The Spark!

Spark 22 Released

2011-08-03T13:50:00.004-05:00

NEW ISSUE OF THE SPARK!

Issue 22 of The Spark!, the Marxist theoretical and discussion journal of the Communist Party of

Canada

, is now on sale.

This issue features a timely article by Toronto communist activist Catherine Holliday, on "Race and Class Bias in Law-Enforcement Agencies in Late Capitalist States." As Holliday says, "the persistent phenomenon of race and class bias in the capitalist legal system can be witnessed by anyone who attends the courts for a few days and watches the process in action."

But the author goes beyond anecdotal observation, providing a fascinating overview of the many reports and inquiries into police use of force in Canada, with particular focus on the situation in Ontario. The data she presents include figures on "deaths occurring at initial encounter with law enforcement officers."

This topic is highly relevant, considering that such deaths averaged about five per year in Ontario between 1988 and 2003, but then tripled to sixteen per year during 2004-2007. While Aboriginal people form just 2% of the population of Ontario, they accounted for a shocking 11% of such deaths at the hands of police during the thirty years ending in 2008. Similarly, 30% of such deaths were among the Black population of Ontario, who account for 21% of residents in the Greater Toronto Area, and much less in the rest of the province.

Holliday analyses the root causes of such discrepancies, especially the myth of white supremacy which is linked to the capitalist drive to expand profits and spheres of influence. She urges "active support (for) groups and communities who challenge the armed repressive forces of the state" as well as "honest efforts" to implement civilian oversight of the police, "while remaining aware that only social revolution will bring complete justice."

Another important feature of Spark #22 is the document "For a Québec Solidaire people's government." Readers in English-speaking

Canada

will find this piece a welcome insight into the debate over policy directions within Québec's left party, which is represented in the National Assembly by Amir Khadir and polls about 6-7% in recent opinion surveys.

This contribution was originally submitted to a QS policy review by members of the Communist Party of Québec, the section of the Communist Party of Canada based in that nation. The Québec Communists, who have been active in QS since its origins, argue that the party must prioritize "the interests of the great majority of the people and break the domination of finance capital" by adopting an openly anti-capitalist programme. This approach differentiates the Communists from some left forces in Québec which place the struggle for independence ahead of class and social issues.

"Trade Unions Under Socialism: Perestroika Revisited", by British Communist John Foster, looks back at discussions which took place during a visit by a UK trade union delegation to the USSR in 1987. As Foster concludes, in hindsight the discussions reveal a couple of important points, starting with the fact that "at the outset of perestroika the economy was not itself in crisis." While the economy was seen to be "underperforming," the Soviet Union provided a vast range of free social services and other advantages to working people.

Second, the Soviet participants in these discussions did not see any social base for capitalist counter-revolution in their country. As the author says, when leading figures within the CPSU initiated policies that were objectively anti-socialist, these were accepted by many as an antidote for apathy and passivity. Events quickly moved beyond the ability of pro-socialist forces to control, with disastrous results.

Other items in this issue include an editorial by Dan Goldstick, recalling the Stockholm Peace Appeal of the 1950s; a reprint of Annie Buller's 1945 article "Women in

Canada

at war"; several excellent book reviews; and a "Marxist IQ" test.

The Spark! is available for $5 per copy (or $12 for a three-issue subscription), from 290A Danforth Ave., Toronto, ON, M4K 1N6, tel. 416-469-2446.

Spark 21 out now!

2010-05-02T12:57:00.000-05:00

Dear comrades & friends,

We are pleased to announce that issue #21 of The Spark!, theoretical and discussion journal of the Communist Party of Canada, has recently been published. The current issue includes a feature article on the ongoing debate around the socialist transition entitled “What is the role of private production in getting to socialism” by Asad Ali, “Why defend public education?” by Jane Bouey (Vancouver COPE School Board Trustee), and a review of Communist energy policy in Canada from 1963 to 2009, along with book reviews, and other features.

This 40-page issue makes for excellent reading, and should be on everyone’s “must have” subscription list.

If you would like to order Issue #21, or – better yet – to subscribe to receive 3 issues (the current issue and the next two upcoming issues, please print out the attached PDF file, complete and mail into our offices today.

Editorial

2010-05-02T12:56:00.000-05:00

[The Spark!, No. 21]

EDITORIAL

On June1st NDP MP Pat Martin stood up in the House and said, “When I announce that I am a socialist, I guess it is no surprise because we are all socialists now. We just bought General Motors. ... The fact is we now have Marxism realized. We own the means of production, and we didn’t have to fire a single shot.”

Was Mr. Martin really serious? In fact, no. (“I always thought one of the signs of the apocalypse would be when General Motors went bankrupt,” he said. “Is that not when the four horsemen appear on the horizon and there is darkness at the break of noon, when GM goes bankrupt?”) But Mr. Martin wasn’t entirely unserious either, more’s the pity. In his conception of society, class has disappeared. “We own the means of production,” he says. Who? He and his fellow members of the parliamentary club? Does he really think that’s who sit in the driver’s seat in this country?

Push him and surely he would accept that the whole purpose of the GM bailout was to keep capitalism afloat. That’s why no class struggle was required to have this massive state takeover – temporary, as the US, Canadian and Ontario governments have made a point of stressing. Communists always fault social democrats for their tendency to prefer easy options, underestimating the intense class struggle required even to win quite modest gains.

Is Canada really ruled democratically through parliament, or undemocratically by a small group of monopoly capitalists? Certainly there are important qualifications to be made, but the main story is one of minority domination thanks to systematic support from the mass media, church and school, tradition and ingrained habit – not to mention the army and police, should push come to shove.

“The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie,” says the Communist Manifesto (Marx Engels Collected Works, Volume 6, page 486). At the time of writing this, over 160 years ago, there probably weren’t many states Marx and Engels would have considered “modern”. (Maybe only Britain, France, Belgium, Switzerland, the USA and some South American states.) And critics have asked how this statement can be squared with the evidence of their complex, concrete discussions of various different countries’ politics, and with the relative autonomy that Marxist science in principle attributes to the state and its affairs. (Have these critics ever personally had dealings with any actual executive committees? If so, they wouldn’t find “relative autonomy” such a very difficult concept to grasp.)

Last December Canada’s Tory Finance Minister Jim Flaherty appointed an eleven-member advisory committee consisting of four billionaires, five other business executives, one pro-big-business professor and one right-wing Liberal politician, who resigned her seat in the B.C. legislature to chair this Economic Advisory Council. We can be glad there is no class-collaborating labour representative on the panel. The Globe and Mail Report on Business commented on its front page (December 19, 2008) that there was “not a banker in sight” on it – which may or may not tell us something about Minister Flaherty and his boss Stephen Harper.

These eleven advisors meet together in private, but only a few times a year, we’re told. Undoubtedly this will be a powerful source of capitalist-class input into government policy, but certainly only one source of influence.

Another is the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (formerly the Business Council on National Issues). The Globe Report on Business (of June 26, 2009) tells us, “... the head of the CCCE or its staff have met with the Prime Minister’s Office or Federal finance officials a total of 15 times in the past 18 months, according to the Federal lobbyist registry. These talks ranged from tax policy to energy and small business. On at least three occasions [CCCE head Thomas] d’Aquino had face-to-face meetings with Mr. Harper.”

And there are also other business groups exerting influence on government policy, such as the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. And then, as well, there is individual corporate lobbying. Canadian billionaire Frank Stronach’s Magna Corporation needed the backing of a number of governments, including Canada’s, for his bid to take over European car-maker Opel from bankrupt GM (a bid which ultimately failed because the mainly government-appointed GM Board of Directors was “relatively autonomous” itself and wavered but in the end decided not to sell). According to the Globe Report on Business (June 1, 2009), Stronach declared, “I pretty well called everybody in Ottawa and said: ‘Look, call the Treasury Department, because in the final analysis the Treasury Department has to agree.’” We can notice that Stronach speaks only of getting through to the Ministry of Finance indirectly (and he seems to have forgotten the Ministry’s correct name; he surely didn’t mean the much less important Canadian Treasury Board). But get through to the government he indeed did. And we know how all this compares to the efforts of Canadian people's organizations to catch the government's ear.

Yet, with a sufficient head of steam, an aroused public, especially in a minority government situation, can influence even a Stephen Harper administration, as seen on issues such as Afghanistan, Quebec, the environment and (un)employment insurance. As these meagre examples show, though, the concessions wrung from a down-the-line big business government are miles and miles from what is needed. We know that a progressive majority of MPs committed to a people’s alternative policy agenda will only become possible to the extent that labour and other people’s forces are successfully mobilized outside parliament first.

n Danny Goldstick

FOLLOWUP: In deference to Canadian insurance companies and their affiliated independent insurance brokers (and the further development of an election campaign pledge), Finance Minister Flaherty faxed a letter to bank CEOs October 7^th telling them regulations would be issued extending the existing rule against selling insurance in bank branches to a ban on their insurance subsidiaries doing business on banking websites. Complained Canadian Bankers Association CEO Nancy Hughes Anthony:

“By and large the banking industry has an open dialogue with the minister and the minister’s department, and we have to. We’ve had this through thick and thin over the past 18 months. So to have something that just kind of came out of the blue, on which we were not consulted in advance, obviously was a shock to many members of the industry. ... It’s not the normal way we do business with the government, that’s for sure.”

An unnamed “senior employee at one of the big banks” was quoted commenting, “I don’t think the memory of this is going to fade any time soon.” (Globe and Mail Report on Business, October 16)

Editorial Comment

2008-08-13T18:22:00.002-05:00

Dan Goldstick

As this is being written, good-paying unionized manufacturing jobs in Canada are being lost, the international devaluation of the United States dollar continues, and stock market prices are bouncing up and down – mostly down. A couple of Quebec financial institutions have taken a heavy beating in last summer’s “sub-prime” mortgage smashup on Wall Street, and so has the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and the Bank of Montreal, among many others. Only a fool would attempt to prophesy with any confidence about the shorter-term economic consequences, but it certainly underlines the instability inherent in even monopolized “free market” capitalism.

It was a financial newsletter issued by the same CIBC from which Jason Mann quoted in the July People’s Voice, just prior to the latest business shocks. Writing in the June 15, 2007 issue of StrategEcon (published by CIBC World Markets Inc.), Jeff Rubin and Warren Lovely told their readers:

“The Bank of Canada, eying an economy operating above its non-inflationary speed limit, will welcome the dampening influence of an even stronger currency on both economic growth and inflation. A couple hundred thousand additional factory job losses, while far from derailing domestic economic growth, might be a route to opening up a bit of slack in today’s ultra-tight labour market, forestalling a more serious wage threat.”

Got that? Forestalling a serious wage threat. Who is it that would be threatened? Not wage workers. Which leaves their capitalist employers, then, as the ones menaced by the prospect of having to pay higher wages.

This was not just some imaginative theorizing in the heads of two business writers. It continues to be the official stated – but not loudly stated – government policy in Canada and other capitalist states even in so-called good times to keep up enough unemployment to make workers replaceable so that they won’t get too far out of line when it comes to pay.

But are not high wages inflationary! How so? Inflation is rising prices. If capitalists are not to reap less profit, they must raise the prices of what they sell whenever their labour costs go up. And so they do. They don’t have to go on strike and negotiate with consumers in order to do it. They simply do it.

(Well, to be sure, sometimes they can’t do it, or can’t do it fully. Sometimes they would lose more in lost sales than they’d gain by charging more in each sale. In such cases the wage gains made aren’t inflationary.)

But then again, improved workers’ wages could be inflationary by putting more money in their pockets than there are things to buy – provided, of course, that there can’t be any cut in production to meet the capitalists’ personal and business requirements. These are the generally accepted conceptions of bourgeois economics. It isn’t that these ideas are all wrong. What’s devilish is the extent to which they’re right!

Economics classes from one end of the country to the other are taught that to guard against inflation interest rates have to be made high enough to ensure some “slack” –unused human and other resources – in the national economy as a whole. The poor economy must not get [“overstretched”] “overheated” – that is: everybody working at a job with good pay.

What a system! For business to prosper some Canadians have to be kept unemployed and poor. That is the way it works. In a rational economy, so long as people have unmet needs, and there are resources in the ground capable of meeting those needs and workers available with sufficient skills to turn those resources into the products needed, those workers will be employed producing those products to satisfy those needs. But that is socialism. For that, working people need to take over the economy and run it themselves, hiring (as capitalist owners do) any expert managers they require. Who needs capitalist bosses anyway?

Meanwhile, back in the economy which we have, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reported in March 2007 that workers’ real wages (corrected for inflation) have remained static for the past thirty years despite economic growth and gains in per-worker productivity – which increased by 51% during that time (www.growinggap.ca).

So what, then, happened to the increased output that workers’ static wages weren’t enough to buy? Canadian capitalists’ personal consumption certainly didn’t go up that much. What working-class families consumed they bought by taking on greatly increased debt. And some Canadian profits were sent back home by foreign-owned businesses. Some profits, again, were spent on expanding Canadian businesses here and abroad. A lot of money was used to expand the Canadian military and military production. And a really big chunk of cash was pushed speculatively into stocks and bonds and laid out on mergers and acquisitions without actually producing anything more. No wonder economic “instability” is now being experienced.

What economic “instability” means is that you could lose your job and you could lose your home. Under capitalism the working class cannot stop the inevitable “business cycle”; but unity and militancy can shift some of its effects off our backs. So it is time now to roll our sleeves up for the fight ahead.

One thing Communists claim they help the people’s struggle by contributing is Marxist science, with a rational society-wide view of the stakes, the forces, and the possibilities. But scientific insight into social reality doesn’t fall from the sky. It comes out of the actual experience of struggles – but then also it comes from study and criticism.

All science, we know, is dependent on study and critical discussion. That is why the theory of art too is a subject that revolutionaries can be better equipped for their job by understanding, for art too is part of social reality. Science’s need for criticism exists because it is never humanly possible to possess all the answers.

In his article “The Nature of the State Under Bush and Harper” Stephen Von Sychowski continues the debate on the extent to which what we already have here now is disguised fascism. He quotes former U.S. Communist leader William Z. Foster noting in effect that, though in World War II the USA was locked in a life-and-death struggle against foreign fascist dictatorships, real conditions back home fell far short of full democracy even then. And today the situation is worse. Cuban leader Fidel Castro has commented that the U.S. [The present U.S. Communist leader Sam Webb says his state] practises fascism abroad but, so far, something partially different domestically. Do we Canadians live in a democracy? Yes, to a degree, but not when it comes to controlling Canada’s economy. And you might well wonder how democratic the social life you experience is, for instance, if you belong to a racialized minority.

Or to an Aboriginal community. We are honoured to have a Spark! discussion contribution in this issue from Indian nationalist Ray Bobb, who makes a case for fighting oppression by uniting together with the working class movement and the left and, furthermore, by resisting the treaty process, which (he argues) weakens the Aboriginals by disuniting them into a large number of “first nations”. A point on which the Communist Party at present disagrees with him is his view that Aboriginals – or non-Inuit non-Métis at any rate – today form a single nation, rather than a group of peoples and nations who face a common oppression. It’s up to them, of course, to determine the forms and strategies their resistance will have, but their collective consciousness and united struggle has so far not taken the one-nation form Bobb favours. From developing events, from united action, and from respectful discussion we all should be able to learn a great deal.

Lastly, are the present-day economy and state in China essentially socialist-tending or capitalist-tending? The answer for which C. J. Atkins in general terms argues in “The Leninist Heritage of the Socialist Market Economy” will certainly not end the ongoing debate about that, which continues within China as well. The Soviet example warns us that revolutionary gains can be lost all too easily if the working class, for whatever reasons, is not up to defending its rights and interests. Like other classes, working classes too need leaders and parties; but it isn’t good enough simply to back them and trust them. This applies also to our Party. Democratic leadership is not about trust, in the main. What even the most progressive leaders can achieve for people will largely depend on the active, intelligent militancy of the people themselves.

Spark 20, Summer 2007

Consumer or Class

2008-08-13T17:39:00.002-05:00

Stephen Von Sychowski

Ever since the theory of scientific socialism was first articulated by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, and subsequently proven correct by history, there have been those who deny its most basic tenants. They deny the fundamental irreconcilable contradiction between social production and private appropriation, between the interests of the working class and that of the ruling capitalist class. They deny the necessity of class struggle, and with that denial they deny all the proven truths of Marxism and instead move for attempting to reconcile class antagonisms, for reforming capitalism. While reformism has never been completely defeated, it is always changing to find new ways to win over different social strata and different segments of the working class. Today it takes on many forms, one reformist current which has recently swept the “left” in the last few years, especially progressive youth, is the “ant-consumerism” current. This current is that of the replacement of class struggle with the struggle against consumerism.

Petty-bourgeois Reformist Ideology

In rejecting the class struggle and seeking reproachmant of classes, the anti-consumerists prove that either they have no comprehension of classes or their significance, or they would rather not mention it for opportunist reasons. They at best may recognize a set of classes composed of “upper, lower and middle”, the favorite line of all petty-bourgeois and bourgeois ideologies. It is nothing to them that class is determined by relationship to the means of production. Marxism is “old left” and is ignored as such and replaced with even older bourgeois lies. But something had to replace the class struggle in this new ideology. In this case that something is anti-consumerism. This “anti-consumerism” pits “activists” against “consumers”, "consumerism” and “corporations” although no real effective anti-corporate activity takes place. As it reads on the website of Ad Busters, the company/magazine which remains at the forefront of “anti-consumerism” (despite the fact that it’s a company which sells consumer goods)…

“We are a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple existing power structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the 21st century” (1).

You may notice that while workers are not mentioned, entrepreneurs are. The working class is abandoned as reformism rears its ugly head. They testify further on the Blackspot Sneakers Website…

“Join us in this quest to create an authentic, non-corporate cool and reassert consumer sovereignty over capitalism” (2).

Quite a quest indeed! Not to defeat capitalism, but rather to “reassert consumer sovereignty”. If there were ever an empty phrase, that is it. Here the class struggle and socialism are abandoned, reformism wins, and so does the ruling class.

Of course, you can’t recognize the nature of the state, the dictatorship of the proletariat or class struggle if you can’t even recognize classes and class antagonisms. As a result, the anti-consumerists are left flailing at the air at “corporations” for all the wrong reasons and without any understanding of their nature under the current capitalist relations or at “consumers” most of which are the working class themselves who are really exploited at work, not when they go shopping. In this way the anti-consumerists often tell the working class something along the lines of “you don’t need things, don’t consume, having nothing is for the best,” a great message as far as the bourgeoisie is concerned as it pushes more and more towards the increased exploitation of the working class globally in a struggle to maximize profits and combat falling profit margins. And while it’s true that companies make many useless goods and shove them down the throats of “consumers” we must not be fooled into believing that this is a major issue or fundamental contradiction in our society.

Besides all of this, the very act of putting “consumers” on a pedestal as such denies class and class struggle. All human beings consume, this is without exception true. What human being does not? Some consume more and some less and on average this can probably be correlated closely with their class and therefore how much they can afford to consume. But in the end we all consume, or we die. This puts everyone in one big “consumer class” and as such effectively eliminates class from the ideology. Furthermore, since most consumers are working class it turns workers who consume less against more wealthy workers who can afford to consume more and divides the working class, which can only be in the interests of the ruling capitalists.

Petty-bourgeois Reformist Tactics

It should be no surprise that and ideology that comes to us from petty-bourgeois elements will be likely to be accompanied by petty-bourgeois tactics and forms of struggle. Logically, the favored tactic of our anti-consumerism crusaders is the tactic of boycott.

“For 24 hours, millions of people around the world do not participate -- in the doomsday economy, the marketing mind-games, and the frantic consumer-binge that's become our culture. We pause. We make a small choice not to shop. We shrink our footprint and gain some calm. Together we say to Exxon, Nike, Coke and the rest: enough is enough. And we help build this movement to rethink our unsustainable course” (3)

A frightening proposal indeed, the bourgeoisie surely trembles at the very thought of “millions” (more likely only a few thousand) people not purchasing their goods for a day, only to come in the next day and buy the stuff then instead. The idea that such an action could bring down capitalism is absurd, even if one assumes the ridiculous and supposes that every person will co-operate with the boycott. Even assuming that full co-operation was sustained for days, such a notion ignores the fact that the bourgeoisie owns the means of producing and distributing goods and without destroying capitalism that will not change. Since people need to eat, drink and live their lives they would be compelled by necessity to surrender their useless struggle and crawl back to their hated class enemies once again. It could be no other way. And why would it when the manufacturers of this ideological trend are petty-bourgeois themselves and have no interest in over-turning a system which works ‘ok’ for them, but rather in turning forces against the corporate monsters that threaten their petty-businesses.

“In the Alternate Economy, there is an emphasis on personal relationships. Instead of everything being monetized with a price tag and "savings" being the only criteria for choice of business one patronizes, the currency of loyalty and reciprocity is used along with cash”(4).

The above quotation sounds a lot like the free-competition capitalism of the past rather than a glorious new future. Of course that past developed into the current imperialist system not by chance or because that’s what people wanted, but rather than because of concrete laws of development, which were spelled out by V.I. Lenin in his work “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism” and have been proven true by history. The so-called “Alternate Economy” is merely the dream of a dying petty-bourgeois class clinging to the past while being dragged kicking and screaming into the ranks of the working-class by the economic conditions of monopoly capitalism.

“This is something quite different from the old free competition between manufacturers, scattered and out of touch with one another, and producing for an unknown market. Concentration has reached the point at which it is possible to make an approximate estimate of all sources of raw materials (for example, the iron ore deposits) of a country and even, as we shall see, of several countries, or of the whole world. Not only are such estimates made, but these sources are captured by gigantic monopolist associations. An approximate estimate of the capacity of markets is also made, and the associations "divide" them up amongst themselves by agreement. Skilled labour is monopolized, the best engineers are engaged; the means of transport are captured — railways in America, shipping companies in Europe and America. Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the most comprehensive socialisation of production; it, so to speak, drags the capitalists, against their will and consciousness, into some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialization”(5).

The tactics of Anti-Consumerist Reformism are petty-bourgeois in nature and constitute a blind attack against the social class which is thrusting the petty-bourgeoisie more and more into the ranks of the proletariat. This attack is blind in that it is impotent to affect any real change. It is incapable of bringing down the capitalist system because it fails to recognize class struggle and organize working class struggle against capitalism.

The Petty Bourgeois Origin of “Anti-Consumerism” Reformism

A particularly striking contemporary example of the origin of this type of ideology is found in the Ad Busters Blackspot Sneaker. Ad Busters, the popular anti-consumerism magazine, which originally spent all it’s time turning corporate advertisements into comical spoofs in an attempt to create “consumer consciousness” has now branched off into shoe production. This development has swept the “left” in North America and caused great controversy, not without good reason.

The company makes several claims regarding the moral integrity you will apparently be instilled with if you happen to purchase a pair of their glorious sneakers. A handy marketing tool no doubt. Their shoes are composed of “organic hemp” and “vegetarian leather”, which sounds very nice and “left” but is of very little relevance to class struggle. They are supposedly made in a “worker friendly union shop”, which indeed an useful to know, yet very odd considering the anti-union statements that reportedly have frequently come from Kalle Lasn, Ad Busters founder and boss. The same Kalle Lasn, who when asked if Ad Busters was unionized, replied…

“no... and we never will be, cheers, Kalle”(6).

A finer example of a bourgeois attitude to the rights of the working class could not be found.

Blackspot intends to give one share of the company to each individual who purchases a pair of sneakers from their company. A better way to ensure that petty-bourgeois ideology is instilled resolutely in these “consumers” could not have been thought up. And of course the key to the reformist ideology behind the whole project,

“1 pair=1 vote” (7)

With each pair you even get a “Blackspot Anti-Corporation Ticket”. What makes it an “anti-corporation” other than just the rhetoric it uses is unknown as evidently it seems very much to be just another shoe company which happens to have a clever marketing scheme and the old re-hashed lies of reformism behind it. The notion of “worker capitalism” has been around for a long time and this is not much more than a new twist of this idea. . The idea that the ability of workers to purchase shares in a company eliminates class antagonisms and creates a friendlier form of capitalism has not panned out, this should come as no surprise. While wealthier working people may be able to invest in shares of companies, this does not imply any real ownership or control of the actual company in question. The majority of shares remains in the hands of the owner of the business in question and with it remains the control of the company. The capitalist takes the workers money, and in return the worker gets a false sense of ownership and becomes that much more susceptible to bourgeois ideologies. Furthermore, the idea of share holding does not deal with basic realities that workers face under capitalism such as exploitation, surplus value or oppression. Indeed, this form of “worker capitalism” is merely a trick of the capitalists to keep the downtrodden working class in check. The whole thing seems quite suspiciously like a handy marketing tactic more than a struggle against capitalism.

While this is only one example, it is nothing out of the ordinary by any means for our anti-consumerists. Of course, all of this will merely be written off as “old left” rhetoric by Kalle Lasn and the rest of the consumer activists in the “new left”. This is despite the fact that it is far from “new” as reformist ideology dates further back than Marxist ideology by a long shot, indeed it is Marxism which is “new”. Indeed, upon close observation we can see that this “new left” is in fact the “new left” is really a petty bourgeois left, whipped up by petty-bourgeois and bourgeois individuals to disarm the working class ideologically and make a pretty penny selling shoes and magazines in the meantime. Meanwhile, the “old left” which they so vehemently denounce is indeed the working class left including progressive trade unionists and communists.

An ideology formulated by business people, handed to the working class but opposing class struggle, working peoples organizations and working class ideology; that’s why this writer suggests readers spend their Buy Nothing Day reading “The Communist Manifesto”, “Imperialism” or “State and Revolution”, and if you don’t have one don’t be afraid to go right ahead and buy one!

Footnotes

1. Ad Busters Website, “Join the Movement”, http://www.adbusters.org/network/, 07/11/2004

2. Blackspot Sneakers Website, Main Page, http://adbusters.org/metas/corpo/blackspotsneaker/home.html, 07/11/2004

3. Ad Busters Website, “But Nothing Day”, http://www.adbusters.org/metas/eco/bnd/, 08/11/2004

4. Over-Coming Consumerism Citizen-Activists anti-Consumerism Site, “Alternate Economy”, http://www.verdant.net/alternate_economy.htm 07/11/2004

5. Imperialism: The Highest Form of Capitalism, V.I. Lenin, Chapter 1 “Concentration of Production and Monopolies”, http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htm 07/11/2004

6. E-mail received to authors account from kalle@adbusters.org on 10/20/2004

7. Blackspot Sneakers Website, “1 share=1 vote”, http://adbusters.org/metas/corpo/blackspotsneaker/oneshoeoneshare.html, 09/11/2004

Make the Minimum Wage a Living Wage!

2008-08-13T17:32:00.001-05:00

Brief to the Minimum Wage Board
Presented by Darrell Rankin
Leader, Communist Party of Canada – Manitoba
May 17, 2001

[The Manitoba government may create a two-tier minimum wage for workers under the age of 18 and for tipped workers. That would be a serious blow to women, youth and immigrant workers – mainly the unorganized workers who have no trade union protection. All workers should be treated with equal dignity and without discrimination!
It is essential that people speak out and protest against a two-tier minimum wage.
The minimum wage is already too low. About $1.9 billion of income has been lost by minimum wage

workers over the last 25 years because the Manitoba government has failed to protect minimum wage workers from the effects of inflation (making certain assumptions, see the brief below). This represents a shift of this amount from workers to capitalists.

The very fact that the government has to legislate a minimum wage to protect the most oppressed sections of the working class is in itself a shameful indictment of the capitalist system. Some of the work force is not even covered - farm workers, so-called “independent” contractors (eg., courier drivers), domestic workers, etc.]

The Provincial Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Canada – Manitoba welcomes this opportunity to contribute to the discussion on the minimum wage in Manitoba. I represent the Communist Party of Canada which has for eighty years fought to advance the rights and conditions of working people and everyone in need, opposed the corporate agenda, and has a goal of a socialist society in Canada.
The Communist Party pioneered many social programs in Canada. We helped mobilize public opinion so that governments of the day were compelled to act on the struggle for jobs, equality, medicare, unemployment insurance, social programs, trade union rights, peace and disarmament, a democratic solution to the constitutional crisis in Canada and many other issues.
We have always pointed out that reforms have never gone far enough, that conditions are getting worse for millions of people, inequality is greater, and wealth and technology are being used and accumulated in the interests of a small minority of people, the capitalist class.
Brutal, reactionary neo-liberal policies in the last twenty-five years have shifted the balance of forces in favour of the corporations and at the expense of working people and the environment. But these policy changes are themselves partly driven by growing impasses and setbacks in the world capitalist system, a system increasingly unable to meet the needs of the large majority of people.
Manitoba’s economy depends more on an unstable and slowing global economy.
The kinds of jobs that have been created in this period are part time, temporary, low wage, while thousands of better paying, full-time jobs are disappearing. For example, Mr. Buhler is threatening to close his Versatile tractor factory, a closure that would result in the loss of hundreds of better paying jobs.¹ While more people have found jobs in Manitoba in recent years, many working families are only one paycheque away from poverty, the food bank or losing their home or their farm.
In recent years, corporations in Manitoba have intensified their efforts to drive down wages and create a class of workers desperate to sell their labour power for any price. Our newspapers are carrying reports of employers bringing workers illegally from China and the Ukraine, and blackmailing them to work in slave-like conditions.
Young workers, especially, have experienced a dramatic decline in earnings. Between 1977 and 1995, real annual earnings for men aged 18 to 24 working full time, year round, declined 20 per cent. The same figure for women – starting from an already low, unequal figure – was a 9 per cent decline. A society that ignores and punishes its youth has no future, and the capitalist society in Manitoba is no exception.
All this means that Manitoba’s minimum wage policy affects or should affect many more people than twenty-five years ago. In 1997, an estimated 16,900 people earned the minimum wage or less, another 30,300 earned not more than 60 cents an hour more than the minimum wage.
When the minimum wage increased in 1999 to $6 an hour, and using the 1997 figures referred to above, almost 15 per cent of workers in Manitoba were earning the new minimum wage or less. While that compares very unfavourably to the 4.8 per cent of workers across Canada who earn the minimum wage, we are sure that many employers did raise their wages to comply with the law.
But far too many working people work at or close to the minimum wage in Manitoba. A person working at $6.25 an hour for forty hours over 52 weeks would expect to earn $13,000, far below – or 72 per cent of – the 1999 Low Income Cut-Off for a single person family of $17,886. The minimum wage for a single parent with one child is only 58 per cent of the 1999 Low-Income Cut-Off.
Provincial governments in Manitoba since 1976 have been willing supporters of the corporate agenda when it comes to the minimum wage. Regrettably, there is little difference in the record between the NDP and Conservative governments. If the 1976 minimum wage had been indexed to the rate of inflation, it would need to be $9.25 today (if the March 2001 rate of inflation holds to the end of the year).
The difference since 1976 between the minimum wage and where it would be without inflation has created an enormous shift in wealth and income from workers to capitalists. For example, inflation robbed a minimum wage worker of 25 cents an hour (rounded to the nearest 5 cents) in 1977, or $520 a year. If there were roughly 17,000 workers earning the minimum wage, this would represent a shift of 9 million dollars from workers to capitalists.
By 1998, the figures are $6,760 per minimum wage worker and a shift of 155 million dollars. Altogether, minimum wage workers have lost about 1.9 billion dollars because of the pro-corporate policy of recent governments to let inflation erode the value of the minimum wage. This is money that is owed to minimum wage workers in Manitoba, who helped create much of the new wealth in this province.
A rough calculation (assuming a constant 17,000 minimum wage workers per year) shows that both political parties are almost equally responsible for these lost wages. The NDP was in power for ten of the last twenty-five years (40 per cent of the time), and in the years it was in power as of December 31 minimum wage workers lost about $698 million due to eroded minimum wages, or about 37 per cent of the $1.9 billion in lost wages.
The fact it has been necessary to legislate a minimum wage in order to protect those parts of society that have no trade union protection, and groups like youth, women (who comprise about two-thirds of minimum wage earners) and the differently abled is itself a shameful indictment of the capitalist system.
Increasing the minimum wage is only one measure necessary to eliminate poverty and improve equality in Manitoba. To be effective, such a measure should be combined with other fundamental economic and social policy changes. Ultimately, the abolition of the wages system itself will be needed to achieve a society without the exploitation of labour, discrimination and oppression.
Measures such as a guaranteed annual income (GAI) under the capitalist system are too open to abuse and may contribute to a lowering of wages by forcing people to work for low wage jobs to supplement an inadequate GAI. The capitalist system which must compel the working class to sell its labour power would never exist with an adequate Guaranteed Annual Income.
The Communist Party opposes the differentiation of the minimum wage according to age or occupation. We believe all workers should be treated with equal dignity and without discrimination. We believe the minimum wage should apply to all currently excluded groups, such as farm workers, domestic workers and contractors. We support “fair wage” laws that require union rates of pay for contracted work at all levels of government. The minimum wage must also be indexed at least to the rate of inflation, after it has been substantially increased. We support a minimum wage of $10.50 an hour. Given recent reports of abuses, we demand the enforcement of all employment standards including the minimum wage.
It is clear that policies must now be implemented to counter not only the overall corporate attack on wages, but specifically address the growing problems of capitalist impoverishment, the growth of the working poor and the marginalized sections of the working class.
The scope of the problem goes well beyond Manitoba’s borders: 820 million workers in 1995 were under- or unemployed, one third of the global labour force. Record numbers of youth are entering the labour force – 700 million were aged 15 to 24 in 1999.²

The lost productive forces now unemployed by this system is enormous, as is the burden of an enormously bloated class of big capitalists and their servants, unsustainable depletion of resources and dangerous military pursuits.
The future that capitalism now holds for working people, including farmers and small business, is a bleak one. The large majority of people stand only to gain with realistic policies to create jobs and reduce poverty. A significant boost to the minimum wage to make it a real living wage, combined with a shorter work week with no loss in pay, taxes based on ability to pay and improving and creating new social programs – these realistic policies alone hold promise for the future.
The capitalist system may not have the ability to reform itself any more, as it has attempted to do in the past. But the failures of capitalism themselves are creating the conditions for its replacement. The low-wage policy of recent Manitoba governments is just one more obstacle that will have to be overcome on the road to a better society.

[Postscript: Manitoba raised the minimum wage to $6.50 per hour; unlike other provinces, it did not introduce a two-tier system.]

*************

Notes:

1 – After a long strike and lockout, Don Buhler had to pay substantial compensation for unfair bargaining, but the Versatile workers lost their jobs, and Buhler now has a union-free plant.

2 – OECD figures. Vancouver Sun, June 6, 1995; “Record numbers of youth will seek work: UN,” Globe and Mail, September 2, 1998.

Sports ‑ the house of cards

2008-08-13T17:30:00.002-05:00

Jane Bouey

"Sports Franchise Sold for Record Amount" ... "City Parks and Recreation Budget Cut Again" ... "Star Athlete Signs Unprecedented Contract" ... "Obesity Rates In Children On the Rise"

Headlines such as these appear in our news on a regular basis. They are stark evidence of the contradictions within sport in our capitalist society. Vast sums of money flow into professional sports, at the same time as communities cut physical education programs in schools, and decrease accessibility to public recreation and amateur sport. (For example, the decision to spend $400 million on Skydome was made around the same time as it was "found" there was not the $500,000 needed to acquire new parks in Toronto.)

The last two decades have seen a massive transfer of public money into private hands. The declining rate of profit in some industries has forced corporations to look for new sources of investment. This transfer of funds has been done primarily through tax cuts, privatization and cuts to social spending. In the area of sport, these methods have been combined with large government subsidies, such as the expenditure of public funds to build stadiums for privately-owned sports franchises.

Throughout North America, cities clamour to see who can give pro sports the best deal:

"We'll build you a free stadium and all the roads and transit to get people there. You can have all the revenue derived from that stadium."

"No, we'll give you all that and a tax free status." And on and on it goes.

Supposedly, cities receive a huge financial benefit from having a "major league" franchise. Yet independent studies usually prove that these benefits have been greatly exaggerated. As outlined in Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit (by Joanna Cagan and Deil deMause, published by Common Courage Press), these studies point out that money spent by families to attend sporting events is money that they would otherwise have spent elsewhere. There is no new wealth generated, and the jobs created tend to be minimum wage, part‑time work in the service sector.

In fact, Field of Schemes refers to studies showing that taxpayers' money spent on stadiums or tax bail‑outs would result in greater benefits if spent on public services and programs.

Yet again and again, politicians make the decision to support big time sports. The same federal and provincial governments which refuse to build public housing can suddenly come up with the funds to do so... if the housing is tied to an Olympic bid. Once the bid is lost, the dollars disappear into the wind.

Some US cities have held referendums on building private stadiums with public money. Even when citizens have turned down these schemes, state governments sometimes override their decisions (as happened in Seattle), or a series of referendums are held with the pro‑stadium side spending increasing amounts of money.

Why are governments making these decisions?

The reason comes down to money. The money in sports goes to some of the world's largest corporations: media monopolies, developers, breweries, and sportswear companies. A substantial portion of cash goes to the very small number of elite athletes who fit advertising's sexy image ‑ whether through becoming stars in a "hot" sport, or by their own looks.

Increasingly the entire concept of sport is tied up with the corporate (often sexist) images of Nike, Adidas, Michael Jordan, Tiger Williams, Anna Kournikova, GatorAde...

Hundreds of billions of dollars are connected with this branding, which even reaches into "amateur" sport. The corruption of Olympic officials and the drugging of athletes are inevitable results of the corporate dollars involved.

Faced with decreased funding, city councils, parks and school boards are being "bribed" with corporate funds to allow this branding of our public space to expand, often for very little return.

While this corporate strategy has been effective, there are signs that the loyalty of fans to particular sports teams ‑ one of the basic cards on which the entire house is built ‑ is eroding. Teams relying heavily on corporate money (with luxury boxes and sponsorships), have put tickets out of the price range of ordinary working class people. An increasing number of televised games are only available on pay‑per‑view. The threats to move teams, the constant flipping of players, and the focus on money ‑ all have alienated much of the fan base.

Even in amateur sports the focus on elite athletes has been a mistake. The Globe and Mail ran an article (August 13, 2001) showing the deteriorating results by Canadians in international track and field. Canada's head track and field coach was quoted as saying "We shifted our focus to the athletes on top... Now we have to shift focus to younger athletes..."

When will professional sport's house of cards fall? This is an interesting question, but the greater issue is the impact of the distortion of sport on society in general, and on youth in particular. The health of young people, both physical and mental, is in danger as access to recreation becomes more expensive, as physical education programs are cut back in school, and as corporate branding of public space spreads.

Professional sports are still indelibly a part of our culture. Why this is the case, and why there are such deep loyalties, is a subject for another article. The point is what to do about it.

From early Communist civic politicians like Joseph Penner in Winnipeg, to municipal unions like CUPE today, working class activists have struggled for decades to build community centres and to protect and increase access to recreation. In recent years we have added the fight against the corporate branding of our parks and schools to the list. Is it possible that a struggle for democratic control over our sports teams could be on the horizon?

Today, money is sucked into elite level and professional sports to fill the coffers of corporations. But imagine a society where sports teams are owned and run by the people, where players make a fair and just wage, and profits flow into amateur and recreational sports. A society where the emphasis is placed on increasing access for all, including those with low incomes, women, and people with disabilities.

This is possible. Even within the confines of capitalism, the struggle for people’s sport can have a real impact, as an important part of the overall movement for progressive and democratic cultural change.

*************

(The author, a life-long sports fan, is active in struggles for women's equality and public education in Vancouver.)

The Place of the Restoration of Capitalism in the Historic Process

2008-08-13T17:28:00.001-05:00

Victor Trushkov, Doctor of Philosophy,
member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the

Russian Federation

(International Correspondence, no.2, 2001)

Despite the dramatic events of the 1980s and 1990s, when socialism had to fold up its banners over an immense area stretching from the Elbe to the Pacific Ocean and from Kouchka to the icy seas of the north, the present historical epoch preserves traits characteristic of the passage from capitalism to socialism on a global scale (...).

In his "Critique of the Gotha Programme" Marx wrote: Between capitalism and communism there is a period of revolutionary transformation of the first into the second. This is the period of political transition". (...) In the course of the second half of the 20th century a number of Marxist philosophers categorically stated that "the scientific category of `the transition period' is only applicable, in Marx and Lenin's conception to the analysis of the revolutionary process of liquidating capitalism and building socialism" (...) All transition periods have this in common, that they are based on a pluralist economy, where the presence of a dominant system is still, to a large extent, illusory.

The elaboration of the methodological bases of the transition period was the work of Lenin. In particular he devoted a series of writings to it in the period of April/May 1918, (...) the period just after the signing of the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty (...) These works allow one to distinguish at least two states within the transition period (...) using Lenin's image, the first is necessary to reach the "antechamber of socialism" and the second is the antechamber itself. In the course of the first stage, society accomplishes tasks that belong, objectively speaking, to the previous system which have been "inherited". (...) The tasks of the second stage are directly linked with the building of socialism on the basis of a level of civilisation, of productive forces capable of ensuring the highest possible labour productivity and the satisfaction of the principal reasonable needs of the individual. (...)

I would like to draw attention to the fact that two other stages complicate still further the transition period: a) the social restoration of the previous regime and b) the elimination of that restoration. (...)

It must be recognised that, by excluding the category of restoration from the theoretical analysis of the transition period, Marxist philosophy, in the period 1930-80 greatly weakened its immunological capacity, and so our ability to prepare for and to resist it. Instead, we indulged in a sublimation of the successes achieved. Thus the completion of the tasks of the first stage of the transition period in the end of the 1930s was declared to be "the building of socialism" and, at the beginning of the 1960s, when we had barely completed the reconstruction of the national economy destroyed during the Great Patriotic War, we proclaimed the "total and final victory of socialism" and announced the "broad building of communism".

Perestroika undoubtedly contributed to the restoration but I'm not talking about so called "catastroika" (...). Perestroika, considered as a restructuring of economic, political, social cultural and administrative relations is an objective fact of the passing from one stage to another, as is revolution when passing from an obsolete to a progressive mode of production.

Reconstruction-perestroika was already necessary in the 30s, when the tasks leading up to the "antechamber of socialism" had been successfully completed. It is no accident that the theme of the perestroika of the administration dominated the debates of the 18th national conference of the CPSU in February 1941. Attempts to restructure Soviet society on a socialist basis were undertake several times in the 1950-70 period. I will not discuss here the successes and setbacks of each of them.

The restoration of capitalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe is due to a considerable extent, to the interest that it has for the forces of world imperialism. In his polemic with Kautsky, Lenin had warned "Even if the exploiters are wiped out in a single country, they remain nevertheless stronger than the exploited because their connections at international level are enormous. That some of the exploited belonging to the least educated strata are capable of following the exploiters has been demonstrated in all the revolutions, including the Commune". (...)

The mere fact of the survival of exploiters on world level does not, in itself, mean that socialism is condemned. External pressure would only become threatening when there exist forces inside the socialist system who have an interest in restoring capitalism. It is about these forces that we must consider.

I think that the picture of Soviet society as a practically classless one in the 80s, the idea that the two forms of socialist property -- state and cooperative -- were sufficient to define the productive relations in the USSR, is far from reality. A mixed economy existed in the country at that time.

First of all I would recall the short-lived debate that took place in 1984-5 about incomes that did not come from work. Whatever one's political appreciation of that debate, it certainly pinpointed the existence of a system of small-scale retail trade. In law, this was barely legal and economically it was falsified insofar as the producers used means of production that did not belong to them but to the state. But between the moonlighting bricklayers and taxidrivers and the sales of the product of smallholdings it meant that this retailing was relatively important.

As for the private wholesale trade, which existed in the form of a parallel economy, its economic power was even greater. These were rumours of its importance current in the 1980s ‑- some research workers stated that its turnover was comparable to that of the state.

The measures taken in the context of perestroika in the 1987-88 period ensured the legalisation of retail and wholesale trading. This allowed those active in the field to seek political means of protecting their interests.

Nor, I believe, was the form of property called state property a uniform economic system. To be sure it had socialist aspects (...) but it was not "uniformly" socialist, rather it was a symbiosis in which state capitalism was the second constituent. Nor must we regard this as a colossal defect of Soviet reality. Lenin had already, 80 years ago, on 29 April 1918, in a speech to the Russian Central Executive Committee outlining his programme, stated that "State capitalism, for us, would be a step forward"¹ (...) This form of symbiosis of socialist and state capitalist systems inside state property is extremely important for analysing the driving forces behind the restoration of capitalism.

Although it is the workers as a whole that act as carriers of the socialist character of society, state property was, in practice, administered by the apparatus (what the "democrats" nicknamed the "nomenklatura of the state and party"). The fact of taking part in the socialist system made of this social stratum supporters of the Soviet regime whose principal characteristic was the fact that, in the work of the Soviets, legislative and executive functions coincided. But their belonging to the state capitalist sector required that they embody political interests of the apparatus in the separation and promotion of the executive branch of authority, in the broadening in the USSR of elements of bourgeois parliamentarianism. And when the Gorbachev-Yakovlev tandem started to introduce the bourgeois system, opening the horizon to semi-legal and illegal systems, an important part of the apparatus discovered it had competitors in those acting in the already existing forms of private property and expressed the will to preserve its privileged status (the privileges of power) by themselves appropriating state property. What happened must not be rejected, because when the restoration is over, the economy will remain pluralist for quite a long time and the role of state capitalism will be even more important.

Thus the possibility of capitalist restoration is determined by the transitional character of the period, by the preservation of a mixed economy in a society that was in the "antechamber of socialism". So long as the socialist system can be deprived of the "commanding heights" the transition period and the danger of restoration remain. Several factors make this possibility a reality. They are to be found, especially, in the social restoration.

Firstly, just after a revolution, there occurs a sort of "accelerated advance", the adoption of measures that rest on no solid economic basis. Let us remember the "Levellers" of the English Revolution and the Jacobins of the French Revolution. In the course of the Soviet Union's 70 years, one can also talk of a chain of "acceleration", whether the too high legal level of socialisation of the economy, the slogans about "broadening the building of communism" and of "developed socialism" or of Khrushchev's attack on the collective farmers' private plots of land.

Secondly, the experience of the preceding period always made itself felt, which led to a "traditionalism" even in innovative actions -- out of habit, in memory of earlier successes brought about by the use of certain social techniques. This "experiment" showed itself in the concentration of power in the hands of one man to reach the level of a personality cult (leaving aside other aspects and beginnings of this complex phenomenon) as well as in the use of war-time methods of mobilisation in peace time, etc.

Thirdly, the fits and starts of the economic system, the elements of crisis. In the USSR they showed themselves in a lowering of the rate of growth of social production at the start of the 80s, in the flagrant lack of balance between the amount of money and the amount of goods at the turn of the 1980s to 1990s, in the serious technological backwardness in relation to the scientific and technological revolution.

Fourthly, restoration is often preceded by war. The particularity of the restoration of capitalism is that the war was exceptionally long and hard, even if it was "cold". Moreover, the Soviet system was also greatly weakened by the participation of its troops in the armed conflict in Afghanistan.

However, all these factors were only the beginnings which made possible the restoration of capitalism. That transformation process became a reality through the action of a "subjective factor" that can be broken down as follows:

- the weakening of the "traditional" vanguard role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the country's life

- the decomposition of society into social strata, including within the CPSU itself, reaching a critical level for the Soviet regime

- the too self-confident indulgence of the sincere supporters of socialism, which allowed a global offensive against the existing political and economic system, against the traditional Soviet values, including attacks on V.I. Lenin.

- the degeneration of the "revolutionary" power which led to its political betrayal. (...)

In the restoration process it is the state that finds itself in a vanguard position. It does not act like a superstructure on an already established base but as a means of stimulating the regression which the wholesale trading system needs so as to become the base. We are thus faced with a unique situation: the functional relations between base and superstructure are reversed -- it is the political that determines the economic. Even Choubais has recognised that privatisation has, so far, been carried out for political rather than economic reasons. (...)

*********************

Endnotes

1- For example:

"Only the development of state capitalism, only the painstaking establishment of accounting and control, only the strictest organization and labour discipline, will lead us to socialism....

"I told every workers' delegation with which I had to deal when they came to me and complained that their factory was at a standstill: you would like your factory to be confiscated. Very well, we have blank forms for a decree ready, they can be signed in a minute ... But tell us: have you learnt how to take over production and have you calculated what you will produce? Do you know the connection between what you are producing and the Russian and international market? Whereupon it turns out that they have not learnt this yet;...

"The situation is best among those workers who are carrying out this state capitalism: among the tanners and in the textile and sugar industries, because they have a sober, proletarian knowledge of their industry and they want to preserve it and make it more powerful -- because in that lies the greatest socialism. They say: I can't cope with this just yet; I shall put in capitalists, giving them one-third of the posts, and I shall learn from them." (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 27, page 297)

2- Anatoly Borisovich Choubais, "father of Russian privatization" from November 1991 on; today CEO of Russian joint stock company RAO UES (Unified Energy System of Russia).

The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea

2008-08-13T17:27:00.000-05:00

Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998, xxi + 274 pages.

Reviewed by: Geoffrey Reaume

In July, 2001, John Manley, then Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, criticized the Bush administration’s rejection of implementing a ban on the use of germ warfare. This ban is supported by almost all 55 countries at the negotiations in Geneva where diplomats have been trying for years to reinforce the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. The current US position that outside inspections would “put national security and confidential business information at risk” (National Post, July 26, 2001) could have been written 50 years ago. As Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman reveal in their important book, The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea, the United States has never been forthcoming about the history of their involvement in germ warfare.

In 1952, when representatives of North Korea and China made public their claims that the US had used biological warfare (BW) to spread disease during the Korean War, their charges were dismissed by the US and their allies, including Canada, as communist propaganda. Later when captured American flyers made statements that they had, in fact, been involved in the BW campaign, spreading infected insects and animals parts in northwest China and North Korea, these claims were also dismissed by Western officials. After repatriation in 1953, some of the American flyers claimed that they had been forced into making these statements after days of interrogation. The authors make a convincing case that their retractions were, in fact, due to the threat of court martial by US officials who had no desire to be exposed as having employed such odious weapons in an offensive manner rather than as a defensive reprisal measure. With World War II war crimes still a fresh memory, this charge had too many horrific implications. Most importantly, Endicott and Hagerman build up a “long circumstantial trail of corroborative evidence that the United States experimented with biological weapons in Korea… This was too large and too complex an operation, and was possessed of too much inner logic, to have been concocted by the Communist side for propaganda purposes, as some have suggested” (p. 195).

In building their case, the authors provide ample context, including the previously exposed use of Japanese war criminals led by Lieutenant General Shiro Ishii. He and his co-killers in Unit 731 conducted deadly medical experiments on “at least ten thousand prisoners of war” in occupied China (p. 39). In exchange for immunity from prosecution, their knowledge was secretly used by American officials to develop their own BW program. The global political crisis of the second half of the 1940s and early 1950s, is also succinctly discussed as are domestic American political developments in which congressional and military figures sought to comprehend how the US “lost” China in 1949, only to be determined to not “lose” South Korea when war broke out in 1950. By this time, there was burgeoning interest in BW among academic and military circles, especially between 1949-53, as being a less expensive way of killing or immobilizing people and animals than atomic weapons or conventional bombs.

Pharmaceutical business interests, led by George Merck, also pushed for this program, arguing that BW posed no special moral dilemma, while research scientists at Camp Detrick, Maryland, displayed an enthusiastic academic interest in the subject with the publication of over 200 papers in 1949 alone. Clearly there was money to be made in this campaign, as well as geo-political points to hammer home. American Defense Department BW funding expanded from $5.3 million for 1950, to $345 million between 1951-53. As the US became more frustrated with the war in Korea, which had bogged down in stalemate by the second year of the conflict, they resorted to the use of weapons which they hoped would spread sickness and death behind their enemies’ lines, leading to demoralization, defeat and an eventual victory over China and North Korea. The fact that these experiments were used in Korea also indicates the racist nature of a war where Asian lives were expendable in an effort to figure out if BW weapons were “effective”. Beside not wanting to “lose” Korea, the authors note that many top US military and political officials expected a general military showdown between capitalism and communism to be in the offing. Thus, testing these weapons was part of US preparations for World War III. Fortunately, these weapons were not as effective as their users had hoped. But some people did die like Qu, a railway worker, who succumbed after coming into contact with beetles infected with anthrax that were dropped by US aircraft in 1952 near Manjing railway station.

Quick response by health officials in the affected areas helped to prevent epidemics from occurring. Because BW weapons did not aid in ending the conflict, American officials became less enthusiastic about pursuing this program after the Korean War, though research continues to this day, witness the Bush administration’s latest effort to try to keep this matter hidden from prying eyes. It is fortunate that Endicott and Hagerman pried into documents in various countries including the United States, Canada and China, to help to expose a topic that is another aspect of “hidden history” that too few people in the west know about. Canada played a not insignificant part in this history by supporting BW through academic research and colluding in the cover-up. The authors’ discussion of censored, and in some cases, destroyed sources, reveals how much there is to still learn about what happened. This research may be impossible to complete due to missing documents from US Army files, difficulty in gaining access to sensitive archival material in Western countries and China and no access whatsoever to North Korean archives.

While they acknowledge the help provided by Chinese officials, Endicott and Hagerman manage to couch their language about selective access to archival material there with a good deal of diplomatic aplomb. In this respect, it will be apparent to anyone who reads this book that it is written by historians who support the Chinese and North Korean version of events, and the views of Professor Endicott’s late father James Endicott who published a pamphlet in 1952 on this topic. There is nothing wrong with this – historians who claim to be “unbiased” usually are kidding only themselves or simply don’t have anything new to say. This book, however, has a lot to say and deserves a wide audience. Whatever their biases, the authors provide a fair-minded synopsis of views contrary to their own, while also refuting these same arguments with their extensive research. Still, there are times when their partisanship wears thin as in Chapter 7 which is a good contextual chapter on the history of the Korean War, but which is obviously slanted to de-emphasizing North Korean and Chinese defeats and highlighting their victories. (As an aside, there also should have been a follow-up reference to the fact that the leading Chinese general of the war, Peng Dehuai, was later purged for having criticized Mao’s disastrous policies during the “Great Leap Forward” in 1959).

Nevertheless, these points do not mar the overall thrust of their work which is to document, as much as is presently possible, a dark chapter in recent world history where scientific researchers colluded with military and political leaders in enforcing US strategic interests during the early Cold War by developing one of the most vile weapons possible. One bright spot in recent developments to this story is that Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister spoke out publicly to criticize the retrograde US position in 2001. While it would be naïve to expect much independent thinking from the Chrétien government in its relations with the American empire, Manley’s position is nevertheless a hopeful sign that Canada’s stand on BW will take the side of all humanity compared to fifty years ago. Now, if only the Bush administration would listen to their “Canadian friends”, or most of the rest of the world for that matter, these appalling weapons could be eradicated. Endicott and Hagerman’s book should be required reading for everyone involved in the current negotiations on banning germ warfare, especially American officials. But, unfortunately, expecting that to happen is being truly naïve.

[Editor’s note: This review was written in August 2001, i.e., before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S.]

Anarchism versus Communism: Our points of connection and our differences

2008-08-13T17:26:00.000-05:00

Pierre Bibeau
Translated from Le Point communiste, September 2001

The primacy given to the free enterprise market economy, the pompous speeches of the bourgeois class, the ever more invasive advertising, a dead-end future, a dying planet, increasing social inequalities -- here is a whole panoply of reasons which make more and more people want to change the system. Of these, the young are a live and increasingly radicalized force. Voices are being raised, demanding the destruction of this system of obsolete values. But the question is: What should replace it and how? Must we try to reform the system on social-democratic lines (there exist several variants of the recipe)? Can we replace the system with egalitarian and libertarian self-management? What strategy should we adopt?

The left faces various choices, and around these there are, of course, different currents. These include anarchist currents besides us Communists. Some points unite us; at the same time, we also have our differences.

Solidarity and equality

Anti-capitalist anarchist movements of the left, as opposed to other libertarian currents usually associated with right-wing ideas, are obviously closer to us. At the heart of these left-wing anarchist movements solidarity and the principles of equality are predominant. Left-wing anarchists rebel against all forms of authority, advocate self-management and direct democracy, are against all forms of centralized power and defend egalitarian principles for all citizens.

To arrive at the principles of self-management, their paths may differ according to their views. To some, local initiatives of direct democracy represent small popular liberations; they see this as a catalyst to a hypothetical seizure of power by the citizens in a movement that would grow broader and broader. Hence the need to think globally, but act locally. Others don't really seek to enlarge the movement; they see themselves first and foremost as dissidents -- "Ni Dieu, ni Maître", so to speak. [A French saying: "No God, no master".]

Anarcho-syndicalism refers to anarchists who work in unions. In North America, because of the Rand formula, the principle of the "closed shop" and the influence of the big union centrals, anarcho-syndicalists are forced to work within a union structure they most often loathe. In general, they face serious difficulties promoting their ideals and mode of direct action within the unions. In Europe, where there exists free affiliation with a union central, they can more easily be a force there. In North America, the anarchists prefer to work in community movements, where more flexible structures probably correspond better to their values.

Anarcho-communists

Anarcho-communists, as their name indicates, are, by their nature, still closer to us. They want the realization of communism, agree that a revolutionary organization must be created to oust the ruling power, but will not base it on democratic centralism or on the notion of a vanguard party such as the Communists support.

Most of them are at the same time against the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. We share the same revolutionary objective, but the anarcho-communists seem to skip the stage of socialism. Finally, anarcho-communists are generally unity-minded -- and so, like us, favour the union of forces on the left, what we Communists call the united front.

Communists

For its part, the Communist movement is not much more homogenous. Thus, between the extreme Maoist Shining Path in Peru and the rather moderate Communist Party in France there are many differences. In this context, we will limit ourselves to describing what we, the Communist Party of Quebec and of Canada, stand for. The final version of our political program, adopted following an all-Canadian congress last February, will soon be available. [It is now available in English and French.]

Like many others, we believe that the capitalist system is evil, destructive and obsolete. In such a context, it seems to us imperative to build a party that will unite conscious elements of the people for the purpose of co-ordinated struggle. We want to build this party according to the democratic centralist precepts elaborated by Lenin, which is to say according to the concept that directions are determined by the base but implemented starting from the top. This amounts to an "elevator" type of democracy, from bottom to top, and at the same time from top to bottom. There's nothing particularly mystifying in any of this. To some extent the workers' movement functions in that type of way. It's a method which already has in large measure proved to work, despite having often been perverted.

We Communists, seek to unite the working class in alliance with other strata of the people to combat the monopoly bourgeoisie. To do this, we are ready to initiate or join a united front of the left coalition.

Our differences

Anarchists tend to be more hesitant regarding the question of alliances, especially if these concern elections. They most often oppose all electoral participation, even for a tactical purpose; some, still more sectarian, envisage coalitions that work only to mount spectacular actions.

We share with many anarchists an anti-capitalist vision, and we are also in agreement with them on the necessity of abolishing social classes, as well as wages as the means of allocating goods and services. Some points of convergence also appear as regards the eventual demise of the State and its replacement by a direct citizens' democracy.

On the other hand, though, and in opposition to anarchists, we don't think that the elimination of the State will be possible immediately after taking power. Our viewpoint is that it will be necessary for some short or long period after taking power to maintain some form of government because the bourgeoisie will necessarily seek to regain power in order to stop the revolution. This new State, built on the remains and vestiges of the old State, must at the same time be radically different from the old one. It will need as well to find the means of preventing the bourgeoisie from taking back control of the situation.

The Communists speak of this period as being, of necessity, the "dictatorship of the proletariat", as opposed to the present dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The expression is not new, and it is often even now poorly understood. Contrary to what many people believe, the Communists are not so much in favour of more State, but aim instead to create, at the same time as the establishment of the "dictatorship of the proletariat", a citizens' takeover of power which, in its real operation will eventually facilitate the progressive elimination of the State. Obviously, various conditions will slow or speed this process, depending on the situation.

On the role of the workers' movement

We cannot agree either with the anarchists who in a leftist way flatly reject the role of the workers' movement in these struggles on the sole ground that the current upper levels of certain unions have taken the path of class collaboration.

Another difference: we value the work of education and large-scale mobilization far more than the spectacular actions which are in general the trademark of different anarchist tendencies. On this point, we are very clearly against terrorism, as much when it comes to the underlying ideology as the strategies associated with it.

Overall, despite our differences, we believe it is nonetheless important to maintain contact with the anarchists of the left. They should be recognized, respected and considered as allies in the struggle against capital. At the last congress of the PCQ we invited the anarchist group Émile Henry to speak to the delegates. It is not customary for the Communist movement to act in this way but we did it; this shows the route we want to take.

It is also good to get criticism (given in a respectful way, of course) and to exchange ideas. Take for example the place of the individual in society; anarchists assign a manifest primacy to the individual, while the Communists give collective needs priority over individual needs. In the past we had a tendency to greatly minimize the latter, saying that they would be met through the satisfaction of collective needs. Real life, in the countries of the East among others, shows us that this transfer from the collective to the individual is not carried out automatically or completely. Certain deficiencies have to be corrected.

CHINA. An ideological debate : classes, party and strategy

2008-08-13T17:25:00.000-05:00

Patrick Theuret

On the occasion of the 80th anniversary[1] of the creation of the Communist Party of China (CPC), its General Secretary; Jiang Zemin, make a speech that has since become the most commented of texts in China, in view of the perspective of calling of the 16th Congress[2]. This speech was rapidly summarised as laying out the theory of `three represents', itself reduced to the proposal of admitting capitalists into the Communist Party of China.

Strictly speaking, the thesis put forward in this speech says that the principle of `three represents', whereby the CPC must represent at the same time the "advanced productive forces, advanced culture and the broad masses of the people" was anterior[3] to this, but this speech assumed unprecedented importance, giving it a theoretical status,[4] subsequently strengthened by the proposal to include it in the Communist Party's constitution. Similarly, the theory, as it is presented, (we have published, as an appendix, broad extracts of it) cannot just be reduced to that one proposal regarding party membership, a proposal that itself aims at a whole series of new strata, of which the capitalists are just one component. But, it is clear, this is the component that is by far the most sensitive, especially if its presence is raised, in one way or another, to the level of a statutory principle. Thus it is very logical that it has aroused a real debate in China, of which we are reporting here some key factors and a contextual background, even if all its outlines are not fully known.

Capitalists in the Communist Party?

To be exact, the question of admitting capitalists into the CPC is raised, at this time, less on the practical and quantitative level as on the theoretical and qualitative level. In fact, bearing in mind the evolution of contemporary China, and that the Chinese elite are members of the Party, some capitalists are already members, essentially because they were already members before changing their social status[5]. Finally, the Chinese definition differs from that of the capitalist world. It is a matter of contractors and owner-managers, essentially managing firms with mixed public/private capital, often public companies whose capital has been opened to private investment. Moreover, their numbers are slight, compared to the overall membership.[6]

The issue being debated is of quite a different scope. It refers to the fundamental nature of the Party. The proposal by Chairman Jiang Zemin was not limited to noting and legitimising the membership of individual capitalists to the CPC, but aimed at recognising the place of this layer of the population in the party and, consequently, at amending the Party constitution which, hitherto, stipulated that the "Communist Party of China is the vanguard of the working class".

The question which is thus raised is, indeed, to know whether this proposal alters the communist, class nature of the party or whether it is a simple adaptation to the contemporary evolution of a Chinese society in full phase of development. In other words, is China in the process of toppling over into capitalism or simply adapting itself to its present stage of `market socialism[7].

This debate has to be assessed with regard to the economic evolution of China, where the private sector has considerably grown, representing 30% of the GNP in 2001 as against 70% for the public sector (37% State, 33% cooperative). In 2001 there were 2 million private firms employing 27.13 million workers[8], that is 3.7 of the 730 million Chinese workers[9].

A break-away or continuity?

The official thesis, relayed by the Chinese media, is categorically : there is faithfulness and adaptation and not a break-away or even the beginnings of one. Such an interpretation is in keeping, at least to the letter, of the speech. Thus theoretician Li Zhongje, expressing his view on the theory as a whole calls for "firmly grasping the relationship that links the `Three Represents' thinking with Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory and preventing any tendencies from separating the two or having them go against each other. In addressing Marxist scientific approach, Deng Ziaoping once used two phrases: one is `old ancestors' and the other is "saying new things" That is, we cannot abandon the old materials old Marxist ancestors, but we should come up with something new in the light of the development of the times". After several quotations showing the `continuous line' of the CPC in its approach while identifying the new elements of the context, he states: "We should oppose `left-leaning' erroneous ideas on denying the `Three Represents' important thinking, with their rigid and dogmatic approach with no regard to changes in historical and objective conditions, and we should oppose right-leaning erroneous tendencies of denying basic Marxist tenets and four cardinal principles[10] in the name of supporting the banner of the `Three Represents'."[11]

In the same spirit, on the question of admitting new members "Li Liangdong, head of the political and judicial Department of the Central Party School pointed out: A political party's being the vanguard of a class is a determined by its guiding principle, fighting goals and value. It is not simply determined by the background of its members. We have no reason to exclude advanced elements of other social strata from membership of our party, including advanced elements of private business operators. ... We mean the admission of advanced elements, not all the people ... If they are not advanced elements, they will not be admitted into the party. Therefore, we cannot simply say the CPC is developing into `a party of the entire people'[12]. A considerable number of principal leaders of our party were from families of the exploiting class. We cannot say the CPC at that time was not the vanguard of the working class. A person's background cannot be used to judge the person's total quality"[13].

Internal criticisms

This position arouses, schematically speaking, two types of criticism, one, said to be of the Right, allegedly sees, in this proposal, an open road leading, ultimately, to a real breach with socialism while another, of the Left, is hostile to taking the least risk of going in this direction.

Thus "some scholars advocate changing the party's constitution and its name to cement the new identity. Beijing University professor; Chen Yingyuar, has even recommended that Mr. Jiang's Three Represents should replace Deng Xiaoping's four Cardinal Principles in the constitution. This would formally dispense with the adherence to Marxism Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, the socialist road and the dictatorship of the proletariat"[14].

In fact, during this period it is rather the other criticism that has been talked about and which weighs more in the debate, essentially because it reflects a can partly canalise the social discontents generated by the changes (rejection of the new rich and of corruption, unemployment) also relayed in intellectual circles and amongst the youth by the rise of an anti-globalist `New Left', very `red' and imbued with experiences from the capitalist countries[15].

The prestigious US Left review, Monthly Review has, for example, devoted a special feature to their theses[16]. The review published, in particular, the letter of 14 former leaders (extracts of this in an appendix here). These leaders call to question, in harsh terms, the internal democratic legitimacy of Jiang Zemin's theory and his orientation, which they accuse of being a prelude to an abandon similar to that which took place in the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries.

This trend has been the subject of considerable international attention : "Leftists or ultra-conservatives have, since early summer; been circulating yet another "10,000 character petition", a reference to neo-Maoist tracts lambasting the leadership for going down the capitalist road. The circular said corruption was the inevitable result of Beijing abandoning orthodox socialism and allowing private and foreign capital to flourish. The leftists are calling for a political struggle to rid the party of the `tail of capitalism'[17]." Several small newspapers have echoed these positions in China.

The impact of this criticism is hard to evaluate, not only as an open opposition but, especially, in the influence it has in those sectors integrated into the official line, up to the top. It nevertheless seems sufficiently strong to affect an official international event. Thus, on the occasion of an interview of a foreign Communist leader, Guennadi Ziuganov, Chairman of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, two questions were asked inviting him to express his views on the question[18]. The two questions raised, on the one hand, the point that "within our party we have to face a difficulty resulting from the resistance of left forces. These, for example, have declared their opposition to the entry into the party of new social strata, beginning with capitalists and important «contractors» and on the other hand that "our old `left' party activists are speaking of a betrayal of the previous policy and are putting forward strong criticism". The recognition of a debate that is not totally new.

Three major trends can be observed within the CPC, all of which Al Sargis, who has drawn a detailed picture of this, places, schematically, in the continuity of the post-Mao `reformers': Left ('conservatives'), Right ('liberals') and Centre (`moderates'). They differ; primarily, over the scope, depth, pace and direction of economic and political reform. To simplify, the left wants economic reforms that stress planning over the market but rejects political reforms like `bourgeois liberalisation'; the right wants economic reforms that emphasise the market, with the state playing at best, a supplementary role and political reform in which the legislature plays the major governing role; the centre opts for economic reform that stresses both market and co-equal regulatory mechanisms but is content with the status quo political structure".[19]

A compromise?

This debate seems to have had repercussions at the top of the CPC and given rise to a compromise with a certain Left criticism. Some sources state, for example, that during the Central Committee meeting of 24/26 September 2001, the admission of capitalists was strongly opposed and even partly refused on the basis of a consensus that is said to have been established at Minzhu Shenghuohui where, at the beginning of September, most of the members of the Political Bureau met together with "three high brow senior elders, Qiao Shi, Song Ping and Lui Huaqing"[20]. And when Chairman Jiang Zemin made the traditional speech to the Cadres School[21] that precedes the holding of every congress, since the text distributed made no reference to sensitive questions observers saw in this a confirmation of this new internal equilibrium.

During the first half of 2002, which saw the election of 2,120 delegates to Congress, certain specialists also sought to follow the trends shown in the election. According to an American source, for example, "Chinese President Jiang Zemin has appealed for unity within the Communist Party by allowing several conservative officials to hang onto their positions. The reshuffle of leadership in 31 provinces and directly administered cities, which began last year; is coming to an end. The majority of party bosses of provinces have been re-appointed or offered similar positions in other regions. Several leftist or quasi-Maoist cadres who have opposed Jiang's effort to allow businessmen to join the party have been given new terms".[22]

A certain international press has preferred to see, over and above the theoretical debate and the different concrete political orientations to which they could lead, only a quarrel for succession and prestige between Jiang Zemin; the No.1 man, and Hu Jintao, the future No.1 man, already projected during the Deng Xiao Ping period as being respectively the leaders of the third and fourth generation[23] and, on the other hand, a question of prestige attached to whether or not the theoretical contribution of some leader or other had been formalised or not.[24].

The 16th Congress

All these and many others were down to be dealt with at the Congress itself (8 - 14 November 2002). On the eve of the Congress, an official theoretical article came out specifying the orientation chosen. Making the debate on the admission to party membership of `entrepreneurs' that some, at that time, considered `workers' and others `exploiters', a debate which, the article said, was around different interpretations of the `marxist theory of value'. It is the first interpretation which has been accepted.[25]

The introductory report by Jiang Zemin confirmed the place assumed of the `three represents' theory. It is widely dealt with at the beginning and the end or the report. The beginning is devoted to past experience and to the ideological orientation outlined : "the main theme of the Congress is to hold high the great banner of Deng Xiao Ping Theory comprehensively to implement the important thinking of the three represents". The thesis is presented as a faithful and creative contribution to marxism in an international context marked by the Chinese decision to continue, under specific forms, the building of socialism after its collapse in the ex-USSR and Eastern Europe.

The question of `entrepreneurs' is treated in this context as a social enrichment, without reference to Party membership[26]. The principles raised are those of respecting the diversity of forms of labour and of the guarantee of the different personal contributions as well as the strengthening of national unity.[27]

It is at the end of the speech that the link is established wit~h membership of the Party, and that in the following manner the Party must, said Jiang Zemin, ensure that it remains the "vanguard of the Chinese working class, the Chinese people and the Chinese Nation ... and that it always represents the development trend of China's advanced productive forces, the orientation of China's advanced culture and the fundamental interest of the majority of the Chinese people". Finally, after recalling the major communist principles, Jiang Zemin could conclude "We should absorb into our party advanced elements of social strata who accept the party's programme and constitution, work for the realisation of the party's line and programme conscientiously and meet the qualifications of the party membership following a long period of testing. In this way, we can improve the influence and rallying force of the party in society at large."[28]

The doors are open, but perhaps not as widely as some expected. The way it is applied will show what importance should be given to the political and ideological pre-requisites for membership and to the "long probationary period'.[29] Is that also the result of the compromise?

As always, in these congresses, there was a lot of attention paid to the choice of people as a means of anticipating tendencies and the way they would be applied. The core of the leadership (the Permanent Committee of the Political Bureau) consists of nine leaders, eight of whom are new, round the new General Secretary Hu Jintao, all of whom are graduate engineers. Jiang Zemin remains, for his part, Chairman of the Central Military Commission[30], as had Deng Xiao Ping before him.

The period prior to Congress had been the occasion of much speculation, particularly by international experts. One of them announced[31], on the eve of the election of the Central Committee, the consolidation of the `era of capitalists' with the designation of two of them onto the 350 strong Central Committee, naming them as Zhang Ruimin and Lui Chanzi, while adding that they "are not exactly private entrepreneurs as they run companies that are partly government owned (i.e. the state holds the majority of the shares)" In fact, only the first was elected, and as a deputy member.[32] Moreover others had predicted[33] the rise to the position of No.2 of Li Ruihan, considered to be the leader of the moderate wing, and hitherto in No.4 position. He was not even elected to the Central Committee. Another result of the compromise? Another sign, the day after the Congress the CNN expert announced the nomination of Zhang Deijang as Party head in Guangdong (Canton) province. A symbol of the new Chinese economy, with 30 of the foreign investments in China, this province of 70 million inhabitants (less than 5% of the total) produces 10% of China's GNP and is 1st province, economically. Zhang Deijang, a member of the Political Bureau, is described as a "relatively conservative cadre" who had particularly been noted early in 2001 by "an article in a conservative theoretical journal raising doubts about the political and moral rectitude of private businessmen"[34].

The decision to admit entrepreneurs, capitalist or not, at present taken at the highest level, is continuing to fuel debates of interpretation that it is not possible to quote exhaustively. Starting with the Chinese internal debates[35], the majority agree on a double point in common : the priority given to economic development focuses attention on the entrepreneurs with a double objective of social and national cohesion. The first is aimed at fully legitimising the contribution of these `workers/exploiters' who must accompany the building of the `first phase of socialism' over a long term. They represent both a contribution and a danger. If the contribution is dominant, the Chinese Communists have two schematically opposed responses possible : to include the entrepreneurs in order to `control' them or to exclude them to avoid their "controlling" the Party. The first is said to be the unofficial thesis (positively) "the idea is to expand the Party's support base to include private entrepreneurs, so that the party can maintain control'[36] and of certain opponents (negatively) : Bao Tong, a dissident expelled in 1989 warns the West against too easy hopes : "placed under wardship of an absolute power; the red capitalists cannot become a driving force for political reform".[37]

The second thesis would be that of the eventual control of the CPC by capitalists. Here, too, we can find two points of view, different in their objectives but close in their analysis. On the one hand is the criticism of the Left inside the CPC which (negatively) proposes to direct the capitalists towards the small parties maintained by the authorities, in harmony with the CPC[38], so as to avoid their `polluting' it. This is also that of the majority of the Western press that welcomes the Chinese change of direction as confirming and announcing the gradual and full integration of China, a message intended rather for world public opinion, to signal that, of course, there is no longer any place for socialism on earth, under whatever form, rather than to the inner circles of political and economic decision makers.

Other, less sensationalist, foreign commentators, using the same basic interpretation, place the social and political issues of the `new strata' not so much in the arrival of a few `capitalists' but in the irruption of `middle strata'[39]. Certainly this notion is disputed. Is the criteria of income enough to define them? Are they politically autonomous? According to different criteria, this group could represent either 1% of the population, 5 to 7% or even, in some views, 200 million individuals. But there is certainly here some substance to reinforce the fears, or hopes, of the holders of different theses on the socio-political evolution of China.[40]

The other dimension is national. The calls to the entrepreneurs are also directed at all Chinese, including the diaspora, at all Chinese communities, including those who have proved themselves under capitalism. This is the theory of the double vanguard: "The Communist Party is the vanguard of the Chinese nation and the working class". It reinforces abroad, especially in the United States, the spectre of the arrival on the scene of an Asiatic great power, tomorrow's competitor. And that is indeed China's objective which, after it increased its GNP eightfold since 1978, plans to increase it fourfold again between now and 2020.

The international stakes

Regarding the future of the Communist Party of China, the leading[41] force of the second world power, the most serious candidate, for the moment, for challenging US hegemony in the 21st century, whatever the choice of ideas or leaders, the issues at stake have an impact that is not merely Chinese but world-wide. Since the forms adopted by the cold war in the 20th century are considered out-dated, China is working in the perspective of a lasting peace, though with increasing caution[42]. Short and medium term competition has been replaced by a long term struggle at which everyone is working as of now. It now assumes specific forms, in particular setting aside direct confrontation, by one side or the other, in favour of some form of co-operation.[43]

What then is the long-term strategy of the United States? According to Zbignew Brzezinski, considered by some as a world authority: "for America the principle strategic stake is Eurasia". However "the rhythm of economic growth and the total of foreign investments -- both amongst the highest in the world -- will have allowed China, in the next twenty years, to become a world power of the same scope, or nearly; as the United States or Europe... We will then be seeing the emergence of a Greater China, strengthened by the return of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, if the latter submits politically; it will not only be the dominant State in the Far East but also a first rate global power"[44].

A French geopolitical specialist, responsible for the training of armed forces cadres, explains, for his part : "It is clear to see that China is the principal object of their obsession. In reassembling all the pieces of the puzzle, it is notable that the global strategy in which the United States is engaged is to block the emergence of this giant"[45].

China, he writes "is 1.4 billion people. This enormous mass is still sheltered from world capitalism. The United States want to break down China's walls, as it did in 1945 with Western Europe, by setting up all the instruments of free trade". Making the connection with recent events (Afghanistan, Iraq) he adds "what are the principle axes of this American strategy? The first is to control the supplies of fuel and power for Asiatic growth. ... For the United States, having the control of this region is owning Asia's fuel pump, and consequently China's power requirements. The second American axis is to form a tight network of alliances round China. In the same way as the United States bottled up Soviet Russia during the cold war".

From a national point of view, this China, by its very size, is perceived as a danger, because it cannot be digested by the West. From the political and ideological point of view, this party, which, despite its marked evolution, has not renounced its identity even eleven years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is also the most flagrantly bad example of the non-disappearance of communists from the face of the earth -- and not a water-tight communism, like the one that had held out for 70 years of conflict with capitalism, but a new version that interpenetrates with the dominant world.

It is true that this inter-penetration is perceived in the light of the simultaneity, at the end of the 20th century, of the advances of a certain capitalism in China with the retreat of certain values inspired by socialism in the capitalist countries (welfare state) -- a coincidence that strengthened, throughout the world, a feeling of a process of one way homogeneity, encouraged by the theses of `globalisation'. What would be the situation in another phase, with an anti-capitalist/anti-globalisation movement reversing, even if only partially, the balance within the capitalist world? What new synthesis might result on a world scale if the socialist dimensions present in both these worlds were to meet? Who can measure, today, the political and ideological impact that China could have, in such a context. An impact not limited to the Third World, though principally there, -- where China might well symbolise escape from under-development through `market socialism' -- with at its head a party claiming to embody a communism defeated in the 20th century, for which many ideologists had seen to have no place in the following century.

(Reprinted from International Correspondence, issue 5, 2003.

`Three represents'

Speech by Jiang Zemin on the 80th anniversary of the CPC

I. Achievements and basic experience of the Communist Party of China in the 80-year struggle

The speech begins with a historical recall. "The torrential anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle of the people of all ethnic groups of China" in the context of "the tempestuous movement of the proletarian revolution in the world". It mentions the main stages from 1840 to the "1911 Revolution led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, which overthrew the autocratic monarchy". After the "Odober Revolution of Russia" and the "May 4 movement of China", it is "in 1921, that the Communist Party of China emerged just as the times called in the process of applying Marxism-Leninism in the Chinese workers' movement," and that "invigorating the Chinese nation had fallen upon the shoulders". At that time, he recalls "the country became impoverished and weak and the people lived in hunger and cold" Going through the different stages of the Chinese Revolution until the building of the "socialist system" he adds that "even in a situation where world socialism experienced serious twists and turns and domestic and foreign situations changed drastically, our Party steadfastly stood its ground like a firm rock in midstream, and socialism in China has displayed its vigour and vitality." "China is an ancient country with a civilisation of more than five thousand years" and has realised" a great leap from centuries-old feudalistic autocratic politics to people's democratic politics. Its annual gross domestic product (GDP) has increased by 56 times since the founding of New China." He adds: "Upholding the guiding role of Marxism, we have educated the people in patriotism, collectivism and socialism and made vigorous efforts to promote progress in socialist culture and ideology."

He enjoys the "successful return of Hong Kong and Macao to the motherland" and affirms that "the People's Liberation Army led by our Party is the staunch pillar of the people's democratic dictatorship, a great wall of steel in defence of the motherland and an important force in socialist construction."... "We have thoroughly ended the history of humiliating diplomacy" and "resolutely opposed the hegemonies and power politics with the strong domineering over the weak".

Jiang Zemin then turns himself towards the future. To maintain "the flesh-and-blood ties with the masses of the people, ... we must always consciously strengthen and improve Party building, continuously enhance the creativity, rallying power and combat capability of the Party, and always maintain the vigour and vitality of the Party ...

II. Correctly understand and fulfil the requirements of the `three Represents' in an all-round way

In the second part of his speech President Jiang Zemin makes precise the conditions to continue the trajectory presenting his famous theory of three represents beginning by : "representative of the requirements of the development of China's advanced productive forces" means that the "Party's theory line, programme, principles, policies and all work are in line with the law governing the development of the productive forces, make them reflect what is required in promoting the release and development of social productive forces,... and the living standards of the people improve steadily."

"Productive forces are the most dynamic and the most revolutionary factor." They are "the ultimate decisive force of social development. The contradictions between productive forces and the relations of production and between economic base and superstructure constitute the basic social contradiction.

The movement of this basic contradiction determines the direction of the changes in the nature of society and the direction of social, economic, political and cultural development. The fundamental difference between socialism and capitalism lies in the difference between their relations of production and superstructures." Amongst those productive forces "man is the most decisive factor" and "the Chinese working class, including intellectuals, is the basic force that pushes the advanced productive forces forward in China. The peasant class and other labouring people, closely united with the working class". This social core stimulates the whole economic system characterised in the following way : "a basic economic system with public ownership as the main body and the common development of multiple sectors; we must persist in and improve the socialist market system; we must hold on to and improve the multiple ways of distribution with the distribution `to each according to work done' as the main distribution modality,' we must continue to improve our opening-up programme; we must hold on to and improve the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on worker-peasant alliance; we must hold on to and improve the people's congress system and multi-party cooperation and political consultation led by the Communist Party and the system of regional autonomy of minority nationalities. ...

Jiang Zemin then tackles the second represent. "To make our Party forever represent the orientation of the development of China's advanced culture" all its work must "reflect the requirements of the national scientific and popular socialist culture that develops toward modernisation, the world and the future, enable them to upgrade the ideological and ethical qualities and scientific and cultural qualities of the whole nation and to provide the motive power and support culturally and intellectually."... "Over the past 80 years, our Party has held high the marching banner of China's advanced culture" It has "cleaned up the old decadent and dying culture which was left over from the old society and infiltrated into China from abroad." And "cadres and masses have been emancipated and encouraged ideologically and mentally, and a correct guiding ideology and a common ideal have taken shape among the whole Party and the people," while consolidating "the guiding status of Marxism."...

"We should advocate the ideology of patriotism, collectivism and socialism among all people, combat and resist money-worship, hedonism, ultra-egoism and other decadent ideas,... there still exist some backward cultures in society that have features of superstition, ignorance, decadence and vulgarity, and even some decadent cultures exist that corrode people's mental world and jeopardise the socialist cause."

Finally Jiang Zemin exposes the third represent; the one of "taking the fundamental interests of the people as the starting point and purpose." and "our party has always adhered to the principle of putting the interests of the people above everything else. Apart from the interests of the overwhelming majority of the people, the Party does not have any special interests of its own."

To sum up "representing the requirements of the development trend of China's advanced productive forces, representing the orientation of China's advanced culture and representing the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people are interrelated and interact and constitute an integral whole."...

"The requirements of the `Three Represents' are the basic requirements for our Party to maintain its advanced nature and always remain the strong leading core in building socialism with Chinese characteristics. It is in conformity with the Party's upholding of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory, adherence to its nature of being the vanguard of the working class, and its purpose of serving the people wholeheartedly."...

III. To strengthen and improve the Party building in accordance with the requirements of the `Three Represents'

Jiang Zemin stresses the point to show the consequences in the life and doctrine of the Communist Party of China of these three represents recalling that "we must always uphold the basic tenets of Marxism." But "in terms of theory, Marxism develops with the times. If we dogmatically cling to some individual theses and specific programs of action formulated for a special situation by authors of Marxist classics in the specific historical conditions in spite of the changes in historical conditions and present realities, then we will have difficulty in forging ahead smoothly and we may even make mistakes because our thinking is divorced from reality. That is one reason why we have remained opposed to dogmatism toward the theory of Marxism'. To meet the requirements of the `three Represents' "we must uphold the Party's nature of being the vanguard of the working class", because "the Chinese working class has always been the basic force for promoting the advanced productive forces in China. Our Party must remain the vanguard of the working class and unswervingly and wholeheartedly rely on the working class."

But "since China adopted the policy of reform and opening up, the composition of China's social strata has changed to some extent. There are, among others, entrepreneurs and technical personnel employed by scientific and technical enterprises of the non-public sector; managerial and technical staff employed by foreign-funded enterprises, the self-employed, private entrepreneurs employees in intermediaries and freelance professionals ... Under the guidance of the Party's line, principles and policies, most of these people in the new social strata have contributed to the development of productive forces and other undertakings in a socialist society through honest labour and work or lawful business operation....

"To build socialism with Chinese characteristics is a great and arduous cause. It calls for the worthy people from all sectors who are loyal to the motherland and socialism to take action and lead other people in pushing forward this cause. The main criteria to admit a person into the Party are whether he or she works wholeheartedly for the implementation of the Party's line and programme and meets the requirements for the Party membership. The basic components and backbone of the Party are those from workers, farmers, intellectuals, servicemen and cadres. At the same time, it is also necessary to accept those outstanding elements from other sectors of the society who have subscribed to the Party's programme and constitution, worked for the Party's line and programme wholeheartedly, and proved to meet the requirements for the Party membership through a long period of tests. (...) "The conditions we are faced with are quite different from those the founders of Marxism were faced with and studied." The present situation is characterised by economic development, our people will live a better life and their personal property will increase gradually. In view of this, it is not advisable to judge a person's political integrity simply by whether one owns property and how much property he or she owns. But rather, we should judge him or her mainly by his or her political awareness, moral integrity and performance, by how he or she has acquired the property, and how it has be disposed of and used, and by his or her actual contribution to the cause of building socialism with Chinese characteristics.

To meet the requirements of the `Three Represents,' we must adhere to democratic centralism, establish and improve the scientific leadership system and working mechanism, give full scope to inner-Party democracy, resolutely safeguard the centralism and unity of the Party, and maintain and continue to enhance its vitality.

At the same time we must: "give full play to the initiative and creativity of the Party members and Party organisations at all levels ... Effective mechanisms should be set up to make sure that all ideas and suggestions of Party members at the grass-roots level or in Party organisations at a lower level can promptly reach those at a higher level. All the major policy decisions of a Party committee must be made through discussions by the committee and nobody should be allowed to have the final say alone."

We must "resolutely resist the impact of Western political models such as the multi-party system or separation of powers among the executive, legislative and judicial branches. We should firmly avoid making arbitrary decisions and taking peremptory actions in violation of democratic centralism on the one hand, and weak and incompetent leadership on the other..". Whereas "the principle of fostering a contingent of more revolutionary, younger, better educated and professionally more competent cadres. We should have a deeper understanding of the loss of political power by some Communist parties in the world that had long been ruling parties and learn a lesson from them. The longer the Party is in power; the more necessary it is for the Party to strengthen self-improvement and the stricter it should be with its members and cadres.... At present, special attention should be paid to overcoming the state of lethargy and seeking no progress, doing away with the grave alienation from the people and standing firmly against the unhealthy tendency of formalism and bureaucracy." ... The power in our hands is given by the people. Cadres at all levels are public servants of the people and must be subjected to the supervision by the people and the law...

All Party members, the leading cadres in particular, must always be clean, honest and just. They must be able to withstand the test of reform, opening up and being in power as well as the test of power, money and badger games. The Party does not allow any hideout for corrupt elements within the Party. ... For this, it is imperative to constantly strengthen and improve the Party building and temper all Party members into firm Communists."

IV. Continue to strive for the fulfilment of the basic line and historic mission of the Party

"We firmly believe in the basic Marxist tenet that human society will inevitably move towards communism. Communism can only be realised on the basis of a fully developed and highly advanced socialist society. ..." So "All comrades in the Party should set up a lofty communist ideal. To care about immediate interests only while forgetting the lofty ideal will result in the loss of direction of progress.". Even if "the Party's basic line" is to "concentrate on economic development".

Jiang Zemin ends his speech by an analysis of the international situation. "The world needs peace. ... This is the trend of our times.". The Chinese policy is based on the "Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence... and "under the principles of independence, total equality, mutual respect and non-interference in each other's internal affairs, conduct extensive exchanges and strengthen cooperation with all political parties and organisations in the world and further promote friendship between the peoples and development of relations between states." Within this framework the Chinese leader warns: "Diversity of the world is a reality that should be recognised. Different civilisations and social systems should enjoy long-term coexistence and draw upon and benefit from each other in the process of competition and comparison and achieve common development while seeking common ground and shelving differences...

Long live our great motherland!

Long live the great Chinese people!

Long live the great Communist Party of China!"

Jiang Zemin in Der Spiegel[46]

... In recent years private companies, stock exchanges and a new middle class have developed -- can China even be described as a socialist country any more?

We still have a clear solution: we are building a Chinese-style socialist land. We continue to be guided by Marxism-Leninism, but are adapting it to our concrete conditions. Marx developed his theories well over 100 years ago in Europe -- how could he have imagined the conditions in our country?...

Is it conceivable that the CP itself may change in the future and, for example, develop into a party based on the social democratic model?

Whether today or in the future: we will never change the name of China's Communist Party. In my youth I fought actively for the revolution, but at that time my idea of communism was rather superficial and simple. A great deal of time is needed in order to realise the great goal. There has been Confucianism for 78 generations. For the establishment of socialism we need at least a couple of dozen generations. We are still only at the beginning.

You have always spoken out against a multiparty system and the sharing of power. Don't people who are allowed to freely pursue business relatively need political rights and independent courts?

The world is characterised by variety. After all, it has long since been shown that it can rapidly lead to social upheavals when developing nations copy the political systems of other countries without regard for the national conditions. Please remember that social stability is in the basic interest not only of the Chinese people. Asia and the whole world profit from it. It is easy to imagine what it would mean if there was unrest in China.

Germans are, on the one hand, fascinated by the rapid development in China. At the same time, many are horrified because many opposition and religious people still are in jail or in a camp.

It is not true at all that opposition people and religious believers are thrown into jail. Although I am an atheist, I am very interested in religion; I have read the Bible, the Koran and Buddhist Sutras. The Chinese constitution guarantees all citizens freedom of religion. The number of religious people is more than 100 million. But one thing is definite: in a nation based on law such as China, everyone, no matter whether he is religious or not, must follow the law. If someone is sentenced then it is only because he has violated laws and not because he believes in a religion of some kind.

Hu Jintao:

"plain living and hard struggle"[47]

"It is of great significance to, in light of the new reality, restudy the important speech made by Comrade Mao Zedong at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh CPC Committee" in 1949. Here, I would like to read the whole passage of the thesis. Comrade Mao Zedong pointed out penetratingly: "We shall soon score victory across the country. This victory will break through the battle line of imperialism in the east and will be of great international significance. ... The bourgeoisie doubts our ability to carry out construction. The imperialists expect that eventually we will beg them for subsistence. With victory, certain moods may grow within the party -- arrogance, the airs of a self-styled hero, inertia and unwillingness to make progress, love of pleasure and distaste for continued hard living. With victory, the people will be grateful to us and the bourgeoisie will come forward to flatter us. It has been proved that the enemy cannot conquer us by force of arms. However, the flattery of the bourgeoisie may conquer the weak-willed in our ranks. There may be some communists, who were not conquered by enemies with guns and were worthy of the name of heroes for standing up to these enemies, but who will be unable to withstand sugar-coated bullets, and they will be defeated by sugar-coated bullets. The Chinese revolution is great, but the road after the revolution will be longer, the work greater and more arduous. This must be made clear now in the party, Comrades must be helped to remain modest, prudent and free from arrogance and rashness in their style of work. Comrades must be helped to preserve the style of plain living and hard struggle. ".... This extract from the thesis put forward by Comrade Mao Zedong is very important. In particular, two essential ideas in it have the significance of giving long-term guidance. The first is that before great achievements, some comrades within the party may become arrogant, engender the love of pleasure, and be reluctant to do any more arduous work. ... The second is that no matter what great achievements our party may attain, we must practice plain living and hard struggle over a long time to come, always uphold the true qualities and purposes of a Marxist political party, and continuously protect and realise the fundamental interests of the greatest majority of the people. Only in this way will our party be able to always maintain its flesh-and-blood relationship with the people, always win the support of the broad masses of the people, and always be in an invincible position.

[1]. The Communist Party of China was created on 1 July 1921 in Shanghai by 12 delegates (including Mao Zedong) representing 70 members.

[2]. Nine have taken place since the birth of the People's Republic. They have only been held regularly since 1977 once every five years.

[3]. An article in the Asia Times of 23 October 2001 places its origin in a speech by Jiang Zemin back in 25 February 2000. The object then, according to the author of the article, was to face up to a «chaotic» situation in which the role of the CPC was being challenged. The President, being on a visit to a difficult region, had thus explained it "Summarising the more than 70 years' history of our party an important conclusion can be reached, that is, our party won the support of the people because, throughout the historical stages of revolution, construction and reforms, our party has always represented (1) the development demands of China's advanced productivity, (2) the forward direction of China's advanced civilization (3) the fundamental interest of China's broadest populace". There was, then, no question about the criteria for membership of the party. More recently, an article in China Daily of 7 November 2000 confirms this origin but back-dates it to the first debates of 1997 or even 1987.

[4]. The principal difference between the speeches (that of 2000 and that of 2001) lies in its passing from the descriptive (a historical observation) to the prescriptive (as a guide for guaranteeing the

[5]. In Shenzhen, 25% of the owner-managers are said to be already members of the CPC ("Kicking Marx out of the party" by Jasper Becker, South China Morning Post (Hong Kong).

[6]. The figure of 112,000 businessmen members of the party has been quoted -- i.e. about 0.16% of the members of the Communist Party.

[7]. The Communist Party of China, since its 13th Congress in 1987, has characterised the present period as the "primary stage of socialism and will remain so for a long period of time .. It will last for over a hundred years" (CPC General Programme).

[8]. "Capitalist enterprises in China", Hong Kong i-mail, 19 April 2002.

[9]. Of whom 490 million are in rural areas and 240 million in urban

[10]. The Four Cardinal Principles are : adherence to the socialist road, the people's democratic dictatorship, Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, and the leading role of the Communist Party.

[11]. "Correctly grasp the relationship links" by Li Zhongje.

[12]. This allusion to the debate between the Chinese and Soviet CPs enables them to preserve the positioning of the Chinese CP to the left of the old `adversary' Khrushchev. Note here the difference in context -- the USSR at the time was a more socially homogenous society in which the possibility of a reversibility of the system was absent. On these two points, China is different.

[13]. Ta Kung Pao 6 September 2002 by Sun Zhi.

[14]. "Kicking Marx out of the party" by Jasper Becker, South China Morning Post (Hong Kong).

[15]. Libération 11 June 2000.

[16]. Monthly Review N^o 54, May 2002, www.monthly review.org.

[17]. CNN.com Willy Wo Lap Lam 20 September 2000.

[18]. Beijing Daily, 13 September 2002.

[19]. For more details read his article "Ideological Tendencies and Reform Policy in China's Primary Stage of Socialism", Nature Society and thought, Volume 11, No. 4 (December 1999), pages 291-398.

[20]. Asia Times 23 October 2001, Xu Yufang reported in the Taiwan owned, Hong Kong based Asia Times Online: "with no fuss and without a word in public, the ruling Chinese communist party (CPC) has rejected the bold plan of its leader, General Secretary Jiang Zemin, to open the party to capitalists and entrepreneurs".

[21]. The speech raised four orientations : 1. "Perfection of Socialist Ownership ... It is basic to the socialist economic system to have of ownership. ... 2. Socialist Democracy is an Important Objective, with the Four Cardinal Principles 3. Acceleration of Socialist Modernisation. 4. Emancipation of the Mind. "This ideological guideline decides the progressive nature of the party's ruling stand, adding that the future of the country depends on whether the Party can adhere to it".

[22]. "Jiang appeals for party unity" Willy Wo-Lap Lam, CNN Senior China Analyst (CNN).

[23]. The first generation is described as that of the leaders who had surrounded Mao Zedong and the second that led by Deng Xiao Ping. Before his death, the latter had prepared his succession with Jiang Zemin as leader of the third generation and Hu Jintao of the fourth. The passing of power to the fourth generation having been programmed for the 16th Congress. Much speculation before the Congress had doubted that it would really take place.

[24]. In addition to the founders (Marx, Engels and Lenin) the constitution of the CPC refers to Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiao Ping Theory (which was introduced at the 15th Congress in 1992).

[25]. The authors argue this on the grounds of their honest contribution to socialism. Today the party's membership is 94.4% "workers, farmers and intellectuals", all the other social strata together making up the remainder; with 3.7 million members (Developing Party's solid foundation" by Xu Wenhua and Chen Dong, China Daily 7 November 2002.

[26]. With the deepening of reform and opening up and economic and cultural development our country's working class is growing stronger and its quality is being constantly enhanced. The working class, including the intellectuals, and the vast numbers of peasants, have always been the fundamental force in pushing forward the development of our country's advanced productive forces as well as society's overall progress. Emerging during social changes, the social strata such as entrepreneurs and technical personnel employed by private scientific and technological enterprises, managerial and technical personnel employed by foreign-funded enterprises, the self-employed, private entrepreneurs employed in intermediaries, and free lancers are all builders of the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

[27]. "People of all social strata who contribute their efforts to building a prosperous and strong motherland should unite together; their enterprising spirit should be encouraged; their legitimate rights and interests should be protected; and the outstanding ones should be commended, so as to create a harmonious situation in which all people can do their best and be well placed. It is necessary to respect labour knowledge, talent and creation and render it an important policy of the party and the country and implement it in the entire society. It is important to respect and protect all labour that benefits the people and society, whether it is manual or mental labour, simple or complex labour; all labour that contributes to our country's modernisation of socialism is glorious and should be recognised and respected.

Enterprises in our national construction carried out by various domestic and overseas investors should be encouraged, and all legitimate income derived from labour and non-labour should be protected. It is not appropriate to judge whether people are politically or backward simply by whether they own property and how much property they own but rather we should consider their state of mind, political awareness and actual performance".

[28]. In the constitution itself, which the introductory report describes as "minor revisions, not major ones", Article 1 integrates the new social strata, but with a restriction that does not apply to the working classes, the notion of advanced elements. "Any Chinese worker, farmer; member of the armed forces, intellectual or any advanced elements of other social strata who has reached the age of eighteen and who accepts the Party's Programme and Constitution and is willing to join the CPC".

[29]. This is the way the press reported the training courses organised by the CPC's Central School and intended for `entrepreneurs' to educate them "ideological and theoretically" (Ming Pao 29 November 2002).

[30]. The international press was rich in comments on this point, stressing the strong presence of people close to Jiang Zemin on this committee (5 or 6 out of 9) and thus a continuity of policy. Some analysts have presented this new leadership as a result of a negotiation between Jiang Zemin and Li Peng at the expense of the moderate wing (Li Rihuan) (Hong Kong Economic Journal 19 December 2002).

[31]. Straits Times 14 November 2002 "Capitalist Cadre idea... by J. Leow.

[32]. The final assessment on the 158 deputy members gives 15 entrepreneurs, 13 of whom run state enterprises, a group from non-state public firms and Zhang Ruimin (Wen Wei Po 19 November 2002).

[33]. Straits Times 30 September 2002 "Jiang's rival to move up leadership ... China No.4 Li Ruihan, could become No.2 if Jiang retires completely" by Ching Cheon.

[34]. Willy Wo-Lap Lam, CNN.com 19 November 2002.

[35]. We ignore here those theses that consider that China has never been or is no longer a socialist country, and who consider these debates yet another justification of their traditional theses.

[36]. An anonymous `political scientist' in Washington.post.com 4 November 2002.

[37]. Liberation 7 September 2002.

[38]. The CPC is not, formally, the sole party in a single-party state, since eight other small parties, called democratic exist (the Revolutionary Committee of the Guomingtang of China, the Democratic League of China, the Association for the Democratic Construction of China, the Chinese Association for Progress and Democracy, the Democratic Workers and Peasants Party of Taiwan). These parties are integrated into the regime with consultative status. They have a total of about 360,000 members (1999). The interest of mentioning them here is that the left critics of the CPC's official line is to propose that the `capitalists' should join these parties rather than the Communist Party.

[39]. "The Communist Party, since 1921, officially under the control of the workers and peasants has at this Congress been turned over to the stewardship of the middle class" in "Hu Jintao made head of China's communists" Financial Times 16-17 November 2002.

[40]. "The main reason to focus on the developing middle group is social stability" says the party official. "The income gap is the core of our concern" in "China strives to win the middle classes" The Christian Science Monitor 25 November 2002.

[41]. In June 2002 it numbered 66,355 million members, that is 5,938 million more than at the previous Congress in 1997. This means that about 5% of the population are members of the CPC (as against 10% in the USSR). The greatest representation in the party is that of the "workers, farmers, shepherds and fishermen" (45.1% of the total), then the cadres of government administration, institutional and state enterprises, soldiers and police» (21.3%). Women, on the other hand, are only 17.5% and members of minority ethnic groups 6.2% (as against 8% in the population). These last two groups are slightly better represented amongst the 2,120 delegates to the 16th Congress with 18% and 10.8% respectively. 97.5% have joined since the creation of the Chinese People's Republic, 63.1% are under 55 years old, 91.7% of the delegates have had some degree of higher education. (Xinhua Agency, 10 September 2002). Furthermore 124,000 members have been expelled over the last 5 years for "having transgressed Party discipline or State law" 473,000 over the last 13 years.

[42]. "However; the old international political and economic order, which is unfair and irrational, has yet to be fundamentally changed. Uncertainties affecting peace and development are on the increase" (Jiang Zemin's report to the 16th Congress).

[43]. We use here a concept forged by economic theory to characterise a relationship involving cooperation and competition in the world of big business.

[44]. Brzezinski (Zbigniew), The Great Chessboard: America and the Rest of the World.

[45]. Aymeric Chaupade, Director of Geopolitical courses at the Collège Interarmées de Defence (Ecole de Guerre, France).

[46]. 8 April 2002 pp. 158-161 : "Harmony Is the Foremost commandment". (extracts)

[47]. Extract from the first speech of the new general secretary, published in the theoretical journal of the Communist Party of China.

The Case for Communism

2008-08-13T17:24:00.000-05:00

John Foster

(The Communist Review, London, Autumn 2001)

How should we put the case for communism? Today. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union. At a time when the working class movement is ideologically weaker than it has been for many years. And when many on the Left themselves are uncertain about the feasibility of either a planned economy or any alternative type of state power that could administer it. This article is written to start a discussion. It will attempt a case for Communism, but its main purpose is to identify those issues which require further debate.

Marx took it as self-evident that the primary case for communism is made by capitalism itself. Capitalism creates the material base: a system of production involving the large-scale concentration of capital, the complex interlocking of different processes across society and the continuing and dynamic transformation of the productive potential of labour. Capitalism creates the social means. It brings into being a labour force, concentrates it, compels it to organise to protect its conditions and makes collective action a social reality. Capitalism also provides the reasons. Capitalism exploits. It seeks to divide working people against each other. It demands that each unit of capital maximises its profit or dies. It has no way of ensuring that its productive power is put to social use -- or even fully used at all. Its competitive character, united with the power of the capitalist nation state, brings imperialism and war.

All this is as true in 2001 as it was in 1868. The concentration of capital is now on a colossal scale. Profits are still maintained by the coercion of unemployment. Imperialist powers are aggressively subordinating weaker nations in order to resolve their own economic crises. For most of the world's population poverty has worsened in the long-run. The past thirty years have seen growing levels of malnutrition and starvation -- and in the last five years living standards have fallen sharply in some East Asian and Latin American countries previously experiencing fast industrialisation. It is true that for a minority, those living in the advanced capitalist countries, material levels of consumption have risen. But so also has the intensity of their work and the inequality of income between rich and poor.

However, two of Marx's claims might well be queried. One concerns the working class. Critics would challenge the assumption that working people today have the organisational potential to pose a coherent opposition to capitalism as such. And this challenge is often linked to a second: the viability of any alternative. Maybe, they say, capitalism is wasteful and exploitative. Maybe it is socially divisive. But capitalism continues to transform society's productive potential and there is altogether no evidence that any alternative system could do as well. Why should workers risk everything for a system that would most probably leave them worse off?

In so far as the challenge on the working class is about its size, it can be answered fairly easily. Marx never defined the working class in terms of industrial or manual workers. This was a definition developed not by Marx but by Adam Smith and, as used by today's sociologists, is quite alien to Marx's concept of labour being a union of hand and brain. Marx deemed all those whose labour was exploited for profit to be members of the working class. They were so because they had a class interest to oppose capital and ultimately the state that defends it. On this basis the working class is bigger than it has ever been. Trade union density among white collar workers in Britain today is no less than that among "manual" workers

The challenge is more substantial when applied to the issue of organisation and political consciousness -- particularly when it comes to the political will to establish an alternative socialist social system. The political disintegration of the Soviet Union has been used very effectively by the enemies of socialism to query whether a non-capitalist society could ever be economically effective. Added to this, there are other questions that do not come from the enemies of socialism which are considerably more difficult. They concern the political and social organisation of socialist societies and their long-term viability.

Proponents of liberal democracy have frequently sought to characterise past socialist societies as systems of arbitrary rule enforced by unaccountable communist parties masquerading as the working class. Conversely, they argue that only a law-governed market-based system of individual ownership can sustain individual liberty. Once the state takes over from the market, once economic power becomes concentrated and is monopolised by an elite, arbitrary invasions of personal freedom are inevitable.

Forget the irony -- that this excellently describes capitalist liberal democracy as it exists today -- and there remain real issues to address. On too many occasions Communist Parties have lost their internal democracy and become dominated by personalised cliques. Even in those socialist societies where socialism had a mass base and institutions of mass democracy had been established, it often proved difficult to carry forward socialist consciousness to the next generation. In the Soviet Union where the survival of at least some forms of mass democracy proved surprisingly robust, Yuri Andropov spoke in the 1980s of the continuing consequences of the "alienation of labour". Individualism could regenerate itself under socialism. So could nationalism and racism. And socialism would regress. Ruling communist parties would increasingly seek to keep power out of unreliable hands and the excluded majority of workers would lose any conception of themselves as somehow being collectively "in power".¹

Opponents of socialism have very successfully rolled together all these negative experiences into one monolithic "failure of communism". The social achievements of socialism are forgotten. The economic and political strength that defeated fascism is as if it never existed. In popular consciousness even the economic disasters resulting from the switch to a capitalist market system are often attributed to "communism" itself.

Ideologically it is almost as if Marx had never lived -- leaving the field open to the spiritual heirs of the utopians of the 19th century, Proudhon and Bakunin. Anti-capitalism is an inspiration to thousands of young people: they fling themselves as bravely against the police lines at Genoa or Seattle as those in Paris in 1848. But there is little or no awareness of how to bring wider social forces into play and a profound distrust of organisation or old political structures. The paralysis of direction is no less marked in the trade union movement. Opposition to privatisation and neo-liberal economics is combined with a general failure to pose any coherent socialist alternative.

This is why putting the case for communism is not some pious piece of antiquarianism but an urgent political need. Marx did indeed demonstrate how capitalism creates the historical conditions for socialism. Yet his primary preoccupation, and his own definition of his main contribution, was about how this change could be brought about. It was Marx who defined the need for a Communist Party, its relationship to the working class and other social forces and the way politically the transition to socialism should take place. In so far as it has been Communists who have been most associated with the practical attempts to build socialism, their successes and their failures, it must primarily be Communists who draw the lessons. Others on the Left -- most, it has to be said, more in the tradition of Proudhon and Bakunin -- will never do this. They prefer to dwell rhetorically to socialism's failure and simply ascribe it to Communist rule. The vital experience of the past century, of success as well as failure, will be lost -- which is precisely what our ruling class wants.

Let's start with Marx's own prescriptions for political action. Anyone looking at them for the first time will find them a strange combination of caution and radicalism, of insistence on mass involvement and requirements for discipline and control. Marx argued that Communists had to be totally realistic about stages of development. The working class would always need its own independent organisation as a class. But alliances were also essential. And they would have to be formed in line with the current balance of class forces. At particular stages these allies would include the peasantry and even sections of the capitalist class. Immediate political objectives would reflect the particular circumstances and usually run well short of socialism. Yet the transition to socialism itself demanded revolutionary change. The capitalist state had to be destroyed -- in the sense of a coherent structure of institutions that operated to meet the legal, social and economic needs of capitalism. And the working class had to constitute itself politically and organisationally in a way that governing institutions responded fully and entirely to the needs of socialist construction. In other words the working class had to become a ruling class -- with all the revolutionary transformation of consciousness that this required.

This change in consciousness was central to Marx's assumptions. A very significant part of the working population, probably a majority, had to go through a process of political mobilisation that both built on and transcended an existing sectional collectivism, overcame sexism, racism and narrow consumerism and created an understanding of what constituted its leading role. Only in this way could a mass base be created for a new working class state. Marx was entirely realistic about this process. It would inevitably be ragged and incomplete: the new society would bear all the birthmarks of the old. But unless a major part of the working class had themselves been involved in the revolutionary process, and had understood its significance as class struggle, there could be no firm basis for the new order.

But what new order? Again Marx was sharply realistic. He abhorred utopianism and all attempts to detail some ideal future. For he knew the future would not be ideal. Over a long historical epoch the priority had to be on developing society's material base --- overcoming the legacy of uneven development, environmental imbalance and stunted human potential.

In these circumstances there could be no naive egalitarianism. In creating the material basis for the new order remuneration had to be based on contribution -- minus what was needed for social investment. Marx poured scorn on utopian schemes for "exchanges of labour value" -- regardless of the social value of what was produced. In the preface to the first German edition of the Poverty of Philosophy, written a few months after Marx's death, Engels stressed Marx's belief in the essential role of competition to determine what commodities society actually needed.²

So, on the one hand, Marx emphasised mass involvement by the working class. But, on the other, it had to be an involvement that understood the need for investment, wage differentials, material incentives and the discipline of competition. Only when the long-term consequences of alienation had been overcome, when work had become the prime necessity of life and the material conditions of abundance created could remuneration be in terms of need and "the free development of each [be].. the condition for the free development of all". Only then. A difficult legacy indeed.

These prescriptions did not come out of thin air. For forty years Marx was centrally positioned in the working class politics of a rapidly industrialising Europe. He was involved in the democratic challenges of 1842 and 1848 and also, though less directly, in the first attempt to establish a form of working class state in the Paris Commune of 1871. When he drew conclusions, he sought to do so collectively -- though often with great difficulty -- through debate and discussion within organisations of communists and trade unionists.

This commitment to practice, to the testing and development of theory through collective action, has been the hallmark of Communist work ever since. It was what Marx saw as defining Communists and is as essential to the case for communism as the perspective for change itself. Here we will focus briefly on just two key issues: the relationship of the Communist Party to the working class and the role of class and party in socialist change.

Marx made the classic statement way back in 1848. "The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole". Communists "point out and bring to the fore the common interests of the entire proletariat"; they "always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole" in the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to go through. Their role is to represent "the line of march" for each particular national struggle at each particular time.

These words need clarifying. They were not meant to claim that Communists somehow knew it all simply by virtue of their name or because they called themselves Marxists. Nor did Marx, or Lenin after him, ever have any notion that the Communist Party should be an elite of intellectuals that brought Marxism to the working class from outside. Quite the contrary. The reason for a party was two-fold. While class understanding develops within the working class, and most readily within those sections of large scale employment most exposed to capitalist crisis, it will be an uneven and difficult process. The most knowledgeable, experienced and combative workers will suffer displacement and victimisation: defeat will often bring disillusion and passivity. Organisation limits this and enables knowledge and class experience to be carried forward.

Organisation was also critical for an even more important reason. A Marxist or scientific understanding of social change has to be both learnt and developed, and development requires testing in practice. Organisation is needed for democratic discussion, disciplined and collective implementation and as a forum for further reassessment. Marxism is not an intellectual instrument that can just be picked up and used. The strategy and tactics of any communist party have to be specific and concrete: matched to the historical circumstances of its working class. A communist party has therefore to be "of" its working class, because that class can alone replace capitalism, but organisationally distinct from the everyday organisations of working class struggle such as trade unions. Such mass organisations will inevitably encompass all levels of consciousness and will in any normal circumstances reflect many of the ideas of capitalist society in general. A communist party, on the other hand, will represent those who accept the need to work unitedly to replace capitalism as a system -- and continuously assess the lessons of that struggle.

Key to everything therefore is the relation between the Communist Party and the wider mass organisations. Today, it can be argued, there is a distinctive Communist style of work which results from over a century of active involvement in the wider movement and many mistakes and reappraisals. Every communist party will have its own story to tell of periods of sectarian isolation, others when reformist ideas invaded the party from outside and others when breakdowns in internal democracy prevented the further development of strategy and theory.

What characterises this style of work? In essence it is confidence in the working class and its basic organisations: a confidence born of necessity. For ultimately it has to be workers in these organisations who become class conscious if there is to be any progress towards a different order. These and no others. There can be no short cuts. Accordingly, the Communist Party does not seek to establish "doctrinally pure" front organisations under its direct control. Nor is the party primarily a recruiting organisation or an electoral machine on

its own behalf.

The key organisations are those for the routine day to day defence of working class interests. First and foremost these are the trade unions. But they also include tenants and community organisations, organisations defending the rights of particular groupings such as black and ethnic minorities, young people, women and pensioners. Individual Communists seek to build these organisations and their effectiveness: to develop confidence that collective action can bring change. They do so in the knowledge that for long periods of time the level of activity will be purely defensive and often sectional. But Communists also know that occasions will occur in which broader alliances can be established, solidarity developed and class understanding thereby transformed.

In terms of how this is done, it is very important to be specific. The whole point of a communist party is that it develops general (international) experience concretely in its own national circumstances. So here, because anything else would be presumptuous, let's consider Britain.

Our communist party has always been relatively very small and has worked within a massively bigger trade union and labour movement. It has never entered government. It has had very few elected representatives. At particular points, however, the party has had a relatively decisive role in bringing the working class movement into action -- sometimes with historic consequences for the balance of class forces.

The late 1960s and early 1970s would be one example. This period saw first a Labour and then a Conservative government seek to limit trade union rights, to impose an incomes policy and to run the economy with significantly higher levels of unemployment and particularly detrimental effects for regional economies. The Communist Party argued for the use of strike action to bring pressure to bear on governments. The reformist leaderships of the TUC [Trades Union Congress] opposed such action. From very small beginnings in 1968 the movement of shop floor, shop steward led resistance grew. Within five years the position had been transformed. By 1973 TUC itself was backing political strike action. Regional alliances had been established, based on the trade union movement, communities and local business, to press for interventionist economic policies. Solidarity strike action was taking place on issues of unemployment and public services. Two miners' strikes had restored the right to free collective bargaining. Shipyard workers on the Clyde had taken over their yards for a year to assert the right to work. By 1974 the Labour Party was calling for an irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and won a general election on that basis.

These changes were certainly not engineered by a conspiracy of communists. Nor did communists work alone. The key work was done by many rank and file activists, communists and non-communists, winning arguments in the workplace and democratically gaining votes for particular courses of action. In mining, shipbuilding, the docks and the car industry communists were especially to the fore. Their contribution was particularly important in two areas. One was to raise the need for solidarity between different groups of workers. The other was to pose the necessity for the building of alliances with other social forces. Critical to the success of the shipyard workers on the Clyde was the strategic vision which led to the creation of a regional/national alliance, including local business, and the resulting political isolation of Conservative government in Scotland. In this sense the working class was at last taking a leading role -- defining the way forward for other social forces within a wider anti-monopoly alliance.

The ability of Communists to achieve this in the struggles of the early 1970s was precisely because they had the genuine trust of those with whom they worked. The outcome, as well as defeating government attempts to shackle the unions and building a mass movement, left individual organisations stronger -- as much as anything because these wider struggles created tens of thousands of activists whose political horizons and experience had been transformed. The great majority of these activists were in the Labour party and this in turn had major political consequences for the democratisation and leftward movement of that party by the early 1980s ‑- developments which gravely worried our ruling class.

Today the position of our Communist Party will hardly recommend itself to any self-styled revolutionary. The Communist Party of Britain still identifies the Labour party as the organisation that must be the focus of Left activity. It is not denied that the Labour government is fully aligned to imperialism. It is accepted that the potential actions of the Blair government on Star Wars and euro membership will strengthen the most aggressive trends in imperialism today.

Yet the CPB also sees the converse of this reality. New Labour's ability to govern on behalf of the British ruling class largely depends on a relationship with the trade union movement, the working class electorate and the Labour party as a mass organisation. And it is precisely here that the organised majority of working people are and where the key changes will have to be won if the labour movement is to go forward to the next stage. It is also at this level, and nowhere else, that actual changes in policy on the euro and Star Wars have to be made -- changes that are critical for working people across the world and which will most effectively open up contradictions in the international alignments of our ruling class. The Communist Party would probably attract many more recruits if it took a different, more "revolutionary" position. But it would not, it is suggested, be conducting itself as a Communist Party -- a position argued in detail in the current (2001) edition of Britain's Road to Socialism.

What then of the other issue that is so crucial in the case for communism: the relationship between the party, the working class and state under socialism? The British party has no experience of its own. But it is an issue which no party can ignore. The reverses of 1989-91 colour the entire climate within which working people operate across the world. While this is not the place to rehearse the entire debate, already well developed elsewhere, it is important to itemise some of the key points.

It might be proposed initially, as a basis of argument, that the economic functioning of centrally planned economies has generally been good. Economics, in any narrow sense, were not the problem. Growth rates in the socialist countries were generally higher than those of comparable capitalist societies for most of the post-war period. The much slower growth of later 1970s and 1980s largely reflected the political decision to reallocate resources from investment to military use. Today growth rates in Cuba and China, each adopting very different models of development, are higher than those of comparable economies in their regions. Both countries have (so far) shown themselves to have sufficient political cohesion to be able to handle transnational companies on terms that do not subordinate their own national objectives -- a matter of no small importance to other countries in the third world.

The difficulties relate more to the long-term interactions between economic and political development and the way in which socialist state power is constructed and sustained. What follows is no more than a list.

First, there is the issue of how labour discipline is developed and accumulation of capital secured at the same time as widening the mass base of a socialist society. There is the longstanding debate on material and moral incentives. There is the newer one, posed dramatically in China, of market socialism and of privately owned capital operating in a relatively open market for labour. What form of labour regime is most compatible with maintaining and deepening socialist consciousness -- or at least avoiding its catastrophic loss? No doubt most of the answers will be concrete and specific, relating to the circumstances of time and place. But there are also general issues here.

Second, there is the much wider but linked issue of the forms of socialist state power. Again answers are likely to be specific. Britain's Road to Socialism stresses the retention of the institutions of parliamentary democracy and a commitment to the operation of a plural party system including parties opposed to socialism. This perspective, central to the BRS, was developed after the last war to match the particular national circumstances of a country where the working class had won democracy prior to socialism and where institutions previously based solely on the representation of capitalist property were democratised. Questions, however, remain about how this process of democratisation will be completed. For any transition to socialism this will be crucial. The government apparatus has to be made fully responsive to the legal, social and economic requirements of socialist construction. In this sense what should comprise the socialist state in terms of institutions that express the political will of the working class as a class? Is it enough at this stage to say that this will be done through the parliamentary representation, and extra-parliamentary pressure, of the trade union movement and its party, the Labour Party, once that party has been transformed through struggle -- once it regains its previous democratic and federal structure and the Communist Party again becomes an integral part of it?

This leads directly on to a final question. What should be the relationship between the Communist Party and the state under socialism? One influential critique of the Soviet Union poses the fusion of the Communist Party with the state apparatus as a major cause of inertia and loss of momentum. The role of the Communist Party, it argues, is to spearhead the social forces of change. The role of the state, even the socialist state, is to sustain the existing socialist order. A fusion between the two aborts social progress. It might be claimed that the formulations of the BRS provide a guarantee against the problem. The Communist Party would be in government and at the same time also exist as a democratic entity outside it with its own internal structures. But is this too glib? Such a separation of roles was also formally the case in the Soviet Union and elsewhere.

So to summarise.

There is a case against capitalism. It becomes more urgent by the day. The weight of imperialist domination is proving increasingly destructive, economically and in terms of social cohesion, for a majority of people across the world. In the advanced capitalist countries big business is enforcing a free market regime that once more uses unemployment, casualisation and insecurity as it principal weapons of control and is directly creating the conditions for racism and fascism.

There is also a case for communism. It is somewhat different from the generalised case "for Socialism" -- which in its popular and rhetorical form is usually weakly specified except, by implication, against the experience of the "communist states". The case for communism rests as much on its methods as its objectives. It is not utopian. It seeks a scientific, tested approach. It seeks to do this through the actual experience of working class struggle -- including that in the building of socialism. In attempting to put the case for communism today it is therefore this experience in particular that we as Communists have a duty to assess.

Notes

1. Bakimed Azad, Heroic Struggle - Bitter Defeat: factors contributing to the downfall of the socialist state in the USSR, International Publishers, New York, 2000.

2. Frederick Engels, "Marx and Rodbertus. Preface to the First German edition of The Poverty of Philosophy", Marx and Engels, Collected Works, XXVI, pp.278-291, Moscow, 1990.

THE RESTRUCTURING OF CAPITALIST EXPLOITATION AND IMMISERATION ON THE EAST COAST OF CANADA SINCE THE 1970S: THE ‘NEW’ WAR ON THE WORKING CLASS

2008-08-13T17:22:00.000-05:00

Jim Sacouman

In the last quarter century, the class structure of the capitalist world has changed substantially. Capitalist concentration and centralization, unfettered by a collapsed socialist bloc and the decline of social democracy as even a modest alternative, is returning to class processes and formations typical of the nineteenth century, although in a dramatically more global context. Direct or unmediated forms of exploitation and immiseration, typical of the nineteenth century and first clearly identified by Marx and Engels, have returned as neoliberal imperialism on a truly global scale.

As a consequence, the political economy both of Canada and of Atlantic Canada have changed ‘back to the future’. And, as a further consequence, ‘what is to be done’ in the Atlantic region has changed.

Class analyses of Atlantic Canadian political economy^{^[1]} that are rooted in older forms of capitalist exploitation and immiseration are, therefore, inadequate to the task of critical understanding the current reality in order to transform it for the betterment of the vast majority. A serious rethinking of the region’s political economy, and in particular its class structure, is now badly overdue.

This paper first briefly reviews key developments in the capitalist restructuring of exploitation and immiseration globally and then Canada wide, in order to identify and place properly major changes in the political economy of the Canadian East Coast. Some implications for class struggle are then outlined.

The central argument in this paper is that since the 1970s the capitalists’ class war on the working class and petty producers in this region has become much more direct and vicious. This war has returned to its classical bases in working class impoverishment identified most clearly and usefully by Karl Marx in the nineteenth century. In the face of this lopsided, divisive assault by capital on labour, working people and their policy proponents in Atlantic Canada must concertedly reassert working class-rooted anticapitalist alternatives that promote and deepen inclusive democracy, equality, and solidarity in ways that recognise and reassert the necessity for working class-led socialism and that consciously build the experiential possibilities for its attainment.

A. Key Changes in Capitalism Globally

During the last quarter century, a large number of interrelated structural changes have occurred in capitalist development:

1. The actual globalization of the capitalist market and of capital together with continuing restrictions on the mobility of human labour power.^{^[2]}

2. The rise and organizational consolidation of transnational finance capital/imperialism through, especially, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization.^{^[3]}

3. The rapid growth in information and other scientific technologies and the associated extension and deepening of corporate control over scientific and knowledge work.^{^[4]}

4. The global extension and intensification of exploitation, superexploitation, and, thus, of both relative and absolute immiseration.^{^[5]}

4. The cancerous spread of neoliberalism as ideology, policy, and enforced practice.^{^[6]}

5. The end of the Second World of state socialism and the general crisis in social welfare and social democratic reformism.^{^[7]}

6. The intensified domination of US imperialism economically, politically, culturally/ideologically, and militarily.^{^[8]}

The net major class effects, so far, of these global structural changes in capitalist development have been twofold. On the one hand, there has been a massive and rapid increase in the proletarianization and semi-proletarianization of the peasant and female segments of the reserve army of labour. On the other hand and at the same time, existing and emergent self-organizations of workers, peasants and women have been massively assaulted -- economically, politically, culturally/ideologically and militarily. The world has, indeed, become more obviously a two-class world of TNCs versus the working class.

But, capital’s one-sided, as yet, war on workers and semi-workers has itself intensified both a global ecological crisis of unprecedented proportions and what appears to be a structural economic crisis of overproduction in capitalism itself. This critical assault on nature and on workers has led to new levels, globally, of resistance to capitalist rule and associated state terrorism.^{^[9]} It has also, of course, also led to further imperialist wars of domination, such as Afghanistan, and has thus further exacerbated the ecological and economic crises.

B. Key Changes in Capitalism in Canada

Associated with these global changes in capitalism, a number of changes over the last quarter century in the Canadian political economy are particularly noteworthy:

1. The heightened exploitation of full-time labour through the extension and intensification of the working day.^{^[10]}

2. The assault on job security and the rise of part-time and other contingent forms of labour.^{^[11]}

3. The privatization and commercialization of significant parts of the public sector.^{^[12]}

4. The diminution of the welfare state, including the dilution of regional development policies and the end of the rhetoric of Canada wide development.^{^[13]}

5. The ongoing anti-democratic imposition of free trade on this hemisphere and the US-ization and imperialization of Canadian internal and foreign policies.

The major class effect of these changes in Canadian political economy is a greatly intensified polarization between the big capitalist and working classes, on the one hand, combined with the uneven immiseration of the working class itself, by gender, ‘race’ and ethnicity, and age. The big question today, of course, is the extent to which the Canadian labour movement and its allies can lead the counter-assault against capitalist self-aggrandizement through heightened exploitation and immiseration and for working class rule.

C. Key Changes in Atlantic Canada

In the light of global and Canada wide changes in capitalism, the following recent changes in the political economy of the East Coast (biased towards Nova Scotia) are of note:

1. The destruction of the industrial proletariat in Cape Breton.

Almost all that is left of Industrial Cape Breton is a human and environmental diaster of massive proportions. “The estuary [around the Sydney tar ponds] contains 700,000 tons of toxic sludge, a witch’s brew of carcinogenic chemicals 35 times worse than New York’s infamous Love Canal .^{^[14]}

The coal and steel industries, created by rapacious finance capital, never developed as a basis for local/regional manufacturing. Under the leadership of Canadian Communists during the 1920s and 1930s, one of Canada’s historically most militant sections of the industrial proletariat^{^[15]} has finally been reduced to begging for better severance pay. Prior to that, the mainland coal miners of Pictou County had been blown away by capitalist greed.^{^[16]}

In place of the militant trade unionism^{^[17]} in the coal and steel industry on Cape Breton Island, a relatively creative, grassroots environmental movement to repair the human and natural diaster that corporate greed has created has emerged. This movement, while of major importance, cannot be expected to replace working class militancy at workplaces, but could keep the flame of struggle alive until the organized working class on the Island and in the province gets better organized on a class struggle basis.

2. The all but ‘final solution’ to the previous persistence of a petty producer class in the inshore fisheries and on woodlots.

The groundfish component of the fisheries has been decimated in Atlantic Canada.^{^[18]} State policies favouring the corporate offshore and promoting overfishing of the resource in both the inshore and offshore components of the ground fisheries has beggared many offshore and fishplant workers as well as petty producers in the ground fisheries, especially in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

Many small coastal communities in the region have thereby been forced into decline as active production sites. In many cases, ‘development’ is being redefined as the tourism of the ‘quaint’.^{^[19]} In these rural areas, from a class perspective, seasonal productive work has been replaced by chronic unemployment or, at best, seasonal unproductive work. A major redefinition of the rural coastal class structure towards intensified immiseration is currently in process.

On the other hand, the market value of the shell fisheries (lobster, scallops, crabs, mussels) has substantially increased over the last decade.^{^[20]} Within the minority of coastal communities in the principal shell fisheries subregions (such as southern Nova Scotia and the Acadian zone of the Northumberland Strait area), a transformation of the rural class structure from petty producers to small capitalists is occurring, coupled with corporate expansion in marketing and the immiseration of those who were unable to expand.

Over the last decade, the indigenous peoples in the Maritimes (primarily Mi’kmaq) have won/reclaimed their legal rights to participation in the fisheries. Many Reserves, often themselves as capitalist enterprises, are now entering the fisheries, especially the shell fisheries, in sufficient numbers (greater than 2%) to be perceived as threatening to the primarily white inshore small capitalists.

With respect to class-rooted organizations, the Maritime Fishermen’s Union (MFU), for example, has dramatically changed from a militant, petty producer- based, primarily Acadian, union fighting for both economic and cultural survival^{^[21]} to a small business interest group attempting to co-manage the fisheries with the state and big capital. Thus, a formerly militant organization of petty producers in the inshore fisheries has become, like successful farmer organizations in agriculture, much more like a chamber of commerce than a union.

The MFU, in fact, has recently led the attack on newly recognised aboriginal fishing rights in both New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. On the other hand, the state-induced leadership structure on many of the indigenous people’s Reserves, has facilitated a tendency for corrupt family-rooted leaderships to siphon off, away from the community, the profits from their new fisheries enterprises.

In forestry on the East Coast, the stubborn persistence of rural petty producers reliant on either a ‘farm’ woodlot or on leasing stumpage from the pulp corporations is currently threatened. In the main, these petty producer families are being immiserated in two ways. Pulp companies are gradually changing towards using more of their ‘own’ crown land stock clear-cut and processed by ‘their’ workers. Also, there is an increasing tendency for the pulp companies to cut and sell directly the hardwoods on ‘their’ crown lands to other big corporations (often ‘from away’). Thus, many petty producers who cut, split and deliver hardwoods for home fuel are being thrown into chronic unemployment.

3. The emergence and expansion of a contingent corporate service sector; proletarianization without traditional proletarians.

Throughout Atlantic Canada, as in the rest of Canada, the “McWorld”^{^[22]} of low-paying, precarious, highly mobile and, therefore, difficult to unionize service sector jobs continues apace. Like other parts of Canada a clear case of such ‘McDonaldization’ is the rush on the East Coast to attract call centres.^{^[23]} A further instance is the cancerous growth in corporate casinos.

The class implications of such growth is, on the one hand, the proletarianization or, perhaps better, working-classization of many, especially young and often female, people. The classical proletariat which is being thrown out of productive activity in the region is certainly not being re-employed in this type of work.

On the other hand, this proletarianization is occurring under rigid conditions of low pay and no or poor benefits. Additionally, there is an overwhelming tendency of such employment to be fleeting. Because of high likelihood of capital flight to cheaper labour areas as far away as India, and also because of high turnover (both chosen and enforced), the McDonaldized working class is always on the knife edge of immiseration.

4. The proletarianization of and heightened attack upon the public sector.

Not unlike the rest of Canada,proletarianization in the form of unionization has advanced, along with the well-documented privatization process.^{^[24]} Certainly, a solid proportion of the increasingly militant unionization-privatization class struggles in Canada have been waged on the East Coast.

5. The consolidation of the illegal informal economy.

Marijuana production in the region has, at a minimum apparently, kept pace with the slightly better known British Columbian situation. An important contribution to the political economy of actual production in the region would be a class analysis of the change from overwhelmingly petty commodity production to becoming, at least in terms of hydroponics, semi-proletarianized production under centralized control by biker gangs.

6. The ‘zoo-ification’ of Atlantic Canada.

Over the last quarter century, tourism has expanded its role throughout the region as a major holding pen for the seasonally employed and the Atlantic Canadian reserve army.^{^[25]} As elsewhere, casinos add to the ‘authentic flavour’ of romanticized, dead, virtually dead, or never-existing cultures and subcultures.^{^[26]} What is comparatively important is its importance to the regional and Canada-wide class structure.

The ‘culture industry’ has expanded to encompass significant movie and television production while the music industry has discovered that the East Coast is undoubtedly^{^[27]} a major Canadian base of production.

7. The extension and intensification of impoverishment.

Throughout the region, the above factors have substantially extended and intensified the immiseration of those near or below the low income cut-offs. Especially significant for women and, in particular, single mothers have been the twin impact of the federal-provincial down loading and de-‘universalizing’ of social assistance programs.^{^[28]} Severe cutbacks in other social services, in workers’ compensation, in unemployment insurance and in its accessibility, in health and in its accessibility, and in education and in accessible education has impacted most directly on the entire working class and petty producer population in this region of century-long, often severe, under- and unemployment.^{^[29]}

D. In Conclusion

To repeat, since the 1970s the capitalists’ class war on the working class and petty producers in this region has become much more direct and vicious manner as understood by Marx and Engels in the nineteenth century, though in a now globally imperialised world. The relative uniqueness of the Atlantic Canadian class structure and class struggles to the rest of Canada has lessened over the past quarter century. The relative and absolute impoverishment has not.

Working class rooted responses to this intensified and increasingly more obvious class war are definitely emerging and re-emerging. These responses and their programmatic direction need to be carefully analysed and discussed by working class-interested organizations.

Such a policy programme that could build the working class as a whole against the capitalist onslaught might well include a number of components which can be fought for nationally, regionally and provincially, such as:

(1) A substantial reduction in the working day and working week, with no reductions in pay, or loss of services to the public;

(2) significant increases in minimum rates of pay, pensions, and other employment related benefits for all full- and part-time workers;

(3) a massive jobs program to put millions of unemployed and under-employed Canadians back to work, to ensure that unemployment is substantially reduced, and that all workers enjoy unemployment benefits for the full duration of joblessness;

(4) the enforcement of laws guaranteeing complete pay equity for women workers, the guarantee of full reproductive rights, and the provision of universal, free child care and other vital services to ensure that women can play a full and equal role in all aspects of economic, political and social life;

(5) the provision of complete, free, and universally-accessible services to all Canadians, including health care, primary, secondary and post-secondary education, livable pensions, housing and other basic services; and

(6) the extension and protection of workers’s rights to unionization, free collective bargaining, and the right to strike.^{^[30]}

Such a policy programme is not, in and of itself, socialist. But, building the working class as a whole in Canada and Atlantic Canada, when done in tandem with building solid alliances with petty producer, women’s, anti-sexist, anti-racist and immigrant, disabled, and environmental movements, can provide a solid basis for the eventual collective and concerted attainment of a massively self-conscious, fully democratic and empowering worker-led socialist project. That would be a credible, if only preliminary, working class response to the capitalist class’ vicious war on the working class and petty producers of our country and region.

[1]. The best source of left analyses of the previous period is the now defunct New Maritimes. Academic sources include Robert J. Brym and R. James Sacouman, eds., Underdevelopment and Social Movements in Atlantic Canada (Toronto, New Hogtown Press, 1979) and Bryant Fairley, Colin Leys, and James Sacouman, eds., Restructuring and Resistance: Perspectives from Atlantic Canada (Toronto, Garamond Press, 1990).

[2]. Osvaldo Martinez, Neo-liberalism in Crisis (Havana, Editorial Jose Marti, 1999).

[3]. Steven Shrybman, The World Trade Organization (Ottawa, CCPA, 1999).

[4]. Scott Sinclair, GATS: How the World Trade Organization’s New “Services” Negotiations Threaten Democracy (Ottawa, CCPA, 2000).

[5]. Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalisation of Poverty (London, Zed, 1997).

[6]. See, for instance, Tony Clarke and Maude Barlow, MAI: The Multilateral Agreement on Investment and the Threat to Canadian Sovereignty (Toronto, Stoddart, 1997).

[7]. Communist Party of Canada, Canada’s Future is Socialism (Toronto, CPC, 2001), Ch. 5 and Ch. 7.

[8]. James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, Globalization Unmasked: Imperialism in the 21st Century (Halifax, Fernwood, 2001).

[9]. Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, Global Showdown: How the New Activists are Fighting Global Corporate Rule (Toronto, Stoddart, 2001) and Jen Chang et al., eds., Resist! (Halifax, Fernwood, 2001).

[10]. See, for instance, Andrew Jackson and David Robinson, Falling Behind: The State of Working Canada, 2000 (Ottawa, CCPA, 2000).

[11]. Henry Veltmeyer and James Sacouman, “The Political Economy of Part-Time Work”. Studies in Political Economy, 1998, No. 56, pp. 115-143; and Dave Broad, Hollow Work, Hollow Society? Globalization and the Casual labour Problem in Canada (Halifax, Fernwood, 2000).

[12]. James L. Turk, ed., The Corporate Campus: Commercialization and the Dangers to Canada’s Colleges and Universities (Toronto, James Lorimer and Co., 2000); Monica Townson, Pensions Under Attack: What’s Behind the Push to Privatize Public Pensions (Ottawa, CCPA, 2001); and Paul Leduc Browne, Unsafe Practices: Restructuring and Privatization in Ontario Health Care (Ottawa, CCPA, 2000).

[13]. Colin Mooers and John Shields, eds., Restructuring and Resistance: Canadian Public Policy in an Age of Global Capitalism (Halifax, Fernwood, 2000).

[14]. Maude Barlow and Elizabeth May, Frederick Street: Life and Death on Canada’s Love Canal (Toronto, HarperCollins Canada, 2000), p. 2.

[15]. See, for instance, David Frank, J.B. McLachlan: A Biography (Toronto, James Lorimer and Co., 1999).

[16]. Cris O’Neill and Ken Schwartz, Westray: The Long Way Home (Winnipeg, Blizzard, 1997).

[17]. Militant trade unionism in Cape Breton has, in fact, been declining since the 1960s. For instance, The general pattern in trade union leadership has been from communist to social democratic to Tory.

[18]. See, for instance, Rick Williams, “Reflections on 25 Years of Fisheries Co-Management.” Paper presented at the CCPA-Nova Scotia Branch Conference on Underdevelopment in Atlantic Canada: Renewing the Debate, Saint Mary’s University, October, 2001.

[19]. See the seven volumes of the magazine of the Coastal Community Network, Coastal Community News. For further discussion of tourism as ‘development’ see the section on ‘zoo-ification’ below.

[20]. See, again, Williams, “Reflections...”.

[21]. See the books referred to in Endnote 1.

[22]. See, for instance, Tony Clarke and Sarah Dopp, Challenging McWorld (Ottawa, CCPA, 2001).

[23]. Tom Good and Joan McFarland, “Call Centres: Solution to and Old Problem?” Paper presented at the CCPA-Nova Scotia Branch Conference on Underdevelopment in Atlantic Canada: Renewing the Debate, Saint Mary’s University, October, 2001.

[24]. Public sector, CCPA documents.

[25]. For more information on the Nova Scotian case, see CCPA-NS’s Alternative Provincial Budget (Halifax, 2000 and 2001). For more on class processes, see my “Semi-Proletarianization and Rural Underdevelopment in Atlantic Canada”. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 1980, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 232-245.

[26]. Consider, for instance, Anne of Green Gables.

[27]. In my biased opinion.

[28]. See, Barbara Moore, “‘Please Don’t Bury Me!’” RECAP Report (Halifax, RECAP, 1997).

[29]. See the CCPA’s Monitor (Ottawa, recent years) as well as references in Endnote No. 1.

[30]. Communist Party of Canada, Canada’s Future is Socialism (Toronto, CPC, 2001), p. 77.