The Communist Family

From each according to his ability
To each according to his needs*

If you did not know the source of this you could easily mistake it for a description of the family.

After all in a family the family unit takes care of all of your needs from birth, and as you age you start to take on responsibilities according to your abilities. As an infant you are completely dependant for everything from feeding to moving about. As a child you can take on many responsibilities for yourself but are still financially dependent on the family. As an adolescent you may start working part-time to pay for some of your own wants but are still fully financially dependent on the family for food and shelter. Once you start higher education you probably work full time part of the year to pay for your expenses but may still be subsidized by the family unit.

Once you leave home and live on your own you finally become fully responsible for your own needs, though you might still receive some financial help from the rest of the family or you may provide some to it.

When you have your own family the cycle starts over again except now you may start financially assisting the family members that once assisted you when they reach retirement age and cease working and become more dependant on others for care.

All of this based on ability and need.

Something to remember the next time right wingers rant on about family values.

Build a Better City – The Ultimate Reality Show

The worlds biggest reality challenge - two groups of 10,000 workers in 100 groups of 100 each face of to see who can build the better city on two separate plots of virgin land.

The first group has each team of 100 competing with the other teams each trying to build a better section of the city as quickly and least costly as possible. No collaboration is allowed and absolutely no social engineering is allowed. Shareholder rewards is utmost. This is the free market group.

The other group, the central planning group, has all 100 teams meeting and planning together before working on their individual sections where they communicate all lessons learned to the other group. Social engineering is required and the groups are required to consult with the people that will be living in the city in the planning process.

Who will build the better city ? Will it be the capitalists or the socialists ? Will the result be Ottawa or Copenhagen ?

"Work" is a communist plot - Rush Limbaugh

LIMBAUGH: I've been mentioning this since I started this show. "Workers" is a communist word. "Workers" is a socialist, a Karl Marx word. Workers of the world unite, workers -- we don't have workers; we have citizens, we have employees. We have associates. When I worked at the Kansas City Royals, the team was owned by Ewing Kauffman, who also owned Marion Labs. He never called one person a worker or an employee. Everybody was an associate, from the custodial staff on up. Workers? All this little leftist lingo trickling into our lexicon.

Source: The Limbaugh Wire for 09/29/2009

So remember next time you see somebody working stop them and ask them what they are doing.

"Working. Are you a communist. Stop that right now and start associating."

Don't Do It – NDP Name Change

If the NDP (New Democratic Party) changes it's name to the Democratic Party it will be the final formalization of the repudiation of the Regina Manifesto and the abandonment of not just socialism, but of social democracy by the NDP.

It will be the acceptance of a political shift of power in Canada to the right in the name of hopefull electoral success. What else could be the desired result than the NDP replacing the Liberals on the centre left, and the Ignatieff Liberals taking the place of the former Progressive Conservatives on the centre right, with the Conservatives becoming the third party and pushing the Liberals to the right, rather than the NDP pushing them to the left.

The NDP has a proud record of accomplishments from Medicare to public pension and Canada's social safety net. Becoming a Liberal Party with Liberal policies may get it elected, but we will never see the party having the type of social and economic impact on Canada in the future, that it has had in the past, if it goes down that road.

If the NDP feels a name change is required to define itself to the Canadian people I would suggest calling themselves the Social Democratic Party of Canada. After all they do belong to the Socialist International along with the European Social Democratic parties. Indeed a name change to Social Democrats would give the NDP a perfect opportunity to explain social democracy to Canadians and it would identify the NDP with western european political parties that have sucessfully governed their countries.

Or, if they fear that name and they really feel a name change is necessary, keep the identity of the NDP and call themselves the New Democracy Party to put emphasis on their policies for electoral and democratic reforms, such as proportional representation.

Even the Working Peoples Party of Canada or Ordinary Canadians Party would be better than the Democratic Party which most Canadians identify with the wishy washy liberalism of the American Democratic Party. You would only do that if you wanted to be identified as Liberals because you believed electoral success was more important than principles.

Completing The Cuban Revolution - An Open Letter to Raul and Fidel Castro

The time is ripe for the completion of the final stages of the Cuban Revolution and the transition to a truly democratic and socialist society. Let us be clear. This must not be an American style “capitalist democracy” where wealthy corporate interests control the economy and political system, but a true peoples democracy.

I see three components to this transformation.

Economic Democracy – Beyond State Enterprises

This will include the expansion of the economy from state institutions to include small businesses, (where the owner works in the enterprise and earns his income from his labour and not from capital invested in the businesses) as well as co-operative enterprises, including both producer and consumer co-operatives.

Economic democracy must above all else ensure that foreign corporate interests are not allowed to dominate the economy.

Civil Democracy – Freedom of Expression and the Press

The revolution is truly strong enough to withstand competing ideas. The people of Cuba can be trusted with the full right of free expression, including full access to the Internet and the right of free expression on it, whether on forums, blogs or other means of communication.

As well a free press will invigorate the people and enhance the revolution. But we are not talking about the rights of corporate interests to build propaganda machines. We are talking about the rights of the people to have free journalistic expression by means such as newspapers, magazines, and the Internet, through their organizations such as labour unions and co-operatives, including co-operatives of journalists.

Political Democracy – Free Elections

It is time to move beyond one party politics - but not into corporate politics, where corporate interests dominate elections and conduct them as marketing campaigns. It is time to have real alternatives to the communist party candidates. These should come in the form of candidates from peoples organizations, such as labour unions and co-operatives, as well as independents. But election campaign funding and expenses must be restricted to ensure elections are grass roots activities and not marketing campaigns conducted by the wealthy.

Towards A Free Democratic and Socialist Cuba

Some will say that because this model does not mirror that of western democracies that it is not truly democratic.

Remember that Cuba had an American style “capitalist democracy” and when the people were about to elect Fidel Castro into government the corporate interests scuttled the election and it took a revolution for the people to put their chosen leader into power.

And I ask is our system truly democratic when the economic and political system is so heavily dominated by wealthy corporate interests as current events so obviously demonstrate.

I say to the leaders and people of Cuba you have a chance to set an example for the world of what a peoples democracy can truly be.

Building A New Society From The Collapse of Capitalism

This is the first of a series on the economic crisis opportunity.

Karl Marx said “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. In other words we are all expected to contribute to society what we can and only expected to take what we need. Under socialism laziness and greed are both vices.

Unfortunately under modern capitalism greed is considered more of a virtue than a vice and has become the driving force of the economic system. It is greed that has brought capitalism to where it is today.

So is socialism the answer. Rather than try to insert a lengthy treatise into the middle of this post let us just all agree that we are not ready to move to that stage at this point in time.

But we do need to change our way of thinking and the way we live in this world for the good of the planet and it’s peoples.

Capitalism has simply gotten out of control, especially American capitalism where most corporations today operate on the principle that “corporate officers have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value”, that is profits, without regards for employees or customers, or communities, or the broader public good.

We have seen it in our communities with the decline of local businesses and the growth of mega corporations. As owners become more disconnected from their businesses concerns for workers and customer value disappear to be replaced by the pursuit of, not just a fair profit, but maximized profit.

And we are all complicit as we sell out our friends and neighbours who worked in the locally owned businesses and local factories, for cheap goods produced abroad by near-slave labour.

Alongside greed, but driven by it, are false assumptions. The first false assumption is that wealth creation is all that matters, and wealth redistribution is an evil of socialism. The assumption being that as long as we keep creating wealth the rich will keep getting richer but enough “crumbs” will trickle down to working people and the poor to keep them happy. This is based on the same theory that sees recessions as the worst thing that could possibly happen. But it is a theory based on continuous and unlimited growth, a dangerous false assumption, The planet simply does not have the resources to support unlimited economic growth without self-destructing.

So where do we go from here. For the moment those responsible are still living their lavish lifestyles, pausing only to fly to Washington in their corporate jets to ask the common people to bail them out with their tax money. But the fact is that the American economy, and even the Canadian economy is so dominated by these mega corporations that their failure would have serious implications for working people.

In the short term governments need to keep the economy from collapsing, for the broader good, But they should not do it on the corporations terms but in a way that serves the common people. In the long term this is an opportunity to change the way the economy works – to an economy that serves the common good, not just corporate interests.

We have seen that countries with mixed economies, in particularly Canada, with a greater degree of government regulation and involvement in the economy have done better than the American pure capitalist approach. We need to learn from that, and build on it. But we need to go much further in building an economy for the people and the planet rather than an economy just for the corporations.

We can build an economy that can provide everyone with a decent quality of life if we responsibly and sustainably utilize and distribute the planet's resources.

Future posts will look in more detail at what we need to do in the short and long term.