Anarchist Communist Orgainizing in the Workplace

I am in the process of writing a paper on Anarchism and Working Class Struggle based on discussions that have occured on the NEFAC (North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists) list serve. They have now published their position paper on orgainizing in unions and the role of NEFAC in working class struggles. Read on!

NEFAC Workplace Position Paper

Adopted at the eleventh federation congress,
November 5-6, 2005, Sherbrooke, Quebec

The struggle toward libertarian communism must be brought about by the whole of the working class, the workplace and labor unions are an essential point of agitation and struggle. Anarchist-communists must organize within the ranks of labor unions, active in this struggle as both advocates of social revolution and as fellow workers in a collective battle against exploitation.

Class struggle is by no means confined to workplace. Class conflict occurs everyday in neighborhood-based battles for decent housing, the fight for welfare, the battles for access to quality education, the struggle against prisons and police brutality, in the arena of popular culture, and especially against racism, sexism, and other oppressions that stratify and divide the working class. However, as anarchist-communists, we have a particular strategic interest in workplace struggles due to the ability to directly challenge the material interests of the capitalist class

Independent rank-and-file tendencies within existing unions, coupled with workplace resistance groups, solidarity networks, and, eventually, workplace assemblies and coordinating councils, provide a glimpse at the kind of self-managed workers movement needed to not only effectively challenge the employers, but also develop the unity and revolutionary class consciousness needed to overthrow the capitalist social order.

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labour
libertarianism
anarchism
economics
socialism

Libertarian Labour

Here are some interesting debates in the Libertarian community around labour, not always an issue that gets such attention, more like it too often gets short shrift by the right wing in the community. And I am being generous at that. Libertarians, particularly American ones, often are followers of the economic mystics of the Austrian School of economics, which denies the Labour Theory of Value, and is focused on distributive economics (much like Social Credit). So they focus more on cost of production and cost of exchange, and the fact that the modern State acts as a regulator of the market. Now some of them are Wobblies, like myself , and they are free marketeers, (NOT privateers which is what the Republicans and the Harper/Klein Conservatives or Campbell/Charest Liberals are) and some are mutualists of the Prodhounian school of cooperatives and credit unions. And some of us are socialists/communists, who believe in worker and community control of society, decentralization and the 'free association of producers' in a federalist model of self government. And this is not much different from those Libertarians that believe in a Voluntarist organization of society. We all believe that governance is a matter of the 'administration of things' not governance over people.

And we define ourselves in the Libertarian community, as being Left Libertarians.

As opposed to Right Wing Libertarians who often call themselves Anarchist Capitalists,l ike Bryan Caplan, but whose ideology is closer to classical fascism, another form of distributive economics, in that they replace the state with the corporation as their model of political economy.

Ok everyone really confused now?! Anyways welcome to our little corner of the universe. I have already written what I believe is a libertarian socialist perspective on the labour movement here and here . So I will throw those into the fray, as well as my populist manifesto for a Peoples Program for Alberta.

A tip o the blog to Freeman for drawing my attention to these articles.


Tags
labour
libertarianism
anarchism
economics
socialism

Liberals Close Day Care

Ok here is a program in Calgary, a successful kindergarten and day care program open to all run by Aboriginals and Metis. And in the middle of the election where Day Care is a major issue the Liberal Government closes the program with no explanation. Just quits funding it. Right before Christmas. Leaving the parents in a lurch.

Here is another reason NOT to trust the Liberal Day Care program.

This wasn't a case of the Alberta Government closing the program, nope this wasn't a case of parents not using the program, nope, it was a case of the Liberal Government closing the day care.

Now mind you I don't think I would be going out on a limb to say that this smacks of racism since this was an aboriginal/metis run day care. Yep the Liberals got a lot of explaining to do over this one.

Parents protest closure of children's programs
The group is upset at the closure of two programs that provide day care and kindergarten programs for aboriginal and non-aboriginal children. They say the federal government has cut the funding for the Medicine Wheel Early Learning Centre and the Ke Mama Nnanik parent program for the coming year. The school focuses on preserving traditional aboriginal and Métis culture and language while providing 50 preschool and kindergarten spaces. Michelle Thrush has one child that has gone through the program and another that is currently enrolled. She says the program has helped more than 400 aboriginal families. A spokesperson for Health Canada says the programs are being cut because concerns were raised about the way they were being run. But Lori Anne Houle, the director of the Medicine Wheel and Ke Mama Nnanik programs says they have been run properly for years and have the audits and internal reviews to prove it.

Tags
feminism
Alberta
Canada
Federal Election 2006
Liberal Party
day care
aboriginal

Alberta Sacrifices Wildlife for Profit

Anywhere else this would be an outrage, in Alberta its a dog bites man kinda story.

Let us count the species going extinct as we expand logging, mining and oil extraction into their wilderness. Grizzly, Black Bears, Wolves and now caribou. Oh yes and while the Environmentalists properly blame the government for allowing this the government blames, wait for it, the wolves........

Here is another example of the failure of provincialism, the idea that only the provincial government can manage the 'resources' of the province which include the wilderness and its creatures. When they fail in their duty to protect that 'resource' then it is time for it to be taken away from them. Simple really.

But who in Ottawa has the balls to fight Alberta...hmmmm....sure they will fight in the streets, and bistros and villages of Quebec but who will put up the dukes in Alberta to save Canada's wilderness and its endagered species?

Fighting for herds under threat in Alberta

Eight major conservation groups filed the petition to Environment Minister Stéphane Dion yesterday. It demands that Ottawa stop the precipitous slide in caribou numbers in the province, where largely unrestricted logging and oil exploration have cut the population to 3,000 or fewer from as many as 9,000 during the 1960s.

Without protection, caribou are likely to be wiped out in many areas in less than 40 years, a trend described by scientists as "slow motion" extinction.

The groups are asking for federal intervention because they have lost confidence that Alberta will take any steps to protect the caribou if those actions inconvenience the resource industry. They say the province has indicated its approach by approving new logging in areas in the central part of Alberta inhabited by the most threatened caribou herds, as well as in most areas of the north that the animals use.

Dave Ealey, a spokesman for Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, defended the province, saying it is shooting wolves to prevent them from killing caribou for food. Some scientists say that would be unnecessary if habitat was preserved.

Alberta is also using donations from energy companies to buy items such as caribou-crossing signs to reduce highway road kill.

The province has classified the species as endangered and ended hunting in 1980. The population hasn't recovered because habitat destruction, rather than killing by sportsmen, is the major threat.

But Mr. Ealey said the Alberta government is loath to conserve land for animals because it would harm living standards.

And that is the real crux of the matter and also the most despicable excuse. Never truer words were spoken the " Alberta government is loath"some.

Even as the last of the caribou under the Klein dynasty will be sacrificed for the greed of big oil. Soon they will only be found on the 25 cent coin. And even there it may be come extinct replaced by the New Alberta quarter.

The coins tell the story

Tags
Alberta
Canada
wilderness
Caribou
Grizzly
wolves
endangered species
environment

I can't stop laughing....oh please stop...

In response to the Green Party announcement about ending billions in taxpayer subsidies to Canada's (read Alberta, err Calgary) oil industry the voice of big oil had this to say;

it drew a decided shrug from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. "We don't believe there are any subsidies to the oil-gas sector right now,"said CAPP vice-president Greg Stringham

Oh puuuuulllleaaaaaaase he said in he best Roger Rabbit, make it stop. I can't write for laughing so hard. Of course he doesn't believe he is subsidized, why would he. Never let the facts get in the way of an Alberta soundbite. You see that comment might work in Calgary, but this is a national media story so watch for the blowback when the National Media start looking into the facts.

Greens Nail It on Energy

The Green Party has nailed it on the head when it comes to energy economics in Canada. And they dared to announce it in Calgary, today. What chutzpah.

What they have said should be sweet music to any libertarians ears, right or left ( and this is where we seperate the real libertarians from the neo-cons). An end to the subisidization of Big Oil and Big Nukes. The biggest corporate welfare bums in Canada.

"Why are we subsidizing oil-gas interests when they're making the highest profits in their existence?" said Harris, adding that $1.4 billion was spent on federal initiatives to the energy industry last year."If you look over the last 30 years, $40 billion of subsidies to oil-gas companies, literally subsidizing global climate change Greens would cut tax breaks to oil-gas sector

And they have taken a page from the NDP campaign over Kyoto, and went one step further than Layton has.

So now the Liberals and Conservatives have to worry about Green Economics which they both fail miserably at.

Now what about coal? Hmmm Jim, didn't see a specific mention of coal here in the program.....now you wouldn't be fronting for Energy Probe on this would ya? Because I searched your web site and found NO specific policy on coal, funding the coal industry, or credits for coal technology. Strange that. Dosen't abstention or failure to mention a particular 'energy' industry mean tacit approval?! Inquiring minds want to know, so does Luscar.

3. Recalculating the balance sheet

Fossil fuels have proven to be one of Canada’s most prized assets. While the projected revenue from oil sands, offshore and Arctic development may seem like Canada’s gain, it is time we consider the other side of the balance sheet. Rising health, social and environmental costs are seldom reflected in government appraisals of energy procurement.

The federal government’s unwillingness to measure the drawbacks of oil dependency leaves future generations in a highly vulnerable position. Rather than lead a global push toward renewable energy alternatives, successive Canadian governments have chosen the path of inefficiency and pollution, which inevitably lead to lower productivity, manufacturing losses, and higher fuel prices.

While the Pembina Institute estimates that the federal government dishes out $1.4 billion every year to fossil fuel production, the figure would be much higher if provincial subsidies were included in the calculation. These actions are known as ‘perverse subsidies’ because public money is being spent to support practices that harm public well-being and incur unintended (though predictable) costs.

Despite the health, environmental and financial risks associated with nuclear energy, the federal government also continues to subsidize Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) with over $100 million each year. Not only would the Green Party end subsidies to AECL, the Green Party would also rescind all uranium-mining permits and prohibit the export of fissionable nuclear material. This is party of the Green Party’s overall strategy to promote life-cycle product stewardship of minerals to ensure full-cost accounting.

The Green Party would empower communities with renewable energy and a renewed confidence in public office by dismantling Canada’s petroleum and nuclear dependency while developing a decentralized energy plan. In order to do this, the federal government must work with the provinces that are responsible for regulating energy production.

Green Party MPs will work to:

· End all federal subsidies to non-renewable energy sectors.

· Work with the provinces to report all public expenditures and tax credits on oil, gas and mining.

· Allow the price of fossil fuels to reflect their true costs to society through new regulations that force polluters to pay for damages and remediation costs.

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Alberta
Canada
Green Party
Politics
economy
oil
Federal Eletion 2006

Bolivia Moves Left

The Globe and Mail, acting like the Voice of Amerika in Canada, is all a flutter over another Left victory in Latin America. In yesterdays editorial they attacked the overwhelming support for Evo Moralies in Bolivia.

Nearly complete official returns Wednesday showed coca activist Evo Morales winning Bolivia's presidency, getting 54.2 per cent of the vote with more than 92 per cent of polling places tallied.

Like we couldn't see that coming a mile away after this springs General Strikes and protests by the miners, the poor and the indigenous peoples movements. The country is another IMF basket case. As Brazil, Argentina and yes even Venezuala, have shown, left wing governments have been able to stablize the national economies and put them on a sure footing within the global market place. Brazil proved that this past weekend when they teamed up with China and India at the WTO and forced through their agenda on trade, much to the chagrin of the U.S. and E.U.

Argentina follows Brazilian lead to pay entire IMF debt
Sum to be recovered from budget surplus, Venezuelan promise to purchase bonds

Hello G&M you are begining to sound like the National Pest.Me thinks that the way it reads the unsigned editorial was penned by Marcus Gee their resident right whing apologist for all thinks Amerikan.

Dr. Dawg does them in with his reply to their editorial. Dawg published the editorial and responds to each accusation. Important note you can't find the editorial the day later, and if you do its 'locked' unless you are a subscriber. So publishing it online is important thanks Dawg. ( and a tip o the blog to Canadian Cynic for pointing this out).

On PBS News Hour they actually had a good overview of the Bolivian election. They had on Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. His analysis was cutting edge, pithy and to the point, so I will quote some of the key points he made.

Well I think you're seeing this across South America as you just showed on the map. What you have here is primarily the result of a 25-year economic failure. People here don't really understand or appreciate this. But you've had very little growth in all of Latin America over the last 25 years.

The total growth of income per person, which is the most basic measure that economists have to measure economic progress, has been only 10 percent.

Now if you look at the prior 20 years, 1960 to 1980, it grew by 82 percent. So you've had a 25-year period now; a whole generation-and-a-half of people in Latin America have really lost out on any chance to improve their living standards.

Well, Bolivia is an example of that. They've been under IMF agreements almost continuously for nearly 20 years. And their income -- and they've done what they were told to do. They privatized even the Social Security system there. And their income today per person is less than it was in 1980.

And I don't know what Roger considers to be a success but when your income per person is lower than it was 25 years ago, most economists would call that a failure, a terrible failure.

Unless you are an American State Department hack or an editorialist for the Globe and Mail.



Tags
Bolivia
Latin America
Socialism
elections

The Real Reason for the Iraq War

This past week has seen the Bush administration in the U.S. admit that it was 'misinformed' about WMD prior to its invasion of Iraq. The President has spoken three times in public on the War, more than any other time even prior to the invasion or immediately after. It was Election week in Iraq, and his poll numbers were down, so it was time to come clean. Sort of.

He still justified the war, democracy, nasty dictator, American interests , war on terror. Wait lets go back over that list, American interests. What could those be? Well an issue that the American media has not covered, nor has much of the media in the rest of the world, is the whole issue of Why America needed the war in Iraq. And while it has to do with oil, it was not oil perse that was at issue. It was Petrodollars.

On Guns and Butter:
An Alternative Perspective on the Reasons for Invading Iraq
by Anthony Haynes
The Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies (February, 2004)

Much of the commentary on the Iraq War has assumed that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were the primary reason for the Bush administration’s decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein. This reason appears problematic as US weapons inspectors prepare to leave Iraq. By now it should be clear that the administration’s claims about Iraq’s reconstituted WMD were more the result of supposition than hard evidence.

An alternative explanation for Washington’s determination to be rid of the Baathist regime may be found in its interest in maintaining dollar hegemony through the continued recycling of petrodollars. According to this theory, the Bush administration aims to maintain dollar hegemony by arresting momentum towards the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) switching to the euro as an oil transaction currency. Such a change in the oil transaction ‘currency of choice’ would have a devastating effect on the US economy.

The first step in this notional strategy would include invading Iraq and reversing Saddam Hussein’s policy of pricing Iraq’s vast oil reserves in euros. In effect, the Iraqi dictator’s fate was sealed when Saddam decided to convert Iraq’s oil reserves from US dollars to euros in November of 2000, realizing a huge profit as the euro subsequently appreciated dramatically against the US dollar. The events of September 11, 2001 provided the Bush administration with the perfect opportunity to pursue its ‘strong dollar’ policy and reverse any movement by OPEC towards pricing oil in euros.

As President George W. Bush stated during his press conference following the capture of Saddam Hussein in December of 2003, “We have a strong dollar policy. We expect the markets to determine the dollar exchange rate, but we have a strong dollar policy.” Likewise, US Treasury secretary John Snow has been advocating the same policy since the dollar began its accelerated slide against other major currencies.¹ Currency traders have long viewed Snow’s comments as doublespeak - especially given the dollar’s continued slide vis-à-vis major trading partners. The President, however, was being quite honest about his government’s strong dollar policy.

By ‘strong dollar’, Mr. Bush was referring to the US dollar as the standard global trade currency. It was also a veiled reference to the currency that OPEC should be using to price its oil transactions. As such, it was likely Mr. Bush’s intention to avoid a potential devaluation of the US dollar while the euro gained global pre-eminence as a standard trade currency. According to this view, the risk of losing dollar hegemony far outweighed the risk of further upheaval in the Middle East.

While it is a coincidence that both The Wealth of Nations and the Declaration Of Independence were published in the same year (1776), it is no surprise that both Adam Smith³ and Alexander Hamilton⁴ were proponents of the mercantilist system of power politics. If the ends of mercantilism were the unification of the nation state with its industrial, commercial, financial and military resources, it follows that, in foreign affairs, its ends must be to increase the power of one nation against other nations. For more than two centuries before Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Europe was governed by the beliefs and practices of mercantilism. The mercantilist state of Smith and Hamilton’s time was protectionist, autarkic, expansionist and militaristic. Indeed, the security of 19^th century Britain was largely dependent on economic ties to its far-flung colonies, the latter being protected by the guns of the Royal Navy. It was a US naval squadron under Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry that compelled feudal Japan to open its doors to trade with the United States.

With wide experience in economics and politics, Friedrich List⁵ later wrote extensively on protectionist and militaristic political economy. President Eisenhower, in one of his farewell speeches in 1961, stressed the importance of the military-industrial complex.⁶ He also took great pain to point out its potential abuses – namely its potential to distort America’s economic and security priorities. From the time of the Declaration of Independence through to the Cold War and today, America’s willingness and ability to wage war has always been tied to its macroeconomic policies (the example having been set by her western European predecessors). Hence, the present-day US administration would readily deploy its military might to advance its economic policies.

The Bush administration has taken great care to justify its war on Iraq. The always stern but media-savvy Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rebuffed any and all doubts as to the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime in the run-up to the war. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented a seemingly detailed review of Iraq’s WMD program to the United Nations Security Council. Equally gripping were Mr. Rumsfeld’s musings on the loose associations between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

Was the war in Iraq waged to further US economic policy, and not simply to remove a dangerous dictator and his exotic weapons? One could certainly argue that there were other tyrants to confront at the time the US moved against Saddam. Mr. Clark posits in his essay that President Bush had failed to provide a rational explanation as to why Iraq’s dormant WMD program poses a more imminent threat than North Korea’s active nuclear weapons program. He points out that shortly after the congressional resolution on Iraq, it became clear that Kim Jong-Il was processing uranium (a clear violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the 1995 Agreed Framework) that would give the North Koreans a nuclear weapons capability by late 2003. In a recent book entitled, The Price of Loyalty, former Bush administration Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil implies that Mr. Bush was directing his cabinet to find a way to effect regime change in Iraq soon after taking office.

Mr. Clark published his essay in January of 2003. In it he drew attention to the UN’s inability to find a reconstituted WMD program in Iraq, despite over 400 unencumbered inspections. Further weakening the administration’s claims was the intelligence community’s belief that Al Qaeda was more likely to acquire WMD from the fledgling states of the former Soviet Union, or even acquire them from a destabilizing or destabilized Pakistan.

Mr. Clark’s essay discusses at some length the “macroeconomics of petrodollars and the unpublicized but real threat to the US economic hegemony from the euro as an alternative oil transaction currency.” While he employs published reports (largely European and Asian) to support his arguments, he draws attention to the fact that the US media had not taken up the story.

Critics of President Bush’s foreign policy typically view his administration as a cabal of aggressive, neo-conservative hawks recklessly advocating global military intervention to topple real and imagined enemies of the United States. While this might indeed be the case, one should not discount the possibility that this invasion was planned and carried out in an attempt to maintain a strong dollar policy – a policy that was vital for the economic security of the United States.

Harpers Pre Depression Farm Plan

Once again the Harper has ressurected the old Reform party made in America farm plan.

Under the Conservative plan, farmers would also be given greater choice in marketing and transporting their products, including choosing whether the wish to participate in the Canadian Wheat Board.

Ah hem, they already have the right to elect directors to the CWB. That issue was resolved years ago. But the right wing rump of farmers who wanted to sell their wheat directly to the U.S. still lobby against the CWB. Forgetting that the CWB for all its bueracracy was created by farmers after the market crash of 1929 which drove Alberta into debt and our farmers into poverty as the Eastern banks swooped up their land for the mortgages they owed. Farmers in Western Canada created the Wheat Board to market their coop grain for the best price. The greater good and all that liberal utilitarian philosophy.

The right wingers in Reform wanted what was good for them, I' m all right Jack screw you...they lived in the Southern half of Alberta, Manitoba and Sasktchewan so loading their trucks and crossing the border was not problem, but transportation costs for other farmers in central and northern parts of the provinces well who cares about them eh. Also many of them belonged to the Religious right, Mormons, Dutch Reformed, etc. whose religious ideology and kinship group is linked across the border in the US. So this was also a question of ideology not just practical economics.

Notice that these same right wing sop called free marketers never challenge the Quebec farm cooperatives and marketing boards for dairy and eggs. Wonder why? Cause they have NO political base in Quebec. That would require finding a couple of selfish stupid Gentlemen farmers who read too much Ayn Rand, hobby farmed and forgot the lessons of the Great Depression. See what I mean;

"The Conservative vision of agriculture policy has been shaped by MPs in almost every region of the country who have been deeply involved in farming for their entire lives. We are stronger because of this representation and, frankly, Conservatives have a better understanding of the impact of the difficult times facing many farm families today."

Canada is Americas Hel

Hel is one of my favorite of the old gods of the Norse. She is Queen of the Dead and rules the kingdom of snow and ice. Sorta like Canada, Queen and Country and all that.


Swingers clubs don't harm society, top court rules
Clubs that allow group sex and partner swapping do not harm Canadian society and should not be considered criminal, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Wednesday. F U L L S T O R Y

Here is another Anti-Americanism for ya. Or maybe its just what makes Canda different than the U.S. For American Right Whing Whiners and Fundies this news will merely confirm what they already know, that Canada really is their version of Hel. A social democratic country of snow, gay marriage,socialized medicine, gun control, legal prostitution, marijuana decriminalization, public education, legal abortion, and now legal orgies and swingers clubs.

I can hear the rants from the usual crowd of nutbars from the Blogging Tory's starting now (mind you I expect some sanity out of the self professed libertarians since sex between consenting adults, no matter how many, is a matter of choice).

Mind you since most of them cross post to each other confirming their conspiracy theories you would think that incest was legal in this country. Please we are Canadian, we may be liberal but we do draw the line.