Medicare Calgary Style

Forget the idea that Ralph Kleins Third Way is Alberta's way it's the Calgary Way. As I have said before the PC's in Alberta are the Party of Calgary. Its the home of the right wing in Canada, as well as new home of Canada's corporate elite and their Headquarters. And for years it has had the honorific of being the largest American city north of the 49th parallel.

Being the brain trust of the neo-conservative revolution in Canada, when the neo-cons didn't like the Calgary Board of Education and its failure to adapt to their demands they pushed through Charter Schools and taxpayer funding for private schools. Calgary now has the largest number of private and charter schools in Canada.

Privatization of liquor and Electrical Deregulation came out of the Calgary business community and its control of the PC's. In particular it was promoted by Steve West, Ralph Kleins old drinking buddy. And despite protests by Ron Southern, Mr. Trilateral Commission, and Tory bagman for years, owner of ATCO, a private electrical supplier, the voice of Transalta, the private Calgary energy giant won out. On its board is the next CEO err Premier of Alberta, Jim Dinning.

What Calgary wants Calgary gets. The Gimball eye clinic started in Calgary, and thus the road towards two tier privatized health care began.Gimball ironically like all other laser eye surgery clinics, learnt the technique in the Soviet Union, where it was developed in the Ukraine to reduce waiting times for cataract surgery.

Private MRI clinics first developed in Calgary, prior to opening in other cities in Alberta. A conglomerate of doctors and investors, with the aid of the husband of a sitting MLA started the first private contract clinic which provides services to the WCB.

Two private health corporations are looking at opening up private surgical hotel overnight hospitals in Calgary.

The Klein announcement of creating a parallel private healthcare system in Alberta yesterday with his white paper on the so called Third Way, is another Calgary scheme. And Canadians in other provinces should be afraid. But not for reasons that you think.

The Third Way in health care
01-03-06, 9:32 pm @ Tory Thoughts

We all saw it coming. The writing was on the wall. The threats had been made. Ralph Klein has unveiled the framework of his Third Way health-care reform. As a Tory, I find myself wondering about the premier's motives for dismantling public health care. Most Albertans are Tories, but that doesn't mean they want to favour the rich and wealthy, so that they can go queue-jumping at the expense of those with less money in their pockets.

This Tory is right. He should be afraid. With a surplus as large as the Federal Governments, and with 25 Conservative MP's from Alberta, including the PM, Klein is preparing to defeat the Canada Health Act simply by bypassing it.

A little help
01-03-06, 7:03 pm @ Occam's Carbuncle

Could somebody please direct me to the provision of the Canada Health Act that bans privately insured medical services or direct payment by patients to health care providers?

Sure, the Canadian Health Act does not say you cannot have a parallel private health care system, nor does it ban privatized services, Klein can have his cake and eat it too.

The reality. Private clinics

There is nothing in the 1984 Canada Health Act or any of the subsequent policy directives from Ottawa that bans private clinics, provided they charge only the going Medicare rates and are paid by provincial plans.

Indeed, in Ottawa’s most stringent directive on the subject—the 1995 letter from former Liberal health minister Diane Marleau—provinces are allowed to pay for medically necessary work at private clinics as long as there is no separate facility fee charged by these clinics, or as long as the provincial plan picks up that tab as well.

The objective here is simply to eliminate any kind of user fee that might act as a bar to someone seeking service. So as long as Alberta hews to the policy on facility fees, it should be home free.

What this means is as I said here, Klein wants to build a private system to attract business. The Calgary gang which has money wants its cake and eat it too. They want their own medical system. Where they can get services and an overnight stay, bed and breakfast and the National Post delivered to the door. Drycleaning is optional.

The idea and Klein has said this before, is to attract those who would go out of the country to get private care. He wants them to come to Calgary for those services.
In fact the idea is to have Americans as well as folks from Ontario and Quebec come here. If they can afford it.

And the doctors, well they will come here too. From Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, B.C., anywhere that pays less than what Hotel Calgary will pay for their services.

And they will be able to have their wages guarnteed by Alberta Healthcare, consider it their base pay, which their private services will top up. It's a win win.
If you are a specialist.

Unruffled Evans preferred to call it a search "for the middle ground, where we can build on our capacity to serve Albertans." She might also have mentioned that it's likely a matter of time before Canada's doctors challenge the restrictions placed on them by medicare. We have the only system in the world that dictates working conditions for supposedly self-employed physicians.

Think of it Alberta is currently cutting edge in medical research, in heart operations, in childrens diseases, in diabetes research, etc. etc. What will now stop this research from becoming a business, an industry, funded by the government but patents and procedures being done for private profit. Nothing.

Alberta already has taken steps to increase the amount of doctors that can practice here by dropping the restrictions on retraining that immigrant doctors face elsewhere in Canada. These doctors are the replacement workers for doctors who will move out into private practice.

Canadians should be afraid. You stand to lose your doctors and nurse practicioners, and specialists to Alberta. You stand to see your provincial healthcare funds going to pay for services in Alberta. And if the Harper government passes its healthcare waiting times reforms, which guarntee that you can get services anywhere in Canada, well Alberta will benefit. We have already reduced waiting times for hip surgery, one of the things the Third Way will allow private practice in, from 47 weeks to 4.7 weeks in our public hospitals.

So Harper and Health Minister Clement can stare at the white paper all they like its whats not printed on the page that says it all. And while Clement isn't in the know every MP from Calgary including the PM is.

The Third Way is Calgary's Way of becoming the Mayo Clinic North. Would you like a glass of wine with that hip surgery sir?

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Ralph Klein Abuser

Was Colleen Klein fearing for her safety when she pushed hubby to go for a fourth term? Calgary Herald Columnist Don Braid thinks so.........

And Klein did admit it was Colleen who pushed him into seeking a fourth term which, in my view, may have more to do with her concern that he'll start drinking again once the public spotlight moves on.

And we know that alcoholics are abusive, even after they have gone sober, which may also explain why Colleen is so reluctant to appear in public.

Her foes insist she's become reclusive from political life.

That's true, too.

Homebody Colleen Klein rarely travels on trade missions anymore and refused, for example, to attend the premiers' conference in Banff last summer until a Klein bodyguard offered to take care of her pooch.

Klein proved he was abusive in the most public way in the infamous incident with the unemployed at the homeless shelter. Drunk in charge He swore off drinking but that was temporary, typical alcoholic behaviour.


It is odd that none of the journalists and politicians, save for Pannu, criticized Klein for drunkenly barging into to a homeless shelter. It seems that homeless baiting is an acceptable pursuit in Alberta, encouraged and practised by the premier himself. At least that is what I glean from the-excuse the cliché-conspiracy of silence regarding Klein's night at the homeless shelter. Ralph’s alcoholism a smokescreen

“Ashley Geddes, a colleague at The Edmonton Journal, had to wait a year to get a story in print in the early '90s about cabinet minister Steve West's shenanigans in local bars. References to West's sometime drinking buddy of the day, Klein, were removed.” Mark Lisac

Klein’s drinking habits have a long public history.

The stories of Klein and alcohol are endless. He drank openly as Mayor of Calgary in the 1980s. He made the St. Louis Hotel in Calgary a national institution. He drinks with reporters. When he decided to contest the Conservative Party leadership in 1992, he was asked about the drinking. His response: a guy can change. He didn’t.

He also has a gambling addiction. An addict is an addict. And those with addictions are the most common abusers.

Klein's ban on booze relaxes just a little Premier says he also gambles in his spare time -- 'I start with $1,000 at the beginning of the year'

King Ralph promotes liberalizing legislation for his addictions. The privatization of liquor, the expansion of VLT's and gambling, and of course the watering down of the provincial anti-smoking laws.

Smoking bill changes: Klein. Red Deer Advocate, A6.

Alberta Premier Ralph Klein states that changes to a private member's bill that calls for a provincewide smoking ban will not weaken the proposed legislation. Amendments to the bill will allow smoking in bars, casinos, and bingo halls as they are locations where children are not allowed. Klein indicates that the amendments are due to concerns from rural residents and bar owners.

Ralphs sin taxes are a major source of government revenue, over and above even that paid by the oil industry.

Even for a family in which nobody smokes, gambles or drinks alcohol, this means a provincial tax bill of $1,029 per month. Mom and dad don’t see this $1,029 taken off of their pay cheques, but that is what the average Alberta family pays in provincial tax each month when you include both visible and hidden taxes.

What does not get paid for is Womens Shelters. Last year despite another record surplus, funding for womens shelters in Edmonton and Calgary were on the bottom of the governments social priorities.

It's something that neither Ralph nor Colleen talk about. Wonder why? Colleen who champions all sorts of causes has never once championed abused women in Alberta. Is it denial? Denial is common amongst abuse victims.

Alberta has the most cases of violent domestic crime in Canada. And native women in particular have less access to services and safe houses.Why are First Nations Shelters worth less than other Shelters in Alberta? Being Metis you would think this would concern Colleen. Instead she focuses on meth addiction as Don Braid says in his article;

Besides, to argue Colleen Klein is in this for the transportation trappings of political royalty clashes with 25 years as a humble volunteer helping charities, particularly children, and her latest push to curb the spread of crystal meth addictions in youth.

Klein abused the disabled during the 2004 election, he publicly used those on AISH as a political punching bag, declaring they weren't Normal Albertans. Ironically his government was sued to payback AISH payments they had stolen from the disabled, widows and the poor. Klein Steals From The Poor And Disabled

Klein is an abuser in public. And this is just another of those incidents. Again behaviour associated with alcoholism.

Klein sorry after hitting page with tossed book
The genesis of the incident is a verbal exchange between the Tories and the opposition.CTV Edmonton reporter Dan Kobe said Klein told the Liberals in the provincial legislature that if they had any good ideas about health care, they should send them over to him.The Liberals used the invitation to send over a copy of their health policy red book, which a page took over to the premier. "The premier admits he threw it back at her and called it crap," Kobe said.

What is he like in private?

So ask why the media in Alberta which knows all about King Ralphs dark side have abetted in covering it up. Afraid of his wrath or is it the silence of compatriots, since he used to be one of them. Those in the media who know have been silent. Perhaps they are waiting to write the tell all biography after he retires, and is safely out of power.





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Democracy Is Messy

Sources tell CTV the regulatory changes to the registry will be fast-tracked through cabinet to avoid a messy parliamentary debate. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office reportedly want quick action on the file because it's a key campaign promise. Federal gov't planning a gun amnesty:

Ah yes that business of democracy is so messy.

Harper is once again showing his mastery of Alberta politics where King Ralph despite his overwhelming majority, and one party state, uses the same tactics to push through spending and policies to avoid facing question period in the legislature. As I have said Welcome to Ottawa, Alberta.

Harper's comments came during a rare press conference where reporters were allowed to pose questions to the prime minister. He touched on a number of topics including the recent murder of a Canadian couple in Mexico, Alberta's move towards a two-tier health system, and his plans to legislate the election of senators.

Press conferences are rare in Alberta and tightly scripted. Don Martin should feel right at home. Martin has just published a book called King Ralph, an unofficial biography on the life and times of Ralph Klein, the premier of Alberta.


Oh yes and remember how consultative Harper promised to be. Well forget that when it comes to Senate Reform. Harper is the ultimate autarch, he is acting positively Presidential. To bad this is Canada where we don't elect a President seperate from his party no matter Harpers illusions that this is so. Since we are a parlimentary system the PMO is an autarch now under Harper the PM is King. In Ottawa, Alberta we now have King Stephen I.

Harper said nothing stopped him from unilaterally creating an electoral process to have simultaneous elections for the Commons and Senate."While I obviously would like to see the co-operation of the provinces, it's a commitment our government has made to pursue Senate elections and that's something we believe we can do from Ottawa.'' Harper plans quick action on elected Senate

Yep he will impose his version of Senate reform on parliment in the grand tradition of that other English parlimentarian King Henry VIII. The fact is that the Senate itself is an elitist institution that denies youg or poor Canadians and renters the right to representation in the Red House. It is the very essence of the British Aristocracy the propertied rentier class.

Senators must be at least 30 years old, hold $4,000 in mortgage-free property. They earn more than $100,000 a year, plus pensions and benefits.

Real electoral reform would be to Abolish the Senate and expand the House of Commons through proportional representation.

Former NDP leader Ed Broadbent, who champions abolishing the Senate as fundamentally undemocratic, had a cautious reaction to the prime minister's announcement.

"Every Canadian knows that reform or abolition is needed and if Mr. Harper can come up with a scheme that addresses both the election of senators and the powers of the Senate, that would be a great contribution.''

"If he aims at just dealing with the elections, I'm not optimistic of the outcome.''

Harper said he did not need the provinces' OK to reform the upper house, but urged them to support his initiative.

The King is dead! Long Live the King!

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Forget Seals what about Bears and Wolves

Hey Sir Beatle get yer butt off the ice and over to Alberta where the endangered Wolf and Grizzly population is being hunted. Ex-Beatle, wife in Maritimes before annual seal hunt

Oh right what am I saying this isn't about the environment or endangered species its about high visibilty campaigns for fund raising for Green NGO's. Its the annual fundraising campaign time again. I guess no one told Sir Beatle Seal Hunt Protest Cancelled Of course not its all about fundraising.

Oh and here is an irony the annual Grizzly hunt began this month in Alberta but the government department in charge of the annual hunting license draw has no news on its web site. The last news update from the Department of Alberta Sustainable Resources is from December 2005. December. Shows how important Sustainable Development and Wildlife protection is in Alberta.


Also See:

A Hunting We Will Go

Cry Wolf

Americans Hunt Canadians

Save Our Grizzly Bears



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Full Medicare Privatization

Unlike proposals from B.C. and Quebec to increase access to privatized health services as an alternative to medicare, King Ralphs proposed Third Way is full blown privatization of Medicare.

The aim, the paper says, is to "let individuals pay privately for faster access."

So why is the Federal Minister of Health dithering over this direct challenge to the Canada Health Act, because he is a Tory of course.

Alberta sent copies of its proposal to Mr. Harper and federal Health Minister Tony Clement yesterday morning

Mr. Clement told reporters in Ottawa that any changes to the health-care system must be done within the confines of the Canada Health Act, but refused to say whether he believes Alberta's proposal meets that test.

When asked whether patients should be allowed to pay to get treatment faster than the public system can offer, Mr. Clement said, "I think the Canada Health Act is clear on that question," but he did not elaborate.

Since the Alberta plan touted by King Ralph is Not American style health care it is modeled on Englands privatized National Health Service lets look at how successful that has been.NHS told: put money before medicine

Need I point out that the government does not have to insure that the rich can cue skip to get medical services, they already do. The point here is that Klein wants to offer those services in Alberta so the rich don't have to go to the Mayo clinic. Convinence and service, for those poor rich folks, of course the logic of this is that not having the rich waiting for hip or knee replacements will shorten the waiting period for those poor folks who can't afford to go south of the border for services. But wait a minute if the rich are already going south, they aren't onthose waiting lists anyways. Which sort of defeats Tony Clements soft shoe shuffle saying that he will consider the Klein plan in light of increasing access and decreasing wait times. Alberta's 'Third Way' could mean health-care showdown with Ottawa

Cy Frank, the Calgary doctor who spearheaded a pilot project that resulted in a dramatic drop in waiting times for hip and knee replacement, said nobody in the government had consulted him or his peers about allowing patients to pay for certain orthopedic services.

"We're not aware of any such plan, but I know they've been musing about that," said Dr. Frank, who is director of Alberta's new Bone and Joint Institute.

Launched last April, the pilot project has seen waiting times for hip and knee replacements slashed. Patients are on the operating table 11 weeks after the first referral to an orthopedic surgeon rather than the usual 19½ months.

But Colleen Flood, a health law expert at the University of Toronto, said research has shown that waiting times in the public system have actually increased in countries such as New Zealand, Ireland and Spain that have allowed doctors to work in both the public and private systems.

"Many countries that allow a private tier have a raft of complicated legislation to try to suppress its ability to flourish," she said.

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Bush Beats Harper to Afghanistan

So maybe this is what the private conversation Harper and Bush had, who would go to Afghanistan first.

Bush in surprise visit to Afghanistan
The US president is visiting Afghanistan at a time when the country is still troubled by a stubborn Taliban insurgency that has claimed 1500 lives since the start of last year, including dozens of US soldiers.

So why is the Harper going to Afghanistan PM eyes Afghan sojourn when Canadians are opposed to this takeover of Kandahar by Canadian Troops doing America's dirty work. Canadian commands coalition troops in Kandahar; new blast underlines danger

If you accept the fact that our forces in military uniform are involved in something that is vital, and you accept the idea that the majority of Canadians don't support this mission, do you think it is necessary for the prime minister to emerge from hiding and tell us why we are committing blood and treasure in the sand and rock of Afghanistan?

Now it's true that Stephen Harper has been thinking about going to Afghanistan next week. That would be a great photo-op for him and perhaps a morale muffin for the troops. But it will take more than a photo-op of the young prime minister saluting our forces in the field to get Canadians on board. Harper AWOL on Afghan mission

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Cry Wolf Redux

Little Smoky Caribou Action Centre

What you can do

Send a message to show your support for Little Smoky caribou herd!

Send a beautiful postcard to your friends and family

Learn more at CPAWS Edmonton

Learn more about CPAWS' work for caribou

Read our news release

The Little Smoky caribou herd:

The Little Smoky herd is one of Alberta's most endangered woodland caribou herds. Industrial activities in their range have led to a serious loss of suitable habitat that is threatening the very existence of this herd.

The Issue:

The government of Alberta has decided that the best way to protect the Little Smoky caribou herd is a wolf cull. Alberta Fish and Wildlife has been advised by members of the Alberta Caribou Committee that the culling of wolves to protect caribou will not help unless significant portions of the herd's range is off limits to industrial activities like oil and gas and forestry operations. However, forestry is still removing critical habitat, and new oil and gas leases are being permitted in the range.

Killing predators is a last-resort option where caribou populations are in a crisis situation. Caribou need secure habitat in which populations can be restored. But in Alberta, the needs of caribou are being trumped by resource extraction. The new sale of oil and gas land leases in the heart of habitat for the Little Smoky Woodland Caribou herd, and logging in this area by West Fraser are contrary to the government's own policy. The 1996/1997 Operating Guidelines for Industrial Activity in Caribou Ranges in West Central Alberta, the location of the Little Smoky herd, state: Industrial activity can occur on caribou range provided the integrity and supply of habitat is maintained to permit its use by caribou.

In 2004 an assessment of the caribou habitat in the Little Smoky was published by the logging companies active in the ranges, and the Alberta Government. It concluded that the Little Smoky range "...does not currently provide habitat conditions sufficient to maintain stable caribou population growth..." Let the government know that habitat protection must be a priority if caribou are to survive.

Take Action!

Please send a letter today to Hon. David Coutts, Alberta's Minister of Sustainable Resource Development.

Also See:

A Hunting We Will Go

Cry Wolf

Americans Hunt Canadians

Save Our Grizzly Bears


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Alberta, Wolf, Kill, Caribou, Protest, CPAWS

Labour Is Capital

An interesting article I came across from the Italian Left Communist group; Countdown provocatively titled; Marxism is Dead! Long Live Marxism! which deals with the fact that in todays Capitalist economy work has no intrinsic value, that is being a shoemaker is of no more importance than working for the Colonel at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The rise of the so called service economy in North America and Europe, and the end of industrialization in these countries, has seen industrialization shipped offshore but it has also seen service work shipped offshore, call centres, computer programing, etc.

Once upon a time the proletariat was seen as blue collar industrial workers today with Capitalisms ascendance around the globe the proletariat is everywhere, waged and unwaged, working in factories or at home, no longer is there a commons for peasants, the peasants have moved to the cities to become the informal economy of the shanty towns.The revolutionary ideas of the elder Herr Dr. Marx now become more prophetic, that labour as abstract labour, as the creator of value, as the very essence of capitalism, is not free, is not liberated but everywhere enslaved to the machinery of capital itself.

Capitalism has no face, only masks as Marx said. The new capitalism the shareholder stakeholder capitalism of today, where we identify as workers, consumers, citizens, stockholders, is the abstract captialism that Marx predicted. The capitalist is one expression of capitalism the machine, the worker/consumer/citizen/shareholder is another. Both are needed for the continuation of capitalism itself. Capitalism can only be abolished now with the abolition of the proletratiat, through its self recognition of itself as the very source and being of captialism.

It is not a matter of smashing the machines like the Luddites, or of nationalisation,or of decalring the State to be socialist, but of recongizing that we are the machine of capitalism and that we can rehape our society to our needs, not the need for making Quarterly profits. The moment we have a mass recognition that our subjective feelings of alienation, which result in many spectral or spectacular forms, is our alienation from the system we have created, will allow us to take over our lives, and thus end the system which is out of our control. This then is the spectre haunting globalization it is the contradiciton facing those who want to promote global capitalism and those who oppose it. They are both dancers in this pantomine but the point they miss is who is playing in the band. The band is those who have taken autonomous action to change their conditions, such as the current revolutions that have occured in Latin America especially Argentina and Bolivia.

As Marx said at that moment the proletariat will have reached class conciousness not of itself as a class, which is in opposition to capitalism, but as a class for itself, as the very source of capitalism. Communism then becomes possible, not as a form of state or governance, through our selfish decision that the abundance we create is available for all to use. Which until this moment in history has been limited by the capitalist means of production and distribution.


The lifespan of orthodox Marxism mirrored
the rise of this industrial working class in Europe
and North America. The critique of the bourgeois
order produced by this class reflected its exclusion
from bourgeois politics, the parasitism of unproductive
capital, and the erosion of its position
in the work process. It was a claim for inclusive
status on behalf of industrial labour as industrial
labour, but not a critique of capital, as the value
form of this industrial labour. The Marxism that
rested on and drew sustenance from this new
industrial working class and its struggle, was a
critique of capital, but from the standpoint of a
class protective of its status as a class. The spontaneous
socialism of the working class movement
produced a Marxism limited to the sovereignty of
industrial labour in the bourgeois order.
The critique to be found in the late works of
Marx (Grundrisse (1857-8), Theories of Surplus Value
(1862-3), Das Kapital (1864-1867)) was a critique
that was never consistently taken up by the leading
theoreticians of the 2nd and 3rd Internationals.
This was Marx’s critique of capital as a critique of
the value form of labour. It was a critique of the
very form taken by labour in the capitalist mode
of production – abstract labour as the source of
value, and constitutive of the form of social
domination characteristic of this mode.2 It was
therefore a critique pointing to the necessity of the
abolition of value producing labour as such.3 This
critique was unappreciated not because of the
personal failings of the leading Marxists of this
tradition. In the attempt to establish Marxism as a
source of authority for working class struggles,
those very struggles, rooted as they were in a
specific stage of development of industrial capital,
and generative of specific forms of social consciousness,
militated against a full grasp of Marx’s
mature critique. In the context of the period in
which it was written, Marx’s critique of the value
form was ahead of its time, pointing as it did to a
development of abstract labour and value that lay
only in the future.

Capital was conceptualised by Orthodox
Marxism as a thing separate from and opposed to
labour. Capital and labour were thus polarities,
discreet opposites, each standing in an external
relation to the other. Labour was an entity whose
essence was denied by the existence of capital – the
source of its oppression understood as something
outside it. This dualist conceptualisation is to a
large extent explicable if it is remembered that the
parties of the 2nd International were an organic
part of the first real working class movements.
These movements were struggling to assert the
integrity and dignity of industrial labour as a
legitimate producer of wealth. While Social
Democracy articulated this sentiment in the form
of a collectivist state socialism, syndicalism offered
a purely corporatist version, and Bolshevism a
modernising variant in the circumstances of backwardness.
But all were in the last analysis variants
of a class representation of labour as wage labour.
By contrast, Marx’s critique of capital was as a
form of appearance of value, the substance of which
was alienated (abstract) labour. The critique and
negation of capital was at the same time the critique
and negation of abstract labour – the abolition of
the proletariat as a class. The implication of Marx’s
critique is that the expression of the domination
of capital through the medium of a class of
capitalists is secondary; while the exercise of
domination through the value form (the rule of
an abstraction which presents itself as natural
necessity) is primary. Insofar as the critique of
capital by Orthodox Marxism equated the abolition
of capital with the abolition of the capitalist
class (a change of property relations), it had no
critique of labour as wage labour.
Understanding capital as a thing, a selfcontained
entity, meant understanding labour as
an equally self-contained entity. In such an
understanding the source of change for capital or
labour derived not from the internal contradictions
of the capital-wage labour relation, but from forces
external to either side of the polarity. It followed
from this that Orthodox Marxism had no
understanding of the dialectic of the social relation
of capital – of the necessary development and
dissolution of this relation. Without an understanding
of the self-movement, the selfdevelopment
of this relation, the strategic aim of
Orthodox Marxism, in all its variants, was to
represent the proletariat in its finished, capitalist
form, as wage labour.

The significance of the Keynesian approach to the crisis
of capital, was that, on the one hand, it understood
the importance of wages for profitability, and
therefore stability of accumulation, and at the same
time understood this as a means of incorporating
the proletariat into the capitalist political economy.
Keynesian state socialism offered a solution to the
underconsumption aspect of the crisis of accumulation,
and neatly complemented the commercial
strategy of mass marketing/advertising (pioneered
in the US in the twenties) that would create the
citizen-consumer. Fordist mass consumption thus
provided a neutralising of the class struggle over
distribution and a hoped for stimulus to economic
growth (through the avoidance of chronic depression).
Bourgeois citizenship as consumption became
central to the Social Democratic strategy of
achieving the inclusion of the working class in
bourgeois society, and thereby “civilizing”
capitalism: providing due recognition of the claims
of labour and stabilising capital’s circuit of
reproduction. Inclusion for the majority of the
working class, which was achieved in the capitalist
heartlands by the 1960s, thus completed the historic
task of Classical Social Democracy. This explains
why Social Democracy has eventually had to
transmute into a managerialist version of economic
liberalism. This latest explicit embrace of the market
should not be seen as a betrayal of its earlier
principles, but a natural terminus for them. It is
merely the logical extension of a strategy of securing
for the “included” masses their individual rights
as citizen-consumers (i.e. as full participants in the
valorisation of capital)

The history of the capitalist mode of production
in the second half of the twentieth century is the
history of the developing hegemony of the value
form as the regulator of social life. The basis of the
capital relation, which was its origin, and remains
its essential underpinning, is the separation of the
direct producers from the means of production, a
separation ensuring the selling of labour power,
which as abstract labour (labour abstracted from
any aspect of use or skill), constitutes the substance
of value. This mode of production demands the
perpetual revolutionising of the means of production
(division of labour/mechanisation) to produce
commodities in the shortest possible time (highest
possible labour productivity). Such revolutionizing
drives the homogenisation of work (i.e. skills
become more perfectly interchangeable, and the
identification of workers with particular kinds of
useful work is eroded). A mode of production
resting on abstract labour thereby inevitably
produces a homogenisation of the work process.
This development was not of course the smooth
unfolding of a pre-established trajectory. It was at
every juncture the outcome of class struggles
generated by the wage-labour/capital relation. The
struggles of the period 1875-1950, for inclusion and
for the autonomy of work, eventually resolved into
a reconfiguration of the terms of engagement of
wage-labour and capital. As the challenge to the
right of the bosses to manage was defeated, the
workers’ movement was gradually reconstituted
around a different perspective. In the context of
the democratic counterrevolution after the Second
World War, the struggle to establish juridical rights
for all workers regardless of skill or job performance
– over unemployment, guaranteed pay (a living
wage), conditions of work, pensions – displaced
the struggle for the autonomy of work; the new
emphasis on the statutory paralleled the homogenisation
of work. Not surprisingly this trend
spelled the demise of craft based trades unionism
and the diminishing resonance in the social
consciousness of class distinctions based on
occupational categories.

The birth of Orthodox Marxism (the first post-
Marx Marxism) coincided with a working class
experiencing the erosion of predominantly precapitalist
social relations by capitalist commodity
production. Its most class-conscious elements
aspired to the sovereignty of industrial labour
whilst preserving the community and solidarity
of established craft traditions. The working class
being formed was in effect straddling two modes
of production – it was already experiencing the
formal subsumption of labour, but not yet the real
subsumption of labour (Marx 1976, pp.1019-1038).
For semi-capitalist labour in transition to fully
capitalist labour, oppression and exploitation was
seen to lie outside the act of labour itself (in a class
of landlords and employers). The Marxism that
was built on, and drew sustenance from this class
experience relied on the categories of base and
superstructure, forces and relations of production,
and economic determinism, but not those of value
and abstract labour. By contrast, in the fully
developed capitalist labour anticipated by Marx
(the product of real subsumption), social
domination was intrinsic (internal) to labour itself;
it lay in the very act of value producing labour.
But the new industrial proletariat, and the Marxists
who championed its cause, would not fully
grasp the nature of a value form that was then
still in the early stages of its development.
Today, the proletariat is incorporated more
firmly into the circuit of the production and
realisation of value via mass consumption, is more
indifferent to the content of work, and thus more
conditioned to the value imperative that flows from
abstract labour. This means that the proletariat will
in the future be less and less able to confront capital
as a force external to itself, and more and more
must experience capital (value) as internal to its
activity, the very form of its (waged and thus
alienated) labour. The value imperative, as a form
of domination experienced as natural necessity,
must be seen by the proletariat as a force that lies
within itself as wage-labour. Marxists can no
longer retail the orthodox view of class struggle
as the struggle against capital as object, external
to the proletariat as subject; the proletarian
struggle must henceforth be seen as a struggle to
abolish itself as labour. This is the theoretical truth
posed by the development of the value form.


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Canadians Say Troops Out Now

This is of course not a scientific poll, like this one, however it shows again that Afghanistan is the Canadian Governments version of Mission Accomplished.

CTV Poll

Is the possibility of Canadian soldiers being killed in Afghanistan worth the cost of bringing stability to a region of the world that has been embroiled in warfare for decades?

Yes		5492 votes	(48 %)
No		5949 votes	(52 %)
Total Votes: 11441

Also See:

We Want A Free Vote

Canada Out of Afghanistan

Hockey Night in Kandahar

Our Troops In Afghanistan Are Fighting For...

The Tories First Scandal

Afghanistan; Americas Shame Canada's Tragedy

Car Courtesy Kills

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Pension Free China

The Blogging Tories and right wingers who hate State Supported Pensions like Steve Janke should be cheering this bastion of Free Enterprize. Steve says;thanks to socialized universal pension plans, children have no value. Really well explain this then; since China has a population control policy and NO Universal Public Pensions.

Over 80 percent of Chinese workers have no basic pension insurance

According to a report of the Economic Information Daily on 17 February quoting official statistics, over 80 percent of workers in China have no basic pension insurance. More than 85 percent of people living in cities and towns do not have basic medical insurance, the paper added. The poor and the needy in urban areas have not received any systematic social assistance. [Read more]

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China, workers, pensions, childcare, Conservatives, Canada, labour, labor