusual. The BQ was, after all, central to keeping Stephen Harper’s last minority government alive in its early months. And these parliamentary details are beside the point. The Tories are focussing on the fact that the BQ supports sovereignty. That is their right. They are also the party supported by 1.3 million Quebeckers in the last election. The BQ is a legitimate part of the political spectrum in Canada. It has a long record of operating in the House of Commons – including being the official opposition in 1993, a party which has “contributed to debates outside matters of Quebec’s status and powers, on everything from climate change and Afghanistan to efforts to repatriate Omar Khadr” as even the editorial writers for The Globe and Mail have to admit.[6]

But Harper is teetering on the edge of losing his office, and will use every weapon at his disposal to say in office – even if that means fanning the flames of anti-Quebec bigotry. What brought Harper to this impasse was his stubborn commitment to neo-liberal orthodoxy, even in the face of the economic storm sweeping the world economy. In country after country, governments have turned their back on the neoliberal allergy to the state – and begun the process of rediscovering Keynesianism and state intervention – indispensable in the face of the horrors of the unfettered free market. But Harper and his finance minister Jim Flaherty – the latter trained in the neo-liberal era of Ontario’s Mike Harris – had delivered an economic update that instead of stimulating the economy, would have further depressed it. They are dogmatic neoliberal ideologues, very reluctant to abandon the old, failed orthodoxy.

Flaherty has been trying to argue that he has already stimulated the economy through previously announced tax cuts. The Department of Finance depends on four firms to help with the preparation of budget documents. One of these is the Centre for Spatial Economics. Flaherty’s view “is a fantasy” according to the Centre’s Robert Fairholm, quoted in The Globe and Mail. “Most of the short-term stimulus from these measures have already boosted economic activity, and so will not continue to provide [a] short-term jolt to growth.” The tax cuts coming January, 2009 put $2.5 billion into the economy. But the update was going to cut $4.3 billion, “so the net effect is contractive, Mr. Fairholm explained.” In fact, instead of stimulating the economy, Fairholm estimates that the impact of Flaherty’s “update” would be to turn a 0.3 per cent annual growth rate to a decline of 0.1 per cent.[7]

Harper has revealed his colours – first as a neo-liberal dinosaur who has no understanding of how to respond to the economic crisis, second as a politician willing to go to any lengths – including irresponsibly provoking an anti-Quebec backlash in English Canada – to consolidate his base and keep his job. No wonder that his actions have disgusted thousands, and that the three other parties in the House of Commons are trying to push him out.

Addicted to war: A tale of three corporations

2008-11-29T16:41:00.007-05:00

In the unfolding of the current economic crisis, many are looking to the state for help. There has been a sudden revival of state intervention or Keynesianism. But what kind of state intervention? There is a dangerous pattern, established over years, of corporations in trouble turning to “Military Keynesianism” – producing for sale to the armed wing of the state – as a “quick fix” for deep structural problems. Corporations addicted to war are the worst way to fix economic problems – a “solution” which only accelerates pressures to engage in overseas military adventures.

Some corporations are well-known as being embedded in the Military-Industrial Complex. In Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore identified Lockheed-Martin as the world’s biggest weapons maker, and in spite of the outrage this created from supporters of U.S. imperialism, his statement is probably true.[1] But there are other corporations which are less well-known as arms-manufacturers. Boeing, for instance, while for a long time a supplier to the Pentagon, is usually seen as a largely civilian corporation – the company of the Jumbo Jet. However, in a dramatic evolution since the early 1990s, Boeing has transformed itself from civilian to military production.

Boeing revealed itself as a major military player in the context of the development of the National Missile Defence (NMD) program – better known as Star Wars. Boeing is the “Lead System Integrator” for NMD “responsible for ensuring that all component NMD parts and systems are developed and integrated successfully.”[2] Pushed to the background by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the time-bomb of NMD is still ticking away in the background. Col-Gen Varfolomey Korubushin, first vice-president of the Military Science Academy in Russia, has said, “If the U.S.A. deploys a national missile defence [system], other nuclear powers may opt for increasing their nuclear missile potential, which will worsen the situation in the world.”[3] He should know. After all, his government is a full participant in this burgeoning arms race, in 2005 successfully testing a “missile with a highly manoeuvrable warhead capable of annihilating the national missile defence (NMD) currently being developed by the Americans.”[4]

Boeing’s NMD role was symptomatic of a deep change in the physiognomy of the company. In the early 1990s, fully 80 per cent of Boeing’s revenue came from its sales of commercial planes – the jumbo jets and other passenger planes that are everywhere in the skies of the world. But in the next two years Boeing suffered a serious decline in revenues. In its annual report for 1995 it explained this decline as “due to fewer commercial jet transport deliveries as a result of economic conditions and airline industry overcapacity in most major market areas of the world,” [5] what Karl Marx called “a crisis of overproduction.”

The company’s solution to this problem was revealed in 1997, with its merger with McDonnell Douglas. The merger was driven by one consideration – while Boeing was in its majority a “civilian” corporation, McDonnell Douglas was one of the Pentagon’s prime contractors. Its 1996 Annual Report “At A Glance” section, proudly proclaimed that it was “#1 military aircraft maker, #2 prime contractor and research-and-development contractor to the U.S. Department of Defense, and #4 NASA contractor.”[6]

The chart here shows its evolution through the 1990s, the percentage of its revenues derived from building military aircraft, missiles and other paraphernalia of the U.S. war machine rising from two-thirds to nearly 80 per cent.[7] Now there are some who would challenge the interpretation of these statistics. McDonnell Douglas, for instance, has three categories and not two: “military aircraft,” “commercial aircraft,” and “missiles, space and electronic systems.” But unless you are a “fly me to the moon” romantic, it is pretty obvious that “missiles and space” production is driven by the needs of a war economy, not by visions of Star Trek exploration. If anything, the emergence of Star Wars should make this abundantly clear.

The second chart reveals the resulting transformation of Boeing. From deriving just 20 per cent of its revenues from arms sales in the early 1990s, by 2004 and 2005, arms sales accounted for 60 per cent of its revenues.[8] From 2005 to 2008 that drifted down again to the 50 per cent mark. But that was before the outbreak of the current crisis. The picture is clear – Boeing has attempted to “solve” the crisis of overproduction that was plaguing it in the early 1990s, by turning to a customer with an eternal appetite for commodities – the Pentagon.

The transition to the war economy has succeeded in slowing Boeing’s decline. (But only partially – In 2003, Boeing had to cede to AirBus its position as the world’s largest airplane manufacturer.[9])

AirBus has unveiled its new, massive A380 airliner – the largest passenger jet ever built – capable, in some configurations, of seating more than 800 people. The plane is designed as a “jumbo-jet killer” to displace Boeing’s big 747 at the top of the commercial airline market. Perhaps then we can look to Europe as a place where business is not driven by militarism. This is in fact how spokespeople for the European Union often market their institutions.

Look more closely. AirBus pushed hard to finish work on the A380 to allow its engineers to turn to building a new military transport plane, the A400M. This massive plane is described by Airbus Military as “the most ambitious European military procurement programme ever undertaken.”[10] One commentator said that this, “the biggest joint venture ever in the European defence industry” was “crucial for the credibility of the European Union's commitment to strengthen its military capability and coordination.”[11]

“Total firm orders for the A400M stand at 192 aircraft,” according to a leading airforce technology web site. Outside of Europe, South Africa has ordered 14. Malaysia has ordered four which could open the door to sales in other Asian countries.[12] European industry, in other words, is just as capable of playing the war production game as is American.

Perhaps this new militarism is particular to the troubled aerospace industry, desperate for sales in a world saturated with expensive to build and maintain airplanes? Turn your attention to the world’s biggest manufacturing corporation, General Motors. GM, as everyone knows, is in trouble. Its current lurch towards bankruptcy has roots that go back years. By the end of 2004, its debt burden had skyrocketed to a mind-numbing $291 billion.[13] In 2005, it recorded losses totaling $10.6 billion.[14] The vast majority of GM’s earnings came from its finance arm, General Motors Acceptance Corp. (GMAC), but to cover its mounting losses, it reached an agreement to sell 51 per cent of GMAC by the fourth quarter of 2006[15]. This staved off problems for a few months, but they came back with a vengeance in 2007 and 2008. February 2008, GM announced 2007 losses of $38.7 billion “the largest annual loss in the history of the auto industry.”[16]

Business analyst Robert Walberg has a solution. GM must, he says, find a “higher margin business with more promising and stable growth prospects.” That business, of course, is the death business. He doesn’t call it that. The nice word for the death business is “defence contracting”. Such a move into war production “could be a good one for the automaker, just as it was for the jet maker Boeing nearly a decade ago.” Walberg is nostalgic for “the 1940s, when GM delivered more than $12 billion worth of war material.”[17] Walberg doesn’t mention that the 1940s was the decade of the most destructive war in human history.

In this tale of three corporations, we have in outline form some of the key elements in the contemporary U.S. and world economy. Industry cannot survive in its traditional markets. Recurring crises of overproduction are driving debt levels higher and higher. In the search for a reliable consumer of last resort, again and again corporations are driven towards arms production. War requires that states purchase massive quantities of expensive to produce weapons and materiel – and if overproduction is the problem, then war with its infinite destructive potential is “the answer”.

It is an economic solution that clearly carries with it huge political and social risks, and very starkly poses the necessity of finding a political solution. The turn to state intervention into the economy is a welcome reprieve from the decades of neoliberalism. But if that state intervention is the intervention of the warfare state and not the welfare state, the dangers for working people around the world are obvious.

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] See for instance Andrea Rothman, “U.S. chief executives, Pentagon brass fail to make Paris show,” Chicago Sun-Times, June 17, 2003, p. 54. Rothman without comment and quite uncontroversially, refers to L-M as “the world’s biggest weapons maker.” But this is for the consumption of the readers of the business press. It is one thing for investors to know the truth about who builds what. It’s a little more awkward when that is made available to the public at large.
[2] Kevin Martin, Rachel Glick, Rachel Ries, Tim Nafziger and Mark Swier, “The Real Rogues: Behind the Star Wars missile defense system,” Z magazine, September 2000.
[3] Cited in “Deploying U.S. national missile defence may trigger arms race – Russian expert,” BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union, February 27, 2006, ProQuest document ID: 994482301
[4] “Russia has successfully tested a warhead,” The Press Trust of India Limited, November 2, 2005, Gale Document Number: A138245614
[5] Boeing, 1995 Annual Report, www.boeing.com
[6] McDonnell Douglas, 1996 Annual Report, www.boeing.com
[7] Based on McDonnell Douglas, Annual Reports, 1994-1996, 2nd Quarter 1997, www.boeing.com. The figures for 1997 represent revenue for the first half of the year only
[8] Boeing, Annual Reports, 1995-2007, www. Boeing.com . Figures for 2003-2007 updated from “Five-Year Summary (Unaudited),” The Boeing Company 2007 Annual Report, p. 21 . 2008 Figures are annualized approximations based on three quarters of results available at “Boeing Posts Lower Third-Quarter Results on Reduced Commercial Deliveries,” News Release, October 22, 2008
[9] Robert J. Samuelson, “The Airbus Showdown,” Washington Post, December 8, 2004, p. A31
[10] Airbus Military, “Final go-ahead for A400M military airlifter,” Press Release, May 27, 2003, www.airbusmilitary.com
[11] Yacine Le Forestier, “Europe’s military aircraft dream takes wing at last,” AFP, May 27, 2003
[12] “A400M (Future Large Aircraft) Tactical Transport Aircraft, Europe,” www.airforce-technology.com
[13] Daniel Gross, “GM’s Debt Crisis,” Slate, Dec. 21, 2004, www.slate.com
[14] “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations / General Motors,” www.gm.com
[15] David Streitfeld, “GM Agrees to Sell 51% of Finance Unit,“ Los Angeles Times, April 4, 2006, ww.latimes.com
[16] Associated Press, “GM reports biggest-ever automotive loss,” www.msnbc.msn.com, Feb. 12, 2008
[17] Robert Walberg, “GM’s best offense could be defense,” MSN.com, February 3, 2005, www.moneycentral.msn.com

How not to remember World War I

2008-11-16T19:32:00.003-05:00

Letter to the Editor submitted to The Guardian, Nov. 16, 2008 • Some wars are controversial. There is a huge debate, for instance, about World War II – which may have been the most destructive war in history, but is nonetheless justified by many as a “necessary evil” – the war to stop the Nazis. That is a debate that should be had. But about World War I there is little debate. It was a senseless slaughter, poor boys dying for the greed of the rich, fighting over the imperialist carve-up of what today we call the “Global South”.

Apparently not. British academic Gary Sheffield was given the honour of kicking off a week-long retrospective on World War I, by the usually “progressive” editors of The Guardian.[1] Sheffield – a professor of war studies at the University of Birmingham – tells us that “this war was no accident.” But to make his case, he throws the study of the “Great War” back several generations – returning to the oldest argument in the book – that it was a war by the civilized democracies against expansionist Germany.

Sheffield discusses the “world policy” of the Kaiser of Germany, his Weltpolitik which “was an attempt to gain colonies and expand German power and economic influence.” Well, that is true. Germany was trying to gain colonies. But the “civilized powers” – Britain and France – didn’t have the same imperative. They already had their colonies. Sheffield glosses over this detail.

Sheffield warns us that the Kaiser was “mentally unstable.” Perhaps that is true. But why no mention of the interestingly limited mental capacities of the Czar of Russia – key ally to Britain and France? Or perhaps a long discourse on Rasputin the very interestingly unstable “adivsor” to the Czar’s wife Alexandra. Not a whisper.

The war professor tells us that the German parliament was “largely toothless” – to make the point that this was a war of democracies (England and France) against autocracies. But what teeth did the Russian Duma (parliament) have? About this not a word.

The method is an old one – the use of selective information to reinforce an idée fixe. This was a war of democracies against autocracy. So we will ignore the fact that the biggest army on the side of the democracies was that of the autocratic Russian Czar. This is a war of good against evil, so we will emphasize the instability of the German Kaiser, and stay mute on the capacities of the Russian Czar and one of his principal advisors.

“Britain entered the war because it, too, could not afford to see Germany triumphant.” That is true. It couldn’t bear another imperialist power encroaching on its territory in Africa and Asia. The world was already divided up – Germany was not allowed into the party.

Most outrageously, Sheffield tells us that “the drafters of the Versailles treaty had it broadly right after all” when it stated that “ ‘the aggression of Germany and her allies’ was responsible for the war.” So as well as showing us that the war was necessary, he is rehabilitating a treaty that many analysts see as laying the basis for World War II – a treaty so punitive toward the German people in the war reparations demanded, that it created fuel for the racist nationalism that would lead to the creation of the Nazis.

This is no way to remember the ten million who died in the horrible slaughter of the “Great War” – including 65,000 Canadians. Their deaths should remind us of why we need to build an anti-war movement. Their deaths are dishonoured when used for articles that amount to pro-war apologetics. For a more balanced account, Sheffield and others should study Marc Ferro’s sobering and authoritative The Great War 1914-1918.[2]

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] “First World War,” insert in The Guardian, November 8, 2008
[2] Marc Ferro, The Great War 1914-1918 (Routledge, 2002)

Spirit of Palestine in Toronto

2008-11-16T18:36:00.002-05:00

“The spirit of Palestine will be in every theatre in Toronto.” With these words, Rafeef Ziadah introduced “Salt of This Sea,” first offering in the first ever Toronto Palestine Film Festival. With more than 800 in attendance, the opening was a smash success. Through eight days of screenings, more than 4,000 people attended 36 films. As well as a cultural success, politically the film festival was testament to the growing support for Palestine solidarity in the city of Toronto.

The timing of the event was not accidental. 2008 is the 60th anniversary of the Nakba – the catastrophe of ethnic cleansing which expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their land, as part of the creation of the state of Israel. Palestine House Education and Cultural Centre conceived of the festival as a way of both marking this anniversary, and helping to put the issue of Palestine on the map in Toronto.

The full line-up of films shown can be found at the Toronto Palestine Film Festival web site, www.tpff.ca. To find out more about Palestine House, visit their web site at www.palestinehouse.com.

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

Bolivian masses defeat the right

2008-11-16T18:20:00.002-05:00

Mass mobilizations of indigenous peasants and workers, in conjunction with actions taken by the government of Evo Morales, have won a decisive victory against a right-wing plot to destabilize the country. The events are as significant for the movement in Latin America as the April 2002 defeat of a right-wing coup attempt against Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Frederico Fuentes has provided a gripping account of these events, summarized below.[1]

Morales’ won a decisive victory in an August 10 referendum – gaining 67.4 percent of the vote nationally. Even in the “half moon” area of Bolivia – the eastern departments of Pando, Beni, Santa Cruz and Tarija – where opposition to Morales has been intense, Morales did very well, winning in Pando, tying in Tarija and getting over 40% in Beni and Santa Cruz.

Frustrated at the polls, the right-wing turned to violence. Central to this violence was the role of US ambassador Philip Goldberg (since expelled from the country). He met with anti-Morales forces after their defeat in the referendum. That meeting resulted in “a plan to destabilize the east, stirring up violence to the point where either the military would be forced to react, causing deaths and Morales’ resignation, or creating the justification for some kind of United Nations intervention to ‘restore stability.’”

What happened was nearly catastrophic. Groups of armed thugs took over airports in the “half moon” area. Paramilitaries took the streets, openly saying that would only take orders from the anti-Morales prefectures (governors). Morales ordered troops to the area to restore order, but once in Pando “the top commander of the Armed Forces, Luis Trigo, known to have links with the Santa Cruz oligarchy ... ordered troops to remain in their barracks and turned off his phone.”

In effect, Trigo was giving tacit permission to the right-wing and their paramilitaries to proceed with their destabilization campaign. He was in Pando, but he was folding his arms and refusing to act.

The right wing understood the signal very clearly. September 11, an unarmed group of peasants, traveling to a meeting of their union, were attacked by right-wing paramilitaries. The number killed is at least 20 – including women and children – and maybe be much higher. More than 60 are still missing.

But the day before, social movements had held an emergency meeting to respond to the crisis. They accelerated their plans in the wake of the massacre, setting out to encircle Santa Cruz, epicentre of right-wing organizing. Peasants cut off all access to the city.

The massacre had backfired. Ordinary soldiers were repulsed at the bloodshed. They were also inspired by the sight of thousands of peasants mobilized to surround the city. “Soldiers demanded to be allowed to go and defend their indigenous brothers. Under direct order from Morales, new troops were sent to Pando.” These troops confronted the paramilitaries in the airport and moved to restore order in the capital Cobija. This, in combination with the emergency summit of UNASUR (union of South American Nations) which fully backed Morales, left the right-wing isolated and in disarray.

There now exists in Bolivia a new force, “the National Coalition for Change (CONCALCAM), which unites more than 30 peasant, indigenous, worker and social organizations, together with the Bolivian Workers Central.” It is clear that such unity will be necessary in the months ahead. A “coup in slow motion” has been defeated. But mass mobilization and organization are a permanent necessity to counter a right-wing which has shown a clear commitment to using violence to defend its entrenched privileges.

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] Frederico Fuentes maintains the important blog, Bolivia rising. Quotes in this article are from Frederico Fuentes, “Bolivia: Right-wing push to stop change defeated,” Green Left Weekly, October 25, 2008, www.greenleft.org

The year 'laissez-faire' became profane

2008-10-22T21:05:00.003-04:00

Pity the poor priests of laissez-faire (the French phrase associated with the advocates of free market capitalism). They want to name a building at the University of Chicago after Milton Friedman. Milton was teaching there in 1976 when he won the Nobel Prize in economics. But 100 faculty members have signed a petition objecting. One of the 100, Bruce Lincoln told the press: "He was the darling of the Reaganite revolution and the American right ... He was a scathing critic of the state playing a role of any importance ... It's now a whole lot more obvious to everyone that [Mr. Friedman] got us into some problems and that he didn't have the final solution to everything that makes an economy work."[1] That’s an understatement. The financial markets are breathing thanks only to a $3 trillion injection of public funds.[2] Laissez-faire has never been so discredited.

Others are figuring this out. We saw this in the run-up to the October 14 vote in Canada’s federal election. The Bloc Québécois were expected to lose a fair number of seats when Stephen Harper launched his 2008 bid for a majority. But they roared back into contention, ending up with 50 seats, just one shy of their 2006 result. There were several reasons for this comeback. The Tories alienated Quebec voters with a reactionary attack on culture, and an even more reactionary attack on youth “criminals.” But Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe, before any other leader, figured out that with the crisis wracking financial markets, “free-market” had become a swear word.

• During the French language leaders’ debate October 1, Duceppe charged that "Mr. Harper is a laissez-faire-ist like Mr. Bush and we see the disaster happening in the United States now.”[3]

• October 6, Duceppe demanding a recall of Parliament to debate the economic crisis said that Harper had no clue how to fix the broken economy “It is still the economic laissez-faire of George W. Bush.”[4]

• In Trois Rivières, October 7 he took it further. "With his economic philosophy, Harper is the worst thing that could happen to Quebec. It's laissez faire ... It is exactly like (George W.) Bush's Republican policies and we see the results today."[5]

• A week after the election, responding to Tories injecting money into Canada’s banking system, Duceppe said: “I think he [Harper] had to do that, but this is not enough. At first they said there was no problem at all. It was the George Bush laissez-faire (approach), and that was a huge error, with the results that we are seeing now."[6]

What a sea-change. Starting with the entire Reagan-Thatcher years, and continuing during the so-called “neo-liberal revolution,” we were told that the state had caused all our problems. We were told that the market would cure our ills. We were told that if you let the free market do its work, incomes for the rich would go way up, but incomes for the rest of us would follow, even if at a slower pace. Wealth would trickle down, and incomes would trickle up. Language was easy. State, bad; market, good. “Laissez-faire” – the great slogan of Adam Smith, was a badge to be worn with pride.

Now, just one little $3-trillion bailout later, everyone is quietly hiding those badges. Laissez-faire has become a swear word.

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] Cited in Paul Waldie, “He inspired Reagan’s revolution,” The Globe and Mail Report on Business, October 22, 2008, p. B1
[2] According to Barry Ritholtz, cited in Alice Gomstyn, “Bailout Critic: Plan Could Cost $3 Trillion,” ABC NEWS Business Unit, Oct. 13, 2008
[3] “Harper targeted on economy, crime in French debate,” cbc.ca, Oct. 2, 2008
[4] Rhéal Séguin, “Duceppe wants Parliament recalled over economy,” The Globe and Mail, Oct. 6, 2008
[5] “Harper improvising on economy, Duceppe charges,” The Gazette, Oct. 7, 2008
[6] “Ottawa has linguistic double standard: Duceppe,” The Gazette, October 22, 2008

The Septembers of Neo-liberalism

2008-09-29T22:46:00.016-04:00

It was September 11, 1973, that the neo-liberal experiment began. The brutal U.S.-backed coup against Salvador Allende’s government opened the door for the “Chicago Boys” – a group of Chilean economists who had studied under Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago[1] – to “reconstruct the Chilean economy … along free-market lines, privatizing public assets, opening up natural resources to private exploitation and facilitating foreign direct investment and free trade.”[2] September 7, 2008 – thirty-five years later – that experiment came to an end, not with a whimper, but a bang. The neo-liberal regime of George Bush – more closely identified than any other world figure with the politics of keeping government out of the market – is now presiding over a state intervention into the so-called “free” market that is without parallel. When the dust settles: a) hundreds of billions of dollars will have been spent to try and fix a broken financial system; b) a generation of free-market arrogance and ideology will lie in ruins, its ideological clarion call “neo-liberalism” completely discredited; and c) the U.S. empire will be exposed as a declining (if vicious) beast. The events of September 2008 mark a watershed in the history of capitalism.

Fannie and Freddie

The first act in this story is in many ways still the most significant if not the most dramatic. September 7, 2008, the United States Treasury announced it would seize control of two institutions called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. At the time, this represented “the world’s biggest financial bailout” (a record it would only claim for a few dozen hours). The U.S. government pledged to guarantee literally trillions in the two companies’ investments, something that estimates said would end up costing U.S. taxpayers in the order of $25 billion.

What are these peculiarly named institutions? Fannie Mae stands for “Federal National Mortgage Association” and Freddie Mac stands for “Federal Loan Mortgage Corporation.” Both are GSEs – “government-sponsored enterprises,” creations of the U.S. government, but which operate as shareholder run companies. Fannie Mae’s roots go back to the depression-era. It was created in 1938 to “provide funding to the housing market ... Freddie Mac was created in 1970 to provide competition to Fannie Mae.”[3]

Their role in the housing market is indirect. Homeowners in the United States borrow money from lenders (banks and other financial institutions) just as in other countries. What Fannie and Freddy do is to buy these mortgages from the lenders. This gives the “mortgage initiators” instant cash, and a little bit of profit, allowing them to go back and quickly offer new mortgages. Fannie and Freddy then turn around and repackage the various mortgages they have purchased as “mortgage-backed securities.” They sell these securities on the secondary mortgage market – in effect borrowing money, but using these “securities” as collateral – counting on the income from the payment of mortgage principle and interest to give them cash to repay these loans.[4]

This “provides liquidity” to the housing market. It also has the effect of creating a huge incentive to get more and more people to buy houses, as at every level of this structure, incomes and profits are dependent on a constantly expanding base of home ownership. In the scheme above, there are massive fortunes to be made – by the banks and other mortgage issuers, by Fannie and Freddy and their hangers-on, and by the investors who buy up the Fannie and Freddy debt. Former Fannie CEO Daniel Mudd was in line to receive up to $8.4 million in compensation. Freddie Mac’s former CEO was in line for $15.5 million.[5] And John McCain’s campaign for the U.S. presidency, suffered a setback when it was revealed that Freddy Mac had been paying $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 until September 2008 to a firm owned by McCain’s campaign manager.[6] All had an incentive in “priming the pump” – creating incentives for working people to pony-up and enter the world of home ownership. The whole scheme works fine as long as homeowners can pay their mortgages. But if they can’t ...

So base greed is an element that fed this bonfire. But that wasn’t the only, or even the biggest issue – the problems were structural. In the stock market crash at the turn of the century, huge fortunes were lost when the dot-com bubble burst. With investors burned from their experience in the stock market, U.S. interest rates were reduced to unprecedentedly low levels, as the U.S. federal reserve essentially “printed money” to stave off a deeper crisis. One key measure of interest rates, the U.S. federal funds rate, dropped below two percent in November 2001, and stayed below two percent for three years, bottoming out at just below one percent in December 2003.[7] Mortgage rates don’t track Federal Funds Rates exactly, but mortgage rates did come down, so that at their lowest point in 2003 and 2004, it was possible to get Adjustable Rate Mortgages (mortgages which increase or decrease with the rise and fall of interest rates) for between 3 and 4 percent.[8] In fact, people often were able to get mortgages below that rate – with incentives of very low interest rates in the first few years of the mortgage to encourage the plunge into home ownership. With millions moving into home ownership, the mortgage-backed securities market prospered. The effect was to create an environment where billions of dollars could flee an insecure stock market, and find a “safe haven” in the housing market, by investors moving from speculating in stocks to speculating in “mortgage-backed securities.”

This structure was riven with problems. The rush into home buying which this created, pushed house prices very high very fast. This has been a visible problem for some time. In 2006, one analyst wrote: “Cheap money turned the real estate boom into a frenzy ... prices in most hot markets ... soared by 55 per cent to 100 per cent (on top of inflation). Trying to keep pace, buyers increasingly resorted to riskier loans to lower monthly payments. Two types became the rage: adjustable rate mortgages and exotics.” We have already looked at the ARMs. The Exotics bear a little examination, the most extreme of which was “the negative-amortization loan, which allows borrowers to pay less than the interest due. The unpaid interest is tacked onto the principal, so the size of the loan grows every month. In 2004 and 2005, no less than 75 per cent of all mortgages were either ARMs or exotic loans, compared to 20 per cent in the late 1990s.”[9]

This outline is important. Some are blaming poor home buying decisions by ordinary working people for the way in which this crisis has unfolded. But it was not “reckless spending” by the poor. It was a structure, driven by greed, which created enormous pressures and incentives to abandon renting and jump into the home-buying game – simply because massive fortunes were being made. Suddenly, working people were being pressured to take on debt far in excess of their capacity to pay. The best way of measuring this is looking at the ratio of house prices to household income. The graph here shows a steady upward climb in that ratio for the United States as a whole, from the late 1990s to the mid-point of this decade – in some cities, an extremely steep rise.[10]

But interest rates don’t stay low forever. Here the story has another layer of complications. There is a close relationship in most countries between the health of the currency and the trend in interest rates. Roughly, if the country is increasing its international indebtedness, there will be downward pressure on its currency relative to other currencies. This can be countered by increasing interest rates to attract investors in spite of the increasing debt burden. At times these rates have to go up considerably to prevent a precipitous fall in the currency.

There are some who say this pressure has yet to make itself felt in the United States. The entire post-war period has been defined by the domination of the international economy by the U.S. dollar. Its “unique” place in the world economy is often seen as making it relatively immune to the downward pressure that other currencies experience when their economies become increasingly indebted. A commonly used measure of this is a comparison of the U.S. dollar to major currencies. The resulting graph does not show overwhelming U.S. dollar weakness, but rather a generations-long fluctuation with no clear trend either up or down.[11]

But there is a problem with this way of representing the health of the U.S. Dollar. The figures in this comparison go back only until 1973. This leaves out of the picture the biggest story in the history of the U.S. dollar, the effect of it “freeing itself” from the gold standard. This was the decision Richard Nixon took in 1971, allowing the U.S. to “print dollars” unencumbered by maintaining an equivalent stock in gold. The most readily accessible international comparative figures, because they begin in 1973, do not factor this epochal event into their picture. But it is possible to improvise a comparison.

The chart “Decline of the U.S. Dollar” shows the U.S. Dollar measured against the Yen (currency of Japan) and something that is being called the “EuroMark” – a statistical composite of the Mark, formerly the currency of Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, and the Euro which has now replaced the Mark and most other major European currencies. The result is very clear. The U.S. dollar is approximately 1/3 of what it was in 1971, compared to the Yen and the “EuroMark”.[12]

The U.S. Dollar has been steadily declining against its major competitors for years. The devaluation that happened after the abandonment of the gold standard was immediate and quick, becoming precipitous in the late 1970s. This was reversed in the early 1980s by a policy of very high interest rates, then fell steadily until the 1990s, recovering somewhat in the Clinton years, but returning to decline under Bush. As the dollar declines, it inevitably leads to a day when interest rates have to go up, or the dollar’s fall could accelerate dangerously. So in Bush’s second term, interest rates have inched upwards, and this in turn became part of an environment pushing higher and higher the interest rates on millions of peoples’ mortgages.

Finally, none of this works if homeowners start to lose their jobs. When this cycle began, unemployment was at historically low levels – just 3.9 per cent, in the last four months of 2000. That increased to 6.3 percent by September 2003, dropped below five percent through the last half of 2005 and the first two months of 2008, but has since climbed steadily to 6.1 percent by August of 2008.[13]

The effects of these problems became visible in the summer of 2007. With interest rates rising, some homebuyers could not make the payments, and the number of defaults began to rise. Rising interest rates and rising unemployment, started to decrease demand for houses, so prices began to fall. And with house prices falling, many saw the value of their house fall far below the principal remaining on their mortgage – creating an incentive to simply walk away from the debt – default on the mortgage, and go back to renting. The result has been the highest rates of foreclosures in the modern era. A report from the Mortgage Bankers’ Association indicated that: ”about 2.75 percent of all home loans, or about 1.75 million mortgages, were in foreclosure at the end of June [2008], up from 2.47 percent in March. That was the highest foreclosure rate since 1979, when the Mortgage Bankers first collected the data.”[14]

As these millions of foreclosures rippled through the system, the whole flimsy structure started to shake. Between them, Fannie and Freddy had issued $3.7 trillion worth of mortgage-backed securities.[15] But suddenly, as mortgage payments started to fall because of defaults, as the assets backing these mortgages started to lose value with the falling prices of houses in the United States, these securities looked a whole lot less secure.

Bankers’ Strike

Neo-liberalism is a modern restatement of an old “free-market” orthodoxy. Markets know best. Let the “hidden hand” of the market do its magic, and a million individual decisions based on individual self-interest, will end up with a virtuous direction for the economy and society as a whole. Sometimes there are barriers to the operation of this hidden hand – too much government intervention, too much regulation being two of the most often cited. Get rid of them. The state’s role is to do away with regulation, to unfetter the markets from the hands of government, to let the markets do their work.

So – from the standpoint of neo-liberal orthodoxy, it is a matter of some indifference that Fannie and Freddy were under stress. Joseph Schumpeter argued last century that capitalism worked through processes of “creative destruction” where periodically whole sections of capital are destroyed in economic slump. This process, while painful, was central to the working of capitalism, clearing the ground for a new round of investment, the way in which a forest fire burns away the underbrush, allowing new saplings to reach for the sky. In Schumpeter’s words the “creative destruction” of competition, bankruptcy and consolidation “revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist has got to live with.”[16]

But the capitalists who made the decisions leading to the impasse of the U.S. financial system are not going to live with the consequence of their actions. Something pushed the neo-liberals into acting against neo-liberal orthodoxy and save those capitalists from the consequences of their actions. What the neo-liberals discovered was that the U.S. economy was not all-powerful, that had they let the process go too far, and the consequences of a full-blown cycle of “creative destruction” would have been disastrous. The issue was not simply one of mortgages – it was about the structural problems of the international, not just the U.S., capitalist system.

So far only one part of the story has been told, the story of mortgages, Fannie and Freddy, and their selling of “mortgage-backed securities”. The next question that has to be asked is, who buys these securities? The economists’ answer is that they are bought by “risk-averse investors such as banks, pension funds and central banks around the world,”[17] investors in other words who want a guaranteed return on their investments, and little or no risk of these investments turning into worthless paper. Fannie and Freddy’s total liabilities is mostly debt, most of it from the sale of mortgage-backed securities, and it totals in excess of $1.7 trillion dollars.[18] Significantly, increasing portions of that debt have been sold to non-U.S. banks and investors. The top five in reverse order, as of June 2007 were Taiwan ($55 billion), South Korea ($63 billion), Russia ($75 billion), Japan ($228 billion) and China ($376 billion).[19] The entire structure then was increasingly dependent on the willingness of banks and other institutions in these countries, to continue giving Fanny and Freddy billions of dollars.

This summer, it came to an end. Under pressure from their eroding mortgage business, Fannie stocks fell from $67.30 a share October 5 2007, to just $7 a share, September 4, 2008.[20] Freddy stocks followed the same downward slide, from $63.43 to $4.95.[21] Suddenly, non-U.S. investors, particularly in Asia, began to worry. The slide in share value of Fannie and Freddy raised the possibility that the two companies could go bankrupt. That would leave banks and investors in Asia and elsewhere holding pieces of paper worth billions of dollars less than their face value. “Chinese banks ‘were probably facing significant losses,’ says Logan Wright, an analyst with Stone & McCarthy Research.”[22]

Bankers from outside the United States began to apply leverage. In the first half of 2007, central bank holdings of Fannie and Freddie securities increased on average by $22 billion a month. But in 2008, those holdings fell by $27 billion from mid-July through early September.[23] And the Financial Times reported in August under the headline “Bank of China flees Fannie-Freddie,” that “Bank of China has cut its portfolio of securities issued or guaranteed by troubled US mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by a quarter since the end of June. The sale by China’s fourth largest commercial bank, which reduced its holdings of so-called agency debt by $4.6bn, is a sign of nervousness among foreign buyers of Fannie and Freddie’s bonds and guaranteed securities.”[24] “The threat of a central bank buyers’ strike was real,” accord to Brad Setser, a former Treasury Dept. official and now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.[25]

Neo-liberal orthodoxy dictated “let the market rule,” let the processes of creative destruction work themselves out. But bankers outside the U.S. who stood to lose billions from this market failure said; “Creative Destruction be damned. If you don’t act, we will start withdrawing our money. We are already doing it. We will not let you ‘cleanse’ your economy by leaving us holding worthless pieces of paper.” So facing an enormous catastrophe, Bush and the U.S. administration suddenly switched from the world’s biggest neo-liberals, to the world’s biggest state-capitalists, when they intervened to guarantee the debt held by Fannie and Freddy. Many of their neo-liberal ideologues were left wondering what had hit them. This whole thing might, said one commentator become a “nightmare scenario, the descent into quasi-socialism” which “balloons the national debt and wrecks foreign investors’ faith in the economy.”[26]

The state and capital

But of course this has nothing to do with “socialism” – unless it is a kind of Frankenstein’s Monster socialism, where the state robs from the poor to give to the rich – because that is exactly what is happening: tax dollars from U.S. workers to be used to pour into the balance sheet of two failed corporations. It is a myth of the neo-liberals that the state is separate from the market. There is of course the central role of state militarism. The British Navy ruled the waves so that British business could penetrate every corner of the globe in the 19th century. The U.S. military has time and again overthrown governments in Latin America to keep the hemisphere open for business. But there are also the directly economic ways in which the state is intimately tied to the development of capitalism. British imperialism jealously protected its industries behind the walls of empire. India did not build its rail network with British steel and rolling stock because of the market, but because of imperialism.[27] Japanese capitalism burst into the 20th century after the Meiji Restoration used the Japanese state to mobilize resources in order to industrialize.[28] Canadian capitalism had at its core the construction of a continental rail network, which bankrupted the private capitalists, and was only finished because of the state-capitalist “National Policy.”[29] In South Korea, the industrial revolution in the post-war era was inconceivable without the “chaebols”, very much creatures of the South Korean state.

The myth that capitalism is about the retreat of the state, and that socialism is about its reverse – state intervention – is a myth made easier by the long nightmare of Stalinism, where there were states which called themselves “socialist” and which said the same thing as the neo-liberals only in reverse: “We are socialist because the state owns everything: never mind the absence of civil rights and the absence of democracy.” But the Stalinist states are long gone, and a new generation is returning to the roots of the socialist movement, understanding that socialism is about popular control, workers’ control of the economy and the state, or it is about nothing. It can be important to have the state intervene to fix problems in the economy. But the key question becomes – who controls that state? In the United States, we can be pretty sure that the state is controlled by the corporate elite.

That capitalist state, having got the taste of government intervention to save capitalism from itself, has now become ravenous for more. Fannie and Freddy were only two of the institutions under stress because of economic problems in the United States. September 16, the U.S. Federal Reserve took over American Insurance Group for $85 billion. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized the rescue, calling the $85 billion a "staggering sum." Ms. Pelosi said the bailout was "just too enormous for the American people to guarantee."[30] But that staggering sum has now been dwarfed by another even larger sum. United States’ Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is asking Congress to come up with $700-billion to clean “toxic assets” out of the U.S. financial system. What he wants is to have enough money on hand so that any bank or financial institution which has a piece of paper that is looking pretty worthless, Paulson will have the money to say “no problem, we’ll take it off your hands.”

How do you come up with this “worst-case scenario” figure? Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in testimony that “ ‘various metrics’ could be used to arrive at that $700 billion number. It is 5% of $14 trillion in outstanding mortgage debt and roughly the same percentage of the $10 trillion to $12 trillion of commercial bank assets. ‘So it seems like an appropriate amount relative to the size of the problem.’”[31]

Seems like an appropriate amount. You would have thought he would have hired someone to get figures so that he could be a little more definitive given the “size of the problem.” What we are looking at is a trillion-dollar intervention by the U.S. government into the financial system of the world’s biggest economy – the biggest ever economic intervention by a state into any economy anywhere – that is going to change the shape of economics and politics for a generation. The crisis brings into focus three central points.

1) The decline of the U.S. and the Danger of Militarism

There has been a sharp divide in anti-capitalist circles over the position of the U.S. in the world system. Theorists like Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt argued that empire had become disembodied from the state.

In contrast to imperialism, Empire establishes no territorial centre of power and does not rely on fixed boundaries or barriers. It is a decentred and deterritorialized apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding powers. Empire manages hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies, and plural exchanges through modulating networks of command. The distinct national colours of the imperialist map of the world have merged and blended in the imperial global rainbow.[32]

The actions of states in the context of the current crisis shows this analysis to be inadequate. The states of the various central banks which had holdings of U.S. securities, including the state in China – all have particular interests that they seek to assert. Similarly, the state in the U.S. is suddenly enormously and obviously important to Empire – doing what no corporation on its own can do, mobilizing the tax resources of working people to bail out the financial system. “Empire” is just as bound up with the state system – a system of competing and predatory states – as were all previous systems of imperialism.

Theorists like Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin have challenged Hardt and Negri on exactly this point, seeing very clearly the continuing role of the state in shaping the field of power that has been called “Empire.” However, in the place of a system of imperialist states, they tend to reduce “Empire” to just one state – the overwhelmingly dominant U.S. state. They have argued that U.S. penetration of European and Asian capital is so profound as to make irrelevant and archaic any notion of inter-imperial rivalry.[33] But this view too is being revealed as problematic. The long decline of the U.S. dollar, documented above, is an indication of the worsening competitive position of the United States against its rivals in Europe and Asia. And the way in which this bailout took shape – in part from the threat of a strike by central bankers outside the United States, refusing to further invest in U.S. securities, is another powerful indicator of a changing world order. The U.S. remains the world’s biggest economy and most powerful state. But its position relative to others has been in decline for decades, and this débacle shows that the decline is ongoing.

There is a very developed literature, under the heading of the “Permanent Arms Economy,” that makes a compelling case to explain this decline.[34] The long-term structural shift of resources into arms has effectively starved key sections of the U.S. economy of investment, allowing others in the world system to catch-up and in some cases economically overtake the United States. The massive military presence sustained by the U.S. since the Korean War, has been accomplished at the cost of its international competitiveness. Other countries have invested in their “civilian economies” to a much greater extent than the U.S., overtime weakening the relative position of the U.S. in the world system, something now being starkly revealed in the current economic crisis.

But we also know from the last empire to fall under the weight of its arms spending – the Soviet Union – that an addiction to war might have negative effects for an economy, but it is still an addiction. The Soviet Union stayed mired in pointless and bloody wars abroad virtually until it collapsed in the years 1989-1991. The U.S. addiction to arms spending is likely to have the same contours – bad for the economy, but unshakeable for the state. It means that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to be with us for some time.

2) Ideological crisis of neo-liberalism

This September financial shock, has opened up a period of deep confusion and splits for the hegemonic ideology of neo-liberalism. The $700-billion bailout is being pushed by Republican George W. Bush, the world’s pre-eminent neo-liberal. Its principal opposition has come from – the staunchly neo-liberal Congressional Caucus of his own party.[35] It was these neo-liberal hardliners who were at the core of the defeat of the $700-billion bailout package in the first vote in Congress.[36] The neo-liberal monolith has cracked over its key precept – that markets should be “free” of the state.

Without any question, this chaotic, sudden shift from the neo-liberal orthodoxy of the small state and the free market to a new state-capitalist interventionism – this shift will like a thunderbolt make millions question the orthodoxies of neo-liberalism. Why are the bankers being given billions, while those who have lost their homes get nothing? In the parlance of the journalists, “why is Wall Street getting billions that come from the pockets of the ordinary folk of Main Street”? If we are going to have state intervention, why not go all the way – use the money for public transit, green jobs, public housing, schools and education, investments that help ordinary people not overpaid bankers?

But as Naomi Klein has pointed out, a crisis in the ideology of neo-liberalism is not the same thing as a retreat from the policies of neo-liberalism – the privatization and deregulation which have so plagued working peoples’ lives for more than a generation.

It would be a grave mistake to underestimate the right's ability to use this crisis – created by deregulation and privatization – to demand more of the same. ... the dumping of private debt into the public coffers is only stage one of the current shock. The second comes when the debt crisis currently being created by this bailout becomes the excuse to privatize social security, lower corporate taxes and cut spending on the poor. A President McCain would embrace these policies willingly. A President Obama would come under huge pressure from the think tanks and the corporate media to abandon his campaign promises and embrace austerity and "free-market stimulus."[37]

It is worth remembering that one of the modern architects of neo-liberalism, Margaret Thatcher, was very clear on this point. Thatcher is associated with the phrase “there is no alternative” or “TINA” – usually seen as justifying the unbridled rule of competition. Susan George writes that Thatcher:

... was well known for justifying her programme with the single word TINA, short for There Is No Alternative. The central value of Thatcher's doctrine and of neo-liberalism itself is the notion of competition – competition between nations, regions, firms and of course between individuals. Competition is central because it separates the sheep from the goats, the men from the boys, the fit from the unfit. It is supposed to allocate all resources, whether physical, natural, human or financial with the greatest possible efficiency.[38]

But in Thatcher’s classic and most often cited use of the term, this was not quite what she said and this was not quite her point. At a speech to the Conservative Women’s Conference, May 21, 1980, Thatcher’s theme was the way in which wages were increasing too quickly.

Wages in the public sector are still higher than the country can afford ... earnings will have to rise much more slowly if we are to avoid still more unemployment and if we are to get inflation down. It is too often forgotten that during the last two years there has been considerable increase in average living standards. What we produce has been growing much more slowly. We have to get our production and our earnings into balance. There's no easy popularity in what we are proposing but it is fundamentally sound. Yet I believe people accept there's no real alternative.[39]

The point is, Thatcher was not in the first instance driven by an abstract commitment to the market, but by a class commitment to transferring wealth from workers to employers. In this, the role of the state is a tactic, not a principle. The Thatcherite state showed its capacity to intervene against workers’ wages with real brutality during the bitter miners’ strike of 1984-1985.[40] Neo-liberal orthodoxy may lie exposed as nonsensical, but the class which brought us neo-liberalism remains in power, motivated by the same project – capturing the wealth produced by “Main Street” and making sure it ends up in the pockets of “Wall Street.”

3) The need for social movements against capitalism in all its forms

Which leads to the most important point, the need to insist that Thatcher and the neo-liberals are wrong – there is an alternative. In the 1990s and early 21st century, there was a magnificent international movement against neo-liberal globalization. The great protests against NAFTA led by the Zapatistas, the protests against the WTO in Seattle, against the FTAA in Quebec City, against the G8 in Genoa – these protests mobilized hundreds of thousands.

But the political leadership of these movements rested in groups like ATTAC in France or the Workers’ Party of Brazil. For them the target was not capitalism itself, but capitalism in its neo-liberal form. Neo-liberalism is now in open crisis, but the alternative on offer is not re-assuring – a strong state that protects corporations from their own excesses, and does so by taxing and squeezing the wages of ordinary workers. The problem is not just neo-liberalism. The problem is capitalism, whether in its “neo-liberal” or “state-interventionist” form. The next round of anti-corporate mobilizations needs that understanding at its centre.

We are seeing today in North America the hollowness of the neo-liberal dystopia. Others saw it earlier. It was after all the indigenous people of Chiapas who rose up against the neo-liberal North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in January, 1994, the peasants of Cochabamba in 2000 who stopped the water privatizers in their tracks, the masses of Caracas who in 2002 prevented the coup d’état which would have restored neo-liberalism in Venezuela, part of the swelling rage of all the oppressed in Latin America who, the principal road-block to the 2005 imposition of the U.S. led neo-liberal Free Trade Area of the America (FTAA). Perhaps just as neo-liberalism’s birth was in Latin America, it will similarly be Latin America where we will see the beginnings of the new social movements challenging capitalism in all its forms.

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] Gilberto Villarroel, “La herencia de los ‘Chicago boys’,” BBCMUNDO.com, December 10, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk
[2] David Harvey, Spaces of Global Capital: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development (New York: Verso, 2006), p. 12
[3] “US rescues giant mortgage lenders,” BBC News, September 7, 2008
[4] Alana Semuels, “Q&A about mortgage giants Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac,” Los Angeles Times, September 8, 2008, www.latimes.com
[5] The Associated Press, “Answers to your Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac takeover questions,” New York Daily News, September 11, 2008, www.nydailynews.com
[6] Jackie Calmes, David D. Kirkpatrick, “McCain Aide’s Firm Was Paid by Freddie Mac,” The New York Times, September 23, 2008
[7] Bank of Canada, “Monthly Series: V122150: Federal Funds Rate”, www.bankofcanada.ca
[8] HSH Associates Financial Publishers, “HSH’s National Monthly Mortgage Statistics,” www.hsh.com
[9] Shawn Tully, “Real Estate Survival Guide,” Fortune, Vol. 153 Issue 9, May 11, 2006, pp. 94-102
[10] Calculated from Joint Centre for Housing Studies, The State of the Nation’s Housing 2007, “Additional Table: Metropolitan Area House Price-Income Ratio, 1980-2006," www.jchs.harvard.edu. Figures are not yet readily available for 2007 and 2008. However, an update has been released to one analyst, which shows the same general trend, with the addition that from 2007 on, house prices have started to fall – the graphical representation of the bursting of the housing bubble. See CalculatedRisk, “Update: Ratio Median House Price to Median Income (2008 Report)," June 24, 2008, http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com
[11] U.S. Federal Reserve Board, Federal Reserve Statistical Release, H.10 “Foreign Exchange Rates,” “Price-adjusted Major Currencies Dollar Index,” www.federalreserve.gov
[12] Derived from “FXHistory®: historical currency exchange rates," accessed September 24, 2008.
[13] Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, “Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey,” http://data.bls.gov
[14] Vikas Bajaj, “Foreclosures Rose as Delinquencies Eased in Quarter,” The New York Times, September 5, 2008
[15] According to Peter Coy, “Back on Track – Or Off The Rails?” Businessweek, September 22, 2008, p. 24
[16] Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 83
[17] Coy, “Back on Track,” p. 24
[18] MarketWatch, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, www.marketwatch.com and Forbes.com
[19] U.S. Treasury Dept., as reported by Bruce Einhorn and Theo Francis, “Asia Breathes a Sigh of Relief,” Businessweek, September 22, 2008, p. 32.
[20] Yahoo Finance, http://yahoo.finance.com
[21] Yahoo Finance, http://yahoo.finance.com
[22] Einhorn and Francis, “Asia Breathes A Sigh of Relief,” p. 32
[23] Einhorn and Francis, “Asia Breathes A Sigh of Relief,” p. 32
[24] Saskia Scholtes and James Politi, “Bank of China flees Fannie-Freddie,” Financial Times, August 28, 2008
[25] Einhorn and Francis, “Asia Breathes A Sigh of Relief,” p. 32
[26] Coy, “Back on Track – Or Off the Rails,” p. 25
[27] Clarence Baldwin Davis, Kenneth E. Wilburn, Ronadl Edward Robinson, Railway Imperialism (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1991)
[28] Colin Barker, “Origins and Significance of the Meiji Restoration,” 1982, www.marxists.de
[29] Stanley Ryerson, Unequal Union (New York: International Publishers, 1968)
[30] Edmund L. Andrews, “Fed’s $85 Billion Loan Rescues Insurer,” The New York Times, September 16, 2008
[31] Joshua Zumbrun and Liz Moyer, “Your Guide To The Bailout Debate,” September 24, 2008, Forbes.com
[32] Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Empire (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. xii-xiii
[33] See essays in Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, eds., Socialist Register 2004: The New Imperial Challenge and Socialist Register 2005: The Empire Reloaded (London: Merlin Press). For an exchange that goes over this controversy in detail, see: Alex Callinicos, “Imperialism and Global Political Economy,” International Socialism 108 (Autumn 2005); Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, “ ‘Imperialism and Global Political Economy’ – A Reply to Alex Callinicos,” International Socialism 109 (Winter 2006); and Alex Callinicos, “Making sense of imperialism: a reply to Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin,” International Socialism 110 (Spring 2007) – all available online at www.isj.org.uk.
[34] See Michael Kidron, Capitalism and Theory (London: Pluto Press, 1974) for a classic development of this thesis. Some of Kidron’s writings are available at The Marxists Internet Archive, www.marxists.org
[35] Sheldon Alberts and Don MacDonald, “Bailout plan stalls as conservative Republicans voice their opposition,” The Vancouver Sun, September 26, 2008
[36] Carl Hulse and David M. Herszenhorn, “Lawmakers Defy Bush and Party Leaders, Rejecting Bailout,” The New York Times, September 29, 2008
[37] Naomi Klein, “Now is the Time to Resist Wall Street’s Shock Doctrine,” The Huffington Post, September 25, 2008
[38] Susan George, “A Short History of Neoliberalism: Twenty Years of Elite Economics and Emerging Opportunities for Structural Change,” Transnational Institute,, March 24, 1999, www.tni.org
[39] Margaret Thatcher, “Speech to Conservative Women’s Conference,” Margaret Thatcher Foundation, May 21, 1980, www.margaretthathcer.org
[40] See, among other accounts, Alex Callinicos and Mike Simons, The Great Strike: The Miners’ Strike of 1984-5 And Its Lessons (London: Socialist Worker, 1985)

Crisis in Bolivia

2008-09-16T00:16:00.002-04:00

Thursday Sept. 11, at least 30 people – supporters of president Evo Morales – were killed in the northern department of Pando, victims of right-wing inspired violence. “We were unarmed” said one survivor of the 1,000-strong peasant march which was the target of the attack. “They stopped us some seven kilometers before Porvenir and afterwards they attacked us when we reached the bridge, where they ambushed us and began to shoot with automatic machine-guns.” The massacre was “executed by civilian groups who’d received weapons training by the government of Leopoldo Fernández.”[1]

Fernández is one of a group of provincial politicians opposed to the Morales’ government. They have been campaigning for “autonomy” in a thinly veiled campaign to push back the indigenous communities who support Morales, and to keep the landed estates, oil and especially natural gas in the hands of a rich elite.

The province of Pando did vote for “autonomy” in the recent referendum – but also, by a margin of 52.5% to 47.5%, voted approval of the Morales’ presidency.[2] Having failed to decisively defeat Morales at the polls, supporters of Fernández have turned to violence.

By Saturday, the Bolivian armed forces had pushed aside the separatist forces in Cobija, capital of Pando Department, and Fernández had fled apparently to Brazil. But the situation remains extremely tense.

September 14, US ambassador to Bolivia, Philip Goldberg, was expelled from the country by Morales. Goldberg has long been suspected of aiding the separatist forces in the country[3] – given his previous role as envoy to the Balkans (he “came to Bolivia straight from Kosovo, which has fed speculation that the US has a secessionist agenda.”[4]). In solidarity, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez also expelled his country’s US ambassador, with the US expelling both its Bolivian and Venezuelan ambassadors.

September 15, Michelle Bachelet, president of Chile, convened an emergency meeting of UNASUL-UNASUR – the new confederation of South American nations – to see if a way could be found to defuse the situation. But at the heart of UNASUL-UNASUR is the emerging power of Brazil, whose president, Lula Inácio Lula da Silva “has faced some domestic political criticism for not immediately defending Bolivia’s territorial integrity more strongly.”[5] This shows again the contradictions of UNASUL-UNASUR. Like its more radical counterpart ALBA (the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas), it aspires to unite the countries of Latin America. Unlike ALBA, it is doing this not on the basis of solidarity first but of trade first. It remains to be seen whether this trade-centred body can act as an “honest broker” in the Bolivian crisis.

Morales remains determined to press ahead with his December 7 referendum on a new constitution – a constitution that has at its core, increasing the power of the government to enforce redistribution of the land from the rich landowners to impoverished peasants. But while Morales is playing by the electoral rules, it is increasingly clear that the rich and their foreign backers have no such scruples, and will stoop to any means to destabilize the country.

Now more than ever, it is the responsibility of those in the Global North, to build solidarity with the processes of change in Bolivia, and to expose and condemn the actions of the right-wing and their business allies.

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] Luigino Bracci Roa, “Bolivia: the Massacre in Porvenir,” Tlaxcala – The Translator’s Network for Linguistic Diversity, Sept. 14, 2008, www.tlaxcala.es
[2] Corte Nacional Electoral, República de Bolivia, “Referendum Revocatorio 2008,” www.cne.org
[3] AFP, “Talks aim to end Bolivia unrest,” Sept. 15, 2008
[4] Conor Foley, “Will diplomacy work in Bolivia?” guardian.co.uk, Sept. 15, 2008
[5] Foley, “Will diplomacy work in Bolivia?”

War Free Schools

2008-07-08T16:54:00.002-04:00

Here’s a nice thought for public education – let’s put automatic weapons into children’s hands, and let’s show them how to use them. Even better – let’s pay them $600 a week for the training. Sounds a bit wrong? Well, since 2006 it’s been the policy of the Toronto District Public School Board.[1] One other point – the students actually get credit for this, their placement with the military being done through the Army Reserve Cooperative Education Program.

A similar program existed in the 1990s, but was terminated in 2002. In this earlier program, when placed with the military as part of their “experiential” learning, students were not paid, as is the case with every other placement. In 2002, the Canadian Armed Forces terminated the program “since the army reserve in June 2002 determined that first they must pay students and second that they could not afford to pay.”[2]

But in 2005, talks opened up between the School Board and the Army Reserve leading to a revival of the program – this time with the students – who “actually become members of the Canadian Forces Primary Reserve” – being paid a salary equivalent to about $600 per week. In 2005-2006 there were 14 Toronto school children taking part in this program – one just 16 years old, three others just 17 – along with 104 others from “boards such as York Region, Peel, and Toronto Catholic School Boards.”[3]

This is being sold as a way of building character. “The military is great for time-management skills” said Martin Boreczek a corporal in the Reserve now attending York University. “A lot of things need to get done on time, which is something procrastinating university students could learn and apply.” But the real reason has more to do with war than study skills. Boreczek, for instance, was a soldier in Afghanistan from 2004-2005.[4] It is the needs of the war machine – now committed to fighting in that country until 2011 – which is behind the intrusion of war-making into the school system.

In response, Educators for Peace and Justice (EPJ) have launched a “War Free Schools” campaign. A fund-raiser to launch the campaign was held June 19 in the East End of Toronto. Teachers and students from high schools and universities listened to a presentation from Dylan Penner of Operation Objection, who made the case for getting the military out of our classrooms. Playing in the background were images from the War Free Schools Organizing Kit – a Backgrounder and a Handbook available from their web site, www.operationobjection.org.

Canada has a reputation as being a peacekeeper, but it is clear that this peacekeeping moment is now over. In 1991, Canada was a full participant in the first Gulf War. Its 1993 intervention in Somalia looked to the Somalis more like occupation than peacekeeping.[5] In 1999 it was one of the principal contributors to NATO’s bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. And from 2001 to the present, it has been a central component of the war in Afghanistan. This has been accompanied by initiatives from both Liberal and Conservative governments to increase spending on the military. Most recently, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government announced a plan for a significant expansion of Canada’s military. In May, the National Post gave a “sneak preview” of the plans.

Over the next 20 years, the Tories want to commit Ottawa to spending $30-billion more on the military. Mr. Harper foresees an expansion of our Forces to 100,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen. Troop strength will include 70,000 regular forces, up from 65,000 today, while the reserves will expand from 24,000 to 30,000. Ageing warships will be replaced, and new transport aircraft and armoured vehicles will be purchased. New medium-lift helicopters will be bought immediately to ferry our troops over and around roadside bombs and snipers in Afghanistan.[6]

This was confirmed while the fund-raiser was in progress. On the evening of Thursday June 19, 2008 – “the night before Parliament adjourns for the summer”[7] – a major document appeared on the National Defence web site, announcing a 20 year, $490-billion “Canada First” Defence Strategy to steadily upgrade Canada’s military capacity over a generation.[8]

This is being accompanied by a serious intensification to recruit young people into the Canadian military. In February 2006, then Chief of the Defence Staff, General Rick Hiller, launched “Operation Connection” whose goal was to enlist all the uniformed personnel of the Canadian Armed Forces into the recruitment effort, saying: “I expect every sailor, soldier, airman and airwoman to recognize their role as a potential CF recruiter, effectively spreading the load from the shoulders of recruiting centre personnel to the shoulders of all Regular and Reserve personnel.” The effect would be to enlist 85,000 uniformed personnel as active recruiters to the armed forces.[9]

This pressure to pull young people into the service of Canada’s wars abroad is not going to end anytime soon. Building a movement to get the troops out of Afghanistan, is going to require building a movement to get the military out of our schools. No blood for oil, no youth for the killing fields.

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] “Briefing Note: Cooperative Education and the Canadian Armed Forces,” Toronto District School Board, June 5, 2006
[2] “Briefing Note”
[3] “Briefing Note”
[4] “Military co-op opens door to a career,” ylife: York’s Weekly Newsletter for Students, October 2, 2006
[5] Sherene H. Razack, Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004)
[6] “Bolstering our Forces,” National Post, May 14, 2008
[7] David Pugliese, “Parliament in the dark on major weapons purchase,” Canwest News Services, June 19, 2008
[8] “Canada First Defence Strategy,” National Defense, Canada, June 18, 2008
[9] “Op CONNECTION: Reaching out and touching Canadians,” National Defense, Canada March 9, 2006. For the response of the anti-war movement, see Dylan Penner, ed., War Free Schools: The Rise of the Counter-Recruitment Movement (Toronto: Act for the Earth, 2006)

The case for deep writing

2008-07-04T13:25:00.005-04:00

Letter to the Editor submitted to The Atlantic July 2, 2008 • Nicholas Carr says that Google is making us stupid.[1] The ubiquity of the Internet, he argues, is leading to a change in the habits of information acquisition, a change in the norms of information processing, and an accompanying change in the very structure of our way of thinking. The very strong implication of the article is that this is a “bad thing,” leading to the demise of what he calls “deep reading”. But deep reading requires its complement, deep writing – deep writing requires facts, and the article has, well, none. The handful of anecdotes at the beginning of the article do not so qualify. Neither does the cute story about Nietzsche and the typewriter. They make good journalism, good copy, but they do not make good research. And without facts, deep writing is close to impossible.

There is one part of the article that does, I think, provide an interesting “open door” to such deep writing. “The Internet” Carr writes is “becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and our TV.”[2] Think about the latter for a minute. Carr throughout is presuming a causal relationship between an increase in Internet reading and a decline in “deep reading” (the focused immersion in long articles, books, etc.). Perhaps, however, this is a false, very false, equation. Perhaps the Internet is not a step down from “deep reading” but a step up from channel surfing? That might be a very good thing, as there are many studies about that older medium – television – warning about its baneful effects on literacy.[3]

I go to the Internet, stopwatch in hand (an homage to the reference to Taylor in the article). Two minutes gone. I have a 2002 study by Norman H. Nie and Lutz Erbring (both at the time at Stanford University). “Internet and Society: A Preliminary Report” is worth some deep reading. It indicates that Internet use is cutting into time spent with friends and family, a shift that worries them. But it also concludes that “time on the Internet is coming out of time spent viewing television.”[4] Seen from this standpoint, the spread of the Internet might be seen as a quite positive development – the evolution, if you will, from “Happy Days” and “Rockford Files” to Google, Facebook and Email.

This has me suddenly engaged in what Carr cites (negatively) as “a form of skimming activity”[5] – to whit, wondering about the relationship between email (the Internet’s close cousin) and writing ability. This time it takes longer – three minutes – but the extra minute is worth it. I find an authority, Al Filreis, director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing at the University of Pennsylvania, who, according to a 2005 Associated Press story, “thinks frequent e-mail improves writing: ‘To become a better writer, you have to write.’”[6]

But the central issue has yet to be broached – the connection, if any, between Internet use and deep reading. Let’s try a hypothesis – that book purchases are a good proxy for deep reading, and that a decline in deep reading would be made evident in a decline in book purchases. You might know where I’m going with this. If my city is anything like your city, one of the most interesting phenomena of the end of the last century and the beginning of this century has been the explosion of big box bookstores. There is also, of course, the Amazon.com explosion. There was also the near hysteria about the release of the latest Harry Potter book, and the interesting sight of millions of young (and old) engaged in what looked quite a lot like “deep reading.”

Can this be quantified? This time the stopwatch records twenty minutes of research – the information is a little more hidden. But then I have it – the U.S. Census Bureau provides information from 1992 to 2007 on sales from bookstores in the United States.[7] The following chart is the result.

What does it tell us? First, bookstore sales in the U.S. have doubled from 1992 to 2007, from just over $8 billion to just over $16 billion. Second, that growth has now flattened in the period 2004 to 2007. What can we conclude from this? Not very much. First the growth rate while real, needs to be qualified by both population increases and inflation. Second, the “flattening” in recent years may be related to the spread of the Internet – or it may be related to the spread of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and resulting economic hardship – another matter that demands both serious deep reading and deep writing. Or perhaps the industry did expand, responding to demand, but did so too quickly – is now in a holding pattern, but will return to growth shortly. What the graph does not show, however, is a steep drop off in purchases of books in the United States. I guess we have to say, then, that the jury is still out.

Enough. This is simply a quick foray into an area opened up by Carr’s provocative article, emphasis on the word “quick.” While this response to Carr is an appeal for “deep writing,” it is certainly not an example of the art. That would require more focus, more time – and perhaps more, not less, use of the Internet.

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” Atlantic, July/August 2008, pp. 56-63
[2] Carr, p. 60
[3] See for example, Sonia Livingstone and Moira Bovill, Children and Their Changing Media Environment: A European Comparative Study (Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum: 2001)
[4] Norman H. Nie, Lutz Erbring, “Internet and Society: A Preliminary Report,” IT & Society, Volume 1, Issue 1, Summer 2002, p. 280
[5] Carr, p. 58
[6] Cited in “Is email ruining the way we write?” Associated Press, December 12, 2005
[7] U.S. Census Bureau, “Service Sector Statistics: Estimates of Monthly Retail and Food Services Sales by Kind of Business,” 1992-2007

The Gutter Press and the ‘War on Terror’

2008-07-04T11:08:00.005-04:00

Letter to the Editor submitted to The Globe and Mail June 26, 2008 • George Bush is white. Stephen Harper is white. Tony Blair is white. So, I will now write about white terrorism as a plague covering the planet, given that several hundred thousand in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a result of the military actions of these white men, are dead, maimed and/or traumatized. I will use the term “honky.” Were I to do this, of course, and submitted it as an article to the very respected The Globe and Mail, it would be rejected as being inflammatory, crude and, well, just a little too “gutter”. The language of the tavern is not appropriate for Canada’s national newspaper. However, when Christie Blatchford applies the same technique to people from Pakistan, not only is her article accepted – it is featured on the front page.[1]

But I urge you not to stop at the front page. Read the article in its entirety. She goes on to write about a man whose mother was in the World Trade Centre September 11, 2001, but who managed to survive. But the son, to Blatchford’s surprise, does not sign up to fight for the United States but is “inspired to go to Afghanistan not to fight the guys who nearly killed his mummy, but to fight the dirty kuffar, or infidels.”

She then compares him to an elephant, likens Manhattan to “civilization,” Central Asia to “the jungle” and says that the fellow left Manhattan for “the wilds of northern Pakistan, and wanted all the more to blow civilization to smithereens.”

Rudyard Kipling would be delighted. Blatchford has “taken up the white man’s burden” complete with racializing the enemy (Kipling disgustingly called his era’s enemy “new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child”) all to prosecute our era’s “savage wars of peace.”[2]

It is a shame that 109 years after Kipling’s hymn to racism and imperialism, there are some who have not discovered a better hymnal. It is a shame that seven years after the launch of the “War on Terror,” Canada’s national newspaper could give pride of place to something as poorly written and racially provocative as this article by Blatchford.

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] Christie Blatchford, “ ‘Down with the J,’ and out of their senses,” The Globe and Mail, June 24, 2008, p. A.1.
[2] Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden,” Literature Network, Rudyard Kipling, www.online-literature.com

Let’s Not Forget Mexico

2008-07-04T10:33:00.003-04:00

Letter to the editor printed in Queen’s Alumni Review, Review Plus, Volume 82 Number 2, May 19, 2008 • Thanks to Sara Beck for her informed, well-researched and interesting article, "A Question of Treason."[1] The stories of Israel Halperin in the 1940s and the Security Certificate Five in the 21st century show clearly the frightening ease with which human rights can be swept away in moments of societal panic.

One small correction I would like to make. Sara calls the events of 9/11 "the most horrific act of violence ever on North American soil." I have in front of me William H. Prescott's classic History of the Conquest of Mexico and History of the Conquest of Peru.[2] The first few hundred pages of the book amount to a dry tale of the utmost brutality carried out by the European armies of Cortés against the people of what is today Mexico, culminating with his barbaric assault on the capital.

A long siege reduced much of the population to starvation. As his armies advanced into the city: “Dead bodies lay unburied in the streets and court-yards ... As the invaders entered the dwellings, a more appalling spectacle presented itself; – the floors covered with the prostrate forms of the miserable inmates, some in the agonies of death, others festering in their corruption; men, women, and children, inhaling the poisonous atmosphere, and mingled promiscuously together; mothers, with their infants in their arms perishing of hunger before their eyes, while they were unable to afford them the nourishment of nature; men crippled by their wounds, with their bodies frightfully mangled, vainly attempting to crawl away, as the enemy entered. Yet, even in this state, they scorned to ask for mercy, and glared on the invaders with the sullen ferocity of the wounded tiger, that the huntsmen have tracked to his forest cave.”[3]

And when the conquest was complete, the corpses “‘lay so thick,’ says Bernal Diaz, ‘that one could not tread except among the bodies.’ ‘A man could not set his foot down,’ says Cortés, yet more strongly, ‘unless on the corpse of an Indian!’ They were piled one upon another, the living mingled with the dead. ... Death was everywhere. The city was a vast charnel-house, in which all was hastening to decay and decomposition. A poisonous steam arose from the mass of putrefaction, under the action of alternate rain and heat, which so tainted the whole atmosphere, that the Spaniards, including the general himself, in their brief visits to the quarter, were made ill by it, and it bred a pestilence that swept off even greater numbers than the famine.”[4]

Enough. The attacks of 9/11 were acts of terrible violence. But they do not qualify as “the most horrific act of violence ever on North American soil.” As someone who teaches history and politics of Latin America and the Caribbean, I feel it is important to qualify that one sentence from an otherwise excellent article. Mexico is part of North America, and we have to know that the Europeanization of North America – in Mexico, in the United States and in Canada – has at its foundation terrible acts of violence against this continent’s original inhabitants.

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] Sara Beck, “A Question of Treason,” Queen’s Alumni Review, Volume 82 Number 1, February 19, 2008
[2] William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico and History of the Conquest of Peru (New York: Modern Library, 1936)
[3] Prescott, p. 592
[4] Prescott, p. 599

Bolivia: Referendums of Reaction

2008-06-02T10:17:00.004-04:00

To understand the recent “autonomy” referendums in Bolivia, don’t count the ballots – travel to the south-central city of Sucre. Saturday, May 24 a horrific scene of racism and violence played out that exposed the reactionary nature of the forces fighting for “autonomy.”

That day, Bolivian president Evo Morales was scheduled to appear in the town to announce the delivery of some new ambulances and some government funding for local projects.

“But in the early hours of Saturday morning, organized groups opposed to Morales began to surround the stadium where he was to appear a few hours later. Confronting the police and soldiers with sticks, stones and dynamite, they managed to occupy the stadium.”[1]

It was a racist occupation. Morales cancelled his visit, but the mob wasn’t satisfied. They surrounded several dozen Morales supporters – many of them Quechua Indians – robbed them, forced them to walk several kilometres, and then “to kneel, shirtless, and apologize for coming to Sucre.”[2]

Morales is an Aymara Indian, the first indigenous president in Bolivia’s history. Bolivia’s population is two-thirds indigenous, mainly Quechua and Aymara. The people of the western highlands, who are in the main indigenous, were the key to the surprise election victory of his party, Movement to Socialism (MAS), in 2004. The racist mob which attacked his supporters in Sucre, are part of a movement rooted in the European minority of Bolivia, resentful of Morales’ attempt to redistribute wealth in the country.

Central to that redistribution is a new constitution that will allow greater access to the land for the indigenous majority. This majority has been fighting for equality for centuries. It took a revolution in 1952 to abolish a system called “pongaje” that was a kind of feudalism, in which the indigenous people had few rights, and were virtually slaves to European landowners.

This is the necessary background to the “autonomy” referendums taking place in Bolivia. May 4, the voters in Santa Cruz were said to have voted “with a majority of no less than 85 per cent” to have greater autonomy. June 1, the departments of Beni and Pando also voted for autonomy, “with a majority of nearly half a million.”[3]

But these claims are quite dubious. First, these referendums do not have legal status, and Morales’ instructions to his supporters were to refuse to participate. The “high rate of abstention in various provinces in Santa Cruz such as Camiri (42%), Puerto Suárez (31%), Montero (62%), Portachuelo (19%), San Ignacio de Velasco (17.8%), Charagua (40%) and Saipina (60%), indicate an overall abstention rate of between 40-45%, according to the Bolivian Information Agency.”[4] And as British-based Latin American expert Mike Gonzalez has pointed out, those who did vote, often did so out of fear, voting “under the watchful eye of the thugs of the UJC – the neo-fascist youth organization of Santa Cruz.”[5]

The referendums all are couched in demands for “autonomy.” These demands are accepted uncritically in most of the western media. More balanced coverage is available from Al Jazeera.

“Statutes passed in Santa Cruz and on the ballot in Beni and Pando would protect huge cattle ranches and soya plantations from expropriation under Morales’ ambitious land reform. Santa Cruz also voted to withhold a bigger share of its natural gas reserves, which Morales needs to finance his reforms, although the state has yet to enforce the rule.”[6]

The threat of withholding the natural gas reserves is now a central issue. The next referendum will take place June 21 in natural gas rich Tarija – centre of most of Bolivia’s gas reserves.

It is critically important that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has rejected the results of these “autonomy” referendums. That country’s representative to the Organization of American States (OAS), Jorge Valero, said he was certain that a majority of Bolivians rejected the results in Santa Cruz, “despite the media terrorism which aimed to persuade them of the suicidal policy of dividing their country.”[7]

The support of Venezuela will be crucial in the coming months. These referendums are not just a cover for the European elite in Bolivia – they are seen by US imperialism as a vehicle for undermining the new sovereignty movements that are challenging its hegemony everywhere in Latin America.

Respected analyst Eva Golinger has convincingly documented that two agencies notorious for undermining popular movements in Latin America – USAID and the so-called “National Endowment for Democracy” – are deeply involved in supporting the “autonomy” movement.

“In Bolivia,” she wrote last year, USAID “is openly supporting the autonomy of certain regions, such as Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija, and therefore promoting separatism and the destabilization of the country and the government of Evo Morales. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), another one of Washington’s financial organs, which promotes subversion and intervention in more than 70 countries across the world, including Venezuela, is also funding groups in regions such as Santa Cruz, which fight for separatism.”[8]

We all have a stake in the desperate struggle underway in this, the poorest country in South America. It was in Bolivia in 1999, that the poor rose up and delivered a central blow against neoliberalism, when a mass movement in Cochabamba stopped the privatization of water. If the forces of neoliberalism and imperialism succeed in reversing this movement, all the people of the Americas will suffer, not just the poor and the oppressed in Bolivia.

What you can do

• In Toronto, June 11, 7pm, Toronto Bolivia Solidarity will be holding a meeting at OISE (St. George and Bloor) to discuss the attack on democracy in Bolivia. For more information, torontoboliviasolidarity@gmail.com
• For more information, see boliviarising.blogspot.com and http://grupoapoyo.org/basn/

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] Franz Chávez, “Bolivia: Local Indigenous Leaders Beaten and Publicly Humiliated,” Inter Press Service News Agency, May 27, 2008, www.ipsnews.net
[2] Chávez, “Bolivia: Local Indigenous Leaders Beaten and Publicly Humiliated”
[3] Cees Zoon, “Bolivia: mutiny in the provinces,” Radio Netherlands Worldwide, June 2, 2008
[4] Kiraz Janicke, “Venezuela Rejects Bolivian Province’s Autonomy Vote,” May 5, 2008, venezuelaanalysis.com
[5] Mike Gonzalez, “Fight for Bolivia’s future lies behind referendum,” Socialist Worker (U.K.), May 10, 2008, www.socialistworker.co.uk
[6] “Bolivian states vote for autonomy,” All Jazeera English, June 2, 2008, http://english.aljazeera.net
[7] Janicke, “Venezuela Rejects Bolivian Province’s Autonomy Vote”
[8] Eva Golinger, “USAID in Bolivia and Venezuela: The Silent Subversion,” September 12, 2007, venezuelaanalysis.com

Labour solidarity with Palestine

2008-05-31T14:14:00.006-04:00

“I want to express my gratitude to both CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees) and CUPW (Canadian Union of Postal Workers) for the solidarity they have shown to the Palestinian people.” With these words, Manawell Abdul Al, member of the executive committee of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions summed up the sentiment at the 150-strong opening plenary of the “Brick by Brick” conference at the Steelworkers Hall in Toronto. He was referring to the motions passed first at CUPE-Ontario, and this year at CUPW national, supporting the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the state of Israel.

Organized by the Labour Committee of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA), the conference focused on “building labour solidarity with Palestine.” As well as members of CUPE and CUPW, the weekend conference brought together members of CAW (Canadian Auto Workers), the USWA (United Steelworkers of America), FNEEQ (Fédération nationale des enseignantes et des enseignants du Québec), OSSTF (Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation) and other unions to debate ways to strengthen the BDS campaign in the labour movement.

Marion Pollack from CUPW also spoke on the opening panel. “It is very clear to us that the struggle facing the Palestinian people is the same struggle faced by the South African people against apartheid,” she said, and thanked CUPE Ontario for taking the lead in being the first major union grouping in Canada to pass a BDS resolution. In the wake of the CUPE Ontario resolution, there were literally thousands of emails sent by pro-Israeli forces denouncing the union. After CUPW members at the recent national convention voted 90 per cent to endorse the BDS resolution, “we were braced for a backlash” Pollack said. “However, we have not had the same level of fall-out.”

One of the most moving speeches came from Paul Loulou Chery, Secretary of the Confederation of Haitian Workers. He described the extremely difficult conditions being faced by Haitian workers, chafing under military occupation sanctioned by the United Nations. He talked about the conditions created by the 2004 coup d’état, carried out by the military of the U.S., France and Canada. But he also said that even though Haitian workers face terrible conditions, they do not want their Palestinian sisters and brothers to stand alone. Manawell Abdul Al took the microphone in response, and said that the occupation of Haiti and the occupation of Palestine are one and the same. “It is the dictatorship of capital that wants to exploit and put its hands on the wealth of the people.”

Notably present at the opening plenary was Phyllis Bennis, well known anti-war activist, (prominent in United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), the principal anti-war organization in the United States), who spoke from the floor as a member of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. Also from the US were members of US Labor Against the War. Links with the U.S. anti-war and labour movements will be critical in the campaign to build solidarity with Palestine.

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

Resources

Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid Labour Committee, www.caiaweb.org/labourcommittee
CUPE B.C., The Wall Must Fall, 2007, www.cupe.ca/updir/WallMustFall2007-eng.pdf
CUPE, "CUPE Resolution 50 Palestine", www.cupe.on.ca
CUPW, Resolution for BDS, http:stopthewall.org
U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, www.endtheoccupation.org