By GEORGE SHLAKOFF

KASMACK — The struggles
of farmers today are part of the
general anti-monopoly fight-back
of Canadian working people.
What are the realities of their
Struggle?

_ Bill C-73, which freezes wages,
_ is a single component of a whole
_ package of policies which are

part and parcel of monopoly’s at-

tack on all working people —
Workers, farmers and others. Un-
doubtedly bourgeois ideologists
have been able to “sell” ideas
and “explanations which, to a
large extent, divide workers and
farmers:

Many workers have also been
Sold on the idea that big labor

1s the cause of inflation, that
farmers are responsible for the
igh cost of groceries and, equal-
ly, so have many farmers been
brainwashed into thinking that
high wages are the reason for
the high costs of farm inputs.

One of the real explanations
Why feelings are so high among
farmers is they have just shelled
Out for the highest bill of farm
Mput costs in all their history —
$6.7-billions in 1975. This figure,

taken from the Globe & Mail, ~

Actually exceeds farm cash in-
Come for any. year in history
With the exception of the years
1973 and 1974. :
Recommendations of the Tru-
deau government’s Task Force
Teport — Agriculture In the
Seventies—which says that two-
thirds of the farmers must leave
© land, are fast becoming a
Teality. The mouthpieces for mo-
NOpoly had for many years
8tound out the idea to farmers
that the scientific and technolo-
Bical revolution was going to
Solve all the problems facing
Working farmers. It was, we
Eoae told, capitalism’s total an-
at _to so-called “backward”
ism. The hopes of what the
clentific and technological re-
Volution would bring under capi-
lism are turning into wide-
Spread disillusionment.
Concerned citizen” Pierre

Elliott Trudeau has now come
up with a solution by presenting
us. Eugene Whelan, the minister
of agriculture, to solve our prob-

lems by helping shove farmers .

off the land all the faster.

His programs control supplies
to keep prices up — protecting
the high profits of the big mono-
polies, while doing nothing to

solve the problems faced by ©

small farmers squeezed by mo-

‘nopoly on the farm and in the:

market place; and by the big
banks and mortgage companies.
The growth of farm techno-
logy, accompanied by ruthless
monopoly exploitation, has and
is still driving thousands of
farmers off the land. Tens, yes
and hundreds of thousands of
rural people, forced to move into
the cities, are tragically disloc-
ated in our society. :
Everywhere the rural commu-
nity is decaying. There is a lack
of jobs, a lack of decent housing,
of adequate medical, recreatio-
nal and educational facilities —

of all services in the rural com-
munity. True, a few big rural
centres have grown, mainly as
marketing centres, but in general
rural youth, must leave the rural
community because of lack of
opportunities whether they want
to or not. The average age of
farmers in Canada as a whole
is now 59 years.

Moreover, threatening to. fur-
ther worsen services in rural
areas, to raise costs of produc-

\tion and designed solely to help
the big monopolies, big grain
companies and corporation
farms, is the recent proposal for
rail line abandonment.

Along with this are the con-
stant attacks on Soviet agricul-
ture, planned to discredit social-
ism and create the impression
that socialism doesn’t work. The
real achievements of Soviet agri-
culture and the .great potential
of its methods are hidden.

Agricultural trade with the
Soviet Union and other socialist
countries means jobs for Cana-

dians. For example, a recent is-

sue of U.S. News and World
Report (Dec. 29,
“Close to $23-billion worth of
farm exports—including nearly
two billion to the Soviet Union
is turning out to be a spur to
keep this country’s recovery
moving ahead.”

The story goes on to Say that
farm exports are generating jobs,
increasing incomes, expanding
purchasing power; and that
every billion dollars of farm
products that moves into export
market means 50,000 new jobs
for American workers. This is
one of the areas in which labor-

farmer cooperation’ is so mean-

ingful. :

’ As wages drop, the cost-price
squeeze is intensified against the
farmers. One example: In. 1973
farmers got just over $833-mil-
lion for the beef they sold. That
same beef retailed for well over
two-billion. That year the farmer
got only 37% of the beef dollar.
It is this plunder that Agricul-

1975) says, .

By ALFRED DEWHURST |

onopolies

ture Minister Whelan defends
and Beryl Plumptre ignores.

It raises some questions for
all progressives about the grass
roots organization of farmers,
the National Farmers Union. The
NFU requires building, and its
program needs_ strengthening.
Farmers are not a homogeneous
group. Some very bitter differ-
ences exist between them. And
it is the majority of farmers —
the small and middle sized ones
— who are pressed the hardest,
many to the verge of leaving the
land.

What is required is a program
for these small and middle farm-.
ers. To accomplish this policy
properly an end should be put to
the ultra-leftist nonsense that
has done so much harm to the
NFU. . j
What is needed is a program
that would strengthen the fight-
back: of the farmers—a strength-
ening of NFU demands — a pro-
gram centred on a well rounded
anti-monopoly position, and bas-
ed on the concept of developing
Jabor-farmer unity. The other op-
tion is forgetting, or writing off,
the producers of food — the
farmers — as an important and
vital ally of the working-class,
an ally so necessary and vital to
the step-by-step struggle for
wider democracy, independence
and socialism.

QUE. TEACHERS
STEP UP CAMPAIGN
TO BREAK DEADLOCK

MONTREAL — _ Temporary
work stoppages and study ses-
sions continued in Quebec last
week, with Montreal teachers
threaterring to accelerate their
harassment campaign if negotia-
tions are still deadlocked by
Feb o::

The teachers can strike legally
Feb, 11.

The 2,600 Montreal .Teachers
Association members gave a
mandate to their bargaining

_ccmmittee on Jan. 29 to order a

partial withdrawal of service, if
necessary. e ;

Socialist democracy versus capitalist democracy

: A reader asks: “What is the differ-
Nee between socialist democracy and
€mocracy as we know it in Canada?”

8 Raut difference is — basic. Socialist
in mocracy is the democracy practiced
ig 4 socialist country where state power
- M the hands of the workers. Demo-
Fre as we know it in Canada is the
peaectacy as practiced in a capitalist
_ /°untry where state power is in the
ot ‘the capitalist class, which in
ae Itions of modern. (monopoly) cap!
~>M means the monopolists.
oe a socialist state the means Of
Uction, marketing, communication
ne transportation, education and cul-
Te are publicly owned and controlled.
“ 4 Consequence the main lines of eco-
ee socal and cultural development
in piced upon by the whole people
“onal discussion and debate, as are
1gn policy and other affairs of state.

For instance, all the peoples of the
Of th are presently discussing the draft
ee 10th Five Year Plan submitted
the e™ by the central committee of
On: Communist Party of the Soviet

10n (CPSU). The Draft named “The
_ In Directions in the Economic Deve-

°Pment of the USSR for 1976-1980"

‘ months) will come

Marxism-Leninism in Today’s World

has been published in full by all the
main newspapers and periodicals of the
ecuntry in tens of millions of copies.

The Draft, as amended by the propo-
sals and suggestions advanced in the
country-wide on Algae pa

i n now for better tha
mae before the 25th
Congress of the CPSU on February 24
for final consideration and adoption by
that supreme body of the CPSU. Once
adopted the Plan will guide the poli-
tical, social and economic activities of
the Communist Party as well as the
entire country and all its peoples.

It is necessary to underline that this
important feature of socialist demo-
cracy is the determining factor in es-
tablishing the main direction of econo-
mic development in the country for
the next five years. The workers and
all working people of the USSR, as the
collective owners of all sccial property,
have made their input. into the Plan.
The working people will guarantee the

fulfillment of the present plan, as they =

did the nine preceding plans. .
The Communist Party Central Com

mittee in summarizing the results of
the just-completed 9th Five Year, Plan,
emphasized that the USSR economy
developed at a high and stable rate
over the past.five year period. The
party credits “the selfless labor of the
werking class, collective farmers, intel-
lectuals, the working people in all
Union Republics and the country-wide
emulation drive’ for the significant
achievements made.
* Bs ae

Comzare this democratic procedure
with that followed recently by the fe-
deral government in introducing the
anti-labor wage restraint program, thin-
ly disguised as anti-inflation policy. In
this instance there was no prior dis-
cussicn on a public basis, not even
with the government party. The policy
was simply proclaimed by the Prime
Minister in a televised address to the
country. This new policy was treated
as law even before Parliament had a
chance to debate it, let alone pass the
enabling legislation. Similar proclama-
tions of policy are a quite well known
practice in the history of Canadian
government.

Compare this cynical disregard of the
democratic process which, incidentally,
quite effectively freezes out the work-
ing people in having a say in determin-
ing Canada’s economic policies, with

the total involvement of. the working

people in the USSR in planning their
country’s.economic development.

= *

In Canada, state power is in the
hands of the capitalists. The ruling par-
ties, which alternate their periods of
rule in accordance with election results,
are in reality the parties of the capi-
talist class. Consequently, it is the capi-
talist monopolists who ‘determine the
main lines of economic, social, cultural,
political and state direction of the
country. :

However, while the monopolists and
the capitalist parties have the power
to plan, they are not able to plan
scientifically the country’s main econo-
mic directions. The chief reason they
cannot do ‘so lies in the anarchy of
production’ inherent in the system of
private ownership of the means of
production, .and its dog-eat-dog moral-
ity serving the interest of maximum
monopoly profits such ownership
spawns and nurtures.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 20, 1976—Page 7

*