The Only Way Forward (300 hits)
Category: PoliticsRating: 0.66 on 3 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Tastycat <guysmily00.at.hotmail.com> (View user info) at 2004-05-01 09:58:44 EDT
May Day 2004 arrives at a critical moment for working people across Canada, and for humanity as a whole. The world is racked by instability and wars, as U.S. imperialism steps up its drive for world domination under the pretence of fighting terrorism. Unemployment, mass poverty, and environmental ruin are spreading like prairie fire around the globe. Labour's rights and the democratic rights of women, immigrants and minorities and the right of dissent are all under increasing attack.
Meanwhile, employers - in both the public and private sectors - have gone on a rampage against workers' wages and conditions, forcing concession after concession. For non-union workers, company 'take-backs' have been even more ruthless. The transnationals "downsize" in a frenzied drive for increased profits, while jobs disappear and right-wing governments gut protections for workers, ruining families and entire communities.
In the midst of the deepening capitalist crisis, the age-old question "which way forward?" confronts the working class with ever greater urgency. From jobs and living standards, to health and education for our families and communities, to the future of Canada's sovereignty, and even to the vital question of war or peace --millions of people are starting to be drawn towards competing futures for humanity.
Struggles are growing against a system that promises only war, ruin and exploitation. Workers in Quebec are planning a general strike to overturn the Liberal Charest government's reactionary laws. Public sector workers in Newfoundland have fought a month-long battle against cutbacks, while in B.C., health care workers have hit the bricks in defence of wages and against contracting out. And in Hamilton, steelworkers are fighting to defend their jobs and to save their industry.
What policies are needed now?
These militant union actions are leading by example, and the Communist Party expresses its full solidarity with these just struggles. But they are still largely defensive in character.
What is needed now? We need trade union leadership bodies - in the first place, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) - to unite and lead a fightback at the all-Canada level. The struggles underway now are big, and put the lie to the view that workers won't fight. It's the leadership that's out of sync. What's needed is action and leadership, and the CLC needs to give it.
Workers' struggles must be increasingly fought out in the international arena as well - either against TNCs or against global capitalist institutions like the World Bank, and agreements like FTAA. The workers at Falconbridge Noranda (CAW) in Sudbury won their strike in 2001 in large part because Norwegian smelterworkers refused to supply Falconbridge while the Sudbury workers were out.
Furthermore, in order to defend our economic and political sovereignty, reverse de-industrialization, create jobs and improve living standards and social conditions for working people, we need to step up the struggle for a new direction for Canada, based on policies that put people first, not the profit interests of the banks and monopolies.
This new direction must include new measures that will build the economic industrial base of the country - starting with strong and sustainable steel and automobile industries - to create good jobs for ourselves and our children. We need to curb the domination of U.S. and other transnational corporations over vital sectors of the domestic economy, block proposals for the "deep integration" of Canada into the U.S. 'empire' and scrap "free trade" agreements.
Canada also needs a stronger and revitalized public sector. We must reverse the privatizing and contracting-out of health, education, pension programs and other public services such as power utilities. Instead, we need to expand healthcare and pubic education, and establish a universally accessible, non-profit childcare system, and build affordable housing for working people and the homeless.
And Canada needs a real job creation strategy, including a 32-hour work week with no loss in take-home pay, and no loss in service to the public. Compulsory overtime must be banned, and statutory paid vacations raised to four weeks.
We need to fight for a $12/hour minimum wage to lift the most under-paid workers out of conditions of poverty, and raise wage levels overall.
* * * * * * *
Working people can win such a new direction, but only through a determined struggle, led by the organized working class in unity with youth and students, women's organizations, seniors, environmental and social activists, the peace and anti-globalization movements, Aboriginal peoples, and other progressive forces opposed to neoliberalism, corporate 'globalization', and imperialist aggression.
One part of that struggle will be in the coming federal elections, when we must deliver a blow to both parties of Big Business - the Liberals and Conservatives alike - by electing a large bloc of progressive MPs, including Communists, who could work together with the people's movements in support of policies for jobs, equality, social justice, democratic rights, Canadian sovereignty, and peace.
But this battle will not be won in Parliament alone - it needs to be carried into the streets, and into every workplace and community.
A gargantuan global struggle is currently underway between workers and oppressed peoples on one hand, and the big transnationals and the U.S. and other imperialist states that represent and protect those corporate interests, on the other. Ultimately, we need to fight for and win a new social system that serves the needs of workers, one based on the principles of peace, genuine democracy and social justice. In short, we need socialism.
The class and democratic struggle is never easy. But it is the only way forward!
User Reviews
Submitted by Jesus_Loves_TwEE (user info) at 2004-05-01 13:26:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
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Submitted by Donitsu2002 (user info) at 2004-05-01 10:54:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I second that. Things where thinking is involved usually isn't cool on the weekends.
Submitted by iddqd (user info) at 2004-05-01 10:51:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
this is a great article, but its gonna get ignored, cos its the weekend. save quality like this for midweek where it will get teh attention it deserves