CANADIAN POLITICS:

A NEW REGINA MANIFESTO:

The Regina Manifesto which was the founding document of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (the CCF, later to be the NDP) is mostly of antiquarian interest today. Social democracy in Canada has strayed far from its idealistic roots, becoming both more reformist, in the bad sense, and also much more statist than it once was. Today even the statist parts of socialism, let alone the idea that the cooperative way is a legitimate alternative to government direction, are basically a thing of the past. Cooperativism has found its major home outside the party. Not that there aren't those, however, in the present NDP who would like to see a revival of these ideals. One of these is Pierre Ducasse, a once candidate for leadership of the federal party. The following is a recent article published at his Ecodema blog. M. Ducasse is, for sure, not an anarchist in any sense, but he represents the better part of social democracy, the part that preserves at least some of the ideals of socialism.

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The New Regina Manifesto?:

A Work in Progress
I'm at it again. Can't leave the CCF alone. I've been reworking the Regina Manifesto, reframing it in largely non-statist terms, as if guild socialists had written the Regina Manifesto rather than Fabians. It is also framed in term of an actual cooperative rather than as a political party per se. Historically cooperatives have played both roles concurrently. I invite others to join in the fun. What I've whipped up so far is in the extended entry.

The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation of North America will not rest until it has brought the values of life, liberty and happiness into every enterprise in America and has put into full operation a cooperative and collaborative platform for an open economy throughout the whole of America.

CCF is a free association of individuals, organizations and communities whose purpose is the establishment of a cooperative commonwealth in which production, distribution and exchange are openly arranged for social purposes and the defense of our common cultural heritage.

The CCF aims to replace the closed corporate system that has been used by the privileged corporate interests of Wall Street mercantilists and their K-Street hirelings to enclose Main Street America's credit, investment, productive capacity and access of each and every American in Mexico, Canada, USA and elsewhere to a free and participative marketplace. This corporate enclosure has limited the progress of communities, entrepreneurs and companies alike. An open economy of enterprise formation and shared capital accumulation will supersede the closed corporate framework and replace it with an open framework in which enterprise is freed to participate in a self-governing, decentralized and federated economic democracy.

The principles of economic democracy at the heart of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation of North America has the power to lift communities, families and working people from poverty into prosperity, rewards achievement for work and entrepreneurship and eliminates the means for the anti-social formation of privileged wealth. The Cooperative Commonwealth of North America contends in marketplaces and marketspaces against the closed corporate system and its fruits: in an age of plenty it condemns working people and whole communities to poverty and insecurity. Closed Corporate Power has become more and more concentrated into the hands of a small irresponsible minority of investment bankers, asset-strippers and hedge fund speculators and to their predatory interests the majority are habitually sacrificed.

Under the rule of these latter-day merchantilists the drive for a monopoly on credit and access to capital leaves the productive world high and dry and working Americans tossed to-and-fro between periods of manic and wasteful activity in which the main benefits go to Wall Street speculators, investment bankers and the industrial-military-financial complex of war profiteers, and then to yet another round of catastrophic depression, in which the already precarious situation of insecurity and hardship of people alienated from their birthright is compounded. We believe that these evils can be removed by free people committed to building a free and open economy together where the means of production, distribution and credit creation are socially-held within the partnership-based framework of open enterprise models.

The new social, political and economic order can not be achieved by partisan political means, nor can it be achieved by redistributive taxation nor by the nationalization of businesses. The aim of the Cooperative Commonwealth of North America will be achieved by creating an economic democracy that shares a common operating system with that of the political republic. The CCF knows that no political republic can long guarantee liberty to individuals and to society as a whole without the presence of a strong civil, participatory and democratic marketplace.
This social and economic transformation can be brought about by the action of a social movement inspired by the ideal of a Co-operative Commonwealth and dedicated to the practical application of USA's founding values of life, liberty and reward for honest achievement. We believe in change effected by Main Street's working people, entrepreneurs and companies as they work collaboratively and in solidarity toward their social and economic agenda in the marketplace on a daily basis.

We consider a purely partisan framework for the transformation we seek for our communities and companies to be wholly inadequate. While the activist base of North America's political parties of left, right and center hold many values in common with the Cooperative Commonwealth of North America there are a number of reasons why political parties in North America have often failed to serve as agents of social, political and economic transformation.

Despite the differences voiced in the heat of political campaigning there is often little difference in the measures taken by parties once forming their governments. It is the tendency of parties of government and opposition both to carry on government affairs in accordance with the aims of those interests, mostly closed corporate interests, that finance them while marginalizing the social capital that exists in their activist base. Seeking to effect a revolutionary social and economic transformation in such an environment is much like trying to steer a ship from the bow. The power of the closed corporate mercantilists that we challenge is exercised by their having control of the economic rudder.

The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation of North America aims to guide the political ship of state by empowering the people to grab a hold on the economic rudder that directs the political ship. Consequently the CCF of North America is a democratic social movement that organizes farmers, workers, entrepreneurs and communities to act on its social and economic agenda in the marketplace as well as advocate its doctrine and principles in the course of governance. Therefore the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation of North America is financed by its own members and by investors who support its social and economic programs. It conducts its affairs solely by constitutional means in accordance with the constitutions of Canada, USA and Mexico. It appeals to all the liberty-loving people of North America who believe that the time has come now for a far-reaching restructuring of our economic, social and political relationships, and that the field of liberty is white and ready for the harvest of prosperity to those who are willing to roll up their sleeves and work while it is yet day, put their shoulder to the wheel and thrust in their sickles with all their might to the end of carrying out the following projects and programs:
1. Establishing a General System for Open Corporate Enterprise Models
2. Reestablishing the Credit Commons

The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation of North America advocates a decoupling of its affiliated enterprises from speculative financial arrangements and draws upon the concepts of Social Credit, The Theory of Monetary Emissions and Open Capital to fashion a creditary system that has the power to sustain a free and open economy. A creditary system in conformance with our objectives
(I) issues credit not as debt but as 'equity carried forward' as Chris Cook (http://www.opencapital.net ) and Thom Greco advocates.
(II)separates banking into 3 distinct departments namely an issuing (monetary department), financial department and capital department to prevent asset-price bubbles that arise from an over supply of fixed capital that in turn results in an excess of production over consumption. This departmentalization of banking is advocated in Bernard Schmitt's Theory of Monetary Emissions (http://www.csbancari.ch/istituti/RMElab/bibliography.htm ).
(III)The formation of a beneficially-held pool of productive capacity and capability in the form of a Capital Account constituting the 'Real Credit' of society from which credit may be issued debt free to all consumers and households on a statistically controlled basis to effect non-inflationary and non-deflationary market clearing. This is the course of action advised by advocates of Social Credit.

All of these measures may be undertaken by non-governmental bodies affiliated with the Cooperative Commonwealth of North America and in collaboration with government jurisdictions.
3. Co-Operative Institutions and Open Capital Partnerships
4. Farming, Ecology and Economy
5. Inter-regional Trade and Development Compacts

CANADIAN LABOUR-SASKATCHEWAN:

SASKATCHEWAN WORKERS FIGHT BACK:

Ah, "good" old Saskatchewan, Molly's home province, left long ago and very rarely missed. Time was when Saskatchewan was in the vanguard of socialism in North America, but that time is long passed- mostly Molly feels because of the excessive and single minded devotion of socialists there to the party politics road to socialism. The inevitable happened. The CCF and then the NDP became the be-all and end-all of what socialism meant. The ideology failed to change with the times as the NDP travelled an inexorable trajectory to the right, urged on by so-called "realism" at every step. The only response of "the left", pathetic as it usually was, was to either engage in futile attempts to capture the party or in even more futile, and quite frankly usually ridiculous, attempts to build an electoral sect to the left of the NDP, hampered, as may be expected, by the usual mishmash of Marxists worshipping some foreign power. All this stuff failed, of course, and in the end the electorate began to shift strategically between a corrupt party of the right and a corrupt party of the left. Politics as "revenge".

Since 2007 the governing party in Saslkatchewan has been the (creatively ????) named 'Saskatchewan Party', an ill suited conglomeration of conservative forces patched together to escape the opprobrium of the name of the (stupendously more than usual) corrupt former Conservative party. Since coming to power the SP has done its duty to its class by vicious attacks on working people in that province.

People in Saskatchewan, however, are beginning to fight back, as the following article from the Public Values website details. Needless to say I, as an anarchist, don't agree with the general politics of the Public values site, whose social democracy is exactly what misled socialists in my home province down their long disgraceful road. What I hope, but have little expectation of, is that the "years in the wilderness" will convince unionists and others in Saskatchewan- and elsewhere- to not put all their eggs in the social democratic basket and to build and retain networks that are truly independent of party politics. Still, the Public Values website, along with its sister sites such as the Harper Watch and Straight Goods, are often valuable sources of information. Here's one such example. Go to the original website to view the video associated with this article.

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Saskatchewan public servants fight back:
by Ish Theilheimer
A political sea change in Saskatchewan is forcing public servants there to fight back. With the election, November 2007, of Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party, organized labour has had a war on its hands.

"Since 2007 we have seen the introduction of some very regressive pieces of labour legislation," said Barbara Cape, in a YouTube video interview for Straight Goods News. She is President of SEIU-West, a recently-formed amalgamation of SEIU locals in Saskatchewan.

"On the face of it they may sound appealing to the public, but quite frankly the government has declared war on trade unions in Saskatchewan."

She says four pieces of legislation are particularly troublesome. These include:
-- the Public Services Essential Services Act, she says, is "probably the most appealing one to the public in Saskatchewan. The problem is men and women who work in health care in Saskatchewan have always ensured there were essential services in the event of a strike. We are being painted by this government as not caring for our patients, clients and residents. That is 100 percent not true. Health care workers in the province are a special breed of people who would never contemplate taking job action without ensuring that there was some safety for their patients, clients and residents.
-- changes to the Trade Union Act. "Previously we had had card checks for organizing. And Saskatchewan had real good union density (proportion of workers that belong to unions) at 33 or 34 percent. With this legislation, not only do we have to have cards signed by our members, but then we have to go through a vote. (Very much to revert the system of unionization to the thuggish regime prevalent today in the USA, a regime that proponents of the 'Employee Free Choice Act are attempting to change down there-Molly)The government has said a vote is democratic. Our argument has been a vote is democratic, but we use the democratic form of card-signing. People have the opportunity to make their choices in the privacy of their own home. There was no pressure. It was organizing, in the pu rest sense of the word.
-- changes to the Construction and Trades Union Act that "open the door quite widely" for the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC) to organize in the trades and in health care. Cape joins with most others in the labour movement in calling CLAC an "employer's union."(Even worse in Molly's opinion. The CLAC is more than just a corrupt union. It resembles communist or fascist "trade unions" more than it resembles the old Teamsters) She says the legislation "lowers the standards for working people across the province."
-- the Trespass Act, which "says that nobody, no union, no organization shall be allowed to gather on Crown property without permission in the province of Saskatchewan. What that does is it takes away our right, as citizens of the province, to gather an assemble on our land, our Crown land. The penalties are quite stiff in all circumstances," $2,000 a day for individuals, $50,000 a day for unions.

"With this kind of legislation, they're pushing our members up against the wall," says Cape.

"Health care workers are going to seeing some dark times ahead in Saskatchewan."

Fightback campaigns
In response, her union has organized campaign such as one called "Essential 365 Days," in support of health care workers. Most recently has come the You've Got Mail campaign. "We marched to the Saskatchewan Party caucus office at the Government of Saskatchewan, and we delivered over 6,000 pieces of mail," said Cape. These were generated in 30 days from workers and concerned citizens. "That's significant," she says. "It has had an effect. We've heard from the Minister of Health that he wants us to redouble our efforts at the bargaining table, and he is challenging us to get a deal sooner rather than later."

Cape says the Wall government has been clever in how it has marketed the changes it has introduced. "Initially when the legislation was introduced, on the face of it it seemed pretty innocuous, however when you read the legislation it has absolutely put our members' backs up. The way that it's written and the punitive nature of it, has really angered our rural members, our long-term care members, our acute care members, people are just shocked that our government, which is supposed to be leading our province, that this is a war they're willing to take on health care workers."

Wall was in Toronto for the launch of SEIU's Member Action Program (MAP), which she sees as "an extension of the kind of work we've been doing right now. Our members are about to see, with the response from the government of Saskatchewan, are already seeing the ability of government to respond to those 6,000 pieces of mail.

"All it took was a signature. You see the immediate action, and you want to go further. And I think our members are going to be really impressed by how quickly we can see some payoff for our efforts in the political realm. Because bargaining is no longer just about sitting at the bargaining table anymore, you need to have some other pieces of the agenda, and I think MAP's been helpful to that."

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Ish Theilheimer has been Publisher of the leading, and oldest, independent Canadian online newsmagazine, StraightGoods.ca, since founding it in September 1999. He is also Managing Editor of PublicValues.ca.
Posted: July 02, 2009
Public Values (PublicValues.ca) is a project of the Golden Lake Institute and the online publication StraightGoods.ca

MOLLY'S ANARCHISM:
Before it disappears from the front page of this blog I'd like to reproduce a comment that appeared under the "Marxism Under the Microscope' posting, from someone who signs themselves as "Joe". It is something that has to be answered because it goes to the heart of why I style myself an "anarchist" despite all the bad connotations that such a label evokes. "Joe" says,
"I would assume that there aren't many 'anarchist' professors as Marxist professors because anarchy is obviously not a workable system. Marxism isn't a workable system either as it appears to lead almost at once into brutal dictatorship. Personally I like constitutional republics."
"Joe" is an example of the intelligent ordinary person whom I have devoted decades of my life to talking to. I can pick apart what he said easily by pointing out that there is a difference between Marxism, as a way of organizing observations about the world (which I mostly disagree with by the way) and the organizational principles set down by what is known as "Leninism" which is probably what he refers to as "Marxism". There are numerous "Marxists" who differ so little from anarchists that the only reason I can see that they don't make the leap is the eternal human tendency to "mental conservatism". I can also point out that there are Marxists such as the Socialist Party of Chile (drowned in blood by the USA sponsored coup of Pinochet) who have been fully committed to the "constitutional republic" means of government, even if they were in alliance with a Communist Party which was not.
I can further point out that the degree of brutality varies from one Marxist dictatorship to another. Stalin's USSR was far more brutal in terms of "body counts" than his erstwhile ally and later opponent Hitler. NO government in human history has ever equalled the "body counts" of the communist dictatorship in China, and, whatever Noam Chomsky may try to say, NO government has EVER equalled the "body count as a percentage of the population" that the Kymer Rouge did in Cambodia/Kampuchea. YET... the dictatorship in say Cuba(which I have NO sympathy for, by the way) has been FAR less brutal than a great number of dictatorships sponsored in that part of the world by the "constitutional republic" of the USA. Without the consent of the citizens of said "constitutional republic" !
I also disagree with the idea that representation in the academy is some sort of litmus test as to the "workability" of a political ideology. History is far more complex than that. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of German professors in the mid 1930s to 1945 were good Nazis. Does this prove that German fascism was a "more workable system" than the alternatives. The answer was delivered by steel and bombs in the most direct way possible. The over-representation of Marxists in the Academy has roots in the situation in the early and mid 60s when there were viable Leninist models active in the world, when the working class entered the academy in large numbers and when anarchism was considered, unlike today, as an antique historical curiosity. Things are different now.
All that being said "Joe" is still right. His question has to be answered even if it was phrased in the wrong context. Is "anarchism" a realistic view of the world ? Maybe yes. Maybe no. It depends on what you mean by "anarchism". All that Molly can do is present her own view of anarchism, of why she calls herself an anarchist. In this exposition she will try to point out the varieties of anarchism-which is no one single thing. some of these varieties are very much "unrealistic" as Joe says. Some are simply insane and vicious. Some are idealistic statements of sainthood that lack a broader view of the failings of humanity. But....some are very much a workable political set of tactics, as Molly will hope to demonstrate. This series will continue on this blog as long as is necessary to give intelligent non-anarchists an idea of where Molly's own anarchism stands and how it relates to other strands of anarchism.
For now lets begin with an observation by the Canadian professor of political economy John Richards. This was originally stated, I believe, though I may be wrong, in his book 'Prairie Capitalism'. He noted that there were two stands in the agrarian rebellion that gave birth to such Canadian political parties as the CCF. Now, Richards is the furthest thing from an anarchist. His own political career is opportunism personified as he went from being a fervent supporter of 'The Waffle' to being an advocate of the extreme right wing of the NDP. His earlier work, however, named the cooperative and localist impulses of the movement that gave birth to the CCF as "libertarian socialist" as opposed to the "state socialist" of the majority of the Party. Molly sees herself very much in this tradition of "prairie populism" that is anarchist at its core. In future posts I will try and show how this tradition that didn't know its name connects with the larger worldwide tradition of libertarian socialism that is called "anarchism". I will also try to point out how there has always been a struggle for "the soul of anarchism" between various tendencies in said movement. That is not surprising. As an astute reader of the above can see there has been a struggle for the soul of Marxism as well. There have been similar struggles in all political ideologies, and such struggles continue today. So... see subsequent posts on this blog.
Molly