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.

CPCPCPCPCPCPCP

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 POLITICS-ONTARIO:

STARVING HEALTHCARE-FEEDING CORPORATIONS:

The following opinion piece was written by the President of the Ontario Public Service Employees' Union and published in the online news journal Public Values. I reprint it here if only because there seems to be a need of periodic reminders of how good Canada (and the rest of the civilized world ) has it in terms of health care when compared to the USA. Through the thunder of their (often mindless ) debate down there on the proposals to reform their healthcare system one can discern the almost comical ignorance that many (most ?) Americans have about how their system compares unfavourably with almost all developed and even a few underdeveloped countries. They spend more money and get fewer results. Not the least reason for this inefficiency is that a good proportion of the funds available are skimmed off as profit by the insurance companies, amongst others. Whatever the inefficiencies of other systems at least other countries don't have to apportion money to this class of parasites.

Up here our health care system is under attack and underfunded. Governments, such as those of Ontario, as mentioned in the following article, would much rather spend the money on corporate handouts. Not that our system is perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Molly has expressed her own preferences here at this blog before ie a system of community clinics and mutual cooperative insurance. The beginnings of such a system could easily be initiated even under our present system, with the mutual insurance covering things not presently covered by medicare. The single payer system would have to be retained until such time as non-government methods of social insurance were more fully developed. That process would have to be gradual to avoid unnecessary suffering. In the process of such a "withering away of the state" the first thing to go would obviously be grants to the corporations. The last thing to remain would be corporate taxes and taxes on the wealthy.

Until this process begins, should it ever begin, it can easily be demonstrated that the Rube Goldberg American system is demonstrably inferior to not just that of Canada but also to that of most of the developed world.

Here's the article.

HCHCHCHCHCHCHC

Canada spends one-half per capita on health than US does, yet we are healthier:
Government pleads poverty, yet proceeding with tax cuts to Ontario corporations.
by Warren (Smokey) Thomas
How sustainable is health care? Opponents of Medicare regularly question the public sector's ability to pay the bills as health care creeps up as a share of provincial budgets. New data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) suggests health care costs may be more sustainable than we think.

Affordability is best determined by looking at health costs as a percentage of our overall economy, not by the size of government. The CIHI data suggests that health care costs have escalated roughly in step with the economy, whereas the size of government has been getting dramatically smaller.

Health care accounted for 10 per cent of our economy in 1992 – the last period of recession. In 2009, health care is expected to be 11.9 per cent largely due to a shrinking gross domestic product (GDP), not rising costs. In 2008 it was 10.8 per cent, less than a percentage point above the 1992 levels. This hardly indicates a lack of sustainability.

"As a share of the overall health pie, hospitals have been shrinking. In 1975 hospitals accounted for 44.7 per cent of health expenditures. Today it’s 27.8 per cent."

There is no question we are living longer and better as a result of the investments we have made. From 1996 to 2006 our average life expectancy was extended by three years – the biggest leap in mortality rates since they have been kept.

Federal funding to reduce wait times is having a positive impact, particularly for hip and knee replacements as well as cataracts. This is something Canadians all said we wanted and were willing to pay for.

According to CIHI, money has also been invested in tailored drug therapies, diagnostic technology, training health care professionals and to increase class size in medical and nursing schools. These last investments are necessary if we hope to replace the soon to retire legion of baby boomers serving as professionals within our health system.

While spending as a percentage of our economy has nudged forward over 20 years, it has not been entirely in lock step. In the 1990s governments dramatically slashed funding to health care, leaving present governments with a major infrastructure deficit. It is far more costly to play catch-up than it is to keep the system on an even keel. Finance Minister Dwight Duncan admitted this when speaking to the Ontario Hospital Association Conference last fall.

Hospitals always appear the target of restraint, but are hardly to blame for rising health costs. As a share of the overall health pie, hospitals have been shrinking. In 1975 hospitals accounted for 44.7 per cent of health expenditures. Today it’s 27.8 per cent.

"Total public sector spending used to account for about half the economy. Today it is closer to one third."

In 2009 Canadians are expected to spend $5,452 per capita on health care – both public and private. That’s slightly less than France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium. It's much less than the United States, which spends almost double per capita and yet leaves 45 million Americans uninsured and many more underinsured. On almost every objective measure, Canadians do better with their health than Americans, from infant mortality to our overall longevity.

In the past year there has been an attempt to divide the progressive community by portraying health care as an insatiable monster crowding out education, housing, transportation and even poverty reduction.

The McGuinty government continues to shrink the pie and is happy to see us all fighting over the scraps. Total public sector spending used to account for about half the economy. Today it is closer to one third.

While the government cries poor, it is stampeding ahead with a series of tax cuts, including a $5 billion reduction to Ontario corporations.

We need to defend all our social services, including health care. When we start pitting our sectors against each other, we all lose.
In solidarity,


Warren (Smokey) Thomas,

President
Links and sources Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) site

CANADIAN LABOUR:

A LIVING PENSION FOR EVERYONE:

The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) is waging a campaign for the improvement of the Canadian pension system, to guarantee a decent standard of living for all Canadian retirees. Here, from the Canadian Union of Public Employees(CUPE) is a news report on this campaign and the times for the first cross country public training forums that will be held on the issue.

R$R$R$R$R$R$R$

Retirement security for everyone:
The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) and its affiliates are waging a campaign on pensions, and CUPE is proud to be part of it on behalf of its active members and retirees.

A series of training sessions for this campaign will be held in several cities this fall and winter. The main thrust of the campaign involves lobbying provincial and federal governments to make bold new changes that will secure pensions for all workers.
The principal demands of the campaign are:
**Double benefits for the Canada Pension Plan (CPP).
**Increase low-income (GIS) pensions by 15%.
**Introduce a national system of pension insurance.

In making these proposals, we are championing the same progressive values that changed our health care system with the advent of Medicare more than forty years ago. We can make a similar choice for pensions today and create a system where no Canadian is left behind.
Forum Locations and Details
Newfoundland and Labrador
**St. John's Holiday Inn, Portugal Cove Road, Tuesday November 3, 2009, 9:00 am. In conjunction with Newfoundland & Labrador Federation of Labour Convention; open to the public.
New Brunswick
**Bathurst, USW Union Hall, Wednesday November 4, 2009, 7:00 pm. (Bilingual event).
**Saint-John, Courtney Bay Inn, Tuesday November 3, 2009, 7:00 pm. (Bilingual event).
British Columbia
**Justice Institute, New Westminster, November 5, 2009, 6:30 pm.

Forums will also be coming up in the next few months in Windsor, Sudbury, Toronto, Ottawa, and St. Catharine's (Ontario), in Brandon and Winnipeg (Manitoba), and in Edmonton and Calgary (Alberta).

To find out more about any of these events, or for questions, get in touch with the Canadian Labour Congress.

R$R$R$R$R$R$

Here is the summary of the Canadian Labour Congress campaign referred to above.

R$R$R$R$R$R$
Retirement Security for Everyone!:
Over the past year, Canada has been hit hard by the deepest economic downturn the world has seen since the 1930s. Hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs have been lost and the retirement savings of countless Canadians put at risk by the financial meltdown and corporate bankruptcies.

Many today, even those with jobs are wondering if and when they can ever retire. They have good reason for concern.

Recent events have exposed major faults in our pension system. Our public pensions – Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) plus the Canada Pension Plan - provide a secure income in retirement. But even the maximum value of those pensions falls far short of what people need to maintain a decent standard of living after retirement.
The private portion of our pension system is in deep trouble
About one in five private sector workers belong to a private pension plan. Very few non-unionized workers, with the noted exception of managers and professionals, are covered by plans. Many of the plans which do exist are on shaky financial ground because of low interest rates and the recent collapse of stock markets. Some workers have discovered that when their plans get into financial trouble, there is little help available.
RRSPs have failed to deliver
RRSPs are often billed as the solution to our pension woes. They are supposed to fill the gap left for those not covered by private pension plans – but RRSPs have failed us. The average worker approaching retirement today has saved only enough to buy a monthly pension of about $250 per month.

RRSPs have not worked because many Canadians cannot save enough to overcome the built-in hurdles of high administrative fees (which in Canada are among the highest in the world) and highly variable and uncertain financial returns.
It's time for change
Decision-makers can hear the growing calls for pension reform in Canada, despite the strong and loud opposition from vested interests in the financial industry. Employers who sponsor pension plans also recognize that supporting decent pensions through public rather than private arrangements would lower their costs and help level the competitive playing field between them and businesses who have offered no pension plans for their workers.

People should not be left to fend for themselves in retirement. It's time for a change in emphasis toward public pensions and toward greater security for people who belong to existing employer plans.

That's why the Canadian Labour Congress is proposing three key reforms that would benefit all workers, improve retirement income security, and gear Canada's pension system to better fit the needs of a changing economy.
The CLC Plan: Retirement Security for Everyone
Double benefits for the Canada Pension Plan (CPP). We propose to phase-in a doubling of the proportion of average earnings replaced by CPP from 25% to 50% over seven to ten years, to $1,635 per month. This would be financed by a modest increase in worker and employer premiums (3% spread over several years).
The benefits of investing in a stronger Canada Pension Plan are clear:
**The CPP already covers 93% of working Canadians and offers an accurate sense of the income they can expect in retirement.
**The CPP is highly risk tolerant because of its size and it has the lowest administration fees of any pension plan in the country.
**The CPP is highly portable – no matter how many times they change jobs, workers will still be covered. Why shouldn’t we build on this successful model?

Increase low-income (GIS) pensions by 15%. This would give low-income seniors up to an additional $110 per month, enough to move virtually all seniors above the poverty line.

Introduce a national system of pension insurance. An insurance floor should be set for defined pension plan benefits through a system funded by contributions from pension plan sponsors. This would be a federal initiative covering federally-regulated pensions but Ottawa should enter into negotiations with the provinces to create a national system.
The Choice: “Move Forward Together” or “Fend For Yourself”
In making these proposals, we are championing the same progressive values which changed our health care system with the advent of Medicare more than forty years ago. We can make a similar choice for pensions today and create a system where no Canadian is left behind.

R$R$R$R$R$R$

All of this is well and good, but Molly suggests that it is hardly enough. One failing is that neither the private insurance plans nor the CPP allow for any input on the part of workers contributing to said plans nor of the retirees who are collecting the benefits. In other words workers and retirees are obliged to take both the good intentions and the competence of the managers, both private and public, on blind faith. The Congress of Union Retirees, representing numerous Canadian pensioners, have proposed "legislation to require participation of retirees in the governance of their pensions". Personally I think that there should be such democratic safeguards for both the private pensions and the CPP. The fate of many pensions plans in recent years and the continued alarms over the viability of public plans in many countries says that such important instruments of financial security should not be left to the supposed competence of the supposed experts.

There is also another option to both private and state administered plans such as the CPP. The viability of cooperative plans is hardly ever considered. This option is actually rarely even mentioned. The institutions to administer such plans, the network of credit unions that cover Canada is already at hand. Molly would suggest several aspects of such an alternative system, one that could be just as stable as the CPP. One is that participation would be voluntary, and that not just individuals (as with RRSPs now) but also workers covered by company pension plans that they may doubt the stability of could opt to have their pension contributions (and matching ones from their employers) deposited in such coop plans. I would also suggest that such plans be a joint effort of several credit unions, rather than individual institutions. This would help to assure stability, as would a fund guarantee for deposits in these plans. The question of stability would, of course, be paramount, and the investments that such funds could undertake would have to be restricted- unlike the situation in many RRSP plans today. To offset the possible spread between stability and return and make these plans more attractive I would also suggest that there be a tax credit attached to deposits in such funds. This would be similar to that already offered by many labour sponsored funds today. The coop funds would be similar to the labour sponsored funds in that they would be restricted to domestic investment, but they would be further restricted from providing "venture capital" ie less secure investment.

The advantages of such coop pension plans would be many. They could provide stability that would perhaps be equal to that of the CPP and certainly greater than most RRSP funds provide. It might even be attractive for people to eventually transfer their accounts from the CPP to such coop plans. Like the labour sponsored funds they would assure a supply of capital for Canadian (or provincial) enterprise. If for no other reason this should ensure them a tax credit, even if the percentage would obviously be less than the labour sponsored funds who invest in more risky enterprises. The mechanism of governance is at hand in the cooperative model of the credit unions, and if one wishes a democratic participation of workers and retirees in their pension funds the creation of this would be far more straightforward than with the private plans of, especially, the CPP.

There would be, of course, many difficulties, and the details would require a lot of thought and planning. The benefits, however, are such that this 'third way' should be considered rather than ignored.

CANADIAN LABOUR-MANITOBA:

PINE FALLS RALLIES BEHIND LOCKED OUT TEMBEC WORKERS:

The lockout at the Tembec plant in Pine Falls continues, but yesterday the residents of the town held a rally to show their support for the people affected. Here's a brief item from the Winnipeg Free Press about the rally.

Residents rally for locked-out workers:
The townspeople of Pine Falls showed up in full force on Friday to show solidarity for locked-out Tembec employees.

Organizers of a march in the one-industry town estimated 350 people came out to support the 230 pulp and paper workers.

"We had people in golf carts and wheelchairs, people from all walks of life. Everybody jumped on board when we put out the notices and went out for a walk," said Vicki Reid.

"If Tembec goes down, the town goes down."

The lockout came after workers overwhelmingly rejected a company proposal that union officials said called for wage and benefit concessions totalling 35 per cent.

CLCLCLCLCLCLCL

While the provincial Labour Minister has indeed appointed Winnipeg lawyer Michael Werier as a mediator the company's previous statements give no assurance that they intend to bargain seriously with the workers involved. The following article from the CBC gives a bit more detail about yesterday's solidarity rally. Generally speaking it is obvious that the vast majority of town residents have shown their support for the workers involved. No surprise there. Is this sufficient ? Of course not. The next rally should obviously take place in Winnipeg, in front of the Legislature. There should also be further effort in terms of a online campaign to pressure Tembec management to bargain in good faith.

Tembec, interestingly enough, was originally formed in 1973 via a sweetheart bailout deal of a mill in Témiscaming, Québec. It is presently headquartered in Montréal, and operates in France, Chile and the USA in addition to Canada. Despite much brouhaha about 'corporate responsibility' Tembec has shown little consideration for its workers over the years. See the Tembec Worker site for the story of one of it past actions in BC. I guess that it just goes to show that corporations that line up for government handouts will, in the end, behave just like any other corporation. Anyways, here's the story from the CBC.

CLCLCLCLCLCLCL
Residents walk with locked-out mill workers:
  Residents of the town of Pine Falls, Man., walked in solidarity Friday with 270 locked-out workers from the local paper mill, where the union says Tembec Inc. is pushing for a 35 per cent cut in wages and benefits.

Pine Falls is about 130 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.

The town put out a call to its citizens to support the workers, and the call was answered by hundreds of people, including elderly people in wheelchairs and a father pulling his young son in a wagon.

Clusters of people walked the 2.5-kilometre stretch of Main Street shoulder-to-shoulder with workers who have been on the picket line since Aug. 31.

Residents told CBC News the lockout doesn't just affect the employees. Several shop owners said their business is hurting and membership has dropped in local recreation programs.

Residents hope their show of solidarity will help end the lockout with the Montreal-based company and get the economy flowing once again.

On Thursday, the province appointed a mediator in an attempt to reach an agreement between the workers and management.

Manitoba Labour Minister Nancy Allan said Thursday that Michael Werier, a Winnipeg lawyer with experience in negotiation and arbitration, has been hired to try to resolve the nearly three-week-long lockout.

Werier has been asked to report on the progress of negotiations and settlement recommendations by Oct. 16.

Contract talks between the union and the company began Aug. 13, but the two sides have been unable to reach a collective agreement.

The company said Sept. 1 it needed an "immediate and significant reduction" in labour costs at the paper mill to keep it competitive in a radically changed market for newsprint.

CLCLCLCLCLCLCL

Tembec, however, is not the only forestry company that is either closing its doors or putting the squeeze on its workers, as the following item from the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada shows in terms of Abitibi Bowaters. Molly agrees with the urgency of the following call, but she disagrees with the proposed "solution" put forward by the CEP Union. As I have said before on this blog, the real long term solution is an expanded system of "community forests" and the cooperative processing plants that would go along with them. If government money is to be applied anywhere it should be to such a system rather than to private corporations. As noted above Tembec was the happy recipient of government largess at its founding, and the public value from that bailout has now been seen to be less than what might have been hoped for. As to Abitibi Bowater, well giving money to a local street gang would be a more rational move.

Given at least the medium term outlook for the Canadian lumber industry a community forest system that would perhaps be more geared to domestic consumption rather than export would indeed involve a certain amount of job loss amongst forestry workers. So, however, will the "accepted wisdom" of throwing more money at the forestry companies- assuming the USA allows such a thing under the Free Trade Agreement (an unlikely proposition). What the community/producer coop model of community forests would encourage, however, is a greater involvement of local workers and community members, an involvement that is far more likely to produce the magic "diversification" that conversation about this subject seems to eventually come down to. The CEP, like too much of Canadian labour, is mired in and tied to traditional solutions that have been shown over and over to be insufficient. It's time for a little imagination.

CLCLCLCLCLCLCL

MILL CLOSURES A DISASTER-CEP UNION:

OTTAWA -- AbitibiBowater’s closure announcements today at six Canadian mills “are disasters of historical proportions for communities that have been a mainstay of the Canadian forest industry,” said Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada.

The indefinite closures at three Canadian mills and paper machine closures at four other mills affect more than 1,500 CEP members in 11 CEP local unions.

Coles said that union members today are “angry with the company and cynical about their governments.”

“These closures were preventable,” he said. “The Canadian government had only to put in place a program of loan guarantees for forest companies forced into CCAA protection because of the credit crisis. But clearly, when it comes to our forest industry, nothing is too large to fail, and no economic disaster is too large for government to ignore.”

“The governments that have done nothing to prevent this, and that will do nothing today but offer meaningless platitudes about markets, have lost their moral right to govern,” said Coles.

The closures are also the “end game of AbitibiBowater’s corporate machinations and an attempt to build an empire based on debt,” said Coles. “This company exploited the forests to buy up productive companies, but failed to reinvest. Now workers and communities are paying the price.” (So do you throw more money at somebody who has already sharked you ?-Molly )

Coles said that the company will also use CCAA provisions to deny workers tens of thousands of dollars per person in severance pay that is owed and relegate them to the back of a line of creditors. “This is an ultimate humiliation and painful blow inflicted on our members because the Conservative government believes that bankers are more deserving than working Canadians.”(Uhh-Abitibi Bowater is not "bankrupt in total", merely certain mills. This says buckets about the laxity of the bankruptcy laws in this country- Molly )

“If this government has any decency it will follow the lead of Premier Williams in Newfoundland and pay the severance owing to these workers,” he said. (I'd also say apply the bill against corporate assets- Molly )

The union is demanding that federal-provincial task forces be established with union participation in each of the communities affected by the closures to ensure that the productive capacity of the closed mills is not destroyed and to look for new, responsible ownership. (Have I said the phrase "community forests" before on this blog- Molly )

“If given half a chance, Canadians will overcome the shock, anger and cynicism left behind by the AbitibiBowater announcements and struggle to rebuild the forest industry,” said Coles. “There is no alternative for Canada’s forest communities than the sustainable development and value added processing of our primary renewable natural resource.”

ANARCHIST THEORY:

KROPOTKIN AND SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN:

Molly is a subscriber to Scientific American, probably the premier popular science magazine in the world. Imagine the pleasant surprise that I experienced when I read the latest (February, 2009) edition to find the theories of the anarchist Peter Kropotkin discussed in Michael Shermer's 'Skeptic' column. The title of the essay was 'Darwin Misunderstood'. the first part of Shirmer's screed was devoted to the term "natural selection" and how this can be misunderstood as implying either a conscious 'selector' or the idea that there is some sort of "progressive arrow" to evolution that adapts organisms to future conditions rather than the conditions in which they survive and reproduce. The second misconception discussed is that 'fitness' means simplistically individual competition rather than the capacity to cooperate. This is where Kropotkin's ideas come in. Organisms that cooperate often increase their fitness by such cooperation and thus contribute genes to their progeny that incline them to cooperation because this is the optimum strategy for both survival and reproduction.

Molly knows that the genetics that Kropotkin held to were outdated, being as he was a life-long Lamarkist. Still, Kropotkin's work pretty well has to be acknowledged as a precursor of the present research programs in the fields of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. If you are inclined look up the article and send a little thank you note to Shirmer and Scientific American. The email for SA's letters is editors@SciAm.com

CANADIAN POLITICS/MEDICINE:

EXPOSING THE MYTH- PRIVATE CLINICS DON'T !!! REDUCE WAITING TIMES:

The Canadian public is exposed to an unending barrage of statements in the media that Medicare isn't functioning well and that we need more private medical clinics to reduce waiting times for various medical procedures. The argument looks good on the surface, but do private clinics really reduce waiting times in the public sector ? The following item from the Nanaimo Daily News suggests that they do not, and it gives the reasons why.

Pundits of the neo-conservative variety expound endlessly on the virtues of the market, and they do so as well when it comes to medical care. No doubt they will be a little less self-confident (at least some of them will) in the wake of the recent banking crisis and market meltdown. Still, in regards to medicine the proponents of a "free market" have always had to ignore a lot to make their case. Their model- the American system- has resulted in the highest per capita outlay on health care related expenses on Earth, and the results have been less than stellar when compared to other jurisdictions. A lot is indeed done. Americans are the most medicated and most surgically treated nation on the planet, but all this busywork has failed to produce the outcomes that less profligate systems have.

Part of the reason for the overmedicalization of the American populace is dealt with in the article below. private practitioners are in an inherent conflict of interest, and it is highly likely that they will err on the side of the most expensive and invasive course of action. This is not to say that they are deliberately dishonest at all. It just that self interest often helps, quite often unconsciously, to weigh the scales when inherently difficult decisions have to be made.

Another reason why market fundamentalism often fails to describe the real world is the lack of recognition that what is being described is an imaginary abstraction where all other things are held constant while either supply or demand change. In the real world prices usually fail to respond to the signals of supply and demand in the rapid fashion that seems academically predictable. This is called the stickiness of prices.

In the case of medicine what is sticky is the supply- of trained medical personnel and their time. The reason that private clinics actually increase waiting times in the public sector is that physicians withdraw their services from the public sector, producing an even greater shortage in that area. It takes many years to train a doctor, and supply is essentially held constant. what goes into one box has to be taken from another. A market cannot respond in a timely fashion in such a situation as the good to be produced- physicians- takes far too long to make to respond to increasing demand. This is also dealt with below.

There is, of course, another model of medical service delivery separate from both the state provided and the private clinic model. The cooperative model is actually an alternative that marries the best of both systems and is superior to both. It's unfortunate that it is rarely mentioned in debates about medical services in Canada. I'll return to this model at the end of this post, but first, the article.

..........................
Private clinic, public cash:
Surgical centre sees 62% more business from VIHA between 2006 and 2008
Dustin Walker, Daily News

Published: Wednesday, October 22, 2008
The number of publicly funded surgeries performed at a private clinic in Nanaimo has more than doubled in the past year, as the local hospital grapples with a growing waiting list for procedures.

There were 238 surgeries done at the Seafield Surgical Clinic in 2006-07 at a cost of $148,000 compared to 620 procedures for 2007-08.

The sharp increase is due to Nanaimo's growing population of older people who require a more complex level of care, said Vancouver Island Health Authority spokeswoman Anya Nimmon.

VIHA signed a five-year deal with a number of private clinics, including Seafield, in late 2006 in an effort to reduce waiting lists for day procedures, and to free up hospital operating rooms for longer, often more complicated inpatient procedures, such as cancer and hip and knee replacement surgeries.

Procedures to treat cataracts or hernias are among those performed at the clinic, said Nimmon.

But a year-long study of the effect of private clinics on Canada's public health care system released earlier this month says wait times are longest in areas where private clinics take personnel from the public system.

"We haven't seen any evidence that private clinics are making any contributions to reducing waiting times," said Colleen Fuller, a health policy researcher with the B.C. Health Coalition, who worked on the report entitled Eroding Public Medicare: Lessons and Consequences of For-Profit Health Care Across Canada.

"Although they may feel they are alleviating pressure on the public system, in fact they are piggy-backing on the public system."

Fuller said because there are a limited number of medical professionals, when they choose to work in private clinics wait times increase at public facilities. "It's not a criticism to say they have to get a return on their investment, that's the way the market works, but it's not supposed to be the way the health care system works."

She added that there are also questions around conflict of interest and whether allowing clinics to perform publicly funded procedures influence a doctor's judgement about where or even if a patient receives surgery.

Fuller said there is a movement worldwide to provide more procedures on an out-patient basis rather than in hospital. This creates a stronger market for private clinics looking to pick up work from the public sector.

Nanaimo seniors advocate June Ross thinks Nanaimo Regional General Hospital needs to find other ways to manage their waiting lists instead of relying on the private sector.

"You've got to improve the existing system, and not do it by using private clinics," she said. "It erodes our existing system."

But the Ministry of Health says health authorities purchase services from private clinics in order to ensure patients receive timely access to needed surgeries. Less than 2% of publicly funded surgeries performed in 2006/07 were at private clinics.

"Using the private sector to enhance the province's capacity to deliver timely surgical services makes sense as the demands on our health system continue to grow," reads a statement from the ministry.

B.C. Health Minister George Abbott told Canwest News Service that the Canadian Health Coalition study is the work of unions and the NDP who don't want the health-care system to modernize.

Repeated calls to Surgical Centres Inc, which operates Seafield, were not returned.
DWalker@nanaimodailynews.com
250-729-4244

...........................

THE COOPERATIVE ALTERNATIVE:

As I said above there is a third way besides the state controlled public hospital system and the private clinic model. The cooperative or community clinic model is associated in the Canadian mind with the province of Saskatchewan, but the earliest cooperative clinic was in fact set up in Québec. At the present time that province is still far more advanced than other Canadian provinces with the majority of cooperative health clinics in the country. There are even other services provided by other "medically related" coops in Québec such as ambulance coops, home care coops and even funeral coops. People in that province have seen the coop model as being useful and timely, and they have joined in far greater numbers than elsewhere. In many ways this is reminiscent of earlier times, before the welfare state, when ordinary people insured themselves against the vagaries of life via a network of mutual benefit societies. As the limits of statist welfare become more apparent people are returning to the cooperative model.

Not that the model is restricted to La Belle Province. As a recent (August 2008) report from the federal Cooperatives Secretariat titled Canada Health Care Cooperatives says this system is becoming gradually more popular across the country. This report gives snapshots of the movement from across the country,from PEI, Québec, Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan and BC. What this shows is that the move to cooperative health care is growing, and there must be reasons for this.

The cooperative model is quite simple. A group of people form a non-profit coop, paying a membership fee that entitles them to the services of the coop. The organization hires personnel and either rents or constructs facilities. The members have open access to the services provided by the facility. What are the reasons why this is attractive ? Here are a few that come to mind.

***Cost savings. As the article from the Nanaimo Daily News points out there is an increasing move away from hospital facilities to outpatient treatment for many procedures due to the rising costs of hospital treatment. Many procedures are far less costly when done outside of a hospital, and cooperative clinics are just as good as private offices for delivering such services.

Coop clinics have a further advantage over private medical offices in terms of cost savings in that the physicians and other staff are usually on salary rather than being paid on a fee for service basis. In the end this means that fewer unnecessary procedures are done as there is no incentive for such things. The government report mentioned above makes the observation that cooperative clinics are better at saving revenue than not just hospitals but also private clinics as well. Coop clinics also often offer a range of services, depending upon the economics of scale, that only the largest group practices in the for-profit sector could offer.

***Convenience. Modern medicine is highly fragmented, and entry into the system often involves multiple visits to multiple offices and other facilities. The cooperative model often hires not just physicians but other health care professionals as well, and dealing with a problem in a cooperative will more often be "one-stop shopping" than it is in either the private or public systems. The economy of scale afforded by the cooperative model also means that high patient volumes can be shared out amongst several physicians, and waiting times are thereby reduced without the detrimental tendency to push patient volume at the expense of detailed attention that can occur in a fee-for service private clinic.

***Patient control. Entrance into the public system means a massive surrender of personal autonomy, and even private clinics demand a great degree of deference to the doctor/owner. While one can "vote with one's feet" in a private system the available options may be either quite limited or even non-existent. For the ordinary citizen the details of the publicly owned medical system are, given their inherent size and centralization, far beyond any democratic control whatsoever. Problems with the system have to be addressed through a lengthy and opaque political process. In the cooperative system the patients are the owners, and the scale of the organization means that democratic control is far easier than elsewhere. Problems can more easily be corrected. It is also a fact that the concerns and needs of patients are not necessarily those of either a private practitioner nor,especially a medical bureaucracy and their political masters. The cooperative system puts the patient/owner in the centre of policy setting.

***Community Empowerment. Neither the public nor private sector puts the needs of a community front and centre. It is the case that cooperatives are often formed to provide the services that both private and public sectors think are not "cost-efficient" but that a local community thinks have priority. The location of a medical facility is not just a benefit to the patients involved but also to the surrounding community in general. This is especially true when the team approach of the clinic leads it to address collective social problems in the neighbourhood, problems that are automatically ignored by both public and private sectors. The existence of a coop also builds community just by getting people together, and this sort of benefit shouldn't be downplayed.

***Quality of Medicine. As previously mentioned coops can provide the sort of team approach that only the largest of private group practices can provide. By their informal nature they are also less bureaucratic than the public sector, and poor outcomes and practices can be more easily identified and corrected without the petty politics involved in large organizations such as the public medical system. As also previously mentioned the cooperative model frees the physician from the pressing need to increase patient volume at the expense of good medicine. This means not just greater attention to detail and diagnosis but also far fewer unnecessary interventions. All of which makes good outcomes more likely.

There are undoubtedly many other advantages to the cooperative model that I haven't mentioned above.What is plain is that the limitations of both the welfare state approach and the free market "alternative" are becoming plainer and plainer in the case of medical services, and the cooperative model offers a reasonable alternative that combines the best of both systems.

WINNIPEG:

POLLOCK'S HARDWARE CO-OP GRAND RE-OPENING A GREAT SUCCESS:

Last Saturday Molly managed to drop by the new Pollock's Hardware Co-op official reopening. Although it has been open for a brief period before it was time for a party to celebrate the "official" opening of the new store. About 200 people gathered on the sidewalk in front of Pollock's for the street party before everyone was driven inside by a thunderstorm. Dozens and dozens of people continued to drop by through the day to look around and offer their best wishes.

Molly took a few pictures (see below), though the quality of some leaves much to be desired. Trust me, the ones I discarded were even worse. Just a little heads up here. The picture that shows the website of the store advertised as http://www.phco-op.ca/ is wrong. The actual website, if you want to learn more about the new co-op is http://www.pollockshardwareco-op.ca/ . You can find details there about membership and "investment shares", as well as the history of how the co-op came to be. The site is still under construction, and more info will be added with updates.

The co-op fills many functions: an alternative for those fed up with the big box stores, keeping business and revenue in the community, providing employment for local people, building community by providing a place to meet and greet one's neighbours, stopping the decay of Winnipeg's North End, returning revenue to the consumers/members of the co-op and saving them money,empowering ordinary people and giving them a sense that can actually do something rather than being passive spectators, keeping a convenient local institution up and running for those who don't want to or can't drive across town and much more. The co-op model, in both its consumer and producer facets provides a living alternative to both corporate "capitalism" and to the false socialism of state enterprise. May there be two, three, many such initiatives as Pollock's in the years to come.

ARGENTINA:

THE "WORKERS' HANDS" COOPERATIVE:

Molly especially likes this notice as it exemplifies the natural response of ordinary people in extra-ordinary times. The following is a notice from the A-Infos website that I have translated from the Spanish.

.............................

[Argentina] Workers' Hands Cooperative of Lugano

--------------------

We are a group of workers from township 20 of Lugano who, in November 2007, decided to work against adversity in the cooperative form and fight together against the exploitation that occurs daily in the clandestine textile workshops of the city of Buenos Aires.

With our effort we have raised the textile workshop wages in our neighborhood without need

of bosses. Three months after we started production. Arm in arm we work with work with those of the surrounding neighborhood and others who have arrived from elsewhere in the Buenos Aires City and the Great Buenos Aires area.

We currently offer our products to the public.

Communicate with us at:

hechosinpatron@gmail.com

or to telephone us at

15-6-678-1205 / 15-6-714-9802

If you want to know more about us you can do so at:

http://hechosinpatron.blogspot.com

http://www.fotolog.com/hechosinpatron

Don't doubt! Forward this email if you believe in the dignity of work and in the solidarity, which must fight against exploitation, unemployment, poverty, individualism, hunger, and that all our hands together have the power to change reality

...

Cooperative Workers 'Hands '

EUROPE:

HANDS OFF OUR COOPS:

The European Commission is presently hearing complaints lodged against cooperatives in France, Spain and Italy. The complaints have been filed by large corporations that claim the coops are "not competing fairly". The following is a petition addressed to the European Commission demanding that the EC keep its hands off the cooperative sector.

...................................

Hands off our Coops! - they compete fairly!
10879 Signatures
Published by coopseurope on May 05, 2008

Region: GLOBAL
Target: President European Commission -Jose Manuel Barroso and Competition Commissioner - Neelie Kroes
Web site: http://www.coopseurope.coop/spip.php?article561
History:
The complaints against French, Spanish and Italian cooperatives that are being looked at by the European Commission are made by large shareholding companies. They are trying to get changes to the national tax rules for co-operatives. Any changes to these rules would reduce competition and would steal the coops' business. The Commission's decisions on the complaints may not just concern a few large co-operatives but they could also badly effect all coops across Europe.

Cooperatives are specifically written about in the EU treaties. Twenty five European Union countries have their own laws for co-operatives. Co-operatives are a different kind of business. Cooperative businesses rely on the principles of democratic control, self-responsibility, equity and solidarity. Co-ops have a unique legal and financial structure that needs to be recognised. The Commission cannot be allowed to pretend that they are comparing the same things when they compare co-ops with private sector businesses.

If you believe that attention has to be paid to the social and human dimension in economic activities and that a strong political message needs to be given to the European Commission, please sign the following petition.
You can read the Petition text HERE in EN/DE/ES/FR and IT
Petition:
Hands Off our Coops! - they compete fairly.

We the undersigned, believe that:

The current legal cases that are before the European Commission are attempts to challenge national co-operative laws and tax rules. They are attempts by our competitors to reduce consumer choice, to steal the coop market share and to end their ethical challenge.

Any Commission decision that appears to side with the private share holding companies may not just affect a few major co-operatives but it could present a risk to the whole co-operative system in all the economic sectors of the EU. Are we to be told that our 'cooperative values and principles' are worthless?

Today, 263000 cooperative enterprises are serving their 160 million members (1 in 3 EU citizens). They actively contribute to the economic and social objectives of the European Union.

Cooperatives do not want privileges, they want to compete equally in an open market that acknowledges their 'cooperative difference'.
Sign the petition

ANARCHIST THEORY:

HOWARD ZINN AND ZIGA VODOVNIK SPEAK ABOUT ANARCHISM:

Howard Zinn (see photo) has to be the all reigning figure in anarchist academia now that Paul Avrich has passed on. He's 86 and still going strong, publishing ,lecturing and agitating. May we all be that alive when we reach his age. Here's a recent conversation where he and Ziga Vodovnik discuss the basis of the anarchist idea. A well thought-out presentation by a moderate and thoughtful exponent of the idea.

...........................................

On Anarchism
�
By Howard Zinn and Ziga Vodovnik
�
"History shows that whenever people have been living under tyranny,
people would rebel against that."
�
�
Howard Zinn, 85, is a Professor Emeritus of political science at Boston University. He was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1922 to a poor immigrant family. He realized early in his youth that the promise of the "American Dream", that will come true to all hard-working and diligent people, is just that - a promise and a dream. During World War II he joined US Air Force and served as a bombardier in the "European Theatre". This proved to be a formative experience that only strengthened his convictions that there is no such thing as a just war. It also revealed, once again, the real face of the socio-economic order, where the suffering and sacrifice of the ordinary people is always used only to higher the profits of the privileged few. Although he spent his youthful years helping his parents support the family by working in the shipyards, he started with studies at Columbia University after WWII, where he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in 1958. Later he was appointed as a chairman of the department of history and social sciences at Spelman College, an all-black women's college in Atlanta, GA, where he actively participated in the Civil Rights Movement. From the onset of the Vietnam War he was active within the emerging anti-war movement, and in the following years only stepped up his involvement in movements aspiring towards another, better world. Zinn is the author of more than 20 books, including A People's History of the United States that is "a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those who have been exploited politically and economically and whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories..." (Library Journal) His most recent book is entitled A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, and is a fascinating collection of essays that Zinn wrote in the last couple of years. Beloved radical historian is still lecturing across the US and around the world, and is, with active participation and support of various progressive social movements continuing his struggle for free and just society.
�
Ziga Vodovnik is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, where his teaching and research is focused on anarchist theory/praxis and social movements in the Americas. His new book Anarchy of Everyday Life - Notes on anarchism and its Forgotten Confluences will be released in late 2008.�
�
�
Ziga Vodovnik: From the 1980s onwards we are witnessing the process of economic globalization getting stronger day after day. Many on the Left are now caught between a "dilemma" - either to work to reinforce the sovereignty of nation-states as a defensive barrier against the control of foreign and global capital; or to strive towards a non-national alternative to the present form of globalization and that is equally global. What's your opinion about this?
�
Howard Zinn: I am an anarchist, and according to anarchist principles nation states become obstacles to a true humanistic globalization. In a certain sense the movement towards globalization where capitalists are trying to leap over nation state barriers, creates a kind of opportunity for movement to ignore national barriers, and to bring people together globally, across national lines in opposition to globalization of capital, to create globalization of people, opposed to traditional notion of globalization. In other words to use globalization - it is nothing wrong with idea of globalization - in a way that bypasses national boundaries and of course that there is not involved corporate control of the economic decisions that are made about people all over the world.
�
ZV: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon once wrote that: "Freedom is the mother, not the daughter of order." Where do you see life after or beyond (nation) states?
�
HZ: Beyond the nation states? (laughter) I think what lies beyond the nation states is a world without national boundaries, but also with people organized. But not organized as nations, but people organized as groups, as collectives, without national and any kind of boundaries. Without any kind of borders, passports, visas. None of that! Of collectives of different sizes, depending on the function of the collective, having contacts with one another. You cannot have self-sufficient little collectives, because these collectives have different resources available to them. This is something anarchist theory has not worked out and maybe cannot possibly work out in advance, because it would have to work itself out in practice.
�
ZV: Do you think that a change can be achieved through institutionalized party politics, or only through alternative means - with disobedience, building parallel frameworks, establishing alternative media, etc.
�
HZ: If you work through the existing structures you are going to be corrupted. By working through political system that poisons the atmosphere, even the progressive organizations, you can see it even now in the US, where people on the "Left" are all caught in the electoral campaign and get into fierce arguments about should we support this third party candidate or that third party candidate. This is a sort of little piece of evidence that suggests that when you get into working through electoral politics you begin to corrupt your ideals. So I think a way to behave is to think not in terms of representative government, not in terms of voting, not in terms of electoral politics, but thinking in terms of organizing social movements, organizing in the work place, organizing in the neighborhood, organizing collectives that can become strong enough to eventually take over - first to become strong enough to resist what has been done to them by authority, and second, later, to become strong enough to actually take over the institutions.
�
ZV: One personal question. Do you go to the polls? Do you vote?
�
HZ: I do. Sometimes, not always. It depends. But I believe that it is preferable sometimes to have one candidate rather another candidate, while you understand that that is not the solution. Sometimes the lesser evil is not so lesser, so you want to ignore that, and you either do not vote or vote for third party as a protest against the party system. Sometimes the difference between two candidates is an important one in the immediate sense, and then I believe trying to get somebody into office, who is a little better, who is less dangerous, is understandable. But never forgetting that no matter who gets into office, the crucial question is not who is in office, but what kind of social movement do you have. Because we have seen historically that if you have a powerful social movement, it doesn't matter who is in office. Whoever is in office, they could be Republican or Democrat, if you have a powerful social movement, the person in office will have to yield, will have to in some ways respect the power of social movements.�
We saw this in the 1960s. Richard Nixon was not the lesser evil, he was the greater evil, but in his administration the war was finally brought to an end, because he had to deal with the power of the anti-war movement as well as the power of the Vietnamese movement. I will vote, but always with a caution that voting is not crucial, and organizing is the important thing.�
When some people ask me about voting, they would say will you support this candidate or that candidate? I say: ‘I will support this candidate for one minute that I am in the voting booth. At that moment I will support A versus B, but before I am going to the voting booth, and after I leave the voting booth, I am going to concentrate on organizing people and not organizing electoral campaign.'
�
ZV: Anarchism is in this respect rightly opposing representative democracy since it is still form of tyranny - tyranny of majority. They object to the notion of majority vote, noting that the views of the majority do not always coincide with the morally right one. Thoreau once wrote that we have an obligation to act according to the dictates of our conscience, even if the latter goes against the majority opinion or the laws of the society. Do you agree with this?
�
HZ: Absolutely. Rousseau once said, if I am part of a group of 100 people, do 99 people have the right to sentence me to death, just because they are majority? No, majorities can be wrong, majorities can overrule rights of minorities. If majorities ruled, we could still have slavery. 80% of the population once enslaved 20% of the population. While run by majority rule that is ok. That is very flawed notion of what democracy is. Democracy has to take into account several things - proportionate requirements of people, not just needs of the majority, but also needs of the minority. And also has to take into account that majority, especially in societies where the media manipulates public opinion, can be totally wrong and evil. So yes, people have to act according to conscience and not by majority vote.
�
�
ZV: Where do you see the historical origins of anarchism in the United States?
�
HZ: One of the problems with dealing with anarchism is that there are many people whose ideas are anarchist, but who do not necessarily call themselves anarchists. The word was first used by Proudhon in the middle of the 19th century, but actually there were anarchist ideas that proceeded Proudhon, those in Europe and also in the United States. For instance, there are some ideas of Thomas Paine, who was not an anarchist, who would not call himself an anarchist, but he was suspicious of government. Also Henry David Thoreau. He does not know the word anarchism, and does not use the word anarchism, but Thoreau's ideas are very close to anarchism. He is very hostile to all forms of government. If we trace origins of anarchism in the United States, then probably Thoreau is the closest you can come to an early American anarchist. You do not really encounter anarchism until after the Civil War, when you have European anarchists, especially German anarchists, coming to the United States. They actually begin to organize. The first time that anarchism has an organized force and becomes publicly known in the United States is in Chicago at the time of Haymarket Affair.
�
ZV: Where do you see the main inspiration of contemporary anarchism in the United States? What is your opinion about the Transcendentalism - i.e., Henry D. Thoreau, Ralph W. Emerson, Walt Whitman, Margaret Fuller, et al. - as an inspiration in this perspective?
�
HZ: Well, the Transcendentalism is, we might say, an early form of anarchism. The Transcendentalists also did not call themselves anarchists, but there are anarchist ideas in their thinking and in their literature. In many ways Herman Melville shows some of those anarchist ideas. They were all suspicious of authority. We might say that the Transcendentalism played a role in creating an atmosphere of skepticism towards authority, towards government.
Unfortunately, today there is no real organized anarchist movement in the United States. There are many important groups or collectives that call themselves anarchist, but they are small. I remember that in 1960s there was an anarchist collective here in Boston that consisted of fifteen (sic!) people, but then they split. But in 1960s the idea of anarchism became more important in connection with the movements of 1960s.
�
ZV: Most of the creative energy for radical politics is nowadays coming from anarchism, but only few of the people involved in the movement actually call themselves "anarchists". Where do you see the main reason for this? Are activists ashamed to identify themselves with this intellectual tradition, or rather they are true to the commitment that real emancipation needs emancipation from any label?
�
HZ: The term anarchism has become associated with two phenomena with which real anarchist don't want to associate themselves with. One is violence, and the other is disorder or chaos. The popular conception of anarchism is on the one hand bomb-throwing and terrorism, and on the other hand no rules, no regulations, no discipline, everybody does what they want, confusion, etc. That is why there is a reluctance to use the term anarchism. But actually the ideas of anarchism are incorporated in the way the movements of the 1960s began to think.�
I think that probably the best manifestation of that was in the civil rights movement with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee - SNCC. SNCC without knowing about anarchism as philosophy embodied the characteristics of anarchism. They were decentralized. Other civil rights organizations, for example Seven Christian Leadership Conference, were centralized organizations with a leader - Martin Luther King. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) were based in New York, and also had some kind of centralized organization. SNCC, on the other hand, was totally decentralized. It had what they called field secretaries, who worked in little towns all over the South, with great deal of autonomy. They had an office in Atlanta, Georgia, but the office was not a strong centralized authority. The people who were working out in the field - in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi - they were very much on their own. They were working together with local people, with grassroots people. And so there is no one leader for SNCC, and also great suspicion of government, because of experience of SNCC. They could not depend on government to help them, to support them, even though the government of the time, in the early 1960s, was considered to be progressive, liberal. John F. Kennedy especially. But they looked at John F. Kennedy, they saw how he behaved. John F. Kennedy was not supporting the Southern movement for equal rights for Black people. He was appointing the segregationists judges in the South, he was allowing southern segregationists to do whatever they wanted to do. So SNCC was decentralized, anti-government, without leadership, but they did not have a vision of a future society like the anarchists. They were not thinking long term, they were not asking what kind of society shall we have in the future. They were really concentrated on immediate problem of racial segregation. But their attitude, the way they worked, the way they were organized, was along, you might say, anarchist lines.
�
ZV: Do you thing that pejorative (mis)usage of the word anarchism is direct consequence of the fact that the ideas that people can be free, was and is very frightening to those in power?
�
HZ: No doubt! No doubt that anarchist ideas are frightening to those in power. People in power can tolerate liberal ideas. They can tolerate ideas that call for reforms, but they cannot tolerate the idea that there will be no state, no central authority. So it is very important for them to ridicule the idea of anarchism to create this impression of anarchism as violent and chaotic. It is useful for them, yes.
�
ZV: In theoretical political science we can analytically identify two main conceptions of anarchism - a so-called collectivist anarchism limited to Europe, and on another hand individualist anarchism limited to US. Do you agree with this analytical separation?
�
HZ: To me this is an artificial separation. As so often happens analysts can make things easier for themselves, like to create categories and fit movements into categories, but I don't think you can do that. Here in the United States, sure there have been people who believed in individualist anarchism, but in the United States have also been organized anarchists of Chicago in 1880s or SNCC. I guess in both instances, in Europe and in the United States, you find both manifestations, except that maybe in Europe the idea of anarcho-syndicalism become stronger in Europe than in the US. While in the US you have the IWW, which is an anarcho-syndicalist organization and certainly not in keeping with individualist anarchism.
�
ZV: What is your opinion about the "dilemma" of means - revolution versus social and cultural evolution?
�
HZ: I think here are several different questions. One of them is the issue of violence, and I think here anarchists have disagreed. Here in the US you find a disagreement, and you can find this disagreement within one person. Emma Goldman, you might say she brought anarchism, after she was dead, to the forefront in the US in the 1960s, when she suddenly became an important figure. But Emma Goldman was in favor of the assassination of Henry Clay Frick, but then she decided that this is not the way. Her friend and comrade, Alexander Berkman, he did not give up totally the idea of violence. On the other hand, you have people who were anarchistic in way like Tolstoy and also Gandhi, who believed in nonviolence.�
There is one central characteristic of anarchism on the matter of means, and that central principle is a principle of direct action - of not going through the forms that the society offers you, of representative government, of voting, of legislation, but directly taking power. In case of trade unions, in case of anarcho-syndicalism, it means workers going on strike, and not just that, but actually also taking hold of industries in which they work and managing them. What is direct action? In the South when black people were organizing against racial segregation, they did not wait for the government to give them a signal, or to go through the courts, to file lawsuits, wait for Congress to pass the legislation. They took direct action; they went into restaurants, were sitting down there and wouldn't move. They got on those buses and acted out the situation that they wanted to exist.�
Of course, strike is always a form of direct action. With the strike, too, you are not asking government to make things easier for you by passing legislation, you are taking a direct action against the employer. I would say, as far as means go, the idea of direct action against the evil that you want to overcome is a kind of common denominator for anarchist ideas, anarchist movements. I still think one of the most important principles of anarchism is that you cannot separate means and ends. And that is, if your end is egalitarian society you have to use egalitarian means, if your end is non-violent society without war, you cannot use war to achieve your end. I think anarchism requires means and ends to be in line with one another. I think this is in fact one of the distinguishing characteristics of anarchism.
�
�
ZV: On one occasion Noam Chomsky has been asked about his specific vision of anarchist society and about his very detailed plan to get there. He answered that "we cannot figure out what problems are going to arise unless you experiment with them." Do you also have a feeling that many left intellectuals are losing too much energy with their theoretical disputes about the proper means and ends, to even start "experimenting" in practice?
�
HZ: I think it is worth presenting ideas, like Michael Albert did with Parecon for instance, even though if you maintain flexibility. We cannot create blueprint for future society now, but I think it is good to think about that. I think it is good to have in mind a goal. It is constructive, it is helpful, it is healthy, to think about what future society might be like, because then it guides you somewhat what you are doing today, but only so long as this discussions about future society don't become obstacles to working towards this future society. Otherwise you can spend discussing this utopian possibility versus that utopian possibility, and in the mean time you are not acting in a way that would bring you closer to that.
�
ZV: In your A People's History of the United States you show us that our freedom, rights, environmental standards, etc., have never been given to us from the wealthy and influential few, but have always been fought out by ordinary people - with civil disobedience. What should be in this respect our first steps toward another, better world?
�
HZ: I think our first step is to organize ourselves and protest against existing order - against war, against economic and sexual exploitation, against racism, etc. But to organize ourselves in such a way that means correspond to the ends, and to organize ourselves in such a way as to create kind of human relationship that should exist in future society. That would mean to organize ourselves without centralize authority, without charismatic leader, in a way that represents in miniature the ideal of the future egalitarian society. So that even if you don't win some victory tomorrow or next year in the meantime you have created a model. You have acted out how future society should be and you created immediate satisfaction, even if you have not achieved your ultimate goal.
�
ZV: What is your opinion about different attempts to scientifically prove Bakunin's ontological assumption that human beings have "instinct for freedom", not just will but also biological need?
�
HZ: Actually I believe in this idea, but I think that you cannot have biological evidence for this. You would have to find a gene for freedom? No. I think the other possible way is to go by history of human behavior. History of human behavior shows this desire for freedom, shows that whenever people have been living under tyranny, people would rebel against that.

Molly Note- As to the last statement I think that Zinn is misstating the question, ie that he hasn't properly formulated how to go about finding "whether there is a biological instinct for freedom". In actual fact a lot of the work has already been done, as a byproduct of evolutionary psychological investigations of cooperation. As a matter of fact, at this very instant there is an article up on Science Express, the online component of Science Magazine, the journal of the AAAS. The title is 'The Right and the Good: Distributive Justice and neural Encoding of Equity and Efficiency'.

One has to hand full kudos to the small number of anarchist academics who kept the idea of a genetic human nature alive despite the opposition of triumpant managerialism of both the left and right. Their ideas were largely based on faith and a critical perspective towards the then-dominant "blank slate" view of human nature. In other words no firm evidence for their ideas but lots against the opposite view. With the disintegration of marxism worldwide we have entered a time when the most rabid managerial opponents of a realistic view of human nature have lost pretty well all of their power to terrorize.

But here's the project. One doesn't go looking for a "gene for freedom" as the start of an enterprise to find a genetic basis for "freedom", or even a multigene system. That's well down the road. First of all one defines exactly what the term "freedom" means. to say the least tjis is rather slippery, given both the many meanings of the noun and also how ideologically bound it is. Then.... go looking for the data. Compile them. Then... formulate hypotheses about the evolutionary function of such a tendency. Test these hypotheses against reality. Refine them. In the end you will find that a biologically based desire for freedom actually consists of several different behaviors. Test these subsets of new definitions against both the empirical and evolutionary evidence. Then, and only then, begin the search for neural bases of such behaviors, and, both concurrently and afterwards, look for genes that contribute to such behaviors. Not A gene but multiple genes.

THAT is the course that evolutionary biology/sociobiology has followed in the past few decades in its studies of cooperation. The result, tens of thousands of peer reviewed articles later, is that nobody, aside from Stalinists and the declining adherants of post modernism, doubts that there is a genetic basis to cooperation. Opponents of such a view are as rare amongst biologists as Biblical literalists are.What is being debated now is not the existence of such athing but rather its fine details. Zinn is not a biologist, and one can easily forgive his unfamiliarity with the way that questions are posed and answered in biology. The important point to be taken away, however, is that YES the scientific evidence for a "freedom instinct" is being laid today. As the field advances one will find that the overly abstract concept of "freedom" will devolve into a plethora of "freedom instincts".