Organized Labour and the Politics of the Class Struggle Today
January 11, 2010 - Don Currie, Chair CPS
The Communist Party of Canada should immediately re-issue its call for a CLC Conference and coming out of the 36th Convention undertake a public campaign for such a meeting as the central task of the leadership and membership of the Party.
Prime Minster Harper’s decision cannot be dismissed as simply a cynical self serving manoeuvre - which of course it is.  It is more sinister than that.  The Harper Conservatives are now the chosen party of war profiteering, the global investment plans of Canadian finance capital and profit interests.  Having the ear of the Harper cabinet are those sections of Canadian and US capital that are plundering the energy resources of Canada and in so doing, endangering the economic future of the whole country. Parliamentary democracy is no longer a useful tool in the pursuit of the profit interests of this traitorous cabal of self-interested militarists and profiteers.Â
CPS - Statement on the Crisis in Haiti
January 15, 2010 - The scope of the tragedy unfolding in Haiti is so overwelming that it obliges each and every Canadian of good will to contribute what they can to support the rescue effort and alleviate the suffering of the Haitian people that is bound to go on for the foreseeable future. Â That is a primary duty of every person who considers themselves human. Â CPS calls upon its readers and supporters to contribute to the agencies that have a proven record of partisanship and solidarity with the people of Haiti and their struggle for democracy and sovereignty.
Your donation should be mailed to:
The Mackenzie-Papineau Memorial Fund &
Friends of the Mac-Pap Battalion, Int'l Brigades
Att: S. Skup
56 Riverwood Terrace
Bolton, ON L7E 1S4
Â
The lesson of Haiti - Reflections of Fidel
January 14, 2009 - Two days ago, at almost six o’clock in the evening Cuban time and when, given its geographical location, night had already fallen in Haiti, television stations began to broadcast the news that a violent earthquake – measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale – had severely struck Port-au-Prince. The seismic phenomenon originated from a tectonic fault located in the sea just 15 kilometers from the Haitian capital, a city where 80% of the population inhabit fragile homes built of adobe and mud.
Ortega claims that US is exploiting tragedy of Haiti to set up their troops
Caracas, Jan. 16. 2010, Tribuna Popular TP - A massive American military presence in Haiti is being installed, taking advantage of the tragedy that these people are living, with the objective of establishing a new military base in the Caribbean to threaten progressive governments in the region.
Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega, accused the United States (U.S.) uses the tragedy experienced by Haiti to join thousands of armed soldiers, and felt that the situation is troubling because "they have already taken military control of the airport.
"They are manipulating a tragedy to install U.S. troops in Haiti and have been taking military control of the airport in Port au Prince and this is worrying," said the president to the Tribuna Popular website.
Reflections by Comrade Fidel
COOPERATION SPIRIT IS PUT TO THE TEST IN HAITI
The news reported from Haiti describe a great chaos that was to be expected, given the exceptional situation created in the aftermath of the catastrophe.
At first, a feeling of surprise, astonishment and commotion set in. A desire to offer immediate assistance came up in the farthest places of the Earth. What assistance should be sent –and how- to a Caribbean nation from China, India, Vietnam and other countries that are tens of thousands of kilometers away? The magnitude of the earthquake and the poverty that exists in that country generated at first some ideas about probable needs, which gave rise to all types of promises that are possible in terms of resources that later on are tried to be conveyed through every possible way.
Read…Â
The 11th International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties
Robert Burns, 1795
Is there for honest Poverty
That hings his head, an' a' that;
The coward slave-we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
Read…
International
Ireland adopts the exploiter’s charter EU Services Directive becomes law
1/24/2010
The Services Directive itself is a mechanism for introducing “free market” competition to all services within the European Union, including health and education, as originally envisaged within the rules of the rejected European Constitution—later to emerge as the Lisbon Treaty.
REFLECTIONS OF FIDEL
1/5/2010
In Copenhagen, Obama appeared on the last day of the conference, which began on December 7. The worst aspect of his conduct was that, after he had decided to dispatch 30,000 soldiers to the slaughter of Afghanistan — a country with a strong tradition of independence, which not even the English in their better and cruellest times could dominate — he went to Oslo to receive no less than a Nobel Peace Prize.
Farming
The poor and medium-sized peasantry blocked the roads
1/24/2010
The poor and medium sized peasants are escalating their struggle with tens of road blockades across the country. On January 18th the peasants from the region of Thessalia set up a blockade in the nod on Nikaia. Since Sunday January 17th more blockades have been set up throughout the country.
Peace
DPRK Proposes to Start of Peace Talks
1/27/2010
The Foreign Ministry of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea issued Monday on January 11, 2010 the following statement: A year has gone by while the process for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is standing at the crossroads due to serious challenges to it.
Youth
To save Earth and the Environment, defeat imperialism!
1/16/2010
Over the last weeks thousands of news in newspapers, websites, television channels and other media have circulated raising the Conference of Partners (COP15) taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark, as a decisive and crucial moment for a deep change in the environmental policies. Many statements and declarations from political leaders and so called experts on the matter have raised this COP15 as a source of hope for saving Earth from the environmental destruction the last one and half century has brought to our common natural patrimony.
Prime Minister Harper (Assisted by Jim Flaherty and Peter Van Loan) Leads the Whole World Forward To the New “Enlightened Sovereignty” of the 21st Century
January 31, 2010 - Don Currie, Chair CPS
Prime Minister Harper’s address to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos Switzerland January 28, 2010 can’t be dismissed as just unctuous and vapid; it was worse than that. Harper adopting his familiar and grating patronizing manner underwhelmed the elite audience of capitalist intellectual luminaries, by suggesting that minority Conservative Government economic policies under Harper’s leadership is the example the nations of the world must follow to emerge triumphant from the worst capitalist depression since the market crash of October 1929.
Â
Basking in the glow of faint praise from the Obama Administration, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the WEF for the miraculous escape of Canada’s chartered banks’ from the catastrophic failures and collapses that occurred in the banking systems of the USA, Great Britain and Germany, Harper made the astounding claim that the Conservative minority government did not provide support for Canadian chartered banks , , during the 2008 global capitalist economic crisis.
Building on that false assertion Harper went on to boldly set the agenda priorities for the upcoming back to back G8 and G20 meetings to be held under Canada’s chairmanship June 25 - 26, 2010 . In little less than a year Harper has made the transition along with all of the leaders of the capitalist world from enthusiastic unbridled free marketeers to contrite stern advocates of international financial regulation.
Once More on the Harper Cabinet Shuffle Labour - Get Ready for a Fight!
January 21, 2010
Don Currie, Editor, Focus on Socialism
Workers are going to be pressured by the federal government and corporate bosses for years to come to defer wage demands, work longer hours and pay higher taxes to pay down a war induced federal structural deficit.  In spite of government denials, cuts to social spending are a certainty after the March 4th 2010 federal budget is tabled.  Cuts will be hidden in baffle gab but they will occur. The media is trivializing the Harper Cabinet shuffle. On March 4th the Harper Government will present MP’s, locked out from their jobs by the Prime ministerial prorogation with an austerity budget . The Harper plan to stimulate the economy is a failure for the people. A huge deficit has been wrung up on behalf of banks and big investors and now the government is planning to dump that burden on the backs of working people.
The Harper-Flaherty-Day March 4th austerity budget will be cunningly designed to justify $19 billion in annual social program cuts over the next few years, to wipe out a $56 billion structural deficit resulting from handouts to private banks, the private auto sector and exempt these parasites from paying back a penny of the public handouts they have received. The Harper Austerity Budget will cut social programs while maintaining rising expenditures of the US-NATO war in Afghanistan , and the ½ trillion dollar Canada First Defence Strategy.
That is the significance of Stockwell Day taking over Treasury. With Day in charge, Canadian workers are in for a big pay cut from combined losses in social spending in health, welfare and seniors programs.  After March 4th, Day can be relied upon to facilitate the further privatization of health services. Wage freezes on federal government employees are coming. Federal transfer payments to the provinces will be frozen. Provinces will be ordered to make do and download rising costs to cash strapped municipalities already desperately short of funds to operate the public school system and provide basic services. Without federal strings attached, provincial regimes will continue to close schools and use federal funds to pay off Olympic Games bondholders and fund such boondoggles as the Atlantic and Pacific Gateway projects.
The Lessons of January 23, 2010
Continue the Momentum – Defeat Prime Minister Harper!
A spontaneous democratic movement of the Canadian people inspired by media-savvy youth has dealt a body blow to the smug arrogance of Prime Minister Harper’s minority government and his US Republican Party advisors.
Right wing think tanks, media pundits and jaded academics are desperately casting about to explain to their political masters, how they got it so wrong, that Canadians didn’t care about Parliamentary democracy.
CPCon Statement
Put Parliament Back to Work: Throw Out the Harper War Criminals!
For the second year in a row, the minority Harper government is proroguing Parliament to avoid a crisis of confidence. Last year, the issue was outrage over the Conservatives' economic update, which sought to solve the economic crisis on the backs of working people. This time, the issue is the ongoing scrutiny into allegations of Canada's involvement in the torture of Afghan detainees.
An Open Letter to Premier Campbell
January 20, 2010
Block the US Auction of Whistler Blackcomb
We call upon you to act to block the auction on February 19th of Intrawest’s Whistler Blackcomb resort by a group of US investors seeking to recoup a $1.4 billion of bad debt owed to a US hedge fund, at the back of which is the bankrupt Lehman Brothers Bank of the USA.
Should a handful of wealthy US hedge fund investors ignore such a request and move forward with their disruptive and provocative auction, we call upon you to expropriate the Whistler Blackcomb resort without compensation to protect the interests of BC and Canadian taxpayers in this a valuable Canadian cultural and natural asset.
Yours Truly
Don Currie
Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Communist Party of Canada Condemns Proroguing of Parliament
January 7, 2010
Unless the Harper Tories are defeated by a powerful movement of opposition, they
pose a real and present danger to the future of Canada.
Left Turn Canada!
Kevin Page Wallops Flaherty – With the Truth!
Workers are going to be pressured by the federal government and corporate bosses for years to come to defer wage demands, work longer hours and pay higher taxes to pay down a war induced federal structural deficit. Â In spite of government denials, cuts to social spending are a certainty after the March 4th 2010 federal budget is tabled. Â Cuts will be hidden in baffle gab but they will occur.
It is becoming clearer everyday why Harper prorogued Parliament.  The economy is in dire straits and the government doesn’t want to answer for its pro-corporate policies.
The January 13, 2010 Report of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) Kevin Page estimates that the Harper Conservatives have burdened Canadians workers with a huge structural deficit well into 2013. (Structural means it is permanent).  The debt is largely due to government transfers of public money to the banks to prop up a sagging stock market during the global financial crisis, to pay for the US-NATO war in Afghanistan and the half-a-trillion dollar Canada First Defence Strategy. The CBC reported that Page estimated in October 2008 that the war would had cost taxpayers $18 billion by 2011.  All of the opposition parties including the NDP avoid talking about the war as a major factor in budget deficits.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty cheerily predicted a year ago that the government in 2008 would post a structural surplus of $13.8 billion compared to the PBO’s more realistic $3.2 structural surplus prediction.  The latest PBO study shows that both were wrong and from an essentially balanced position in 2008 the country is headed for a structural deficit of $18.9 billion by 2013-14.  That is on top of the statement of the government last September that the country was wallowing in a $59 billion fiscal deficit that would take ten years to discharge providing there was an estimated annual growth of 2.5 %.
Â
.jpg){kind=small}
Racism Weapon of the Ruling Class
The Latest From FOS:
- Federal Politics
The Way I See It! - Some Critical Comments
The main link that can move the entire political process forward is a clearly articulated and unambiguous revolutionary working class program to confront US-Canadian corporate power and its stranglehold on Parliament, the State, the military and the economy. That task must be the main theme of the upcoming 36th Convention of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC). From the convention an appeal that reaches out to all of organized labour and the democratic forces of our country with a plan to unite electorally to defeat Harper, and decisively, will be influential within labour and garner widespread appeal with Canadian workers. That is a concentration task and if it is solved, the organizational tactics to achieve it can be worked out.
Read more...
- Energy
Canadian Workers Labour 5 Years for Free
Striking CUPE public sector workers in Ontario are revealing the rapacious nature of capitalism better than any number of "exposures", op-eds and news articles by the academic "left" press.
Read more...
- Labour
From Resistance to Counter Offensive!
We in CPS believe the Communists have a key role to play in helping to solve practically and theoretically the problems confronting organized labour. We contend that is not being done adequately. The trivialization of the theory and the teachings of Marxism-Leninism as applied to contemporary labour struggles is the main reason. The Communists have retreated from the field of polemics in the realm of theory and ideology as applied to the development of what constitutes a militant and winning trade union policy.
Read more...
- Labour
Back to Buck, Forward to Socialism
The statement by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) on the outcome in Greece of the recent elections to the European Parliament has been posted below. We in CPS believe there are important lessons in the KKE victory for the struggle for peace and socialism in Canada.
Read more...
- Labour
CAW Embattled - Solidarity and Support
No labour struggle in Canada today puts the question “which side are you on” more starkly than the bitter confrontation now underway between the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) on the one hand and the anti-labour Harper Conservatives, the Dalton McGuinty Liberals and the big three auto corporations, GM, Ford and Chrysler on the other.
Read more...
Polls
Have you read the CPC 36th Convention Draft Main Resolution?
What Was Said
Tim Buck – Steps To Power
Published 1925 by the Trade Union
Educational League
Under capitalism there can be no equilibrium and no peace. The varying intensity of the class struggle in not a result of the machinations of bad capitalists modified at times by the “justness” of good capitalists, any more than it is due to the efforts of “professional agitators”. It flows from the ceaseless struggle on the part of capitalists to increase their profits, and on the part of workers to maintain their standard of living. Fluctuations and working class defeats must occur – and will continue – so long as the aim of those controlling the labour movement is social peace. Because that in turn demands a measure of social equilibrium which the very nature of the capitalism renders impossible.
Our problem and the aim of this booklet is to direct our activities and the activities of our organizations so that, instead of merely functioning as a kind of bargain counter across which officials continually haggle with the boss in a futile effort to maintain a balance between wages and the cost of living, our organizations will also engage in struggles for more fundamental things; which struggles n turn, while strengthening the unions, will bring them into direct conflict with capitalism as a system.
36th Convention of the Communist Party of CanadaÂ
2. CPC 36th Central Convention Discussion Bulletin #2
3. CPC 36th Central Convention Discussion Bulletin #3
4. CPC 36th Central Convention Discussion Bulletin #4
Young Communist League of Canada Contribution to the CPC 36th Central Convention
Read...
