Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Feminizing the Proletariat


Here is an excellent post on why women are the proletariat, not a special interest group, nor a minority . Nor is womens work in the social factory valued anymore than it is in the home.

Women's work is real work
My recent starting of a job in childcare has got me thinking just how underappreciated and unappreciated childcare work really is. What it all comes down to though, is that childcare has always been the primary responsibility of women. And, as belonging to women, has so been made to be inadequate. Unimportant. Less skilled. Lower. Certainly paid lower on the pay scale of things. But most importantly, deemed of a lower status because it is women’s work - it is not “real” work.


What is mistakenly called the feminization of poverty is in reality the proletarianization of womens work and of women as workers.

The social factory is the extension of womens work in the home and the extension of homework. The fact is as I have posted here before, but it is important to reiteriate, womens work, women workers are seen as and extension of being homeworkers. Home work includes child and elder care. It is not the natural function of women as individuals in society prior to capitalism.

In pre capitalist societies it takes a village to raise a child or care for its elders. It is a social function of the whole community. With the advent of capitalism and the creation of modern urban society a new family unit of the bourgoise was created; the nuclear family. What was once the family unit of the upper classes is now the generalized family unit in modern capitalist society. It is perfect for the needs of capitalism, which is producers no longer working from their homes as artisans, but working as wage slaves and unwaged slaves capable of consuming the goods of fordist production.

Housework and Care of Young Children

Throughout the world women continue to bear primary responsibility for childcare and house-work. This unpaid work remains economically invisible, but creates a foundation for all other economic, political and social life.

At the same time, pregnancy and care for young children impede women’s opportunities for employment. Women today increasingly lack the traditional support of the extended family, in which other family members participated in childcare and children helped with agricultural and domestic chores. Childcare is often a heavy burden on women who work outside the home to support the family. Poverty greatly exacerbates the problem.


The World’s Largest Workplace: Social Reproduction and Wages for Housework

Done-Paid
or
Women's house work - How it should be rewarded?


For a year and a half we have been running in foundation "Taking care of the world" a campaign "DONE-PAID or women's housework - how to reward it". We can see the results of ignoring women's rights: violence against them, poverty, too small participation in public life. We point out the structural cause of these problems: no payment for housework done by women for ages.

Women's economic rights are ignored all over the world. This problem is so difficult that it seems almost impossible to solve it in existing system. But Poland has good tradition in starting changes in what seemed impossible (for instance social movement Solidarność and its leader Lech Wałęsa). Now it is time to take the next step.

In our opinion the key to the problem called "equality" is women's money. A fight for equality hasn't ended yet. First we fought out a right to education, then to work outside home, next electoral rights. Now it's time to fight for our economic rights. It's time to work on new way of thinking and new solutions.

Only when women become financially independent, not by taking on additional responsibilities but by achieving recognition for their housework, such shameful acts as violence against women can be eliminated. Only then social and political activation of women, so desired by international institutions, will be possible. Because without dealing with causes we can't deal with effects.

Sweden

EXTRA PAY FOR HOMEMAKING
It is given to families with children and childless persons between the age of 18 and 29. It consists of two parts: one - for running the home, and another - for children who live in that house. Its amount depends on the size of a household, costs of its keeping and family income.

The extension of womens work into the workplace in jobs such as daycare workers, teachers and nurses leads to it being undervalued and underpaid. And today in Canada the vast majority of women are working.

Not as professionals, eg. lawyers, politicians, doctors, CEO's, etc. but a low paid workers in the service and retail sectors a sector that is not unionized and pays minimum wages or just above. Again the role of women workers in the service industry is an extension of their role at home as the hostess.

When the Conservatives attacked the Liberal daycare funding for the provinces often they focused on the fact that monies were being used to boost the pay for daycare workers, as if this was some sort of waste of money. In fact you can't talk about having daycare spaces for children without the workers to maintain the relationship with those children. Which is exactly the problem with private daycares and the baba as babysitter situations, they often do not have enough workers per child.

And its not just that women earn less than men but that their jobs are undervalued. This is clear in the report issued this morning on the SARS epidemic in Ontario. That workers, mainly women, were injured on the job because their work is not considered as hazardous as mens.

The commissioner lambasted Ontario for its failure to adequately protect the doctors, nurses and other hospital employees in their place of work, noting of all the people who contracted SARS in the province, 72 per cent were infected in a health-care setting, including 169 health-care workers. Two nurses and one doctor died.

''Hospitals are dangerous workplaces, like mines and factories, yet they lack the basic safety culture and workplacesafety systems that have become expected and accepted for many years in Ontario mines and factories and in British Columbia's hospitals,'' Campbell wrote.

''This was a system failure,'' Campbell wrote. ''The lack of preparation against infectious disease, the decline of public health, the failure of systems that should protect nurses and paramedics and others from infection at work - all these declines and failures went on through three successive governments of different political stripes.


The fact this report shows that several years after the SARS outbreak Ontario still has not protected its healthcare workers.

In the same way other working women have experienced the failure of succesive governments and their policemen to protect them from being terrorized and murdered on the streets of our cities by lust murderers. Their work being an extension of the womens role in the bedroom.

Along with sexism racism is the undercurrent in the failure of the State and its cops to do anything about the mass murder in Canada of sex trade workers. Because many sex trade workers are aboriginal women and girls they suffer a modernized form of colonial occupation and domination, that it is ok to rape and abuse them, as has happened in their own communities by the very policemen supposedly there to protect them.

It all comes back to the home. The oppression of women in the home is written on the face of our very uncivil civil society. Only when the proletariat refuses to continue to do housework at home or its extension in capitalist society, the General(ized) Strike, will the exploitation and oppression of women cease.


See

Childcare


Feminism

Proletariat

Women Workers


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Loonies and Scorpions


This whole War On Terror Security State business is getting just downright silly.

Its an arachnid not a terrorist
Scorpion delays Canada-bound flight

Now whose loonie? Canadian coins bugged, U.S. security agency says


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Marxist Dictionary


And speaking of dictionaries and definitions I found this useful definition at Paulitics Marx English Dictionary;

Use Value:

-the power of something to satisfy a human need/desire (eg.: food satisfies hunger)

-use value exchange value (which is how much $$ you can get for something)

-an umbrella’s exchange value may equal a dinner’s, but their use values are never equal (unless of course you have, for instance, a very large steak that you can also use to protect yourself form the rain)

See Use Value

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Minoritory


A new word to add to my Devils Dictionary, courtesy of the National Post;

Minoritory: n.

The small number of Canadians who vote Conservative. "Can Harper grow the minoritory?"

Only if he waters them with tinkle-down economics.



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Labour WebSite Of The Year-A Blog?

Its that time of the year again for the annual Labour Web Site of the Year Awards.

Vote for the Labour Website of the Year 2007!
Voting ends in 21 days ...

When it was begun in 1997 I had my first website up and got the nomination for website of the week. Then Eric Lee expanded it into Labour Web Site of the Year. There were few union websites up then. Today there are thousands.

Now the question is will the Labour Website expand to include labour blogs. There are now labour blogs publishing, whether directly from unions or from union based commentators.

I would suggest that Eric Lee consider doing a Labour Blog of the Year award to differentiate them from Labour Websites.

Amongst the Progressive Bloggers these folks have blogged on labour issues lately which is always good to see, its just a smattering and apologies if I missed anyone. You can always let me know in the comments. Don't forget to add a link to your story.



We haven't discussed the SGEU strike yet. Please share your feedback on this matter.

Toronto Taxi Drivers Picket Sheraton Hotel


They're goin' back to work...


US Army might break Goodyear strike - Financial Times - MSNBC.com

A Short History of the Labour Movement in Canada and Quebec: Part One




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Return Of Internment Camps

In Alberta,and across Canada, during the dirty thirties under the Bennett Buggy Conservatives unemployed single men were not granted relief, that is a dollar a day payments that predated unemployment insurance.

Instead they were rounded up and placed in internment camps, called relief camps but which were concentration camps by any other name, run by the Army. They were used for building roads, clearing brush etc. just as internees during WWI had been.

They led to the radicaliztion of the unemployed and the historic revolt in the camps that led to the famous On To Ottawa Trek.

I wonder if this is being considered by these nice folks in Calgary
as a solution to homelessness; gather up the homeless and ship them out. Calgary To Become First Homeless Free City?

After all R.B. Bennett was from Calgary just like our current PM.




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Trilateral Commission


Rona Ambrose was a Member of the Trilateral Commission as reported in Vancouver's Georgia Straight, August 24, 2006.

Well shucks who knew. The Trilateral Commission is the public face of the those other secret societies of the corporatist ruling class like the Bilderbergers and the Davos Forum.

It is the original source for George Bush Seniors announcement of the New World Order.

Managing the International System Over the Next Ten Years: Three Essays
The Trilateral Commission (© 1997)
Bill Emmott, Koji Watanabe and Paul Wolfowitz

The 2006 annual meeting of the Trilateral Commission dealt with "Globalisation and Governance".

The Commission, which operates through three regional secretariats, coordinates task forces on a variety of pressing issues in international affairs and meets in regional groups as well as in an annual three-day plenary to discuss these studies and to share perspectives on common political, economic, and foreign policy challenges. The task force reports are published as a series called The Triangle Papers. Also, a report on the annual meeting is published each year as part of the Trialogue series. The annual meeting of Trilateral Commission members rotates among the three regions.


Holly Sklars book remains one of the best on the Trilateral Commission and it's importance in setting the agenda for Globalization, without falling into the tinfoil hat conspiracy theories that abound around ruling class institutions like these. As I wrote in my article; Conspiracy Theory or Ruling Class Studies


"The Trilateral Commission is international and is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the U.S." -- attributed to Senator Barry Goldwater.

The new "trilateralism" reflects the realization that the international system now requires "a truly common management," as the Commission reports indicate. The trilateral powers must order their internal relations and face both the Russian bloc, now conceded to be beyond the reach of Grand Area planning, and the Third World. Noam Chomsky: The Carter Administration: Myth and Reality

A Trilateral Commission Task Force Report, presented at the 1975 meeting in Kyoto, Japan, called An Outline for Remaking World Trade and Finance, said: "Close Trilateral cooperation in keeping the peace, in managing the world economy, and in fostering economic development and in alleviating world poverty, will improve the chances of a smooth and peaceful evolution of the global system." Another Commission document read: "The overriding goal is to make the world safe for interdependence by protecting the benefits which it provides for each country against external and internal threats which will constantly emerge from those willing to pay a price for more national autonomy. This may sometimes require slowing the pace at which interdependence proceeds, and checking some aspects of it. More frequently however, it will call for checking the intrusion of national government into the international exchange of both economic and non-economic goods." In other words, they were promoting world government by encouraging economic interdependence among the superpowers.

The Trilateral Commission was formed in 1973, and it is widely perceived as an off-shoot of the Council On Foreign Relations. According to Christopher Lydon, writing in the July 1977 Atlantic, "The Trilateral Commission was David Rockefeller's brainchild." At the time, David Rockefeller was Chairman of the Council On Foreign Relations, having been elected to that post in 1970. David Rockefeller became the founding Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, which consists of leaders in business, banking, government and mass media from North America, Europe, and Japan invited to join by Rockefeller himself.

A related purpose of the Trilateral Commission was to promote cooperation among the industrialized countries in the face of an emerging bloc of Arab, African and Asian states which had come to dominate the General Assembly of the United Nations.

But the Trilateralists did not want to give up on the United Nations. The economic and political elites of America and Europe seek international political power in order to provide a stable investment climate, including protection against nationalization of their assets.

At the same time, the international bankers and multi- national corporations have gained much of their wealth through partnership with government. The corporate elite look to governments for lucrative contracts; taxpayer subsidized financing; and protection from competition.

The international bankers and multinational corporations have exploited two UN financial agencies in particular - the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But they have relied on their own national governments to attempt to protect their foreign investments.

The politicians have looked to a strengthened United Nations for a different reason. Politicians seek power. Control over their own government is all too often only a beginning to their ambition. History is littered with corpses who mutely testify to the imperial ambitions and arrogance of politicians.

In 1973, the U.S. was winding down its involvement in Vietnam. The Vietnam War had proved to be a costly mistake, and had turned a majority of the American people against the idea of military intervention in other countries.

As noted, the Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973, in the midst of the Middle East oil crisis. The ostensible cause of the oil crisis was a decision by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to dramatically raise the posted price for oil, with the price hike enforced by limited production quotas for each member country.

11 Jun 1993 The Washington Times reports: "Presidential counsellor David Gergen resigned yesterday from the all-male Bohemian Club, three days after saying he would not run around naked at its annual Bohemian Grove encampment and insisting he would not quit. White House spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers announced the resignation along with Mr. Gergen's departure from 17 other interest groups, charities and public boards ranging from the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group and Council on Foreign Relations."


For Canadians our concern has to be that the Trilateralists promote deep integration starting with the original Mulroney Reagan FTA followed by NAFTA evolving into a continental alliance,or North American Union, including shared monetary standards.

Canadians On the Trilateral Commission 2005 appointments

Rona Ambrose, Member of Parliament, Ottawa, ON

Maurizio Bevilacqua, Member of Parliament, Ottawa, ON

Arthur A. DeFehr, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palliser Furniture, Winnipeg, MB

André Desmarais, President and Co-Chief Executive Officer, Power Corporation of Canada, Montréal, QC; Deputy Chairman, Power Financial Corporation

Peter C. Dobell, Founding Director, Parliamentary Centre, Ottawa, ON

Wendy K. Dobson, Professor and Director, Institute for International Business, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON; former Canadian Associate Deputy Minister of Finance

Peter C. Godsoe, Chairman of Fairmont Hotels & Resorts; Retired Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Scotiabank, Toronto, ON

*Allan E. Gotlieb, Senior Advisor, Stikeman Elliott, Toronto, ON; Chairman, Sotheby’s, Canada; former Canadian Ambassador to the United States; North American Deputy Chairman, Trilateral Commission

E. Peter Lougheed, Senior Partner, Bennett Jones, Barristers & Solicitors, Calgary, AB; former Premier of Alberta

Roy MacLaren, former Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom; former Canadian Minister of International Trade; Toronto, ON

John A. MacNaughton, former President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Toronto, ON

Brian Mulroney, Senior Partner, Ogilvy Renault, Barristers and Solicitors, Montréal, QC; former Prime Minister of Canada

Hartley Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, James Richardson & Sons, Ltd., Winnipeg, MB

Gordon Smith, Director, Centre for Global Studies, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC; Chairman, Board of Governors, International Development Research Centre; former Canadian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Personal Representative of the Prime Minister to the Economic Summit

Ronald D. Southern, Chairman, ATCO Group, Calgary, AB

Barbara Stymiest, Chief Operating Officer, RBC Financial Group, Toronto, ON

See:

Bilderberg


Conspiracy Theory

Conspiracy


Ruling Class



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Mr Harper Forgets Redmonton

The Conservatives think they have Alberta sewn up. I guess they forgot about Redmonton.

As the Edmonton Journal editorial on the new Harper Cabinet points out.


A more conventional leader might have worried that Edmontonians, who used to boast the country's deputy prime minister, might feel they are being taken for granted -- surely an odd thing for a minority government to do to a city with small margins of victory for Conservative MPs, and a past record of electing Liberals and even New Democrats.

But this possibility doesn't seem to have occurred to Harper, who has barely set foot in Edmonton since his election, and who obviously feels all Albertans will be equally thrilled to have a third Calgarian, and a fourth MP from Southern Alberta, articulating the aspirations of their province in Ottawa.

Will Edmontonians feel that Kenney, a social conservative from Calgary, is as good an extra voice for them in Ottawa as one of the talented alternatives in the city or elsewhere north of Highway 1?


This is the second time Redmonton has been passed over for any cabinet posts.

And speaking of
potential cabinet choices has anyone seen Rahim Jaffer anywhere? Nope missing in action, something we all know about in Edmonton Strathcona.

Once a prominant critic in opposition he is now just another pretty face on the arm of newly minted Parliamentary Secretary
Helena Guergis. Having been the token Muslim in the Conservatives even that is now a passing claim to fame.

And Laurie Hawn, who fought so hard (twice) to replace the Liberal Deputy PM
Anne McLellan, is still cooling his jets in the backbenches when he could have replaced the geriatric mouthpiece for the military industrial establishment as Minister of Defense.

And what of long suffering and long bearded backbencher Peter Goldring, who could have been made a Secretary of State for the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Yep lots of possibilities there but none to be had.

Unless you accept Rona Ambrose as being from Edmonton since she lives in Old Strathcona, but of course she represents Spruce Grove which Edmonton has not yet annexed.

Redmonton is not in the bag for the Tories.

Linda Duncan
is running against Jaffer for a second time after her excellent showing last election.

Nicole Martel may run against Goldring again, she too did well last election.

And what of Anne McLellan, might she decide to try and make it another landslide?

Given the Tories dismissal of womens issues, the environment, social justice, and its attacks on the Wheat Board the election should any of these three candidates run and win it would be sweet revenge for Redmonton and a lesson for Harper.



See:

Cabinet



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Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Who Is He Signalling

The death of sex workers in Edmonton has given rise to theories of a serial killer, or killers.

I think it may be the case of the latter.

Since this creep has been busted for two of the deaths of young inner city women, you have to ask who is he signalling to keep silent, or assuring he will be silent.

He made a pointed effort to make sure the media filmed him doing this.



See

Crime

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Variable Labour=Variable Captial

Just when you thought that the American worker could not get squeezed for any more juice, major retailers have come up with a new cost-savings innovation to apply more pressure on their workforce. Indeed, staffing is the latest area where big retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, and Payless hope to wring out a few pennies with new operational efficiencies.

Major features in the Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle this week reveal that new computerized scheduling systems will move many American workers from a predictable work shift to staffing based on the number of customers in a store at any given time. The system will allow managers to start the business day with a few employees on hand, then bring in "on call" workers when business picks up during the course of the day. Once commerce lags, the manager can send workers home until further notice. In short, it matches staffing to more closely match customer demand.

"The whole point is workers were a fixed cost, now they're a variable cost," Kenneth Dalto, a management consultant told the Wall Street Journal. "Is it good for workers?" he added. "Probably not."

Labour under capitalism has always been a variable cost, which Marx called variable capital, it is the source of profit. This is an example of the speed up of production and the use of flexible labour time as is done in factories now applied to the social factory of the service/retail industry.

Variable capital means that proportion of capital which is invested in wages, in the purchase of labour-power. Marx called this capital “variable” because it is this proportion of capital which, if it is used wisely may produce a new, surplus value in the course of the labour process, over and above the “necessary labour time” which the worker needs to live and is paid in the form of wages. This investment is the only one which creates new value, because the worker is able to produce more than he needs in order to live.

So for example, let us suppose a worker earns $100 and consumes $1000 worth of materials and components to produce a product which is sold for $1300. This value could be represented as constant capital ($1000) + variable capital ($100) + surplus value ($200). That $200 of surplus value was added to the product solely by the activity of the worker. That is, of the capitalist’s investment of $1100, only the variable capital, $100, expanded.

Marx represented this relation symbolically:

c + v -› c + v + s

The ratio of constant to variable capital, (c/v), he called the “organic composition of capital”; the ratio of surplus value to wages, (s/v), he called the rate of surplus value, or the rate of exploitation of labour, and s/(c + v) the rate of profit.

The contradiction brought out by this analysis is this. Every capitalist works might and main to reduce the wages bill, and turn over as much material as he can, investing in expensive machinery and increasing c to cut labour costs, v; this produces a general increase in the “organic composition of capital”, c/v. However, since it is only the variable capital that produces profit, the result is a falling rate of profit.

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Eight


Thus all workers produce capital and thus capitalism. This is what made Marx revolutionary, in identifying the proletariat not the capitalist as the source of capitalism. Even if work is not productive in the traditional meaning of producing goods, in the expansion of capitalism into all social relationships, the commodification of all our being, every worker who is also a consumer is the producer and product of capitalism.

It is this social relationship that means all workers, whether in a factory or in retail store, are the greatest threat to the functioning of capitalism. Which is why revolutionaries call for the General (ized ) Strike by all members of society against the system which exploits us as cogs in the machine.

A tip o' the blog to my co-conspirators at News Trolls for this.

See:

Suplus Value

Labour Produces All Wealth

Libertarian Labour

Peter Drucker RIP

It's the Labour Theory of Value, stupid




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