Socialist Worker 520

www.socialist.ca

G20 ROB THE POOR TO PAY THE RICH

$2 no. 520 July 2010

RAGE AGAINST G20

Pages 6&7 Police brutality Page 7 James Clark on the mounting evidence of misconduct

Victory for free speech Page 2 Kim Koyama on Pride Toronto’s decision to rescind its censorship

Crisis in Afghanistan Page 3 John Bell & Paul Stevenson on the spiralling devastation

by MICHELLE ROBIDOUX

AS THE DUST settled on the Toronto Convention Centre, site of the G20 Summit last month, the world was left with a brutal hangover. The G20 “consensus”—that deficits should be cut in half by 2013— signals a vicious new round of attacks on ordinary people everywhere.

While G20 leaders are divided about what represents the greatest threat to the world economy—ballooning deficits or a sudden end to stimulus spending—in the end, they agreed to the targets for 2013. They further agreed to reduce the ratio of debt to GDP by 2016.

But these divisions—especially between Europe and the US—were reflected in the final declaration which stated that economic policy must be tailored to “national circumstances”.

As the Summit concluded, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated that each country will have to fulfill these targets, or face punishment on the financial markets.

But far from satisfying the markets, the freshly-inked G20 declaration was met with a close to 3 per cent drop in the markets on worries of a slowdown in the global economy.

Prominent economist Paul Krugman called the G20 outcome “deeply discouraging”. In

Harper’s security state Why did Stephen Harper spend $1.3 billion on security for the G20 Summit?

It wasn’t about a few hundred protesters setting fire to police cars, or breaking a few windows. The scale of the cuts the G20 leaders—including Harper—have in mind will put states in direct confrontation with their own populations.

They are terrified at the prospect of resistance such as we’ve seen in Greece.

The police behaviour in Toronto mirrors the bullying and arrogance that the Harper government has made its hallmark. When Tory Senator Nancy Ruth told women’s organizations that they should “shut the f*** up” in response to Harper’s attacks on abortion rights, it prompted many people to join the G20 protests.

Now, police brutality is having the same effect. The paramilitary occupation of Toronto was meant to send a signal that as further attacks come, resistance will be met with repression.

The minority Conservative government, unable to push through its policies, is increasingly relying on force—proroguing Parliament, shutting down organizations that oppose its policies, and physically crushing dissent. Yet this show of force is broadening opposition to Harper’s policies.

The largest mass arrest in Canadian history— with 900 detained—can become a turning point in resisting Harper. In the weeks and months ahead, we need to fan the flames of that resistance.

an article in the New York Times, he wrote: “We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression,” arguing that austerity measures made the Great Depression worse, and that the G20 policy may lead in the same direction.

There are real fears that attempts by governments to cut hundreds of billions in public spending could precipitate a deeper economic crisis.

But Harper—who denied that there was an economic crisis during the last federal election campaign—intends to carry on regardless. The G20 plan he is peddling will mean more attacks on social programs like health care and education, as well as on public sector jobs and conditions.

Working people and the poor around the world are being told to bear the brunt of policies that will only make capitalism’s crisis worse. That is why it was so important that tens of thousands marched against the G20 Summit.

And that is why it is so important that thousands more are now mobilizing against Harper’s “security state” and attacks on civil liberties.

This is the repressive apparatus the minority Conservative government relies on to crush resistance to these cuts—and there is a growing movement prepared to fight it.

Workers’ struggle against austerity Page 11 Carolyn Egan on the fighting the coming assault

How BP lied about disaster Page 12 John Bell on Big Oil’s Chernobyl

Novotel strike Page 11 Workers fight for a fair contract

CPMA No. 58554253-99 ISSN No. 0836-7094

FIRST NATIONS

FEDERAL BUDGET

First Nations win HST exemption

Budget makes workers pay for recession

by JESSE McLAREN

by AMELIA MURPHY-BEAUDOIN

THE UNOFFICIAL coalition of corporate Canada has passed another budget that puts war and corporate profits over the needs of workers and the environment.

FOR NEARLY a year, Ontario First Nations have been rallying together and lobbying the government demanding they be exempt from the controversial Harmonized Sales Tax (HST), as is their treaty right.

A deal was reached in June between federalprovincial officials and Ontario First Nations that the long-standing point of sale exemption for First Nations people will continue.

The HST took effect throughout Ontario on July 1, and First Nations people will be exempt from the 8 per cent provincial portion of the 13 per cent HST, a blending of the PST and the 5 per cent federal Goods and Services Tax (GST).

However, First Nations people will initially be charged the HST, until the exemption comes into effect in September.

It’s been speculated that the provincial and federal governments agreed to the deal to avoid embarrassment and disruption at the G8 and G20 summits from First Nations groups who have been vocal about their intention to organize blockades.

On June 21, about 40 natives from Batchewana First Nation in Northern Ontario blocked a railway.

On June 24, First Nations and supporters took to the streets to draw attention to Their struggles and protest the G20 on stolen native land. More blockades are probable this summer.

The HST is one more example of governments shifting the recession and their debt from expensive wars onto the shoulders of workers.

SOLIDARITY

Defend Libby Davies LIBBY DAVIES, NDP MP for Vancouver East, has come under sustained attack in response to comments she made during a recent Palestine solidarity protest.

Davies was interviewed by a pro-Israel activist who asked: when did the occupation start, 1948 or 1967? Davies hesitated, then said 1948, adding that dates weren’t as important as the need for the occupation to end. Critics seized on her comments, claiming she opposes Israel’s right to exist.

These attacks are part of a growing list of McCarthylike tactics pursued by Harper and all those who want to silence Palestine solidarity. Davies has been the strongest supporter of Palestinian human rights on Parliament Hill.

In August 2009, she led a multi-party contingent to Gaza, and co-authored a report condemning Canada’s complicity in the siege.

In March 2010, Davies blocked a resolution in Parliament condemning Israeli Apartheid Week.

Don’t let Harper silence Davies or Palestine solidarity.

Send a letter of support to her and the entire NDP caucus: www.caiaweb.org

2 Socialist Worker July 2010

Honourees present Pride Toronto organizers with a shame award during a press conference PHOTO: JOHN BONNAR/JOHNB.SMUGMUG.COM

Major victory as Pride rescinds censorship

by KIM KOYAMA IN THE past two years, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) marched peacefully in Toronto’s Pride march.

This year, however, Zionist lobbyists pressured both Toronto city council and Pride Toronto (the organizing committee of Toronto’s Pride Week) to ban QuAIA and the phrase “Israeli Apartheid” from the march.

Unfortunately, Pride Toronto complied.

Much of the LGBT community was outraged at this censorship. The response was swift and significant. A number of performers and partici-

pants in Pride Week activities withdrew in protest.

Twenty-three current and past recipients of Pride awards and honors made public statements and attended a news conference to condemn the censorship and return their awards.

Numerous other prominent members of the LGBT community in Toronto and around the world condemned Pride Toronto’s action. Pride Toronto did its best to counter the criticisms, claiming pressure from the city and sponsors.

With no significant statements of support, and QuAIA planning to defy the ban, Pride Toronto was

heading for a confrontation it couldn’t win. QuAIA had already met with Toronto Police and received assurances that QuAIA members would not be arrested for displaying the banned words. The Pride Toronto committee finally bowed to public pressure and rescinded the ban.

The result of this controversy has been a re-invigoration and re-politicization of many in the LGBT community.

Many have been awakened to Pride Toronto’s increasing attempts to shape Pride as a feel-good party—in which performers sign contracts which specify that they cannot make political statements

while on stage.

The community has started to take a hard look at the corporatization of Pride, which is drawing more complaints every year. The controversy has also raised consciousness about the marginalization within Pride of Trans people and racialized groups.

We owe Pride Toronto a debt of gratitude. Their attempts at censorship moved QuAIA’s cause front and centre, and in the process, started debates about the place of politics at Pride and the dangers of corporate influence.

A corner has been turned, and there will be no going back.

For the fifth time in a row, the Liberals allowed the minority Harper government to pass a budget that puts profit over people and the planet.

The 2010 budget is a bonanza for corporations and the military. As the budget brags, “the government has reduced taxes by an estimated $220 billion over 2008-2009 and the following five fiscal years”, including lowering the corporate income tax from 22 to 15 per cent, the lowest in the G7 countries. The budget for the military, currently at $18 billion a year, will continue to climb, as the government recently announced plans to spend $9 billion on 65 fighter jets.

The Tories and Liberals are making ordinary Canadians pay for recession and the war. Public sector salary and operating budgets of departments will be frozen, saving $6.8 billion over five years—less than the cost of the fighter jets.

BIG OIL

Canada sacrifices our world for profit

On the west coast, tar sands oil from Alberta being pumped to Burnaby, BC has increased almost tenfold since 2001; currently at 300,000 barrels per day.

This is the only pipeline taking tar sands oil from Alberta to the Pacific Ocean for export. The owner of the pipeline has confirmed there are plans to expand to 700,000

barrels per day.

To get to and from the pipeline terminal, tankers must navigate under the CN Railway Bridge. This area has the highest navigational hazard rating as determined by the Canadian Coast Guard.

There is another proposed pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat, BC in the North. In response, the Coastal First Nations, an alliance of nine nations from the central coast to Haida Gwaii, declared, “oil tankers carrying crude from the Alberta tar sands will not be allowed to transit our lands and waters”.

NOVA SCOTIA

TAR SANDS

by ALEX KLAVER AS THE BP oil spill continues to gush out of control, Canadians should be seriously concerned about what’s happening in our own backyard.

By-elections show anger at NDP TWO BY-ELECTIONS in Nova Scotia on June 22 show growing anger at the NDP government, and its failure to keep its election promises.

The NDP had been poised to win seats in the ridings of Yarmouth and Glace Bay, where incumbent MLAs were forced to resign because of government expenses scandal.

But NDP cuts to the public service and a two per cent hike in the HST angered voters. In Yarmouth, the Liberals took the seat vacated by a Conservative.

In Glace Bay, the Liberals held the seat.

On the east coast, about 430 km off the coast of Newfoundland, a consortium of Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, Imperial Oil and ExxonMobil has begun drilling the Lona 0-55 well in 2,600 metres of water—the deepest ever in Canadian history. BP’s Deepwater Horizon well is 1,500 metres.

Even more disheartening is the response from the government of Newfoundland and Labrador. Last month, Premier Danny Williams, said he won’t force Chevron to drill a relief well because it would raise costs dramatically and endanger the ex-

ploration process, losing the province billions of dollars in revenue.

Premier Williams, before coming to office in 2003, served as president of OIS Fisher, an oil and natural gas company.

Canada is at odds with the rest of the world when it comes to the environment, and the BP oil spill has been no exception as Harper’s inaction speaks loud and clear.

We need to send a message to the economic and political elites that it’s unacceptable to endanger and destroy our environment in search of profits.

Science wins against climate skeptics

by JOHN BELL LAST YEAR, two Alberta scientists, Peter Lee of Global Forest Watch Canada and Kevin Timoney of Treeline Ecological Research concluded their analysis of wildlife, air, water and soil samples from the tar sands district.

Their conclusions were published in Open Conservation Biology Journal, entitled “Does the Alberta Tar Sands Industry Pollute? The Scientific Evidence”. They found that pollution from tar sands extraction and processing posed a danger to the ecosystem and the health of communities.

Shortly after, Lee attended a symposium at the University of Alberta presented by Preston McEachern, the Province of Alberta’s top environmental scientist.

McEachern’s speech and slide show accused Lee and Timoney of lying and falsifying data—effectively ruining their reputations as scientists.

Worse, McEachern’s material attacking the researchers was featured on the website of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), as part of their multi-million dollar public relations campaign to rehabilitate the tar sands’ reputation.

After their requests for clarification were ignored

by McEachern and Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner, Lee and Timoney sued.

An out-of-court settlement has completely vindicated the environmentalists and their research.

McEachern was forced to write an apology stating: “The statements in my presentation…were false and I regret very much that I made these statements. I unequivocally retract them.”

The slanderous material has been removed from the CAPP website and the researchers’ legal fees were paid.

A meager $1.15 billion is put into extending EI by a few weeks for those eligible, without restoring coverage or benefits. Most shocking is the gutting of the EI surplus.

Over the years, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have built up a massive EI surplus of $57 billion, by reducing benefits and coverage. Now the government is starting a new EI account from scratch, and erasing the previous account. This last move is one of many pieces of legislation inserted into the budget implementation Bill C-9, to bypass Parliamentary debate.

The bill also pushes towards selling off Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd and privatizing Canada Post, and lets the environment minister waive environmental assessments on energy projects (like the tar sands and offshore drilling).

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‘WAR ON TERROR’ PALESTINE

An Afghan woman mourns as she holds photos of her family members, who were killed during a US led raid

Ships continue to defy blockade

by PETER HOGARTH FOLLOWING THE shocking attack of an aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), which killed nine Palestine solidarity activists on May 31, the world has responded with outrage.

Crisis in Afghanistan deepens

by JOHN BELL IT WAS just the latest in a series of published statements from General Stanley McChrystal that slammed the White House and Obama’s policy for the war in Afghanistan.

But Michael Hastings’ damning article in Rolling Stone revealing contempt for civilian leadership forced Obama to sack the commander of the Afghan war effort.

Last fall, at a press conference in London, McChrystal publicly ridiculed Vice President Joe Biden’s comments on the war and said that White House policy would lead to “chaos-istan”. A rebuke from the White House didn’t seem to sink through the military skull.

It was the tasteless jokes and insults directed at the White House from McChrystal and his team, spouted in front of Hastings, which is cited for his downfall. That belies the serious contradictions and splits among the powers that pretend to be in charge in Afghanistan.

McChrystal was a proponent of a counterinsurgency strategy known as COIN, described in

Hastings’ article as: “a doctrine that attempts to square the military’s preference for high-tech violence with the demands of fighting protracted wars in failed states.

“COIN calls for sending huge numbers of ground troops to not only destroy the enemy, but to live among the civilian population and slowly rebuild, or build from scratch, another nation’s government—a process that even its staunchest advocates admit requires years, if not decades, to achieve.”

Setting aside the fact that it wasn’t working, the high costs of that strategy—economic, military and political—put McChrystal at odds with the White House. The war became the longest in US history, with no clearly defined goal or endgame in sight. And popular support was reaching an all-time low just as McChrystal’s gaffes were reported.

Obama had to boot McChrystal, and bring back General David Petraeus, to at least create the illusion that he was in charge.

And so the war drags on, evolving from tragedy to farce.

Death toll on steep incline

by PAUL STEVENSON THIS YEAR has become the deadliest so far in Afghanistan for both civilians and foreign troops, and the death toll continues to climb.

The numbers are chilling.

By mid-May, 1,000 US troops have been killed. The 300th British soldier was killed in June. On June 26, the 150th Canadian soldier was killed and the summer ”fighting season” has not yet begun.

It is the acceleration of troop casualties that is more alarming than the scale.

The first 500 US troops were killed between 2001 and 2008, but the second 500 were killed between 2009 and the first five months of 2010.

The death toll of Afghans is much higher, but the foreign occupiers have never bothered to keep accurate records.

The planned offensive in

Kandahar is on hold temporarily as NATO planners try to find a way to take control of the area knowing that they will be in for a huge fight from the one million residents in the region.

The test case for the Kandahar offensive was the assault on Marjah, which was lost to the resistance in the months after the attack.

The occupation has caused immeasurable misery to the people of Afghanistan as the country continues to suffer night raids, air attacks and growing tensions brought about by the occupation itself.

The war has now become the longest in US history.

The only way to end the bloody conflict is the immediate removal of all foreign troops and the handing of control back to the Afghan people.

TORTURE

Report exposes use of illegal experimentation on prisoners

by G. FRANCIS HODGE A NEW report examining the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the US and its allies since the attacks of 9/11 paints a damning picture of the so-called “war on terror”.

The paper, Experiments in Torture, which was released in early June by the international doctors’ organization Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), was the result of a six-month intensive study of recently declassified US government documents.

It argues that not only do such techniques amount to torture, but that US attempts to monitor and systematize the application of those techniques amount to illegal research and experimentation on humans.

Experimentation on humans

is illegal under the Geneva Conventions and US law, so such research into the effects of torture techniques could constitute a war crime or a crime against humanity, in addition to the moral and legal wrong of the torture itself.

After the attacks of 9/11, the US administration of President George W. Bush authorized the use of a range of interrogation techniques that had previously been deemed illegal. The Bush administration redefined waterboarding, forced nudity, extensive sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation and the use of stress positions as “safe, legal and effective” and called them “enhanced interrogation techniques”.

Medical monitoring

The PHA paper, which points out that this redefinition of torture was accomplished by the US govern-

ment establishing a legal threshold for exactly how much pain administered constituted torture. In order to stay within this threshold, medical monitoring of detainees undergoing interrogation was necessary.

Medical personnel would oversee interrogations to ensure that this threshold wasn’t breached.

In addition to ensuring that the interrogations did not cross the line into legally-defined torture, medical monitoring would provide interrogators with a potential legal defence against future accusations of participating in torture.

The interrogators could argue that they had a good faith belief that what they were doing was legitimate, “safe, legal and effective” because of the presence of medical personnel.

The report points out that CIAsponsored doctors were not moni-

toring interrogations to protect the health or welfare of those interrogated. Rather, they were systematically gathering information about the effects of torture and generating a body of knowledge that would be used to further refine torture techniques to be applied to subsequent interrogations.

The PHA report argues that not only does such practice violate the basic medical principle of “do no harm” and place medical personnel in direct collusion with the security apparatus practicing torture, but it fits the definition of medical research and experimentation upon humans. Such experimentation can be deemed a major war crime, a crime in addition to the original crime of the torture itself.

Read the complete report at www.phrtorturepapers.org.

Tens of thousands of people in cities all over the world have taken to the streets in protest over the crime perpetrated by the IDF in international waters.

This pressure has forced many of the world’s leaders to come out in condemnation of the siege of Gaza, criticizing the blockade that served as the impetus for the attacks.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has demanded that Israel lift the blockade immediately.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has stated unequivocally that the closure of the Gaza Strip constitutes a collective punishment on the people there, an act prohibited under the Geneva Conventions.

The international community has almost uniformly demanded that the UN investigate the actions of the IDF. However, Canada and the US have objected to this and instead Israel has set up its own panel to probe the incident.

Despite Israel’s game of smoke and mirrors, the international pressure continues to mount.

Dockworkers in San Francisco refused to unload a ship with cargo from Israel. Ship after ship filled with solidarity activists and humanitarian aid from all over the world continue to defy the naval blockade. Most recently, the German-based Jewish Voices for a Just Peace says it will send at least two ships of entirely Jewish passengers to defy the blockade.

The cries of outrage from around the globe are certainly having an effect. Israel began allowing more items into Gaza, including food supplies, toys, mattresses and towels. But the ban remains on building materials and the sea blockade continues.

We must keep the pressure on, continue to condemn the blockade and break the siege.

IRAN

UN imposes more sanctions

by NINA WOLFE EARLY IN June, the UN Security Council passed a fourth round of sanctions against Iran in an effort to stop the country’s uranium enrichment activities.

The sanctions now ban any UN member states from supplying battle tanks, missiles, warships and combat aircraft to Iran and imposes a travel freeze on more than 48 companies and individuals.

The sanctions passed with a strong push from the Obama administration. President Obama praised the Security Council vote: “This resolution will put in place the toughest sanctions ever faced by the Iranian government, and it sends an unmistakable message about the international community’s commitment to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.”

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, stated: “No matter how many resolutions are passed, Islamic Republic of Iran will not stop its enrichment activities, which is in full accordance with its right under the statute of IAEA and NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty].”

July 2010 Socialist Worker 3

TALKING MARXISM

INTERNATIONAL

Abbie Bakan

Marxism and anarchism MANY PEOPLE who oppose capitalism ask what to put in its place. Historically, two schools of thought enter the conversation: anarchism and Marxism. But what’s the difference?

There is a great deal that anarchists and Marxists have in common. Both approaches oppose the rule of a small capitalist class, which controls vast concentrations of wealth and profit. Both seek radical (as in “from the roots”) change.

But there is a distinction in terms of who is understood as the agent of change.

Not all Marxists are the same, and neither are all anarchists. But generally, for Marxists, the key to social transformation is the self-emancipatory movement of the working class. A genuinely socialist society depends upon the working class as the collective subject of history, not the object.

Some anarchists also look to workers as an important part of the movement, but this is not a defining characteristic. More specifically, the anarchist tradition emphasizes a broad notion of the “people” where individual actions are central in the challenge of all authority.

Proudhon

Daniel Guérin, for example, one of the most frequently cited anarchist theorists, looks to Marx’s contemporary, PierreJoseph Proudhon, as the theoretical founder of anarchism.

In his book, Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, Guérin favourably cites Proudhon, for his rejection of: “…all and any ‘official persons’—philosophers, priests, magistrates, academicians, journalists, parliamentarians, etc—for whom ‘the people is always a monster to be fought, muzzled, and chained down; which must be led by trickery like the elephant or the rhinoceros; or cowed by famine; and which is bled by colonization and war.’”

Any “official person”, whether on the side of capital or labour, was equally prone to suspicion for Proudhon.

Proudhon was hostile to the precursors of trade unions, illegal groups of workers taking collective labour action referred to at the time as “combinations”.

He opposed strikes, which he saw based on narrow self-interest. And he understood “the people”, not least including workers, to be an unintelligent mob.

This “mass” required a small group of leading intellectuals (such as Proudhon) to shape their interests.

In 1847 Karl Marx wrote a book challenging Proudhon’s view of the working class. The title of his book, The Poverty of Philosophy, inverted the title of one written by Proudhon, The Philosophy of Poverty.

Marx challenged the anarchist view of change from above, with the notion of socialism from below.

He looked to the collective struggles of workers as the key in the struggle for human emancipation.

This was not based on some moral claim that workers were a superior sort of class. Instead, Marx emphasized the collective labour of the working class within the capitalist mode of production.

The capitalists profit by keeping the majority of the surplus workers produce. Only a tiny portion of that surplus is returned to workers in the form of wages.

Workers organizing together to increase wages, argued Marx, advanced collective confidence to challenge capital.

Anarcho-syndicalists

Not all anarchists trace their views to Proudhon. Another wing of anarchists are much more favourable to labour than to capital, and are far closer to Marxists.

These are anarcho-syndicalists. Syndicalism is the idea that the employed working class, collectively organized in trade unions, can act as a revolutionary, transformative force in capitalism regardless of political affiliation or strategy. But political organization, even on the left, is rejected on grounds that it threatens to create a left version of authoritarian rule.

Syndicalism tends to rise when there has been a sudden growth in the size of the working class, often when there has been rapid rural to urban migration and expectations of workers’ rights far outstrip the reality.

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), for example, which formed in the US at the turn of the last century, is a classic example of syndicalism.

The IWW, or Wobblies, grew up as a radical response to conservative craft unionism and sectarian left politics of the day. Unlike the sectionalism of the American Federation of Labour unions, the Wobblies drew in unskilled workers, immigrants and non-whites.

Working class leaders like Big Bill Haywood, Mother Jones and Joe Hill were associated with this movement.

But as syndicalist movements rise, so do they fall. And as trade unions have developed within capitalist society and won legal bargaining rights, a full time layer of labour officials have been institutionalized, mediating the struggle between capital and the rank-and-file of the working class.

Today, a gap has developed between the top of the trade union bureaucracy and the vast majority of rank-and-file workers.

The need for a conscious, organized political force within the mass of the working class is starkly posed.

This is a key point that distinguishes a Marxist view of the working class from that of anarcho-syndicalists.

Marxists emphasize the importance of linking every struggle against capitalism with the day-to-day struggles of workers, including the organized and unorganized.

The capitalist system depends on both economic and political power to maintain its hegemony, or dominance, over the working class. To challenge this, an alternative political force needs to be built that unites workers collectively as a class with all the struggles of those who suffer at the hands of the capitalist system.

4 Socialist Worker July 2010

Resistance to austerity sweeps across Europe

by RITCH WHYMAN THE ANNOUNCEMENT by G20 leaders in Toronto that western governments pledge to slash deficits by 2012 can only mean more misery for workers. They want workers to pay for their crisis.

It is workers and the poor who will face the brunt of cuts to spending as governments rush to recoup money spent bailing out banks and financial speculators. To get a sense of what this will mean for workers here in Canada one can look at what has happened in Europe in recent months.

The European Union has demanded that EU governments reduce deficits to 3 per cent of GDP. This has created a rush by governments across the EU to push through harsh austerity measures.

In France, the right-wing Sarkozy government plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 and force public sector workers to work longer before qualifying for their pensions. In Spain, the Socialist Party government rammed through a package of cuts that passed by a mere one vote. The cuts include a 5 per cent slash in pay for public sector workers, a pension freeze and cuts to social programs totaling more than €15 billion ($25 billion CAD).

Similarly, in Portugal, the Socialist Party government voted to implement cuts to public sector pay and hikes in the value-added tax on goods bought (which disproportionately affects poorer people), as well as slashing social programs. In Italy, the right-wing Berlusconi government slashed hiring in the public sector, planning to fill only one in

five vacancies created by workers retiring. They cut €13 billion from cities and regional governments, and have extended the retirement age in the public sector by six months.

The UK, Ireland and Germany are likewise making huge cuts and attacking the public sector. And in Greece, where the crisis has hit the hardest, the Socialist government is trying to push through deep cuts, in addition to changes to social programs and the state sector. These changes include raising the retirement age, freezing salaries and increasing taxes on goods bought to 23 per cent.

Deficits

In all of these countries, deficits grew as governments dished out money to the banks and gave bailouts to big business. The majority of the austerity measures involve either the cutting of corporate taxes or tiny increases in taxes on the wealthiest incomes. The majority also involves not just cuts to programs and jobs but increases to consumer taxes, which affect the poor and working class the most.

There are worries in some quarters that these measures, while celebrated by the wealthy for making the working class pay for the crisis, will potentially slow any recovery by pulling money out of the economy. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman argued recently in the New York Times that austerity measures could lead to a full-blown depression as demand dries up.

The response to austerity throughout Europe has been a boiling anger from ordinary people. Greece has seen

the highest level of struggle, with successive general strikes and protests, and more to come.

In France, a series of strikes have occurred against the Sarkozy cutbacks. On June 24, an estimated 2 million workers struck and over 100,000 demonstrated in Paris. In Portugal unions have mobilized mass demonstrations. In Italy, strikes have broken out against the cutbacks and even opera workers struck against cuts to cultural funding. Teachers walked off the job in the midst of exams, and mayors from across Italy protested the downloading of services onto their cities.

The anger against governments and business is creating the potential for a larger fightback against the system, creating new spaces for the left. European governments, social democrat or Tory, have shown that they are willing to ram through measures to ensure that banks and big business profit from the crisis while workers pay for it.

Fortunately, the response of the unions and the left has been to mobilize and fight back. The European Trade Union Congress has called for continental actions including strikes and work stoppages for September 29 to protest the austerity measures. Where this leads depends on whether workers push their unions to continue the fight and demand that the banks and business pay for their own crisis.

Activists in unions here in Canada must push their leaders to follow European workers and begin mobilizing now against the coming austerity measures.

We must turn September 29 into a global day of action against cutbacks.

Rise of the far right in Hungary a warning

by G. FRANCIS HODGE AS THE growing economic crisis has led to a growing resistance across Europe of ordinary workers refusing to pay for a crisis not of their own making, it has also led to a rise of the right in other countries.

Hungary elected a new government dominated by parties of the right.

The ruling socialists (similar to the NDP) were reduced to only 59 seats in the country’s parliament, while the conservative Fidesz party gained a massive majority, taking 263 seats.

The neo-Nazi party Jobbik won a further 47 seats.

Jobbik began as a paramilitary street movement, the Hungarian Guard, in 2003. It is an openly fascist organization, scapegoating Jews and

Roma for the problems in Hungarian society.

Since 2003, it has capitalized on widespread anger at the state of the economy and disillusionment with the mainstream parties to build a mass presence, attracting 50,000 people to a rally in Budapest in early April and polling 842,306 votes in the first round of elections that month, only just behind the Socialists.

The socialists had hugely undermined their own support by pursuing neoliberal austerity measures in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, and by adopting much of the language and many of the policies of the conservatives in the months before the vote. The only result of these manoeuvers was to strengthen both Fidesz and Jobbik.

The success of open fascists in the Hungarian elections should sound an alarm bell to progressives across Europe.

Fortunately, this spring also saw an election in Europe in which the fascists were soundly beaten.

Britain went to the polls in early May, and the fascist British National Party was seriously beaten back, losing much of the support they have been able to build up over the past few years.

This success was the result of antifascists working together with trade unionists, social justice campaigners and faith communities to build a united movement that defeated the Nazis on the street as well as at the ballot box.

This example shows the potential for a movement to be built capable of defeating the fascist politics of Jobbik.

W

ho has the power to change the world? Can we get rid of capitalism? Is a revolution possible?

These are just some of the questions that activists have grappled with in the lead-up to the G8 and G20 Summits in Canada.

But this is not the first time that activists have faced these questions.

During the Russian Revolution in the early 20th century, socialists and ordinary people alike fought back against war and economic crisis in a way that led to revolution—a process that ended Tsarism in Russia, and gave workers a sense of their collective power to remake society on their own terms.

The history of Russia’s revolution has important lessons for activists today, as they consider the possibility of getting rid of capitalism, and initiating the task of building a better world.

Vladimir Lenin addressing a crown of workers

The lead-up to war

In February 1904, war broke out between Russia and Japan, putting a damper on a growing revolutionary movement. But the war went badly for Russia. As the Russian military suffered one defeat after another, a growing movement pushed for reforms. On January 9, 1905, peaceful demonstrators were massacred by troops in St. Petersburg, the capital of imperial Russia. This event, known as Bloody Sunday, ignited a mass movement.

Anti-war sentiment connected with workers’ anger at falling wages and appalling conditions. A massive strike wave paralyzed the Russian state for a year, sparked protests all over the country, and gave birth to genuine workers’ democracy in the process. But the success of what became known as “The Great Dress Rehearsal” wouldn’t last.

By 1907, the movement was defeated, and a period of reaction followed. It was a difficult time for socialists in Russia. Nevertheless, they used the time to learn the lessons of 1905, to prepare for the next struggle.

The most important lesson was the potential power of the working class. The wave of strikes and meetings in 1905 united the fight for economic rights and the fight for political representation. It dramatically illustrated the power of workers in struggle, and created the first democratic organizations representing the entire working class: the “soviet,” a Russian word for workers’ council.

It also raised questions for revolutionaries of how best to fight the state and the capitalist class. For Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik party, he argued that the party must immerse itself in the day-today struggles of workers, insisting that those economic and social demands turn into political ones.

By 1910 and 1911, the struggle began to revive. Six thousand gold miners in Lena went on strike, facing brutal police repression. Over 500 were killed or wounded. In response, 300,000 workers went on strike in protest. By May Day, 400,000 workers were on strike.

In November 1913, six workers from the Obukhov works in St. Petersburg were arrested for defying the law that banned strikes in “socially necessary” factories. Protest meetings were held in every factory in the city. Over 100,000 workers went on strike in solidarity with the accused, and there was a violent demonstration in front of the court building, demanding the workers’ right to organize. Under the pressure of these protests, the court gave the accused workers light sentences.

Even so, the workers launched an appeal. When the appeal was heard on May 20, 1914, another protest strike took place, involving 100,000 workers.

These political strikes continued up to the outbreak of World War I. In the first half of 1914, the number of workers participating in strikes was 1,425,000—of which 1,059,000 were in political strikes.

This almost matched the level of

HOW WORKERS MADE A REVOLUTION In the wake of the G20 protests, activists are asking: who has the power to change the world?

Peter Hogarth looks for answers in the history of the Russian Revolution

‘It was in this climate of mass dissatisfaction and unrest that Lenin and the Bolsheviks argued for workers to resist the war by joining the class struggle’

political strike activity of 1905.

The movement was pushing toward revolution.

Meanwhile, the Bolshevik party was making gains among key sections of the working class. In the April 1913 elections to the executive of the St. Petersburg Metal Workers Union, 10 of the 14 members were Bolshevik supporters. A re-election took place in August 1913, attended by 3,000 metal workers. The Bolshevik list carried an overwhelming majority, while the Menshevik list attracted only 150 votes. In June 1914, of 18 trade unions in St. Petersburg, the Bolsheviks controlled 14, and the Mensheviks controlled three. One union was split down the middle. In Moscow, among 13 unions, 10 were led by the Bolsheviks.

The Bolsheviks had positioned themselves within key sections of the working class, winning widespread support among workers. As the lessons of 1905 showed, workers had the power to bring the coun-

try to a standstill, and their numbers and economic power could inspire revolt in the rest of the country.

Class consciousness

World War I formed the backdrop to the Russian Revolution.

In August 1914, war broke out in Europe. The spread of industrialization had brought the world more closely together. Investment flowed in huge quantities across borders and millions of people moved freely between countries in search of work.

However, this integration did not bring harmony. The process of growth was competitive and the globe was divided into colonial powers, all challenging each other for control of raw materials, markets, and investments. Private industry was becoming more integrated with the state as the economy became more dependent on access to world markets and resources. The stage was set for the bloodbath of World War I.

The explosion came when a Serbian nationalist assassinated an Austrian archduke. Austria struck back against Serbia; Russia backed Serbia; Germany rushed to support Austria; France backed Russia; Britain used an 80-year old treaty with Belgium as an excuse to fight alongside France and, in their view, to put Germany in its place. Forty years of seemingly “peaceful” capitalist expansion ended with the most horrendous war known to humanity up to that point.

When war broke out, most members of the (Second) Socialist International—which had been created in 1889 to bring socialist parties together—loyally supported their respective governments. The struggle for class unity had now given way to a bloody fight in defence of national self-interest. Socialists opposed to the war, such as Lenin and the Bolsheviks—who argued that war could create a revolutionary situation in which workers would rise up against the barbarism—were marginalized and few in number.

But the patriotic wave was shortlived. Slaughter on that scale had never been seen before. The Russians suffered terrible losses in battle. Total war revolutionized daily life. The state took control of huge swathes of production in the “war effort,” and the capitalists were compensated handsomely. By contrast, many soldiers had to fight without shoes or guns, while millions of families went hungry. The crisis brought by the war shook the beliefs of millions of workers and undermined the system’s greatest ideological weapon: the notion that capitalism, whether good or bad, is fundamentally unchangeable.

It was in this climate of mass dissatisfaction and unrest that Lenin and the Bolsheviks argued for workers to resist the war by joining the class struggle. According to them, it was the duty of socialists to help workers develop their revolutionary consciousness, and to support them in every fight-back. The Bolsheviks struggled to turn the imperialist war between the peoples and nations into a class struggle between the oppressed classes and their oppressors—for the conquest of political power.

On February 23, 1917, women workers from the textile factories poured into the streets of St. Petersburg, on strike. Their protest met an immediate response. The next day, 128,000 workers struck; the day after that, 214,000 went on strike; the following day, it was 305,000. By February 27, the numbers rose to 390,000. Soon, the government ordered troops to fire on the protesters. Unable to shoot at their wives, mothers, sisters, brothers, etc., large numbers of soldiers, perhaps as many as 70,000, came over to the side of the workers. In the following five days, Tsarism was swept away, and the police and old structures of governance were disbanded.

Reforms to revolution

In the battles to transform their conditions, workers begin to transform their own ideas. All kinds of old prejudices can be overcome, and all kinds of new possibilities can open up. Economic, social and political crises can be moments when these possibilities become reality, as the history of the Russian Revolution shows. However, just as isolated struggles can become big political ones, so too can they remain isolated.

The difference between isolation and generalization, however, is the position of the working class. Due to its direct influence on production and the functioning of capitalism, the working class is the group that can bring the system to a grinding halt and effectively demand change.

The more socialists are involved in every campaign, the more other workers can seize their potential and fight back. Socialists must relate to these fights and encourage and generalize the struggle—to help build a revolutionary current within the social movements and the working class.

July 2010 Socialist Worker 5

C

orporate greed is terrorism. This was the message striking Vale Inco miners carried during the 25,000-strong march against the G20 in Toronto on June 26. Over 1,000 Steelworkers marched behind this banner.

For several hours, the city centre was brought to a standstill as demonstrators marched through the streets.

While the world’s leaders hid behind miles of fence and 12,000 police, protesters called for a Robin Hood Tax on financial transactions to pay for the disasters capitalism has created all around the world.

Large union contingents marched side by side with Greenpeace, Oxfam, Amnesty International and many women’s organizations.

There were several feeder marches to the main demonstration, including students, climate activists and Steelworkers.

An anti-war feeder march heard from Josie Forcadilla, the mother of a Canadian soldier recently deployed to Afghanistan. “Relatives and mothers like me don’t want to extend the mission in Afghanistan.

Lives have been lost, not just ISAF soldiers but Afghan civilians. We don’t know how many people have died in this conflict.”

While the media focused on scattered incidents of property damage across the city in the wake of the protest, the real crime was being committed by the G20 leaders behind closed doors.

RAGE AGAINST THE G20

PHOTO: ALEK SHNAYDER

Thousands took to the streets protesting against poverty and injustice as G20 world leaders make plans for more savage attacks on workers, write Michelle Robidoux and Julie Devaney They announced they would cut the deficits of G20 countries in half by 2013—a target that is staggering in its implications for the world’s workers and the poor. For the US alone, such a measure would mean cutting $780 billion in spending.

These cuts are already aimed at social program funding in countries like Canada and the UK. “This agenda of privatization and social spending cutbacks is what feeds the rage we saw on the streets Saturday afternoon,” said Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians. “We cannot be surprised by fury when people are excluded and discarded by a toxic economy and politicans who lack not only common sense, but compassion.”

Overall, the message was clear: we will not pay for an economic crisis we did not create.

Women take the lead

Women led the mass march against the G20 chanting “Our bodies, our choice!” carrying a giant coat hanger and a banner saying “Maternal health includes abortion”.

The thousands of women marching against the G20 summit called out Harper on his hypocrisy and callous disregard for maternal health while waging wars, leading the chant: “Healthcare, childcare anything but warfare!”

Ever since Harper announced that a maternal health initiative would be Canada’s focus at the G8 there has been global outrage about the fact 6 Socialist Worker July 2010

‘The thousands of women marching against the G20 summit called out Harper on his hypocrisy and callous disregard for maternal health’

that this initiative, now called the Muskoka Health Inititiatve, would not include contraception and abortion.

On May 3, aid organizations met in Ottawa where Conservative senator Nancy Ruth advised them to “shut the fuck up” on the issue during the five weeks until the G8 and G20 summits.

The maternal health contingent led tens of thousands of marchers with the response: “We won’t, we won’t, shut the fuck up!”

According to Oxfam, around 1,000 women in Africa, Asia and Latin America die each day due to complications with pregnancy and childbirth.

Coming out of the G8 and G20, aid groups are outraged that only $5 billion is being dedicated to global women’s health in the next five years. Considering that Harper just spent $1.1 billion on summit security alone, it’s shameful that Canada is pledging just $2.85 billion to the initiative.

The details are still vague. It’s not clear whether abortion and contraception will be included in this funding, but global outrage has forced the inclusion of the word “choice” in the initiative. The idea that this concession needed to be fought for in an initiative purporting to support women’s health is shameful.

Harper needs to know that the starting point for women’s health is our right to choose and make decisions about our own bodies.

Women lead the march carrying a giant coat hanger

PHOTO: GLENN MacINTOSH

Striking Vale Inco workers PHOTO: CHARLOTTE IRELAND

NATIVE RIGHTS

POLICE VIOLENCE

Evidence mounts of police violence, misconduct

by JAMES CLARK

Indigenous rights rally marches down University Ave PHOTO: G. FRANCIS HODGE

Canada can’t hide from genocide

by PETER HOGARTH “WE WILL not stand for the destruction of our identity” stated Jasmine Thomas, a member of the Frog clan from Saik’uz of the Carrier Nation, to the crowd outside the Ontario Legislature.

On June 24, she spoke to over 1,000 Natives and allies who marched through the streets of Toronto to expose to the world Canada’s disgraceful record on indigenous rights and the current government’s aggressive undermining of treaty rights through resource extraction and attacks on self-government.

The march, organized by Defenders of the Land and Red Power United, shone a spotlight on Canada as the only country that refuses to sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Harrison Friesen, of Red Power United, said that while the declaration is not legally binding the Canadian government refuses to sign on because “if our people were given these rights they (the Canadian government) would lose control over

Arrests

the oppression that so many of us have had to live under for hundreds of years and we would stand up and expose what has really been taken away from us and the damage done to our nation.”

The day of action called into question the priorities of the current government, as speakers highlighted the brutality and waste of the war in Afghanistan. As Friesen explains, “the money the government uses on war and bank bailouts should be used to clean up their own backyard and to help improve the living conditions of First Nations people… that at one point had everything stripped from them.”

The rally took aim at the G20 countries for their role in climate change. Lionel Lepine, a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, spoke of the damage that the Alberta tar sands has done to the traditional territory and the people of his community and sent out a call that resonated with all in attendance: “As long as I live, I will fight until the very end. It is our duty to protect our mother earth from exploitation.”

Voices of the movement

“Because I think it’s important to add your voice and energy to any movement that seeks to bring democracy back, and I don’t want to sit at home and complain and watch events unfold that affect me. I think it is important in a county that calls itself a democracy to be vigilant about democracy and to fight for it.”

Chang “We’re here in support of most causes, but especially the abortion groups, we’re very pro-choice; and Harper is limiting women’s

PHOTO: JESSICA SQUIRES

“Because I think lots of really bad things are happening in the world and I don’t think summits of developed countries really take care of those things; poverty, ecological disaster... they come and meet, there’s this fake lake, and fences, and they’re not interested in what people really need.”

Anna Poradzisz

rights. We also want to see action on environmental issues; the BP spill is ridiculous, and it has taken far too long to act.”

Meredith Loveys & Danielle Nelson “I’m a labour activist and I’m here to raise the profile of the poverty issue, because the G20 agenda is to tax the poor and give tax breaks to the rich.

We also want action on the environment.”

Frank Curnew

IN THE aftermath of the G20 Summit in Toronto, evidence is mounting of widespread police violence and misconduct.

Eyewitness accounts, video footage, and photos are flooding the internet with protesters and passers-by alike re-telling their experiences at the hands of the police.

On Saturday, July 26, tens of thousands of people joined the labour-led “People First” rally and march which wound its way peacefully through the downtown core. The police presence was overwhelming, yet a small group of Black Bloc demonstrators were given free rein to rampage all over Yonge Street. Police abandoned two cruisers in the intersection of Yonge and King, which some media have reported were “decoys”—cars meant to attract acts of vandalism for awaiting media to document. Witnesses in the area watched police stand by as the cars were torched.

Later, police chased protesters into Queen’s Park—the “designated protest zone”—where they were attacked, beaten, and arrested. By Saturday evening, hundreds had been arrested and held without charge at the temporary detention centre on Eastern Avenue.

On Sunday, the police tactics got worse. Almost every instance of public opposition to the G20 was met with force—often ending in arrest. In one stand-off, hundreds of people, many of them shoppers and pedestrians, were trapped by police in the intersection of Queen and Spadina, where they were forced to stand for hours in the pouring rain—until police arrested many of them one-by-one. Among those arrested were journalists, photographers, and other media workers trying to cover the protests. Others were arrested for wearing black, for photographing police, for asking questions about police tactics, or for watching the protests from the sidelines.

Across the city, police harassed and arrested activists at the Convergence Centre, in parks, and anywhere police suspected anyone of “protesting.” Even the solidarity rally outside the detention centre—a peaceful event—was attacked by police with rubber bullets and tear gas. Police “snatch squads” kidnapped people from all over the city: an unmarked van would pull over, half a dozen undercover officers would rush out and grab one or two individuals, stuff them into the van, and speed away.

Some people were held in the back of vans for hours.

On Friday night, the police made a series of pre-emptive arrests, breaking into the homes of anti-G20 organizers to arrest them. The days leading up to the G20 Summit also saw countless instances of police intimidation.

At the University of Toronto, over 70 people, mostly students, were arrested in one sweep.

Just days before the Summit began, media reported that Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty had secretly passed a new law that gave the police sweeping new powers, including the right to arrest anyone who doesn’t show I.D. or consent to a search within five metres of the security perimeter. Although the police now admit the law never existed, they

nevertheless claimed it did to violate people’s Charter rights all over the city. When asked if the law really existed, Toronto Chief of Police Bill Blair grinned and told the media, “No, but I was trying to keep the criminals out.”

Illegal searches and detentions took place well beyond the perimeter, as police attempted to thwart protests even before they began.

By the end of the Summit, nearly 1,000 people had been detained—the single largest mass arrest in Canadian history, almost doubling the number of people who were arrested during the October Crisis in 1970, when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau imposed martial law through the War Measures Act. As protesters are being released, they are sharing horrific stories of police intimidation and violence, including in the detention centre. Dozens of people were forced into tiny metal cages with no heat, no shoes, and only two cheese sandwiches and two Dixie cups of water per day—if at all. The lights were kept on all night and no one slept. Many people waited 24 hours before being allowed to make a phone call. A number of women have reported being stripped-searched— and sexually assaulted—by male police officers. Others have reported that police threatened them with rape.

The majority of people arrested and held in the detention centre are now being released without any charges whatsoever, although their processing could take days.

Many respected media figures also witnessed police brutality.

Long-time journalist and host of TVO’s The Agenda, Steve Paikin saw police attack media workers, including reporters. Jesse Rosefeld, a freelance journalist reporting for The Guardian, was arrested then beaten by three police officers during the protest.

Paikin witnessed the assault and has reported it widely. Other journalists for CTV, CityTV, and the National Post were also arrested and held in detention, some of them strip-searched.

Inquiry

The brutality, violence, and record number of arrests have produced a wave of anger at police and the Harper government.

Amir Khadir, the Québec solidaire member of Quebec’s National Assembly, said, “They don’t arrest all the bankers because of the crimes of some bankers. But that’s what they did to protesters, just because a small number of people broke windows. People are being arrested for no reason, for sleeping in a dormitory.”

Khadir also condemned the police’s targeting of demonstrators from Quebec, many of whom were arrested in the sweep at the University of Toronto.

Calls for a public inquiry and for the resignation of Police Chief Blair continue to grow. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association and Amnesty International are among the major groups demanding an inquiry into police tactics.

A rally against police violence and in solidarity with the hundreds of people detained took place on July 28 outside Toronto Police headquarters on College Street—attracting over 4,000 people. Mainstream media outlets, including the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail have also called for inquiries.

Shamefully, hardly any political leaders have offered anything but praise for the police, despite the mounting evidence of violence and misconduct. Mayor David Miller defended the police actions, dismissing any suggestion that police may have played a role in instigating violence as agents provocateurs.

Just a few years ago, Quebec provincial police were forced to admit they sent undercover agents to the anti-SPP demonstrations in Montebello, although they claim they did not incite violence. A YouTube video of three undercover cops carrying bricks and rocks proved otherwise.

As more evidence becomes available, and as more detainees are released and share their stories, a fuller picture of the scale of police violence and misconduct will become clearer. In the meantime, civil liberties advocates and anti-G20 protesters will continue to push for a public inquiry to hold the police and government leaders to account for their actions, and to restore the Charter rights that were widely violated during the G20 Summit.

If public anger continues to swell at its current rate, that pressure will soon be overwhelming.

Over 4,000 march against police violence on June 28 PHOTO: G. FRANCIS HODGE

July 2010 Socialist Worker 7

OPINION STRATEGY & TACTICS

Lessons from the G20 The fact that over 25,000 people marched against the G20 on June 26 was buried in the mainstream press. Instead, headlines, articles and photographs captured the smashed windows, burning police cars and the black-clad protesters who snaked their way through downtown Toronto.

Largely, the day went much like other summits. There’s a mass demonstration, which got little attention. A layer of people do a split from that march and then some express their rage against the system by smashing windows and other acts. Given the widespread anger at the world we live in, it’s surprising that this doesn’t happen more often.

The black bloc and their supporters utilize the larger rally to launch attacks on property and the police. In response, the police hold back until the main march disperses. They wait for some damage to be done and then they go on the offensive.

They round-up and brutalize everyone left on the streets, including passersby, peaceful protesters and those engaged in property damage. This script has played out over and over again—in Seattle, Quebec City, Genoa, etc.

The actions of the black bloc reflect their politics. The tactics, regardless of their intent are inherently elitist and counter-productive. In fact, they mirror the critique of reformism many on the left have. The NDP says vote for us and we’ll do it for you, the black bloc says in essence the same thing—we will make the revolution for you.

At best the tactics of the black bloc are based on a mistaken idea that the attacks on property and the police will create a spark to encourage others to resist capitalism, at worst they are based on a rampant individualistic sense of rage and entitlement to express that rage regardless of the consequences to others. The anti-authoritarian politic they follow is imposed on others. Very rarely will you see a black bloc call its own rally, instead the tactic is to play hide and seek with the police under the cover of larger mobilizations.

The tactic of smashing windows and burning police cars is counter-productive. Everywhere you went there was anger at the billion dollar price tag for security. At a time when thousands are struggling to make ends meet, the cost of thees summits is seen as exorbitant. Many, consciously or not, recognize that this money is being spent to protect the architects of the crisis; protecting those who gave billions to the bank while leaving workers and the poor to pay for it.

Furthermore, in the lead-up, there was a growing polarization with many being angry or frustrated with Harper’s attacks on civil liberties, on women’s rights, on the climate, on the economy and more.

To have had a day of mass demonstrations and militant but non-violent action would have left Harper with egg on his face and given more confidence to those want to find ways to challenge Harper and the market.

Is it radical to trash a few windows? It depends on what one means by radical. Radical is about workers gaining confidence and consciousness to fight back, not just at work, but in solidarity with others. Radical is about developing a sense of mass power, organizing based on moving others into struggle, winning others to challenge the power in their workplace or community collectively, beyond the individualisation of our society. Radical is about going to the roots of the system—not trashing its symbols.

AFGHANISTAN

Bring the troops home now During a recent trip to Afghanistan, Canadian MPs lauded the great work Canadian Forces are doing and argued that the mission be extended, lest these good works be in vain. Liberal MP Bob Rae led the chorus calling for a new role for Canadian Forces that would shift emphasis to training, rather than combat.

Even NDP MP Jack Harris hinted that he would support an extension if the mission focused on a non-combat role.

These are the same arguments we heard in 2008 in the months leading to the debate in the House of Commons that extended the mission.

We need to be clear. There is no option for a non-combat role. If the forces are training the Afghan army, they will be in combat. Either way, the presence of the troops, regardless of their specific actions, will help provide legitimacy to an immoral and brutal occupation, which is creating more violence and misery for the Afghan people.

If Canada stays we will continue to prop-up a corrupt regime dominated by drug warlords, and will continue to see soldiers brought home in body bags. Each month, casualty figures rise and more civilians are killed. The Conservatives, initially stating that there would be no extension, are now biting at the bit, saying they would be happy to work with the Liberals to keep the troops in Afghanistan.

The drive to stay is even stronger since the US geological survey found large mineral deposits. As much as a $1 trillion in untapped resources. Under better circumstances that could be good news for the Afghan people, but under the NATO occupation, this is not. Western interests in Afghanistan has always been about securing energy resources—or at least the pipeline routes. Finding copper, uranium, lithium and other minerals means that there are now many more very lucrative reasons for the West to stay. Canada, a world power in mining, will want to stay to reap its part of the spoils of war.

The next months will be crucial to the Canadian anti-war movement. NATO and Canada are in Afghanistan for their own interests and after nine years of occupation have left the country in ruin with little hope for the future. A better war is not possible. The anti-war movement has to rise to this new challenge and redouble our efforts to get the troops home now.

8 Socialist Worker July 2010

Canada’s cuts: model for UK? Governments across the globe attempt to make workers pay for the economic crisis P.R. Wright looks at how newly elected British Prime Minister David Cameron takes a page from Canada’s history of austerity measures and the resistance that it sparked AFTER THE British government handed over £850 billion to British banks in the wake of the financial meltdown, the newly elected British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced £7 billion in cuts to public spending in Britain.

He wants to emulate the model of Canada during the mid-1990s, when Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien implemented the largest social spending cuts since World War II. These cuts were deeply unpopular.

The previous Progressive Conservative government under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney had implemented spending cuts and privatization.

Beginning in 1984, Mulroney had privatized over one-third of Canada’s Crown corporations, including Air Canada. In his second term, he signed on to the first Free Trade Agreement, raised interest rates, downloaded taxes onto individuals and away from corporations through the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and in 1991, brought Canada into the first Gulf War. When the Federal Liberals were elected in 1993, the unpopularity of such policies resulted in the decimation of the Tories, reducing them from 151 seats in Parliament to a mere two.

At the time, many had illusions that the re-election of the federal Liberals was a triumph for progressive government. In fact, the opposite was true.

In less than a year, the Liberals announced a massive restructuring of federal transfer payments to the provinces for health care, education, housing and social assistance spending, slashing $7 billion between 1996 and 1998.

Thousands of federal public sector jobs were eliminated.

According to a 2008 report released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), inequality and poverty rates increased rapidly between 1995 and 2005, compared with other OECD countries. This rise in poverty was a direct result of spending cuts on unemployment and family benefits.

The cuts of the mid-1990s transferred responsibility directly onto the provinces, which had to replace the funding or make deep cuts in education, health care and social program funding. Most provinces made cuts, but other spending was squeezed as well. According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, cuts in some areas resulted in additional indirect costs, for physical and mental health care, emergency shelter and services, and policing resulting from cuts in federally-funded social

housing. This further squeezed provincial and municipal budgets.

The consequences of the federal cuts were swift and sharp. In Ontario, the newly-elected Conservative government of Mike Harris slashed education, health care and welfare funding. Social assistance income support was cut overnight by 21.6 per cent while others were driven off welfare rolls through workfare programs, reducing the number of recipients by 40 per cent and drastically reducing income for those who remained.

By 1998, the number of children living in poverty in Canada had increased by 42 per cent from 1989, when the House of Commons adopted a motion to end child poverty by the year 2000.

In Ontario, the number of children living in poverty doubled from its 1989 level.

The provincial cuts—embraced wholeheartedly by the Harris government—downloaded millions of dollars in costs onto municipal governments and school boards that were stripped of their ability to raise taxes or run deficits.

Resistance

When the federal cuts were announced, the federal Liberal government also announced new education reforms that would see the complete deregulation of tuition fees offset by unlimited and unprecedented student debt. Students launched the first wave of resistance to the federal cuts, calling for a student strike (the first such call outside Québec). In January 1995 the largest panCanadian student day of action in history took place.

Nurses across Canada mobilized with multiple strikes starting in BC in 1998, then in Newfoundland and Labrador, and then finally to Saskatchewan and Quebec where, in 1999, nurses struck and defied provincial back-to-work legislation imposed by their respective NDP and Parti Québécois governments.

In Ontario, resistance to provincial spending cuts led to a wave of one-day general strikes between 1995 and 1998, culminating in Toronto with a Friday general strike and a Saturday demonstration of 250,000 workers marching through downtown Toronto. But instead of escalating strike action, the labour leadership directed their effort to the June 1999 provincial election. Despite their anger with the Harris Conservatives, workers were still stinging from the betrayals of the NDP in office from 1990 to 1995. Many unions openly called for a vote for the provincial Liberals, despite the vicious cuts that

had just been unleashed federally. Not surprisingly, the Conservatives were reelected and the NDP was reduced to just nine seats.

Nevertheless, just months after the election, resistance was back on the provincial agenda. In response to vicious attacks on public education, on October 27, 1999 all major teachers unions walked out in an illegal strike, closing 4,742 schools, affecting over two million students. This was the largest ever teachers’ strike in North America, involving 126,000 teachers. For a moment it appeared as though the province teetered on the verge of an unlimited general strike.

Labour leaders faulter

Instead of calling an all-out, provincewide strike in solidarity with teachers, Ontario labour leaders faltered, sending a message that teachers—and anyone else choosing to fight—were on their own. The results were predictable: the leaderships of one teachers’ union after another retreated. With the parliamentary road seemingly closed as a result of elections five months earlier, and an intransigent government, the Ontario labour leadership offered no strategy to resist. The solidarity that would have been pivotal, failed to materialize.

While these struggles did result in some improvements and stopped some of the austerity measures being contemplated, the struggles weren’t able to break through the confines set by the trade union leadership.

Instead of calling for unlimited strikes, the labour leadership limited their tactics to rotating strikes or oneoff days of action. In Ontario, again and again, leaders failed to call for provincial strike action – funnelling anger first into elections, and then into lobbying strategies that proved ineffective.

If the British government is taking a lesson from Canada, then the labour movement must also learn the lessons.

Solidarity is crucial. No group of workers should be left to fight alone.

The cuts are coming down, not just in Britain, but across the European Union where the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund are forcing structural adjustment programs on sovereign states.

In Greece, workers are resisting. And the resistance appears to be spreading: in France, Spain, Portugal and elsewhere, workers are putting mass strike action on the table. In the wake of the massive austerity measures announced by the G20 leaders, mass action and solidarity will be critical.

LEFT JAB

REVIEWS

John Bell

Here’s the drill RESPONDING TO the everworsening disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is dispiriting on two counts.

First, the sheer magnitude of the environmental and social devastation wrought by the explosion of BP’s deepwater rig is heartbreaking.

Second, just when I start to chronicle the stupidity and greed of the cast of characters associated with this story, somebody comes along and says or does something so jaw-droppingly venal that I have to start all over again.

Names & numbers

FILM

Science for profit the real horror story in Splice Splice Written & directed by Vincenzo Natali Reviewed by Peter Hogarth

SPOILER ALERT: this movie is creepy as hell! Starring Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley as Clive and Elsa, Splice is a film that stands firmly in the tradition of movies like The Fly, in which scientific interference with nature produces disastrous results.

However, this movie is much more than a mere gory cautionary tale of science gone wrong.

Clive and Elsa are partners who are also both fantastic scientists. Charting brave new territory in the field of DNA splicing and gene-manipulation, Elsa and Clive are living the good life. They receive funding for their research and development lab and, with minimal supervision from the higherups, they are able to feel a sense of ownership and pride over their work.

They can employ their friends and family, play the music they want to in the lab, dress as they please, follow scientific pursuits that interest and engage them, and enjoy a great deal of autonomy and control over the work they produce.

Unfortunately for Clive and Elsa,

the contradictions of science under capitalism come crashing down on their little utopian workspace. Clive and Elsa have made an incredible breakthrough: they have engineered the DNA of several animals to create a new organism that can produce a strain of protein beneficial to the health of livestock.

They believe that with further work they can splice human and animal genes to create an even more widespread protein that could mean the end of cancer, diabetes and other diseases in humans.

Profits

Upon reporting their incredible findings to the CEO of the pharmaceutical company from which they receive their funding, they are told that they must now enter “phase two”. Essentially, they are ordered to halt all further research and focus on harvesting the recently discovered livestock protein to be sold on the market.

Elsa and Clive protest, but are told that their potentially life-saving work must be abandoned due to the pressures of the market and the need to stay competitive.

The two scientists consider quitting, but realize that the intellectual

property their labour has produced is owned by the company and they would lose everything if they quit. Determined to continue their groundbreaking scientific work, they are forced to create a human-animal hybrid in hiding, away from the now prodding eyes of their manager.

As you can probably imagine, their spliced creation turned out to be more than they bargained for and quickly turns into a secret that is very hard to contain (and restrain). Consequently, the ills of an economic system that put profit before people are acted out in violent fashion.

Shortly before the release of this film, geneticists announced they had created a new life form, a synthetic bacterium. Immediately, wrangling began over ownership and patent monopolies. It is hard to know what is more frightening: this film or reality.

Beyond the politics of science under capitalism, this film can be uncomfortable to watch. The acting of Brody and Polley is stellar, but Splice oozes weirdness throughout. Realistic and disgusting effects, cringe-worthy moments that can illicit both laughter and revulsion, and a story that is predictable but never boring, make Splice an entertaining yet not riveting film to see.

BOOK

Story of anti-racist activist hidden from history Lost Prophet: The Life & Times Of Bayard Rustin Written by John D’emilio Reviewed by Jesse McLaren

ANYONE INTERESTED in the history of the Civil Rights movement, or movement strategy and tactics in general, should read this book. Lost Prophet documents of one of the most important and least acknowledged organizers in 20th century America, Bayard Rustin.

Rustin was raised in a Quaker family active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and became politically active with the Communist Party in the 1930s. In the 1940s he went to jail for resisting WWII (where he campaigned against prison segregation), and organized the first Freedom Rides to desegregate southern buses.

Over time, Rustin built a wealth of theory and practice advocating multiracial, nonviolent civil disobedience.

He linked anti-racism with anti-war issues and—along with socialist trade union leader A. Philip Randolph—always put class politics into the Civil Rights movement, mobilizing workers

and linking civil rights with economic justice.

In the 1950s, Rustin took his experience and contacts to advise Martin Luther King Jr on the Montgomery bus boycott. The book shows that the Civil Rights movement was not purely spontaneous and King not born a leader, but both developed under the leadership of an older generation of activists like Rustin.

At the same time, Rustin directed the War Resisters League and was active in anti-nuclear campaigns, organizing direct action teams to go to nuclear test sites in the Pacific and French Algeria.

Returning to the US he became the main organizer of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which provided the catalyst for the Civil Rights Act. But Rustin was repeatedly attacked for being gay, both from the state and from within the movement itself, and has been erased from mainstream history.

In the early 1950s, he was arrested for being gay and fired as an organizer. When moderate civil rights leaders felt threatened by Rustin’s mass action

strategy and its influence on King, they claimed he and King were having an affair, and King let him go as an advisor.

Even as civil rights leaders turned to Rustin to organize the March on Washington they did not want him to be the public face of the march, and Senator Strom Thurmond tried to derail the march through homophobic attacks on Rustin. But the Civil Rights leadership rallied to his defence for that historic day.

Whereas bigotry marginalized Rustin for most of his life, his own politics separated him from the movement as it radicalized. Rustin turned non-violence from tactic into principle, and cut himself off from a new generation inspired

by Malcolm X, the Black Panthers and the National Liberation Front.

Instead, Rustin turned to the Democratic Party, leaving him silent on the Vietnam War and critical of armed resistance movements from Vietnam to Palestine.

Despite his faults in later life, it is an injustice that Rustin has been erased from history. This book does a great service by restoring him to his rightful place as one of the great civil rights organizers, from whom we can all learn.

It is only occasionally mentioned that the disaster began with the death of 11 BP workers. Try as I might I can’t find one article that lists the names of the dead.

I know one was Gordon Jones, because his brother Chris addressed a Senate hearing: “They’ve [BP] made no phone call, no nothing to make any effort to reach out and at least extend their sympathies.”

Maybe BP execs were too busy trying to figure out how much oil was spewing into the sea. First, they told the press it was a 1,000 barrels a day; then 4,000; then, while they prevented independent analysts from seeing high definition video for more a month, 5,000.

Now, after their repeated failures to cap the well, they admit 100,000 barrels of crude per day are fouling the Gulf. That estimate may still be low. It seems all BP knows how to count with any accuracy is profit.

Friends of oil

Not everybody hates BP. On June 16, the day after BP agreed to Obama’s demand they create a $20 billion liability fund, the very day when BP boss Tony Hayward was evading questions from a Senate inquiry, Republican Texas Representative Joe Barton stole the spotlight. He humbly apologized to Hayward for the mean way BP is being treated.

“I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown—in this case a $20 billion shakedown.”

Joe is top Republican on the powerful House energy committee. He is, since 1990, recipient of at least $1.4 million in campaign contributions from the oil industry. Receiving big oil money doesn’t make Joe unique; having it buy his loyalty, even temporarily, does. Within minutes, Joe was being swarmed by Republican leaders, furious that he would publicly admit what they all privately believe.

Four hours later, Joe Barton apologized for his apology and got to keep his seat on the energy committee.

BP and Hayward do have some political friends who won’t scurry away just because the environmental optics are bad. But it helps to be a continent away from the disaster.

In Britain, Tory Trade and Industry Secretary Norman Tebbits (a fossil left over from the Thatcher era) and London Mayor Boris Johnson have led the charge to defend BP. Tebbits, Johnson and the British tabloid press (virtual organs for the Tories) have portrayed the push to

make BP financially and— gasp!—criminally liable as Brit-bashing. They claim that it will bankrupt the public pension plans. It all plays to the sadly resurgent antiimmigrant, anti-foreigner sentiment on the far-right.

In fact, BP stock exposure represents only about 1.5 per cent of the British public pensions. Joanne Segars, chief executive of the National Association of Pension Funds, told the press: “The ability of pension funds to pay out pensions to today’s pensioners and tomorrow’s pensioners shouldn’t be affected by this crisis.”

But true-Tory-blue friends of big business aren’t about to let facts cloud the issue, not when they can whip up a bit of racist, nationalistic froth. Some point to the fact that Obama removed a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office as proof that his family’s African roots have left him with a grudge against the Empire.

Blame

Environmentalists are to blame. If we hadn’t made it so hard to drill in the Arctic, the poor old oil corporations wouldn’t have to deep-water drill.

Republican governors from Louisiana and Mississippi have demanded that the moratorium on deep-water drilling be lifted. It unfairly penalizes a whole industry for the bad behaviour/ luck of one corporation.

Oil bosses portray BP as a “rogue” corporation. “We would not have drilled the well the way they did,” said Mr. Exxon. “It’s not a well that we would have drilled,” said Mr. Chevron. “Not all standards that we would recommend or that we would employ were in place,” said Mr. Shell.

So, BP bad–deepwater drilling good!

This ignores the fact that even as the Gulf disaster raged, a Chevron-owned pipeline in Utah broke and dumped tens of thousands of barrels of crude into a pristine mountain river. It forgets about the Exxon Valdez. It overlooks the horrendous record of environmental and human rights crimes racked up by all the oil corporations in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world.

Meanwhile, oil corporations based in Alberta’s tar sands are touting their industry as “safe”.

Those pictures of dead ducks have been replaced by images of oil-fouled pelicans.

Polluting the Athabaska River is insignificant alongside destroying a whole sea. Destroying the health and culture of First Nations in the north is preferable to the suffering all along the Gulf coast. Isn’t it?

It’s the crude, dude

All the contradictory reporting, the blame and counter-blame, the apologies, nationalism and racism adds up to one thing: an attempt to separate this disaster from the political and economic stranglehold the oil industry has on all of us.

If there is one silver lining in this still-growing, oily cloud it is that millions will awaken to the fact that there is no democracy where corporations rule their lives, and that transforming the way we produce energy offers the possibility of a revolution in the way all humans live and work on this wounded world.

July 2010 Socialist Worker 9

WHERE WE STAND

international socialist events

The dead-end of capitalism

TORONTO

The capitalist system is based on violence, oppression and brutal exploitation. It creates hunger beside plenty. It kills the earth itself with pollution and unsustainable extraction of natural resources. Capitalism leads to imperialism and war. Saving ourselves and the planet depends on finding an alternative.

Russian Revolution & the 21st century: Lessons for revolutionaries today – study series Bahen Centre 40 St. George St. University of Toronto

Socialism and workers’ power

•How the Russian Revolution won Tues, July 6, 6pm Speaker: Jesse McLaren

Any alternative to capitalism must involve replacing the system from the bottom up through radical collective action. Central to that struggle is the workplace, where capitalism reaps its profits off our backs.

Capitalist monopolies control the earth’s resources, but workers everywhere actually create the wealth. A new socialist society can only be constructed when workers collectively seize control of that wealth and plan its production and distribution to satisfy human needs, not corporate profits—to respect the environment, not pollute and destroy it.

•Did Lenin lead to Stalin?

Tues July 20, 6pm Speaker: Amelia MurphyBeaudoin •Stalinism & state capitalism Tues, Aug 3, 6pm Speaker: Faline Bobier •Deflected permanent revolution: liberation movements in the developing world Tues, Aug 17, 6pm Speaker: Pam Johnson

Reform and revolution

Every day, there are battles between exploited and exploiter, oppressor and oppressed, to reform the system—to improve living conditions. These struggles are crucial in the fight for a new world. To further these struggles, we work within the trade unions and orient to building a rank and file movement that strengthens workers’ unity and solidarity.

But the fight for reforms will not, in itself, bring about fundamental social change. The present system cannot be fixed or reformed as NDP and many trade union leaders say. It has to be overthrown. That will require the mass action of workers themselves.

Elections and democracy

Elections can be an opportunity to give voice to the struggle for social change. But under capitalism, they can’t change the system. The structures of the present parliament, army, police and judiciary developed under capitalism and are designed to protect the ruling class against the workers. These structures cannot be simply taken over and used by the working class. The working class needs real democracy, and that requires an entirely different kind of state—a workers’ state based upon councils of workers’ delegates.

Internationalism

The struggle for socialism is part of a worldwide struggle. We campaign for solidarity with workers in other countries. We oppose everything which turns workers from one country against those from other countries.

We support all genuine national liberation movements.

The 1917 revolution in Russia was an inspiration for the oppressed everywhere. But it was defeated when workers’ revolutions elsewhere were defeated. A Stalinist counterrevolution which killed millions created a new form of capitalist exploitation based on state ownership and control. In Eastern Europe, China and other countries a similar system was later established by Stalinist, not socialist parties. We support the struggle of workers in these countries against both private and state capitalism.

Canada, Quebec, Aboriginal Peoples

Canada is not a “colony” of the United States, but an imperialist country in its own right that participates in the exploitation of much of the world. The Canadian state was founded through the repression of the Aboriginal peoples and the people of Quebec.

We support the struggles for self-determination of Quebec and Aboriginal peoples up to and including the right to independence.

Socialists in Quebec, and in all oppressed nations, work towards giving the struggle against national oppression an internationalist and working class content.

Oppression

Within capitalist society different groups suffer from specific forms of oppression. Attacks on oppressed groups are used to divide workers and weaken solidarity. We oppose racism and imperialism. We oppose all immigration controls. We support the right of people of colour and other oppressed groups to organize in their own defence. We are for real social, economic and political equality for women.

We are for an end to all forms of discrimination and homophobia against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people. We oppose discrimination on the basis of religion, ability and age.

The Revolutionary Party

To achieve socialism the leading activists in the working class have to be organized into a revolutionary socialist party. The party must be a party of action, and it must be democratic. We are an organization of activists committed to helping in the construction of such a party through ongoing activity in the mass organizations of the working class and in the daily struggles of workers and the oppressed.

If these ideas make sense to you, help us in this project, and join the International Socialists.

10 Socialist Worker July 2010

Info: www.socialist.ca Tel: 416.972.6391 Organized by the UofT International Socialists

Chinese workers strike back against a low-wage economy

by JONATHON HODGE WORKERS ACROSS China have taken inspiration from a successful strike at Honda Automotive Components. At the transmission plant, with fewer than two thousand workers, a recent strike won a 24 per cent wage increase and shut down Honda’s entire Chinese operation for eight days.

At Honda plants elsewhere, such as Honda Lock, workers have gone on strike to demand a 70 per cent wage increase and the right to independent representation.

There are three forces behind the massive expansion of the Chinese economy over the last generation: the unholy trinity of political dictatorship, state control of industry and a trade union federation committed to the exploitation rather than the protection of working people. As a result, China has moved from barely registering at all on international measures in the early 1970s, to becoming one of the four biggest economies in the world today.

As the New York Times points out, “The labour income share of Chinese GDP declined from 57 per cent in 1983 to only 37 per cent in 2005.

(The ratio has stayed at that level since then.) This is to say that hundreds of millions of Chinese workers have lost relative to government and corporations, which, in terms of head counts, represent a tiny fraction of China’s massive population.”

Resistance

This super-exploitation has been masked by socialist rhetoric, combined with unambiguous state repression. But recent events show that times may be changing.

Workers at Honda elected their own shop-floor representation and occupied the street defying riot police.

Workers are also speaking to international and domestic reporters without fear of showing their faces, something unheard of in China until very recently. Finally, they denounced their official union as “worse than useless … they are traitors.”

Workers are using the new tech-

nologies they produce in abundance to organize themselves and communicate with less government interference. They are comparing wages and conditions across regions and sectors, and raising consistent and escalating demands. Other strikes have won gains in rubber, plastics and textiles, forcing an increase in basic wages across the board in some locales.

Solidarity

Solidarity is emerging amongst layers of workers engaged in struggle. The elected committee at the Honda strike declared, “We must not let the representatives of capital divide us. This factory’s profits are the fruits of our bitter toil … This struggle is not just about the interests of our 1,800 workers … We also care about the rights and interests of all Chinese workers.”

Similarly, a workers’ petition at KOK international, a Taiwaneseowned factory outside Shanghai, stated, “Power lies in unity and hope lies in defiance.”

De facto independent trade unionism is emerging, threatening capital, the Chinese state and the stock market as workers demand higher wages.

More generally, this poses a potential long-term political threat to what has been one of the most advantageous states for capitalist investment and development in the world.

While international investors may publicly feign indifference—or worse, insist everything is fine as Apple CEO Steve Jobs did in response to a spate of worker suicides at Foxtronn, a major supplier for the iPhone and iPod— they should be concerned. The attractiveness of the Chinese economy as a producer has been predicated on low wages, a compliant workforce and a legal environment with few if any restrictions for business.

While an overall increase in Chinese working wages could in theory stimulate domestic demand (and so, at some point in the future, make Western goods affordable to the nowmythic Chinese mass consumer base), there is no guarantee.

Meanwhile, such disruptions and

budget adjustments could give Western CEOs more headaches than they care to admit, while reducing the rate of return of their Chinese investments, subsequently exacerbating economic problems for capital elsewhere.

The Chinese state also has reason to fear. Abroad, Beijing is heavily invested in US debt to secure a market for exports. China is also increasingly active in raw material and energyrich regions like sub-Saharan Africa and central Asia. At home, their political legitimacy depends on buyingoff a layer of urban professionals with Western-style living standards, who then act as an inspirational example for the mass of the population held in check by state repression.

The states central place in the economy and political and social life has allowed it to keep down workers living standards for decades, while pouring a disproportionate share of productive gains back into capital investment or foreign investment.

A redistribution of these productive gains to workers, through better wages and union protection, would not only make China less attractive to foreign capital as it becomes known as a risky venture, it would make Beijing’s ability to do whatever it likes that much harder. It would reduce the pool of money available to the ruling class to sink into redevelopment, further investment, military spending, domestic policing, international bribery/investment, etc.

Finally, an inability to contain workers gains, especially the calls for independent representation, could stimulate further calls for domestic political reform, from educated urban professionals and workers across the country. Lurking in the background are the minority liberation struggles in Tibet and northwest Xinjiang province, where flareups recently have shown the world how pressure-filled the middle kingdom actually is.

Victories on the factory floor could provide an example for a broader challenge to Beijing’s rule should the various elements of Chinese discontent find common ground.

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What does it mean to be a revolutionary today?

– One day conference University of Toronto

•Opening plenary: Capitalist crisis and the relevance of Marxism •Workshops: The centrality of the working class; the role of religion; reform & revolution; oppression & exploitation; the environment; the struggle for national liberation •Closing plenary: Being a revolutionary today info: www.socialist.ca

OTTAWA

Ideas to change the world – study group

Second Cup, Rideau at Dalhousie •Marxist economics: what can they explain about the current crisis?

Tues, July 6, 7pm Reading: “Wage Labour and Capital” http://bit.ly/6VD2pD •Class society: haves, have-nots, and how to change it Tues, July 20, 7pm Reading: Engels and the origins of human society http://bit.ly/b0o37h •Reform vs Revolution: can the system be fixed?

Tues, Aug 3, 7pm Reading: Lenin, State and Revolution, Chapter 1 http://bit.ly/5CKhTT info: gosocialists@yahoo.ca

VANCOUVER

Marxist study series •Why is capitalism addicted to war?

Wed, July 21, 7pm Room C509, Langara College, 100 W. 49th Ave, •What’s really going on with the economic crisis?

Wed, Aug 4, 7pm Rhizome Cafe 317 East Broadway •The Russian Revolution: Why should you care?

Wed, August 18, 7pm Rhizome Cafe Readings & info: vancouver.socialists@gmail.com / 604.765.2580

You can find the I.S. in: Toronto, Ottawa, Gatineau, Vancouver, Victoria, Montreal, London, St. Catharines, Mississauga, Scarborough, Halifax, Belleville & Kingston e: iscanada@on.aibn.com t: 416.972.6391 w: www.socialist.ca For more event listings, visit www.socialist.ca.

reports@socialist.ca EAST ISLE STRIKE

STICKING WITH THE UNION

UNITE/HERE

Carolyn Egan

by STEPHEN ELLIS WORKERS WALKED off the job at East Isle Shipyard in George town, Prince Edward Island on April 23.

Because of a dispute about overtime, East Isle had laid-off a number of workers a few months earlier. Now, in order to meet production demands to complete a new tug boat, East Isle was demanding overtime from the remaining workers on a regular basis.

The union representing the workers, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, told the company if it was short of workers, it should rehire those it had laid-off.

In a feat of logic that could only come from a government agency, the Labour Relations Board ruled that while individual workers were free to refuse overtime, the workers as a collective could not. The Board then served a cease and desist order on the union.

Workers across the Island need to show solidarity.

The workers at East Isle must fight to ensure that the issue of overtime is dealt with to their satisfaction in the new contract.

ST. MARY’S STRIKE

by PETER HOGARTH WORKERS of CAW Local 222, on strike now for over 15 weeks, are standing strong in their fight against St Mary’s Cement in Bowmanville, Ontario.

St Mary’s, which is owned by Votorantim Cimentos, based in Brazil, are trying to force workers to forgo the fixed benefit pension plans they have been paying into for years in favour of a pension plan tied to the volatile patterns of the stock market.

Talking to retired workers on the picket line it is obvious that the tactics of Votarantim Cimentos are not exclusive to foreign multinationals, but standard practice for capitalist bosses of any country.

Strikes, scabs and arrests were just as common and just as brutal whether it was Votarantim Cimentos from Brazil, Blue Circle from Atlanta or St Mary’s from Canada running the plant.

Workers are holding up vehicles entering the premises, including buses carrying scabs, many of whom are fresh out of high school. The consensus on the line is that these inexperienced scabs are being placed in danger considering how unsafe the working conditions can be. Scabs have been seen being taken from the plant covered in blood.

Talking to the striking workers of Local 222, it becomes obvious just how much power a unified labour movement can wield. Considering the time-sensitive nature of the ready-mix being brought out of the plant, a delay of more than an hour could mean the difference between a successful delivery and a truck ruined by hardened cement blocks.

Fighting against austerity PRIME MINISTER Stephen Harper has become the global champion of slash and burn debt reduction.

He urged the G20 nations to move quickly to slash deficits.

Novotel Centre workers strike for fair contract

by PETER HOGARTH AS G20 delegates from France and Indonesia arrived at the Hotel Novotel, just blocks from the security zone, they were treated to a loud, festive, militant display of solidarity and workers’ resistance.

On June 24, workers from non-union Novotel hotels in North York, Mississauga and Ottawa came out to support the workers of UNITE/ HERE Local 75 who walked off the job at 6:30am that morning. Members of the United Steelworkers, CEP, CUPE and a range of other allies, including a samba squad, joined them.

Workers planned the walkout after Accor, the French

company that owns Novotel, refused to continue negotiating and ignored the union’s basic demands for a pension plan and more working hours.

The heavy-handed negotiating tactics of Accor provoked a picket that shook the town, as hundreds danced to the samba music, blew vuvuzelas, and chanted alongside a giant inflatable rat symbolizing Novotel’s refusal to negotiate good jobs for its workers.

Rick Hockley, who has been a banquet server at Novotel for seven years and the food and beverage shop steward for Local 75, said that the workers have been without a contract since February 1. The company refused to negotiate the union’s

offer or propose anything until 37 hours before the strike deadline.

Hockley emphasized that waiting until the last minute to offer up a contract with concessions and takeaways “isn’t bargaining. It’s dictating.”

Hockley said that workers will continue this strike as long as it takes. “Its ridiculous to offer these garbage contracts to the workers during a global recession.

“We have been making all the sacrifices, not the management. They have been getting their hours and bonuses because they are cutting from us. They have piece of mind for their family and their rent or mortgage, we just want that security for our jobs.”

SIEMENS GREENWASHES ATTACK ON WORKERS

by JESSE McLAREN SIEMENS, the global engineering conglomerate, is greenwashing its attacks on workers, as it reorganizes production to boost profits.

In March, the company announced it would close its gas turbine plant in Hamilton in July, putting 550 people out of work. Since then it has refused to negotiate a fair closure agreement.

According to Canadian Autoworkers (CAW) Local 504 President Randy Smith, “This is totally unacceptable. We are going to fight back to ensure our members

KENNEY SHAMED ON JUNE 12, Minister of Censorship and Deportation Jason Kenney spoke at a Filipino Independence Day celebration in Vancouver.

Kenney, repeatedly heckled and shamed, cut his speech short and fled. The only cheers came from his private security, Conservative politicians and his mini entourage.

The crowd continued jeering at Kenney, denouncing his racism, anti-immigrant policies, growing rates of deportation and exploitation of temporary workers until RCMP officers escorted Kenney from the park.

get a fair and equitable closure agreement.”

Workers, most of whom are over 50 and will be hard pressed to find a similar job, burnt the latest offer in a barrel outside the plant on June 14.

Siemens claims it is closing its plant in order to shift to green jobs, and recently announced 50 new jobs in Burlington to build solar inverters. But Siemens is reorganizing global production for profit, not the planet.

By slashing 10,000 jobs and consolidating factories—transferring Hamilton jobs to South Carolina, and

leaving workers with nothing—they posted $10 billion in profits this year. And this profit is being reinvested in fossil fuel technology.

According to a company brochure, “long-term growth in oil and gas demand and the increasing complexity of exploiting energy sources located, for example, beneath the ocean floor are driving developments in our market.”

Siemens is trying to drive a wedge between workers and the environment, but it’s the company and capitalism that threaten both. The only solution is good green jobs for all.

WORKERS’ PROTEST WORLD CUP

by VIV SMITH BOSSES AT Stallion Security have fired security guards who struck during the World Cup in South Africa.

Workers struck June 14 over low wages at Durban’s Moses Mabhida Stadium and were met by police firing teargas and rubber bullets. The South African trade union federation COSATU condemned the treatment of stadium workers and blamed FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, for sabotaging the World Cup through greed.

Thousands of people marched in Durban on June 16—the 34th

anniversary of the Soweto uprising against apartheid—in solidarity with Stallion Security workers.

They also condemned the wasting of $4.2 billion by the government on funding the event while millions live in poverty.

Trevor Ngwane from the Anti-Privatization Forum who took part in the march said, “Our protest is not aimed at disrupting the World Cup. The government must get their priorities right—when we ask for jobs, better education and houses, they tell us there is no money. But suddenly there are billions to build stadiums.” © Socialist Worker (UK)

He is asking all nations to cut their deficits by 50 per cent by 2013 and have their debt as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on a “downward path” by 2016.

The demands for austerity with private and public sector cutbacks are a clear sign that neo-liberalism, discredited by the massive economic collapse, continues to dominate public policy. Harper is pushing for a quicker pace, and telling leaders that they must see cutting the deficit as the key priority.

The economic crisis has sent the rich and powerful into a blind panic and, whatever they claim, they have only one solution: make the workers and the poor pay. We are seeing how these policies are intensifying the social crisis across Europe. Greece is a primary example, but Portugal, Spain and other nations are feeling the same contractions.

The ruling class wants workers to feel that in these times they have no power, and that they cannot fight back and win. This idea has to be challenged.

We know that both the anti-war and anticapitalist movement of the past decade have left an ideological radicalization that has not gone away.

We are in a rapidly changing situation and must do everything we can to bring a transformation of consciousness and confidence when struggles break out.

We know that the debt crisis has migrated from the private to the public sector and there will be a continued and sustained attack on public sector workers and services in Canada and around the world. How this will be played out is essentially a political question.

The fall guys are the working class and the poor, but how it will end depends on the level of resistance.

In Greece, we have seen the fusing of the militancy of the organized working class with the spirit of the youth-led demonstrations of 2008 when the police killed a young student.

This has shaken the leaders of the European Union.

Any victory can have wide reverberations on

the class as a whole.

There are several important fights in Canada.

In Sudbury, Vale Inco workers are in an 11-month strike against the company’s attempt to roll back pension rights. In Toronto, community and labour coalitions are pushing back attempts to privatize services such as Toronto Hydro and win the Transit City Campaign to increase public transit. Across Québec, public sector workers are battling against the provincial government.

If these fights win, it could have a significant impact on the class as a whole.

We must do everything we can to enhance the ability of rank-and-file workers to resist. Progressives have to provide the solidarity that can help sustain a particular group of workers when they are in a fight. This can potentially break through the political dominance of neo-liberalism.

A militant fight can shatter the fear. If a group of workers begin to move, they could become a focus for a much broader mood within the working class and potentially kick-start a process of ongoing struggle.

We do not know what the future will hold, but no one anticipates a rapid return to economic stability. The effects of the “great recession” are expected to continue, and a prolonged economic crisis will put pressure on political structures exposing their fault lines.

One of the lessons of the “great depression” is that a major economic crisis is a process, not an event. It is a historical phenomenon that passes through different stages and the process is uneven. It is a volatile situation and a fightback can break out at any moment.

In Canada, the erosion of living standards, the assaults on the social safety net and attacks on workers have brought widespread popular disenchantment. Our job is to ensure that when workers do fight back, they are not alone, but feel that they are part of a larger workers movement.

The outcomes of particular battles, large or small, can be crucial to the ongoing class struggle in Canada, and those in struggle may start questioning the system itself and begin the search for real alternatives.

Join the International Socialists Mail: P.O. Box 339, Station E, Toronto, ON M6H 4E3 E-mail: membership@socialist.ca / Tel: 416.972.6391

Name: Address: City/Province: Phone: E-mail: July 2010 Socialist Worker 11

BIG OIL’S CHERNOBYL

by JOHN BELL

BY THE time you read this, crude from BP’s ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico will have been gushing for more than 70 days.

Between 60,000 and 100,000 barrels of oil per day is polluting the Gulf.

Everything BP and US government experts have done to stop the flow of oil has failed.

Now, the optimistic view is that it will take another two months to stop the flow, by drilling behind the exploded wellhead to siphon off the oil and relieve the pressure.

In other words, the best-case scenario is that “only” about eight million barrels of oil will pollute the waters.

At first, the deadly explosion on the BP-owned Deepwater Horizon rig—with corporate partners Transocean and Halliburton—was being compared to the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, where almost 300,000 barrels of crude leaked from a ruptured tanker off Alaska’s coast. BP’s disaster equals a new Exxon Valdez every three days.

This environmental disaster is more comparable to the meltdown of the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986. The radioactive fallout—a nuclear cloud that drifted over Europe—was 400 times greater than was released by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Almost a half million people were evacuated away from their homes, now a dead zone.

Rates of cancer rose dramatically and the number of birth defects in Europe spiked nine months after the event.

Greenpeace estimates that 200,000 deaths between 1990 and 2004 are directly attributable to slow poisoning from Chernobyl’s radioactivity.

For big corporations and governments, the worst “fallout” from Chernobyl was universal popular opposition to new nuclear develop-

ment. Only now, almost 25 years later and after millions of dollars spent on public relations, is the nuclear industry attempting to rebrand itself— falsely—as a solution to climate change.

Worst-case

As bad as all that is, the Deepwater Horizon disaster could be far worse than we know.

Some oil industry insiders are suggesting the explosion did more than wreck BP’s pipe.

They worry is that the seabed atop the oil deposit has

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been irreversibly cracked. An estimated billion barrels of oil is pooled beneath BP’s rig. No wonder they were in such a mad, greedy rush to tap into it.

If oil is leaking from multiple cracks in the ocean floor, it could be years, not months, before the flow of crude subsides. The Gulf could become a dead sea, and effects will be felt throughout the Atlantic Ocean.

No wonder all the players in the Gulf, from BP to the White House, are trying to downplay the disaster and its

probable aftermath. They are trying to preserve not just one “too-big-to-fail” corporation, but also the oil industry, a crucial sector of the world economy they preside over.

By the time you read this, Chevron will continue to drill its “ultra-deep-water” well off the shores of Newfoundland. If anything goes wrong, Chevron has no more idea about how to handle it than did BP. The drilling continues with the blessing of Tory governments in Ottawa and St. John’s.

Oil-rich judge drills Obama AS THE scope of the Gulf disaster became apparent, Obama imposed a 6-month moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf. Now a Louisiana judge has overturned the ban.

Judge Martin Feldman’s ruling will please the Republican state governments in the Gulf region who have been clamoring for drilling to carry on.

Feldman owns deep investments in the oil industry. He has share not just in the big oil corporations, but also in companies that directly support and supply oil rigs and deep-water drilling.

Legal experts insist the jingling in his pockets had no bearing on Judge Feldman’s decision. Nonetheless, the White House is appealing the ruling.

Vale strikers fight for all workers

by JESSE McLAREN ALMOST 1,000 Steelworkers joined the march against the G20 on June 26, including a large group of striking workers from Vale Inco in Sudbury.

“Essentially, Vale is the poster child for everything for which the G20 is criticized,” Jamie West, a flash furnace operator and member of USW Local 6500 told The Sudbury Star.

West was one among three busloads of Vale workers who made the trek to Toronto.

According to Bernie Arsenault, also a Vale striker: “All these world leaders are there, doing their own thing, and pretending that their best interests are the interests of the people. But you see something as silly

as them spending over $1 billion on security, to make sure people can’t get out there, and express their views.”

July 13 marks the one-year anniversary since over 3,000 steelworkers in Sudbury and Port Colbourne went on strike against mining giant Vale Inco, and August 1 will be one year since 200 workers in Voisey’s Bay joined them.

Vale has resorted to scab labour and endless court challenges against strikers, but the strike is still strong and support is growing.

On June 1, over 50 members of Ushitau Maintenance Limited (a Vale contractor) joined the strike in Voisey’s Bay, further interrupting the company’s efforts to ramp up production.

This is a strike for all of us. According to Sudbury strike support organizer Laurie McGauley: “If Vale Inco manages to break this strike, that would have huge repercussions for all workers in Ontario, all over North America, because it would be a signal to everybody that replacement workers can be used to bust a union.

“To bust a historicallystrong union like United Steelworkers Local 6500 is a huge symbolic loss for all unions in Canada as well as in North America.”

The president of the union which represents Vale workers in a region of Brazil, Valerio Vieira, also participated in the protests against the G20.

“The G20 countries should stop their aggressive

policies against workers and communities. If they don’t stop, we are going to organize ourselves, along with trade unionists worldwide, and make them stop,” said Vieria.

When asked about the current situation in Europe, Vieria stated: “The struggles in Greece, where workers are fighting back, are a model for the whole world. Only through this kind of resistance struggle can workers actually create a different world.”

Vale has tried to starve workers out to push through its attacks on workers.

The strikers are holding strong. With talks between Vale and the union broken down, building solidarity and financial support for the strikers is more important than ever.