——
St Eo

— Ory» ,2Toung

QUEBEC TODAY

' The Creditistes—reserve

army of St. James Street

The @', 2AM WALSH
into th split which has broken
des ¢ : Open in the Ralliement
i ditistes raises questions
hen erably more important
oe will be the next
ve a leader of this curi-

uring the week-end of
18-19, both factions held a et
“re : qominated by Camil
ae © former leader who
» and the other dominat-

b : .
sa bs acting successor, Ar-

lois,

second = the meeting of this
chairm action, Adrien Drouin,
ciation of the Créditiste asso-
hurled a Levis constituency,
tain € accusation that cer-
Daid Eaeeent Liberals had
in fae 00 to some Creditistes
r gt ee cnciitistes run

elects In the Chambly by-
ate on (to replace the Reesor.
Sto Minister of Labor,
fe ne on Feb. 8, 1971. There
the « doubt about who cashed
Blois re for according to Mr.
Money J© Party didn’t get the
4 oe the end, but the per-
platy Ponsible “js able to ex-

is g transactions”.
, inci
cision yous recalls the de-

f eye
test € Creditistes to con-
Province phe first time) the last
9 vlogs 4 Clections, despite the
Minaries €sitation of many “lu-
latans, iM this gang of char-

No One

Candida

Pearance doubted that their ap-
tica) + On the provincial poli-
rightist €né would take away
Nationale o°S from the Union

fro as well as nationalist
And ieee the Parti Quebecois.
Peneg 1S precisely what hap-
than ha at considerably more
a Ve N expected. It was
pean td blow for the Union
0 from which it still

for th nO sign of recovery. AS

he Quebecois, it de-
of col the illusory advant-
Grepoing ec borating with Gilles
e ? me i °
tal Creditiste i Sp oiiinent fed
that th Bained from the fact
eats in th Creditistes took 12
tions Bee last provincial elec-
tistes th apart from the Credi-
answer jauselves, of course? The
Whom S$ Obvious: the party to

Mousy,  JaMes St. had unani-
BOtt, “the s0cd to give its sup-
knows Liberal ‘Party. Who

Creditict ©w much went to the
the j cfm directly or through
All this pa vi2ty Of the Liberals?

dal pares to mind the scan-
NeWly-clennn a years ago when
Mp, “Sted federal Creditiste

ac A
the fine bribes to support
Ment op crtY Liberal govern-
It woul € moment.
Dass alt d be easy enough to
Monkey this off as political
Unde Shines, quite “normal”
this yo.;.caPitalist system. But
for the be very dangerous,
Ordina -Teditistes are not an
Capitalist
e party.
Banda e Et am and the propa-
"actiona © Patty are the most
8d ro. "Y, anti-working class
t blatasce as well as the
the poe tly demagogic of all
e _ Parties,
the cacdltistes appeal to all
ets, in Prejudices and in-
Nt work trying to form an
oe Class mass move-
a simplistic “the-
. In: rT fess
Prise» ‘es on “private enter-
Order to attract the

Poor’
|
the ioay ght? desperately fear

their land or their

small business, or who have al-
ready lost .them. Despite all
their demagogy directed
“against” the banks, taxes, the
lack of money in circulation (in
an inflationary period), their
real target is the labor move-
ment, their foreign idols are the
fascists.

Such movements become a
very real danger when the big
bourgeoisie loses confidence in
all the “orthodox” bourgeois
parties, fearing that they are in-
capable of ruling as before be-
cause of the mounting resistance
of the oppressed classes and of
the internal crises, which ensue
in such parties. Then the bank-
ers, the big industrialists, and
in the first place the U.S. mon-
opolists, choose such parties
which have succeeded in creat-
ing a base among a section of
the petty bourgeoisie and among
the declassed. This is the “‘se-
cret” of the inexhaustible funds
at the disposal of Hitler, Musso-
lini, Poujade in France (whose
“theories” resembled those of
the Creditistes to a remarkable
degree), and today of the fas-
cist junta in Greece and of Thieu
in South Vietnam.

In such critical situations the
big ‘bourgeoisie doesn’t play
around with $5,000 bribes in
order to favor one of their
orthodox parties, the Liberal
Party in this instance, against
a petty bourgeois party, the
Parti Quebecois. At a time like
that it feels obliged to stake all
on a party which people con-
sidered a joke until then, treat-
ing them as buffoons, as was
the case with the Nazis until
the bankers, the junkers—and
Henry Ford—invested millions
in’ it.

So long as St. James St. (and
Wall St.) keep the Ralliement
(or Ralliements, since the: split)
in reserve for the critical, mo-
ment, while using them today to
reward the more docile servants
in their political parties and to
punish the more refractory ones,
just ‘so long will it be necessary
to unmask their demagogy and
put the labor movement on the
alert. :

Hence, to preach some kind
of alliance with the Creditistes
in order to defeat Trudeau at
any cost, is just plain madness.
For it is the extreme right which
correctly looks on the Credi-
tistes as its trump card.

Longshoremen boycott
goods from Rhodesia

BATON ROUGE, La.—Long-
shoremdn and Black organ-
izations here are joining for-
ces to prevent the unloading
of a shipment of chromium ore
from Rhodesia.

The shipment, consisting of
25,000 tons of ore aboard the
Argentine freighter Santos
Vega, passed through the
port of New Orleans last
week and is scheduled to
dock at Burnside, a small port
between New Orleans and
Baton Rouge.

Black organizations here
have also organized pickets
on the Burnside docks against
the shipment.

A second shipment of the
Rhodesian ore bound for the
U.S. is scheduled to leave the
Mozambique port of Beira
shortly.

It is now a generally recog-
nized fact that the power of the
working class is steadily grow-
ing on a worldwide scale. In
the capitalist countries there
are now some 250 million work-
ers who belong to trade unions.

The numerical growth of the
labor force in advanced capital-
ist countries comes up against
changing social patterns as a re-
sult of the revolution in science
and technology. Dominated by
huge private and monopolistic
corporations, and aided by a
servile state power geared to its
exploitative and repressive prac-
tices, capitalist society seeks to
solve its contradictions by
means of intensified pressure on
the working class. This increas-
ed pressure finds its reflection
in growing unemployment,
mounting inflation and conti-
nuous attemts to drive down
real wages.

When Presideht Nixon of the
U.S. told his TV audience that
higher profits are “good for
everybody,” he was paraphrasing
Charles Wilson, former head of
General Motors, who said that
“what’s good for GM is good
for the country.” This is. now
the official policy of the US.
government. As a result of this
policy, the buying power of
American workers is now $2.58
per week less than it was four
years ago, based. on 1967 prices.
The total wage bill for the coun-
try as a whole has gone down
even more as unemployment
has gone up. .

It is precisely in this area that
one has to look for an explana-
tion for the growing strike
movement of workers in all
capitalist countries, which has
increased three times over in
that many decades” and con-
tinues to increase. Moreover,
realizing the role of the state
in a capitalist society, the work-
ing class is more and more ad-
dressing its demands to govern-
ments. Workers will not permit
prices and profits to rise at the
expense of their living stand-

by Bruce Magnuson

LABOR SCENE Anti-wage freeze battle
high on CLC agenda

ards. Even the leaders of the
AFL-CIO, who have hitherto co-
operated with the cruel hoax of
U.S. President Nixon’s so-called
“new economic policy” of wage
freeze, are now being forced to
reassess their position and to
resign from Nixon’s pay board
to openly challenge these poli-
cies.
)

In Canada the leaders of the
trade union movement are
strongly opposed to any in-
comes policy aiming at a freeze
on workers incomes. Judging by
the continued and _ intensified
agitation for such an incomes
policy in: this country, it is clear
that the struggle will grow
sharper on the economic front.

By the time the CLC meets
in convention in Ottawa in May,
this struggle against an incomes
policy directed against the
working class will have to oc-
cupy a foremost place on the
Congress agenda along with job
security in the face of continued
layoffs, technological change
and rising unemployment.

At the 1970 Convention of the
CLC in Edmonton the follow-
ing resolution was adopted on
the matter of extension of col-
lective bargaining into areas
hitherto considered prerogatives
of management only:

“Whereas it is inappropriate
in a free society for working
people to be subjected to au-
thoritarian control in the work
place that would be considered
intolerable in the community at
large; and

“Whereas one of the major
historical forces for freedom has
been the labor movement;

“Be it resolved that the Cana-
dian Labor Congress press for
the application of democratic
principles in the work place by
fighting for the extension of
collective bargaining to remove
the unfettered right of manage-
ment to exercise undue control
over the work force;

“Be it further resolved that
the CLC, while recognizing that

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there is a division of. functions
between labour and manage-
ment, endorse the extension of
collective bargaining to encom-
pass all matters which affect
the workers’ industrial life, in-
cluding such things as the im-
pact on workers of technologi-
cal and other change, with par-
ticular emphasis on the legisla-
tive enactment of the recom-
mendations of the Freedman
report, production plans, future
industrial development: policies,
the curtailment of operations,
the methods and processes of
operations and pollution con-
trols.”

This resolution was discussed
at a special conference by the
CLC in January last, and will
be reported upon in a policy
paper at the forthcoming May
Convention in Ottawa.

While the above resolution
speaks of a “free society” it ig-
nores monopoly control and its
affect, not only on industry but
in society as a whole. It is also
worth noting, that while the
Ottawa conference in January
discussed concentration of eco-
nomic power and monopoly as
cause for growing worker anx-
iety, CLC leaders sought to leave
the impression that this was a
worldwide phenomenon, apply-
ing equally to capitalist and so-
cialist countries. For instance,
Donald MacDonald, CLC Presi-
dent describing monopoly pow-
er under capitalism, stated: “The
same kind of monopoly power
in the hands of governments
and state corporations in coun-
tries behind the Iron Curtain
provides little, if any, opportun-
ity for individual workers or for
legitimate worker organizations
to participate in industrial de-
cision-making .. . “In the Com-
munist world, free trade unions
are unknown. . .”

This is, of course, the old
hoary lie peddled by cold war
propaganda to obscure the real
problem of the need for a fund-
amental reorganization of so-
ciety along socialist lines, which
is and must be the ultimate ob-
jective of, the working class and
democratic movement of all
peoples.

There are today no fewer
than 643,000 primary trade
union organizations ‘in the Sov-
iet Union alone, all of which
are incorporated into their re-
spective central trade union
bodies uniting factory and office
workers. There are 25 unions,
the largest of which are’ the
trade unions in metallurgical,
railway, engineering,~ building,
educational and scientific, and
agricultural workers.

All unions in the Soviet Union
unite close to 100 million work-
ing people, with more than
5,500,000 worker activists elect-
ed to various trade union org-
ans. Trade union members in
the USSR not only elect their
leading organs, but control
their activity and check and ap-
praise the work that they do.

The coming CLC Convention
in May must appraise its rela-
tions with the workers and their
unions of all countsies, particu-
larly with the workers and their
unions in the socialist world;
and embark upon a new direc-
tion towards world trade union
unity for peace, independence
and the socialist perspective.
We shall have more to say
‘about this in -future columns.

_ PACIFIC, TRIBUNE THURSDAY, MARCH 30,.1972—PAGE 9
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