« The Spark!

Marxist Theory & Discussion

CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM & WOMEN

By Jeanne McGuire | 

For the International Women’s Day in 2017

[Detail from “Emancipated Women Build Socialism!” (1920) | Strakhov. (Public Domain)]

The struggle for a new world will be stunted and debilitated if women are not part of the struggle to build it.

***

I WOULD like to begin by discussing ideas – ideas about the other – other race, ethnicity, nationality, class or caste, sometimes religion, and of course gender.  Those others who are designated as less – less intelligent, less capable, less rational, less responsible, less controlled – having less of those qualities adds up to being inferior. Being less able to cope with certain jobs, stresses, and decision making. They are also designated as being more – more emotional, more intuitive, more natural (less civilized), more child-like, more manipulative.  

However, these descriptions are equally false when applied to women.  I won’t drown you in historical or cross-cultural data to prove my point – you are here, you know it isn’t true.  I’ll refer to one myth – women belong in the home not in the workplace. The reality is that women have always worked – poor women, peasant women, working-class women.  The rice paddies of China were planted by women, the fields of Ukraine were plowed by women who, when the family could not afford horses or oxen, pulled the plow themselves. In the early days of Canadian colonization it was understood that indigenous women were the ones with the necessary stamina and knowledge to be guides over long distances.  All over the world, the houses of the rich, the children of the rich were tended by women – poor women who cooked, cleaned, fed, laundered, and scrubbed for the rich.

In Canada today, 82% of women between the ages of 25 and 54 work and women make up 47% of the workforce. In 1953, only 24% of women worked.

But if this idea isn’t based on reality, what is it based on, why is it believed?  As is the case with many ideas, it is based on social structure not on nature. During the age of slavery, most people believed slavery was natural.  When there is a monarchy, most people believe in the rightness of having a king.  If you look at the world and see that women occupy a position of inferiority within society, it is easy to assume that the inferiority is within the woman herself, not a reflection of social structure.  These ideas also reflect the values, behavior, affectations of those who hold power and position in the society, the rich, the owners, the rulers.  The rich always want to distinguish themselves from the masses – whether it is long fingernails in China, or wives who didn’t work.  How can such useless, counterproductive ideas continue in the face of today’s reality?  Religion, the press, the educational system, movies, and other forms of popular culture like music transmit and reinforce the ideas of a social system.   But ideas take on a life of their own, they have substance and consequence. And they need to be confronted and defeated – they may die on their own, but we cannot wait for that, we must make it happen.

Who loses from the ideas about women’s role in society? The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives issued a report this year – women earn 80% of the male wage packet and they earn less even if they do the same job.

45% of Canadian women work in one of 20 low-paying positions – so, for instance, in 2011 a truck driver, usually male, earned on average $45, 417 and an Early Childhood Educator, usually female, earned $25, 252.  And women make up 47% of the workforce but make up 70% of the part-time workforce.   The rest is due to wage discrimination.

Even being a university graduate doesn’t level the playing field – the majority of university graduates are in fact women, but they earn almost $30,000 a year less than their male counterparts.

Who benefits from this discrimination?  Men?  Well, some men – those who reap the super profits from paying women less than they would have had to pay a man.  Those who benefit from the tensions and conflicts within the workforce created by ideas about women’s role and place.  

Do other men benefit?  In some ways; they have higher status, greater self-regard, they are released from much of the petty drudgery done by the females in the household.  BUT they also suffer. Family income is less, so they know greater insecurity, and their children’s future may be restricted as a result.   And when these ideas about the inferiority of others combine, when prejudice with respect to women is added to prejudice based on race, class, ethnicity, or religion, the result is truly ugly – violence, sexual abuse, discrimination. Witness the outrageous treatment of immigrant women, women of colour, and women workers in foreign subsidiaries of Canadian companies.  One of the most horrendous examples of this coming-together of a number of variables is the situation confronting indigenous women in Canada.   The problem of sexism is multiplied by the issue of racism and again by poverty and isolation.  It is multiplied again by the legacy of colonial occupation and subjugation, in some cases genocide (as in the case of the Beothuk in Newfoundland). It is multiplied again by subsequent government policies of exclusion, followed by policies of assimilation, which included the horrors of the residential school system. The violence and sexual abuse, the prejudice and discrimination that all indigenous peoples in Canada, but particularly indigenous women, face goes beyond shameful. There is no greater stain on Canada’s history than the treatment of its original inhabitants.

And, as to the violence visited on women, let me make this point.  Men in prison live in fear and apprehension of the possibility of physical and sexual violence by other inmates.   Women spend their entire lives in that prison.  They are always aware, they always know, not that they will, but that they can be violated, not that every man is a rapist, but that they are vulnerable should he be.  They spend their entire lives in a prison of apprehension, the prison of awareness of vulnerability.  And we cannot fail to notice that, when there is a war; one of the battlefields always seems to be the bodies of women.

But people have tried to bring about change; women have tried to bring about change.  

And since the Soviet Union is gone, we need to assess whether that effort to change the world, to make it a better place, was misplaced or foolishly expended.  Did it offer any positive alternative to capitalism?

So I think we should compare. The Soviet Union, as described by its most determined detractors, invaded two countries in its 70 year history, three if you consider its support for the fledgling socialist-oriented regime in Afghanistan an invasion.  

Compare that to the first 70 years of capitalism and the record of invasion by capitalist countries. In fact, capitalism was built on the backs of those it invaded, conquered, enslaved, colonized, stole from. The biggest imperial power of the nineteenth century was of course Britain – and it was rapacious in its reach.  In Canada, by 1857, the Hudson’s Bay Company had extracted 20 million pounds sterling from the fur trade alone.  Timber, grain, meat and other produce, and the sale of land to which they had no right garnered many millions more. And the products they sold to those they had dispossessed and those to whom they had sold the land were priced from 100 to 400 times their cost.

And of course, Canada was nothing compared to the wealth drained from the jewel in the Crown – India.  The estimates of the pillaging differ only in the magnitude of millions plundered. Without question, it exceeded one million pounds sterling per year in direct transfer for which nothing was returned.  If you include the fact that the country had to pay taxes to cover the entire cost of its own subjugation – administrative and military subjugation – the theft of valuables and historical treasure (one ship that sank on the way to Britain and was later found contained 150-million-pounds-sterling-worth of silver); along with other charges – for the period 1757 to 1815, the estimates range from 15.9 million pounds to 17.2 million pounds per year.  That’s one billion pounds sterling during that period alone.  And it went on for 190 years.  And then you have to calculate what it would mean in today’s dollars – the numbers are mind-numbing and incomprehensible.

Another feature of early capitalism was the slave trade.  The trans-Atlantic trade alone saw 12.8 million Africans loaded on to boats, at least 1 million of whom died en route.  And once again, the convergence of sex and race produced unconscionable brutality and violence, with rape and torture commonplace.

And we haven’t even touched on the role of France in Canada, the Caribbean, Africa and Indochina; Belgium, which was one of the worst in Africa, the Netherlands in Indonesia.  It is a picture of brutality beyond comprehension – and always against THE OTHER.

And is it different in the modern era?  Let’s look at what has happened since the end of WWII.  No, step back to the end of the war.  In Hiroshima 100,000 were incinerated instantly and 50,000 died from radiation poisoning.  And even if one accepts the doubtful argument that Hiroshima was necessary, Nagasaki – three days later – certainly wasn’t.  Another 70,000 were killed instantly.  The women of Japan died, their children died and continued to die or be born deformed and mutilated by the unnecessary use of a weapon that is truly one of mass destruction.  

And since then, the list of countries where the Western world has intervened is a long one. The West, primarily the US but including Britain, France, Canada and others, have manipulated elections, financed the overthrow of governments, assassinated or tried to assassinate the leaders of many sovereign nations. The author William Blum in his book Rogue State identifies 71 occasions in which the US alone has interfered in one of those ways.  They have meddled in the elections of allies and enemies alike. They have organized or condoned the killing of leaders when they feared their influence – from Patrice Lumumba in the Congo to Salvador Allende in Chile. They have orchestrated the overthrow of governments from Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala and Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic, Sukharno in Indonesia, Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran, Cheddi Jagan in Guyana, Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti, directing and supporting the military coup in Greece, funding the Contras in Nicaragua.  They invaded Cuba, napalmed women and children in Vietnam, used depleted uranium weapons in the first invasion of Iraq, funded the Mujāhidīn in Afghanistan against the only government that had ever offered any rights to women, defeating that government – one million dead, three million disabled, five million refugees – half the total population of that time.  And of course, 10 years later, invading again – this time using the plight of women to bolster their claim to legitimacy – to rescue the women they had put in fundamentalist prison.

And since then – they sent drones to Yemen, unleashed on the people of the Arab world a blight of reactionary fundamentalism – all the while pretending to abhor that fundamentalism, while they attack and destroy every state that was secular, progressive in its attitudes to women, developed in its educational and health policies, protective of its cultural and historical legacy, etc.

Is it different today?   Have they stopped the looting?  In 2012 – the developing world received $1.3 trillion in aid, investment and income from abroad. In that same year the developing world sent $3.3 trillion to the developed world. The bleeding continues.  Compared to the carnage of Western behavior, the foreign policy of the Soviet Union looks like a birthday party with gifts all around.  

On the other hand, who described ANC as a terrorist organization and aided the South African regime in its efforts to defeat the aspirations of the majority population?  Who funded Jonas Savimbi and delayed the capacity of the new Angolan Government to address issues of the health and welfare of its people?  Who supported the state of Israel against the Palestinians, condoning Israel’s illegal settlements and occupation of the Golan Heights?

And Canada has been a part of that Western policy, supporting the state of Israel in its war against the Palestinian people, leading in the bombing of Libya, joining the war against Afghanistan, endorsing the overthrow of the elected government of Haiti, of Honduras, of the Ukraine by recognizing the regime which overthrew the democratically elected one.   Even with its new leader, who aspires to be the poster boy for progressive policies and women’s rights, Canada has acceded to these policies – condemning thousands to continued conflict, misery, death and destruction. And in Canada we have not seen any concrete action being taken to alleviate the problems facing indigenous women – the issues of clean water, mercury poisoning, inadequate housing, inferior education, and continued racial and sexual violence.

The people of the world, the women of the world have not been the beneficiaries of US foreign policy, no matter the rhetoric – the oil companies, the mining companies, the manufacturers, the fruit companies – they have benefitted. I remember the slogan of the Chilean Solidarity movement in speaking to the role of Canadian mining companies in Chile – the companies got the copper, Chile got the shaft.  And it is still true today. The poor countries of the world continue to get the shaft.

The Soviet Union did support the attempts by many people to throw off the yoke of colonialism, to improve their lives and living standards.  

And the ideas of the October Revolution, when it came to women, broke the mold of the day – challenged the very foundation of sexist ideas.  

 “The degree of the emancipation of women can be used as a standard by which to measure general emancipation,” wrote Marx and Engels.

In speaking of the demands for women’s rights, Lenin said, 

“We demonstrate thereby that we recognize these needs and are aware of the humiliation of the woman, the privileges of the man.  That we hate, yes hate, everything and we will abolish everything which tortures and oppresses the woman worker, the housewife, the peasant woman, the wife of the petty trader, and yes, in many cases the women of possessing classes”. 

And 

“The proletariat cannot achieve complete freedom unless it achieves complete freedom for women.”

Did they succeed in addressing the shameful humiliation of women?  Certainly there were advances.   And not only did the women in the Soviet Union and in many developing countries benefit from the role of the Soviet Union.  Women in the West used the advances of the women in the Soviet Union to batter down the doors of opposition to women’s rights in Canada and elsewhere.   Maternity leave, daycare, equal pay – if they could have all of that in the Soviet Union, why not here?  

The working class as a whole used the same argument to open the door to publicly funded health care, to compensation for injured workers, to Old Age Security and a government-funded pension plan. If they could have it there, why not here?

But the Soviet Union failed – it exists no longer. And we can ascribe the blame to the fact that it was the first attempt and errors were made, or to the fact that they bore the brunt of Nazi aggression in World War II, or to the fact that they were forced into an arms race that depleted their coffers and distorted their economy, or to the fact that the West meddled in their affairs just as they meddled in so many others. To whatever we ascribe the blame – we now live in a world where there is no Soviet Union.  

Was it a failure? Only if one thinks that trying to alter the world to make it better is a worthless endeavour.  

Will we try again? The idea of making the world better will not go away.  How can it when we were told this year that eight people now have as much wealth as the poorest 50% of the world’s population.  How can we not try again?

Will we make errors again? We’re human – how can we not make errors?

Will it be better than what we have? Given the ecological disasters, the climate change, the increasing gap between rich and poor, the growing arrogance and power of the corporations, the threat of war, the racism at home and abroad, the sexism, people’s insecurity, the debt, the fear, the cynical use of people’s aspirations to defeat their goals – how can it not be better than what we have?

Will women be equal when we try again to build a world based on different values? We don’t know. What we do know is that the struggle for a new world order will be stunted and debilitated if women are not part of the struggle to build it. We do know that it is not necessary for women to achieve equality before they join the struggle for a new world.  We know also, it is not necessary to wait for the new world in order to struggle for, and to achieve some of the goals in the struggle for, the equality of women – in our workplaces, our homes, our organizations, including the organizations dedicated to changing the world. 

But, as to whether women will be fully equal – know this – it isn’t over until they are!

***

Jeanne McGuire is a progressive educator and past president of the Congress of Canadian Women, living in Toronto.

[Communist Party of Canada contingent marching at International Women’s Day in Toronto, 2017. (Jay Watts)]”

“ Instead of maximum profits -- maximum satisfaction of the material and cultural requirements of society; instead of development of production with breaks in continuity from boom to crisis and from crisis to boom -- unbroken expansion of production; instead of periodic breaks in technical development, accompanied by destruction of the productive forces of society -- an unbroken process of perfecting production on the basis of higher techniques.

It is said that the law of the balanced, proportionate development of the national economy is the basic economic law of socialism. That is not true. Balanced development of the national economy, and hence, economic planning, which is a more or less faithful reflection of this law, can yield nothing by themselves, if it is not known for what purpose economic development is planned, or if that purpose is not clear. The law of balanced development of the national economy can yield the desired result only if there is a purpose for the sake of which economic development is planned. This purpose the law of balanced development of the national economy cannot itself provide. Still less can economic planning provide it. This purpose is inherent in the basic economic law of socialism, in the shape of its requirements, as expounded above. Consequently, the law of balanced development of the national economy can operate to its full scope only if its operation rests on the basic economic law of socialism.
As to economic planning, it can achieve positive results only if two conditions are observed: a) if it correctly reflects the requirements of the law of balanced development of the national economy, and b) if it conforms in every way to the requirements of the basic economic law of socialism.” (Stalin, Joseph, Economic Problems of socialism in the U.S.S.R., Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1972 / Reprinted in the U.S./2012, pages 36-37).
Hall of “Fame”
As to a concrete example of capitalism in Canada, let us have a look to the gallery of local French-Canadian leaders of the Insurance industry, to name it:  London Life (based in London, Ontario).  In fact, they control Canadian multinationals.

Marcel R. Coutu

André Desmarais

Paul Desmarais jr.

Olivier Desmarais

Paul Desmarais III

Claude Généreux

The last federal budget was curtailed for them.  Following is the analysis of the Communist Party of Canada:

Federal Budget 2018: A Kiss and a Promise

(March 21, 2018)

Statement by the Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada

If the Liberal government’s goal with its Feb. 27 budget was to expose the Tories as advocates of austerity, unable to see or respond to the crisis of falling wages and living standards, they probably succeeded. And if they also hoped to expose the NDP’s weaknesses, they may have succeeded in revealing that the NDP has stepped away from the progressive policy ideas it was once known for, in its campaign to gain Big Business support.   

With this budget, full of promises but short on delivery, the Liberals aim to create the impression that they are the only progressive alternative, and that working people can count on them to protect their interests.

In fact, the Liberals represent the interests of the banks and the multi-national corporations. They are the preferred party of Big Business, after a decade of the discredited Harper Tories.

They continue to run big deficits that will eventually be paid off by the public, rather than force the banks and the corporations to pay taxes on their enormous wealth and profits, much of it hidden in offshore tax havens exposed by the Panama and Paradise Papers. At most, the government aims to recover $1 billion in unpaid corporate taxes, instead of the estimated $50 billion lost every year. There is no mention of the tax reform pledge made during the 2015 election, and nothing about raising the capital gains tax, restoring the capital tax, raising the corporate tax rate, or introducing wealth and inheritance taxes on the rich.  

This budget makes lots of promises, but implementation is all very vague, and contingent on working people paying the shot when it comes to delivery.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau identified many of the key concerns working people have, without delivering any long-term solutions and, in the case of childcare, without even a short-term solution. His much vaunted budget gender lens simply magnified the complete absence of a key determinant of women’s equality: a universally accessible, affordable, quality public childcare system  which is essential and long overdue (and which the Chretien Liberals promised in their 1993 Red Book).

At the same time, other social programs have been seriously eroded. Last year’s cuts to health transfers (base escalators) contributed to dangerous under-funding of health care and hospitals across the country, and encouraged provinces to allow privatization of services such as Saskatchewan’s privatized MRI. The government could and should have restored the base escalator for the Canada Health Transfer to a minimum of 6% (a mere 0.8% above actual costs). It can and should enforce the Canada Health Act and stop the escalating privatization of healthcare across the country.  

The announcement that pharmacare will be studied by former Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins has raised the hopes of millions of Canadians. But pharmacare has already been studied and recommended, most notably by the Romanow Royal Commission in 2002. What’s missing is implementation of a plan for pharmacare. The Romanow Commission also recommended expanding Medicare to include vision, dental and long-term care, but this is also missing.

Morneau’s Feb. 28 speech to the Economic Club of Canada clarified that the Liberal agenda is not pharmacare; it’s government purchase of drugs, which will not interfere with pharmaceutical company profits.  Canadian Doctors for Medicare warns that the Finance Minister’s business interests should preclude him from any involvement in this project, or in any discussions or decisions on public healthcare policy.

Public opinion must be brought to bear to demand a plan to implement a real pharmacare program, which should sooner or later include nationalization of the pharmaceutical industry in Canada.  Sooner would be better for working people who pay the bills for Medicare.

The budget promises pay equity for federal employees and those contracted by the federal government. This is the result of a massive struggle by postal workers and other public sector unions who have combined the fight for pay and employment equity for women with bargaining for these rights in their collective agreements. This government has been forced to accept what women, unions, arbitrators and the public have fought for over decades – equal pay for work of equal value – in one small section of the federal public service.  

But the gender pay gap, which has grown wider under successive Liberal and Tory governments, has been a big contributor to Big Business profits. The pay gap forced onto racialized workers has also suited Big Business’ profits very well.

The government could and should legislate pay and employment equity legislation with teeth, covering all workers. This would substantially raise the wages and living standards of huge numbers of workers across the country. Further, this budget should also have increased the federal minimum wage, indicating strong support for higher minimums across the country.  

The budget doesn’t address the crisis of precarious work facing millions of part-time and low-paid workers. The new jobs created recently are almost all part-time, with a huge and growing proportion of those being precarious jobs – temporary, casual, or single contract self-employed, and generally with low-pay and lacking benefits, pension plan, job security or protections of any kind. The low-waged economy is the new normal under the free trade deals: the race to the bottom for workers, the race to the bank for employers. This is what the government refers to as ‘full employment’ today.

This budget should have laid out a plan to rebuild value-added manufacturing and secondary industry, as part of a sustainable industrial strategy for Canada. This should include a machine tool industry, agricultural implements, appliance industry, ship-building, and it should create jobs and apprenticeships for youth as a priority. Expanding public services will also create jobs, as will development of renewable sources of energy.

This budget should have substantially increased Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security benefits, which condemn many seniors to live in poverty and to work well into their retirement years. The voluntary pension age should be cut to 60, enabling older workers to retire with dignity and security, and enabling young workers to enter the workforce.

This budget promises to do something to protect pensions in bankruptcy proceedings – but what? The government should change bankruptcy legislation to put pensions and wages at the top of the list of creditors to be paid out. Pensions are deferred wages. Further, it should introduce plant closure legislation with teeth, requiring companies to show just cause before public tribunals before they are able to close or move their operations out of Canada.  

While increasing parental leave to a combined 40 weeks, the budget should have substantially increased EI benefits so that parents can afford to stay home with their newborns. Within the current EI rules, less than 44% of unemployed workers, and only 37% of unemployed women, are able to qualify for benefits. EI should have been expanded to include part-time workers, and first-time job seekers, many of whom are impoverished and living in precarious circumstances.

Affordable social housing is not on the Liberal agenda, though the crisis of affordable housing and rents is front-page news. An emergency program to construct a million units of affordable social housing for rent and for sale is urgent. So is infrastructure spending that would create thousands of construction jobs and spin-offs in manufacturing and services.

Post-secondary education is not in the budget, even though accessibility is a huge issue for tens of thousands of students because of sky-rocketing tuition fees. The budget proclaims the importance of science and technology, but makes it impossible for many students to access these important areas of study and work. The bar is financial. This budget should have eliminated tuition fees, and taken steps to adequately fund post-secondary institutions, so that they can deliver quality education without depending on private corporate funding. The annual cost of eliminating tuition fees across Canada is $10 billion – a very good investment in youth, in education, and in the future. This would also stop the drive to privatization of these publicly owned institutions.

The budget commits almost $5 billion to Indigenous communities, including funds to finally comply with four Human Rights Tribunal rulings that the federal government engages in 

racial discrimination by underfunding of indigenous children’s welfare. The initial funding shortfall that led to the human rights complaint by the AFN and the Caring Society in 2007 has taken 11 years to finally address.

This budget funding sets a target date of 2021 to end the boil water advisories that still exist on 90 indigenous reserves and communities. Some funds have been earmarked for housing, though not nearly enough to address the housing crisis on reserves across Canada. The funds budgeted don’t come close to meeting either the immediate needs or the long-term rights of Indigenous nations.

This budget ignores the biggest single producer of carbon emissions and climate change in Canada – the Alberta tarsands. The Liberals continue to push pipelines that threaten the environment and negate their promises to respect Indigenous sovereignty. Public ownership and control of energy would enable the government to close the tarsands, and focus on clean energy projects, to generate real action to combat climate change, employ the tarsands workers, and develop a new relationship of equality with Indigenous nations.

This budget is ominously silent about important issues including military spending, taxation, and trade. The Prime Minister has stated the government will raise military spending by 70% over the next 20 years, from the current $18.9 billion to $32.7 billion, but without raising corporate taxes. Big Business is demanding cuts to the corporate tax rate following massive US tax cuts. Cuts to social program spending will pay for this increase of $13.8 billion for the military, ensuring that Canada is even more deeply involved in US/NATO dirty wars, including nuclear war.  This military spending increase should be canceled, and the current spending levels should be cut by 75% as a shift away from militarism and war, towards a foreign policy of peace and disarmament.

The budget boosts funding to the Communications Security Establishment, a body given new powers under Bill C-59 to actively engage in mass surveillance and disruption of domestic and foreign cyber operations. This Bill has sparked public opposition, as did the Harper government’s Bill C-51, for funding activities that are a threat to civil society, democracy, and peace.  

Meanwhile, program spending is being shaved down, as is spending on healthcare, education, and pensions.  More and more programs and public assets are being privatized and public services contracted out. Will US procurement policies demanded by Trump in NAFTA renegotiations be agreed to by Canada, and if so will universal social programs, health and education be opened up to US corporations? Will Canadian farmers go belly up because our supply management system has been dumped? Will plant closures and mass lay-offs be the future for Canadian workers?

The truth is that the Liberals may do some or all of these things if the pressure from Big Business in the US and Canada is strong enough.

But if greater pressure is exerted by the labour and democratic movements – by the public – the government may be compelled to deliver on at least some of its promises. That’s how Canada got Medicare in the first place, along with unemployment insurance, maternity leave, pensions, and more. These gains were never given by governments; they were won by public opinion and mass independent labour political action.

The reason this budget has a ‘gender lens’ is because women are angry and on the move. So are Indigenous Peoples, workers, and young people trying to get a foot in the door. Fed up with the status quo, they all want the real change that this government and Parliament are unwilling to deliver.

Working people want pharmacare, childcare, pay equity, pension protections, EI improvements, good jobs, higher wages and living standards, security, affordable housing, accessible education, environmental action, and reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, to name the most urgent issues. But it will take an organized campaign of mass labour and public action to force Parliament to act, issue by issue. A new Parliament is needed, with strong voices inside – working with the labour and people’s movements outside – to win.  

The old-line parties can’t deliver, because they represent the big corporations and the very wealthy. Working people need to look left, to the Communist Party and others committed to fight for working people, to win these policies, starting with proportional representation which will open the door to real change in the composition of Parliament and in the class interests represented there.  

Real change in policy requires real change in politics. A people’s agenda needs a people’s coalition, and the election of a people’s majority in Parliament.  

It’s time.”

Canadian working class versus Canadian bourgeoisie

Altogether, NAFTA will not make Canadian workers any richer and they will have to think about their own BREXIT; whatsoever may be the opinion of the Bank of Canada.

“Unfavourably affected firms mainly referred to rising US protectionism, including changes to softwood lumber policy, North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiations or Buy America sentiments. These firms cited adverse effects on their sales or an increase in their costs (for example, due to tariffs). Others reported challenges moving staff or goods across the border. Some firms in recent surveys, including those in the energy sector, also noted reduced relative competitiveness vis-à-vis US firms, pointing to US tax cuts and regulatory differences. Finally, a few anticipate weakened Canadian business confidence.

While most firms indicated that their domestic investment plans to date have not been affected, some reported reducing or delaying Canadian investments, or are considering changes in response. A few firms reported expanding in the United States.

Among those citing favourable effects, some firms, especially in the spring 2018 survey, foresee benefits from lower taxes for their US subsidiaries or from improved performance of their US clients and partners. Other firms noted gains as Canada attracts more tourists and immigrants.

Overall, many firms see US demand as contributing positively to their sales prospects in the spring 2018 survey. The share of firms anticipating strong economic growth in the United States in the next 12 months is near record-high levels.

The Business Outlook Survey summarizes interviews conducted by the Bank’s regional offices with the senior management of about 100 firms selected in accordance with the composition of the gross domestic product of Canada’s business sector. This survey was conducted from February 12 to March 9, 2018. The balance of opinion can vary between +100 and -100. Percentages may not add to 100 because of rounding. Additional information on the survey and its content is available on the Bank of Canada’s website. The survey results summarize opinions expressed by the respondents and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Bank of Canada.  (Monetary Policy Report, Bank of Canada, Spring 2018, Ottawa).”