The Spark! Number 24 Sneak Preview!

7/27/2019 The Spark! Number 24 Sneak Preview!

1/17

PG 1

The rise and demise of the Western welfare state. Housewivesassociations take on food prices and red baiting. Plus: tales ofchampagne, meatballs and the adventures of a Canadian Red.$

7.0

0

spark!Marxist Teory & Discussion. Edition Twenty Fourt

he

Marxis

Violence againstAboriginal women inCanada today


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PG 2

The Spa r k !

I n d e x

258

The number on theship which carried

Michael Ukas from

Algeria to Sicily as partof the Allied war effort

to liberate Italy fromthe Nazis. Page 44

10 % to 30%

Percentage of wage

increases in the indus-trial belts of China due

to pesant and worker

protest in the early2000s according to

James Petras. Page 32

709 ,583

Canadians who sig-

ned the Housewives

Consumer Associa-tions petition 1948,

reported to be the big-gest petition ever pre-

sented to the federalgovernment. Page 22

11

Total number of shorttheses presented by

Marx in the spring of1845 about a German

philosopher and early

anthropologist.Page 17

58 2

Number of missing ormurdered Aboriginal

women in Canada inthe last three decades.

Page 8

60 %

Percentage of Abo-

riginal women withjobs working part-time

and/or part-year.

Page 8

Surprise! Surprise!

I looked at lots of survey data that indicated what people at different income levels

wanted the government to do, and then I looked at what the government did. For

people at the top 10 per cent, you could predict what the government would do based

on their preferences. But when the preferences of people at lower income levels di-verged from the affluent, they had no impact at all on the policies that were adopted.

Chrystia Freeland in the Globe and Mail Report on Business for March 1, 2013,

reporting on the Demos report Stacked Deck and quoting Professor Martin Gilens

of Princeton University, author ofAffluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and

Political Power in America.

Te Spark! is the theoretical and discussion journal

o the Communist Party o Canada.

Editor: Danny Goldstick

Edition Twenty-four, Winter 2013

Subscription rates:

Three issues (including postage) is $20.00 CND$25.00 US for international subscriptions.

Individual copies are $7.00 each.

To subscribe, or to contact The Spark! please write:

Editor, The Spark!

290A Danforth Ave.

Toronto, Ontario

M4K 1N6.

Phone: 416-469-2446

Email: [email protected]

Attn: Danny Goldstickwww.thesparkjournal.blogspot.com

Copy editing by W. Brooker

Design by J. Boyden

Printed in Montral, Qubec

by Union Labour


3/17

INSIDE ISSUE 24

PG 3NUMBER 24

Editorial Comment4

Murder is injustice if anything is. But,up to now, that hasnt bestirred Canadian

police forces to go after their killers with

anything like the drive which Ottawadevotes to going after alleged-without-evi-

dence terrorists (with nonwhite skins),

writes editor Dan Goldstick, introducingthis edition of The Spark!

Idle No More6

A short essay by Kimball Cariou explains

some of the politics behind the struggles

depicted on our front and back covers.

Champaign and Meatballs54

This concise review by Chevy Phil ipsmakes the case why readers of The Spark!should read this new book by a long-timecadre of the Communist Party of Canada.

Explain the world,Chante the world

17

Rne Simon looks at a classic quote by

Marx and addresses some criticism it hasrecieved over time by some philosophers.

L i f e i n t h e st r u g g l e

Michaels story44

The Spark!sits down with Michael Ukas totalk about his life story as a member of the

Communist Party of Canada.

08Sisters in spirit: Canadian state violencecontinues against Aboriginal women

Barb Moore reviews and presents compelling facts and statisticsgathered by the Native Womens Association of Canada aboutthe legacy of colonialism in creating todays emergency crisi ofhundreds of murdered and missing Aborignial women.

22The Housewives Consumers Association,Cold War anti-communism, and theCanadian left

Julie Guard writes about the Housewives Consumers Associationwhich mobilized thousands of women and men across Canada incampaigns for fair prices, a managed economy, and state ownership

of essential foods from the late 1930s upto the 1950s.

32The Western welfare state, its rise anddemise, and the Soviet Bloc.

James Petras looks at the influence of East European socialism informing the welfare state, how it has been undermined and the roleof social democracy and the so-called anti-Stalinist left.

THE

spark!ISSUE 24 - WINTER 2013

Barb Moore is past President of CUPE

3912 and teaches at St Marys University

and Acadia University in Nova Scotia.

Rne Simon is a philosophy student at theUniversit de Montral in Qubec.

Julie Guard teaches labour studies at the

University of Manitoba where she special-izes in social movement, left and womens

history, left history, womens history.

James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeri-tus) of Sociology at Binghamton Univer-

sity, Binghamton, New York.

Chevy Philips is a writer and activist withthe Young Communist League of Canada

and Rebel Youth magazine.

Dan Goldstick is a professor at the Uni-

versity of Toronto and a member of theCPCs educational commission.

A b o u t ou r c o n t r i b u t o r s

Detail of aflyer from the late 1940s by the Saskatoon Housewives Consumer Association calling

a "public protest meeting" over the price of milk. "When the price of milk goes up the health ofour children goes down," it reads. Annie G. Ross Collection, Provincial Archives of Manitoba,P5941,file 6. Find out more about this organization in Julie Guards article on page 22.


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PG 4

by Dan Goldstick

Everyone knows that Aboriginal peoples have by and large the worst

shakes of anybody in Canada. Though, from the standpoint of justice yes, even bourgeois justice their case is really open-and-shut. Thewhole continent was theirs and then it wasnt a take-over managedby force, threat of force, and outright fraud. (What is the case on theother side? Right of conquest.) The Constitution and the courtsdo acknowledge, to some extent, Aboriginal peoples unsurrenderedexisting rights though how much substantive recognition ofthose rights can be expected from a Harper-appointed judiciary willhave to be seen as the struggle continues. For Aboriginal peoplestoo, especially the younger ones, are realizing more and more nowthat without struggle they cant expect to get anything. The Idle No

More movement has won support from large sections of Canadians,who may have themselves had to experience (though to a lesserdegree) the brunt of a government of big business, by big businessand for big business.

Aboriginal women have often found themselves doubly out in thecold when it comes to getting justice. Murder is injustice if anythingis. But, up to now, that hasnt bestirred Canadian police forces to

Editorial Comment


5/17

PG 5

go after their killers with anything like the drive which Ottawadevotes to going after alleged-without-evidence terrorists (withnonwhite skins).

Barbara Moores article in this issue, Sisters in the Spirit, on

violence against Aboriginal women, was actually written for thelast Spark!, but was squeezed out as that issue got filled with pieces

marking the ninetieth anniversary of the Communist Party andpress in Canada. Even so, there were articles on the Communistmovements history in this country that there was no room for inSpark!no. 23, and there will be more historical material in futureissues as well as this.

Here in no. 24 we have some oral history from Michael Ukas, whose

experiences as a Ukrainian-Canadian party member on the prairiesin the late nineteen-thirties, as a soldier liberating southern Italy inWorld War II, and, after the war, as a student and then Universityof Toronto professor of Italian language and literature, can givethe reader some picture of what it was like to be there. The samegoes for Bert Whytes wonderful book Champagne and Meatballs,a personal memoir of working class life and Communist activismfrom the thirties to the sixties, reviewed here by Chevy Phillips.

Those who knew Bert will be very sorry he died before continuinghis recollections any further than that. Bert had known suchfiguresas Leslie Morris, Harry Rankin and (in Moscow) Kim Philby, andhe was never short of good anecdotes about them and their times.

We are especially grateful in this issue to historian Julie Guard

for her account of the Communist-led Housewives ConsumersAssociation, active from the late thirties to the earlyfifties. InSpark!no. 23 we had an article From Pariahs to Patriots, about

how Communist activists were vilified and driven undergroundin the first years of the Second World War, then publicly hailedand applauded in the Forces as well as on the Home Front, whenthe democratic anti-fascist character of the war effort came tothe fore, especially because of public gratitude for Soviet militarysuccesses in Europe. Professor Guards article gives an exampleof the post-War re-stigmatization of the Communists as part ofputting Canada on a Cold War footing. The two turn-arounds

were markedly sudden and unsubtle. Guard refutes the charge thatthe Consumers Housewives Association was simply a tool ofthe Communist Party rather than a genuine peoples movementfighting for working peoples interests; but of course the Partybacked the movement because it saw organizing working-classwomen to fight for the interests of their families as part of itsgeneral class struggle mission. Guard appears to suppose that

M a r g i n n o t es

* * *

Idle No Moreand the nationalquestion inCanada:

Te brilliantachievement othe grassrootsIdle No More hasbeen to expose

the Potemkinvillage that isthe one nationo Canada, saysKimball Cariou.Page 53

Graphic lef andabove: A protestorin Ottawa holdsGrandmotherMoon, a symbolo the Sisters in

Spirit campaign.Photo om theNative WomensAssociation.


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EDITORIAL COMMENT

PG 6

the Communists in the Association somehow could not be bothdemocratically leading a peoples struggle and doing so as a Party

assignment, so she feels the need to defend the comrades againstthe charge of taking direction from the Party collective centrally.For instance, aware that the Association was an alliance of womenwho had a variety of ideological viewpoints, she marvels that this

was long after the party abandoned the popular front (citingex-Communist Norman Penner). In fact, though, CanadianCommunists have always sought alliances with others, especiallyfrom below, but most of the time with non-Communist leaders

too, where feasible. So this was no departure.

In the post-War period it took a great effort from world capitalismto save Western Europe and to keep the worlds underdevelopedlands despite their legal independence as far as possible undercontinued imperial sway. That, above all, was what the Cold Warwas for. It was sold to First World workers as part of a social

contract: prosperity and a much expanded welfare state in returnfor firm anticommunism both at home and abroad. But it is a great

exaggeration to think of First World capitalists as having agreed toall this without a fight. The fierce battles in Canada, for example,to build the Steelworkers and Autoworkers unions (struggles inwhich Communists played a proud part before being dumped) isevidence that even that rotten deal cost a lot of blood and tears. Sothe gratefully reprinted contribution by James Petras in this issue,The Western Welfare State: Its Rise and Demise and the SovietBloc, arguably has overstated the case on that; just as Petras has

arguably understated how much democracy there was in the USSRand its allies though the Communist Party of Canada for its parttakes the view that a grave shortfall in democracy there has a lotto do with explaining how the socialist orientation of those stateswas so easily overthrown. And have we really heard the last of theforces for socialism in the People Republic of China?

Petras is surely right, though, to stress how enthusiastically post-Warsocial democracy went for the social contract, and how removal

of the anticapitalist example of Eastern Europe has made theFirst World capitalist class that much less in need of the welfare

part of the welfare-warfare state. But Petras in his article makesno mention of the current economic crisis. The capitalists aredarn sure it isnt they who will bear the burden of it, and theyrewilling to put up with the risk of some social turmoil in forcingit on to the workers backs. So, arguably, if the disappearance ofthe anticapitalist social order in the East has made an all-out drive

against workers gains all the more possible, especially in Western


7/17

SPARK!the

PG 7

Europe, that is only part of the story. But the issue is certainlydebatable, and Professor Petras contribution is very welcomeindeed.

In the spring of 1845 the twenty-six- or twenty-seven-year-oldKarl Marx wrote in a notebook he kept, The philosophers have

only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to changeit. Some readers may be surprised to find an article here (by RenSimon) that is prepared to take seriously even if only to rebut

it a criticism of this remark of Marxs coming from the rightistGerman philosopher Martin Heidegger (who was indeed a signed-up Nazi during the Third Reich). But Heidegger is far from beingthe only one to take this remark as placing Marx in support ofmindless activism unguided by a theoretical interpretation of things.Some of the left-inclined academics who are most prone to readMarxs statement in that sense are the furthest people from actualactivism that you could meet.

As for Marx himself, his whole life work certainly speaks of aconcern to interpret the world. But the point of that, for him,was to change it.

Collective Power

We dream that when we work hard, well be able to clothe our children decently, and

still have a little time and money left for ourselves. And we dream that when we do asgood as other people, we get treated the same, and that nobody puts us down becausewe are not like them... Then we ask ourselves, How could we make these things come

true? And so far weve come up with only two possible answers: win the lottery, ororganize. What can I say, except that I have never been lucky with numbers.

M a r g i n n o t es

* * *

est your Marx-ist IQ on politicaleconomy, page 43.

Irma, a Filipina worker in the Silicon Valley, California,

quoted in Briarpatch magazine, November/December 2011.


8/17

PG 8


9/17

REPORT &

ANALYSIS

PG 9NUMBER 24

Sisters in Spirit:

Canadian

state violence

continues against

Aboriginal

women

by Barbara Moore

On October 14th, 2010, there was an importantpresentation to the CUPE Womens Commit-

tee meeting in Ottawa by two women, RashidaCollins and Michelle McGuire, who worked for

the Strategic Policy Liaisons Sisters in SpiritResearch directed by the Native Womens Asso-ciation of Canada. These two women were soli-citing support from trade union women acrossCanada in their quest for social justice and anend to discrimination against Aboriginal women.

The Native Womens Association of Canada wasformed in 1974, shortly before the beginning, in1975, of the United Nations Decade on Women,which began a series of international conferences

and conventions to determine the status of wo-men throughout the globe, and the overall treat-ment of women in their respective nations. Theaim of the NWAC was to achieve equality for all

Aboriginal women in Canada. The organizationis founded on the collective goal of enhancing,


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PG 17NUMBER 24

Explain the world, change the worldby Ren Simon

After Marx died in 1883, it was up to Engels tocarry on his work, not only in the German and

European politics of the day, but in politicaleconomy and other fields. In preparing his 1886Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of ClassicalGerman Philosophy for publication as a pam-phlet, he was looking through an early notebookof Marxs (from 1845), where he found elevenjottings under the heading On Feuerbach. Inpublishing these Theses on Feuerbach with thepamphlet, he described them as notes hurriedlyscribbled down for later elaboration, absolutely

not intended for publication, but invaluable as thefirst document in which is deposited the brilliantgerm of the new world outlook.1 [Thesis 11reads: The philosophers have only interpretedthe world in various ways; the point, however, isto change it.2 The word however was addededitorially by Engels.]

Marxs eleventh thesis on Feuerbach has been thesubject of numerous commentaries. Id like to put

forward an interpretation here by criticizing twofeatures in the commentary by Martin Heideggeron the occasion of an interview in 1969.

Ill begin with this quotation, translated from theGerman:

In quoting and following this statement, itsoverlooked that making a change in the worldpresupposes a change in the conception which is

held about the world, and that its only possibleto get a conception of the world by arriving atan adequate interpretation of it. This means thatMarx based himself on a certain conception ofthe world to do with the changes he demanded,and by that this statement shows that it is not awell-founded statement. He gives the impression


11/17

NINTEY

YEARS

PG 31NUMBER 24

Clockwise from upper right: Housewives Deny Press Allegations Of Red Domination Of Organization, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Apr 24,

1947; Housewives To March Saskatoon Star-Phoenix - Apr 15, 1948; Milk Inquiry. A Sarcastic Witness. Waste Of Time And Money Syd-

ney Morning Herald, Nov 25, 1930; Only His Speed On Foot Saves Him As Irate Housewives Storm Abbott, Montreal Gazette, Jun 26, 1947


12/17

Report & Analysis

PG 32the

SPARK!

Introduction

One of the most striking socio-economic featuresof the past two decades is the reversal of the pre-vious half-century of welfare legislation in Europeand North America. Unprecedented cuts in socialservices, severance pay, public employment,pensions, health programs, educational stipends,vacation time, and job security are matched byincreases in tuition, regressive taxation, and the

age of retirement as well as increased inequalities,job insecurity and workplace speed-up.

The demise of the welfare state demolishesthe idea put forth by orthodox economists, whoargued that the maturation of capitalism, itsadvanced state, high technology and sophisti-cated services, would be accompanied by greater

welfare and higher income/standard of living.While it is true that services and technology have

multiplied, the economic sector has become evenmore polarized, between low paid retail clerks andsuper rich stock brokers and financiers. The com-puterization of the economy has led to electronicbookkeeping, cost controls and the rapid move-ments of speculative funds in search of maximum

profit while at the same time ushering in brutal

The Westerni t s R I S E . . .

and the

SOVIET BLOC

This article was first published online on July 4, 2012 by GlobalResearch, http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-western-welfare-state-its-rise-and-demise-and-the-soviet-bloc/31753, and is republished here

by kind permission of the author. Image: Soviet Poster c. 1970.

by James Petras


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PG 33NUMBER 24

Welfare State& d e m i s e

budgetary reductions for social programs.

The Great Reversal appears to be a long-term,large-scale process centered in the dominantcapitalist countries of Western Europe and North

America and in the former Communist statesof Eastern Europe. It behooves us to examine

the systemic causes that transcend the particularidiosyncrasies of each nation.

The Origins of the Great Reversal

There are two lines of inquiry which need tobe elucidated in order to come to terms with

the demise of the welfare state and the massivedecline of living standards. One line of analysisexamines the profound change in the internatio-nal environment: We have moved from a compe-titive bi-polar system, based on a rivalry between

the collectivist welfare states of the Easternbloc and the capitalist states of Europe and North

America to an international system monopolizedby competing capitalist states.

A second line of inquiry directs us to examinethe changes in the internal social relations of thecapitalist states: namely the shift from intense

class struggles to long-term class collaboration,


14/17

PG 43NUMBER 24

1. The worker sells to the capitalist her or his:

a) toil or workb) living labourc) labour powerd) soul

2. Capitalist private property is based on:

a) exploitationb) inheritancec) forced) land theft

3. The Marxist attitude to property can be summa-rized as:

a) control it through a socialist market economyb) "what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine"c) seeking to replace capitalist with social propertyd) seeking to abolish property in all its forms

4. Marxist understand production in general as:

a) alienatingb) anti-socialc) individualizedd) social

5. Marxists argue that each social system has aneconomic basis, which ultimately determines othersocial relations which rise above it in the form of asuperstructure. Which of the following is NOT partof the superstructure?

a) political partiesb) musicc) the state

d) productive forces

6. What term do Marxists use to describe the phe-nomenon of disorder and chaos in a private-propertycommodity economy?

a) competitive exchange economyb) financializationc) anarchy of productiond) all of the above

7. Marx primarily synthesized and developedCapitaland his economic theories from:

a) Hegel and Feuerbachb) British political economistsc) Arab scholars like Moses Maimonidese) TheKama Sutra

Mural by GDR artist Walter Womacka, Haus des Lehrers (House of teachers) c. 1970

Test your Marxist I.Q.Questions on work, property and other aspects o political economy.

Answers:1c;2a;3c;4d;5d;6c;7b


15/17

PG 44the

SPARK!

What year were you born?

1916. In Bonne Madone, Sas-katchewan.

And so you lived on the farm throu-

ghout your early life?

Well, a good part of it, yes. But

there was no future there, so Iwent away. Went to Saskatoonand enrolled at the universitythere. Well, I should have saidthat I had to complete my high-school. I couldnt do that in

Wakaw which is fifteen milesaway from Bonne Madone. They

I had to sign a promissory note.They had me sign -- I promise topay so-and-so but, of course, Icouldnt pay. And having com-

pleted one year of pre-medicine Ihad to stop and try to earn somemoney. But those were very toughtimes.

How old would you have been?

Lets see, I guess about twenty.

So then it would have been around

1936.

The Great Depression was com-

ing on. We couldnt get anythinganywhere. So I had to stop andI got a job at the University ontheir experimental farms - they

were trying to develop new kindsof wheat and things like that. It

was quite skilful work in that youhad to select, as you moved alongin the rows, and be very careful,

you picked the right kind of grain.And they did produce some newvarieties. I got a job on the experi-mental farms. There were only afew of us I think there were onlyfour of us.

So you were lucky.

About twenty or more applied forthat job which wasnt easy. A lotof bending row after rowall day. We were paid 30 centsan hour for that which was

welcome. We worked, let me see,four hours in the morning and

another, I think it wasfive, in theafternoon. They let us off earlier

on Saturday so we could do a littleshopping to buy food or some-thing, Because stores closed atsix oclock. But once that job wasdone there was no further work.

We got paid there all right for that,

Michaels story

Michael Ukas grew up in the Canadian Prairies in a Ukrainian family,joining the Communist Party of Canada in Prince Albert, Saskatchewanduring the Depression. In the winter of 2010-2011, at age 94, Michaelsat down with TheSpark! and shared part of his life story as part ofour continued series celebrating the 90th anniversary of the CPC. The

following transcript has been edited and abridged.

only had grade eleven. To getgrade twelve I had to go anotherabout twenty-five miles to Cud-

worth. My people, my parents or my Mother and my step-father Ill explain this later myfather died in the epidemic,the Spanish Flu. Anyway mypeople and I too thought that I

should study and go on to theUniversity of Saskatchewan and

become a doctor. And so I did Iput in one year.

Where did you get the money for

the fees?


16/17

PG 54

BOOKREVIEWS& REFLECTIONS

Champaign and MeatballsReview by Chevy Philips

Champagne and Meatballs:

Adventures of a Canadian

Communist. By Bert Whyte,

Introduction by Larry

Hannant. Edmonton, 2011

The Canadian Committee on

Labour History, an organiza-

tion concerned with the study of

working class life and struggle

in Canada, has presented Cham-

pagne and Meatballs as the first

in a series. It is a book based on

the manuscript-memoir left by

Bert Whyte, long-time member of

the Communist Party of Canada,

after his death in Moscow in 1984.Larry Hannant, who has provided

an introduction to the book, came

into contact with Monica Whyte,

Berts widow, in 2006 and was

introduced to the manuscript. The

series is intended to have a popu-

lar bent ... accessible to labour

audiences rather than simply ...

[for] scholarly studies. Certainly

this is the most distinctive feature

of Bert Whytes story, which covers

his childhood up to his posting to

the Peoples Republic of China in1960, as it follows the adventures

of a Canadian Communist across

Depression-era Canada, in the

Second World War, and in the

post-war years in Toronto and on

the west coast.

Champagne and Meatballs is

grounded in mundane expe-

riences, dealing with everyday life

rather than grand political narra-

tives or metaphysical reflections.Whyte could have chosen to pep-

per his story with expositions of

ideological positions, justifications

for stands taken, or internal Com-

munist Party politics, but there is

very little of that sort to be found

here (which some readers will

no doubt appreciate, and some

will regret). What certainly isvery successfully communicated

is what life was like for someone

born just before the First World

War, who grows up in an era of

profound mass politicization,

and embarks on a broadly left

and eventually Communist

trajectory that is grounded in

and inspired by the condition of

ordinary peoples working lives.

Early influences on Whyte

are clear from detailed and

extensive reflections on his

childhood, adolescence and

early adulthood. Bert joined

the Party in the mid-1930s (by

which time he was in his mid to

late twenties, having been born

in 1909) only after having some

significant experience of the tra-

vails and struggles of working

people in an extraordinary periodof Canadian history. Early on in

Champagne and Meatballs he

briefly discusses his encounter with

the Ku Klux Klan, which he quickly

recognized as a nut organization

in his early teens, and he describes

the context in which he came to

consciously turn against religion

(perhaps, along with his reaction

to the KKK, his first well-defined

political positions in a life which

never lost its political content).The condemnation of a man for

simply teaching the science of

human evolution, combined with

an adolescent encounter with Tho-

mas Paines anti-Christian Age of

Reason are recognized by Whyte as


17/17

PG 53

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