A worker's
Suggestions
to cut down

the federal

gov't debt

Iam nota politician or an economist
whose views are formulated by the polit-
ics they believe in. I am a simple Joe
Lunch-Bucket.

These days I keep hearing about the
deficit and the national debt, which the
sum of all the past federal deficits. The
debt is now bulging at over $300 billion.
The interest charge on such an amount
would be $36 billion at 12 per cent, $33
billion at 11 per cent. The deficit is actu-
ally the interest paid on the national debt.

Surely, everyone can see that the
deficit can be lowered considerably by
dropping the interest rate. Everyone, it
seems, except the bunch of idiots in con-
trol of the interest rate. These despicable
people keep the interest rate high to fight
inflation, so they say. Meanwhile, a lot of
workers are losing their jobs and income
because of the export industry slowing
down, due to the high value of the Cana-
dian dollar resulting from high interest
rate. The only ones profiting from sucha
policy are the finance industry and the
speculators on the money market.

Here is the opinion of a worker on
how to tackle the deficit:

MICHAEL WILSON

... gov't high
interest rate policy the main problem.

@ Drop the interest rate.

@ Charge the going interest rate on
corporate deferred taxes and collect 20
per cent of the amount owed per year
until all are repaid.

@ Make income tax simple with no
loopholes (it is a disgrace that a bank
teller pays more income tax that the bank
itself).

@ Instead of creating unemployment
(caused by free trade and high interest
rates) create good paying jobs.

e@ Ensure control of the Canadian
economy by Canadians in a democratic
manner.

Fernand Samson,
Kamloops

Disappointed that B.C.
Fed didn’t take stand

on Carmanah logging

Judging by your recent reporting on the
B.C. Federation of Labour convention
(“Compromise vote backed but logging
issue remains,” Tribune, Dec. 4, 1989), it
would appear that the senior labour body in
this province remains reluctant to deal with
the more contentious and difficult issues
facing us today. Its side-stepping of the issue
for the preservation of the Carmanah Val-
ley at the convention is a case in point.

The local union to which I belong and for
which I am a senior executive officer —
Canadian Paperworkers Union, Local
514 — has taken a position in support of
preservation of the Carmanah and its inclu-
sion within the boundaries of Pacific Rim
National Park. The resolution which we
submitted to the convention was a reflection
of that position. Speaking as the mover of
the resolution at our general membership
meeting, I can only express disappointment
with the manner in which it was dealt with
at the B.C. Fed.

While recognizing that the composite
resolution warrants support, it totally failed
to encompass our resolution regarding the
Carmanah, calling for “further studies” of
ecologically sensitive areas. We did not pull
the name out of a hat, we referred specifi-
cally to the Carmanah because of the

urgency of the issue. Time is indeed a factor.
The Carmanah Valley has been studied to
death and if the B.C. Fed can’t figure out
where it is at this late date, its position and
ability to lead the fight on many other con-
tentious issues facing workers in this pro-
vince is very much in question.

We in this local are given to understand
that the composite was the result of pressure
from some of the neanderthal elements
which have apparently found a home in the
IWA-Canada. (Incidentally, our delegates
to the convention were treated to a daily
dose of childish verbal abuse from some of
the less progressive brothers of the TWA.)
The result was of course that the B.C. Fed
avoided the difficult responsibility of having
to take a position on this controversial issue.
The question which must be addressed is:
why did the resolution not go to the conven-
tion floor to stand or fall in accordance with
the wishes of the majority? *

If the federation’s dealing with the issue
of the Carmanah Valley is an indication of
its approach to the tough issues facing the
workforce in B.C. today, the labour move-
ment’s prospects for success and victories
are dismally bleak indeed.

Karl Ettinger,
Port Alice

Debate on socialism must be searching, frank

It was with great interest and anticipation
that I read George Hewison’s analysis of the
significance of the momentous changes now
taking place in Eastern Europe (“New winds
blowing, uprooting old ideas, renewing
socialism,” Tribune, Dec. 18, 1989). I must
admit, however, that despite detecting some
signs of new openness, I came away from
this article feeling unsatisfied with both the
Scope and the depth of its analysis.

I was looking for a translation of the
profound questioning taking place in the
USSR and elsewhere into Canadian terms,
in the hope that it would help us all nego-
tiate our way through troubled waters. But I
find myself asking whether the article fully
accomplishes the task of helping us go
beyond endorsing the basic thrust of glas-
nost and perestroika, to actually utilizing
their revolutionary spirit as an aid to recon-
sidering the collective past of the Canadian
left. The danger here is of missing a crucial
Opportunity to foster a debate on strategy
that would encompass not only the Com-
munist Party of Canada but broad seg-
ments of the left as a whole.

Socialism in
Eastern Europe >

The changes going on in Eastern Europe

' force us to constantly reassess our notions

of the nature of socialism and of these socie-

. ties. Thus I find it difficult to come to terms
with Hewison’s unqualified affirmation

that “socialism is still potent — economi-

: cally, politically and philosophically.” As
’ socialists, we all retain the conviction that

capitalism is afflicted with incurable ills

which are responsible for the suffering of
untold millions of people around the world.
We also retain the conviction that some
form of socialism, one which would eradi-
cate the very source of these ills, is the future
of humanity.

But we must also recognize that 1989
marks the end of an era in the history of
international socialism and acknowledge
that the eventual reinvigoration of the
socialist alternative requires the most rigor-
ous criticism of previous socialist practice
that we can produce. The versions of social-
ism practised in Eastern Europe are not
potent in any of the senses indicated by
Hewison. On the contrary.

They have demonstrated their inability to
build a working alternative to capitalism
economically. In the Soviet Union that
promise of industrialization has vanished in
a morass of bureaucratic incompetence and
technological backwardness. The heroic
sacrifices of the Soviet peoples have been
squandered by a leading elite which, by suc-
cumbing to self-serving greed or to
cowardly toadying, or through ideologically-
blinkered stupidity, caused the economy to
regress toward underdeveloped status in the
final years of the Brezhnev regime. The
problems have proven to be so intractable
that nearly five years of reform attempts
have actually worsened the situation, espe-
cially with regard to the critical question of
the availability of consumer goods.

Politically, a single concept points to the
immense failings of all existing socialist
regimes — democracy. Their inability to
even match the limited practice of Western
countries has left their peoples clamouring,
not for socialist democracy, but for its

(truncated) capitalist variant. Until repeated
and compelling cases can be made other-
wise, people are going to follow the lead of
the capitalist press in attributing the failings
of these attempts at socialism to the theory
itself, and to all its philosophical underpin-
nings. In this sense, then, socialism is in need
of philosophical resuscitation as well.
Confronting this reality means asking
basic questions, no matter how much the
answers had previously seemed self-evident.
What are the links between the economic

_and political spheres that should exist under

socialism? Clearly, the creation of a single
ruling elite which monopolizes both func-
tions does not produce satisfactory results
in either domain. What role should the
market play in a socialist economy? What
type of market should it be? Does market
exclude public ownership? What forms of
ownership, and in what proportions, are
consistent with socialism? Can people be
motivated to work without the threat of
unemployment?

All these, and countless other questions
need to be soberly addressed, using the lar-
gely negative results generated in Eastern
Europe as important reference points. We
must attempt to piece together a picture of
the nature of the social formations which
evolved there based on the reality of class
and other power relations which actually
exist and not on the ideological fantasies
generated by state propaganda machines.

This would seem to me to be the only
approach consistent with Marxism. Of
course, it means being prepared to entertain
the possibility that some or all of these
countries never succeeded in actually trans-
forming their societies along socialist lines,

or only did so in a very partial manner. It
means asking ourselves whether or not the
working class and its allies were ever in fact
in power and whether there continues to
exist exploitation of one class by another in
these countries. I could find no evidence in
Hewison’s article that these questions are
being given the attention they deserve.

They are, however, clearly on the mind of
many Soviet citizens, including political
commentator Vladimir Posner who, in an
interview published in the Dec. 27 issue of
The Guardian, said: “... I know people
—and I’m one of them — who would
argue that what we’ve had in the Soviet
Union for 70 years is probably not social-
ism. At least it certainly does not reflect
some of the basic tenets of socialism. It was
never a society that gave land to the pea-
sants, the factories to the workers or power
to the people. It certainly did not observe
the motto ‘From each according to his abil-
ity, to each according to his work.’ So in
what way was it socialist? You could point
to a few things. But you’d have to say in all
honesty, that it was some kind of bastard-
ized form of socialism.” We should all take
heed of his candour.

Marx, Lenin
*and the CPs

It should be clear by now that the type of
questioning required by recent events in
Eastern Europe also points towards the
need to re-evaluate the Marxist principles
upon which those societies claimed to be

see SEARCHING page 6

Pacific Tribune, January 22, 1990 « 5