The Deubli

Le Squeeze = Cont.

ing industries and industrial
concerns at the expense of the
small farmer, worker, and gen-

eral consumer will soon reveal_

who should absorb the subsi-
dies.

@
‘THE MONOPOLIES
DID WELL’
ESPITE the payment of

excess profits tax which was
partly offset at the beginning
of the war by the rapid rise in
prices and the wage-freezing
order, the monopolies did very
well by themselves.

Wages to workers, which
were quite low before the war,
did not rise in the same ratio
that profits did. Agricultural
prices to farmers were in a
depressed condition. Price con-
trol and freezing orders kept
the income of both farmer and
worker quite low. It was the
increased hours worked by in-
dustrial workers and the in-
ereased production given un-
der conditions of great hard-

ship which farmers added to

their small incomes. These ad-
ditions are now to be taken
away.
. Phe monopolies have always
exploited both by cutting wages
and charging monopoly prices
for industrial goods to the far-
mer.

While it is true Canada must
export, it must not be done at

the expense of the home mar-
ket as was the case in prewar
days and as the monopolies are
attempting today.

Ontario produces 30 percent
of the agricultural goods of
Canada and has traditionaily
worked chiefly for the Qntario
market where 50 percent of the
Dominion’s industry is locat-
ed. The Tories are advocating
wage cutS and increased con-
sumer prices for agricultural
products in order that both the
big farmers and the industrial-
ists can dump industrial goods
and farm products abroad at

what they term “competitive
prices.”’ :

e@
TORIES WANT CONTROL

/ [EBs policy is what prompts

the campaign to abolish
price controls. The Tories’ aim
is to further weaken the al-
ready weak-kneed Liberals and
perhaps to force on Canada a
coalition government which
would give them a greater op-
portunity to stifle the labor
movement, cut down postwar
reforms and stifle agricultural
advance.

tf the Tories are able to
Swing the farm organizations
over to this policy it is partly
because of the laxness of the
Ontario labor movement in in-
fluencing the farmers to join

in united battles to guarantee
floor prices for the farmers,
lift wage levels for the work-
ers and thus increase their buy-
ing power and curb the profits
of the monopolists. :

Canadian labor can ~learn
much from the strike at pres-
ent under way at the Interna-
tional Harvester plants in the
United States where the Farm
Implement Union, before it
pulled the plants, circularized
the farmers. Leaflets and ma-
terials were issued showing the
justmess of their claims for
higher wages. At public meet-
ings they showed the farmers
how both were being exploited
by the IHC. Facts and figures
were issued widely in the rural
areas proving how the company.
could give the farmer cheaper
machinery and still pay the
workers more wages.

It was in 1919 after the last
war that Toronto’s Labor Tem-
ple echoed with the cheers of
union delegates as they Jlisten-
ed to the leaders of the iarm
organizations ask for coopera-
tion in fighting the “‘combines
and monopolies who oppress us
both.”

It is time now to revive this
cooperation of farmer and wage
earner in the battle against
their common enemy the
trusts and monopolies and their
government agents.

“Robin Hood of the Orient’

HEY STILE LAUGH

SEVASTOPOL

ARO SIRE!

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 4

THE MIGHTY EPIC OF

Another tune-filled Soviet - | Go
comedy \

iJ

4

Farmers in the grip of monopolies, find their incomes shrinkng
while the prices of the industrial goods they need—also under

monopoly control—is excessively high. They get caught both

ways.

|

inti Mosc?

The Capitalist State - Cor

agriculture, the people achieve
even higher levels of wellbeing.
Socialism enormously increases
the productivity of labor—and
the benefits of the people.

HISTORIC TASK

OCIALISM has the historic

task of expanding the pro-
ductive forces to such an ex-
tent that distribution according
to needs can become the rule—
the higher phase of develop-
ment that is Communism. In
the present. Socialist phase,
distribution according to labor
is the rule. Here, the law of
value still continues to operate:
but it has undergone a trans-
formation. Economic laws
under Socialism no longer work
blindly, they are now subject to
conscious direction by society.

Since the means of produc-
tion are no longer privately
owned commodities as under
capitalism, and the relations of
production are no longer based
on the exploitation of man by
man, money, prices, trade,
have new, social functions. Tle
commodity is no longer fhe
bearer of contradictions that
lead to crises, unemployment

; and misery.

Similarly, the surplus pro-
duct that is created serves, not
to swell private profit, but to
expand the socially owned pro-
ductive plant and to provide
ever-growing social and cul-
tural benefits to the commun-
ity. Under Socialism, “the sur-
plus product goes, not to a
class of owners, but to all the

toilers,
(aenin).

Of the world’s first ed
state, our mighty Soviet,nei)
bor, we can quote the words
Lincoln Steffens, in the 43
est years of the’ revolution:

“T have seen the future— :
it works!” ,

Reading: Constitution of :
USSR, Chap. 1 (Article 1-7
J. V. Stalin: From Social
to Communism (Report —

XVIII Congress, CPSU: Sel
ed Writings, pp. 434-8, aats

Pi )

and to them a

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RECORD 4

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MR. COLDWELL RE-DEFINES CCF AIMS
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