The Value and Purpose of Education

The Value and Purpose of Education

By Tim Heigel

“It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.”

-Albert Einstein

It is a pitiful thing that many young people in the world today grow up believing school to be nothing more than a tool for future employment. One would be hard pressed to find a teenage student who disagrees that their future options are limited to university or bust. Despite valiant efforts by tradespersons to declare their fields to be viable alternatives, education is still pushed as being a destination and not a journey. This must change, first with the attitudes and philosophies towards school, then the structure and substance of the curriculum, and ultimately the function of school in society.

Foremost among the follies of today’s institutions of learning is that they fail to regard the intergenerational transfer of knowledge as something to be cherished. Rather, the bureaucracy of the modern school system works in a continuum: first they teach literacy and arithmetic, then being to hammer out future goals, followed by needless standardized testing right up until the end of secondary school. Preparation is lauded as the key to success, with success on tests being considered the only important thing. For this reason, students begin to see school as a rat race wherein learning itself is not important, but retaining the information long enough to pass a test is. The continuum of education stresses that if one wants to succeed in life, they must prepare for the next level of education and once they get there they begin preparation for the next one. In this sort of system, there is no time for learning in the present for learning’s value. Furthermore, this type of system breeds a mindset wherein we view those who do not toe the line in this system as failures and therefore unworthy of anything along the lines of a decent pay, a comfortable life, or happiness in general. They are screw-ups who missed their shot at happiness. It is a mentality that victimizes working people and transforms their place in society from being those who produce wealth via their labour to being the underlings of the ruling classes, who naturally came to their position through their success in the education continuum. These philosophies on what it means to learn must change. We must begin to view school as the foundation for healthy citizens who use their knowledge for the betterment of mankind. We must view education as a means of enhancing one’s ability to enjoy life and not as a means of some day living a corporate life. In summation, school must be a place of enjoyment where one can explore their creativity and curiosity and not have an authoritarian, carbon-copy model bearing down upon them.

Naturally, the next step would be a complete revolution in the schools. Curriculums must function in a way that allows for the greatest possible flexibility in a student’s learning. This means loosening deadlines, providing students with options for emphasis on certain subjects while maintaining emphasis on literacy, and decentralizing the role of a teacher to a student-requested assistant rather than a director and thereby allowing for different levels of skill to be taught alongside each other in the same classroom. The intellectual apartheid that exists in parts of Europe, where students are separated into different schools depending on their performance in early education, does nothing more than set the foundation for elitism. Even in Ontario high schools, where students select different classes based on difficulty levels, separates students based on their levels of intelligence and does not fully integrate them with each other. Rather, classrooms should function by giving students the option of moving up or down the ladder of difficulty while remaining alongside those on different levels. As mentioned, for this to come about the role of the teacher must be changed. Instead of giving classroom lessons, a teacher should allow the students to learn in a self-directed manner and provide assistance at the student’s request. Furthermore, teachers and tutors should be available for after regularly scheduled classes should a student find him or herself in need of extra assistance. On top of this, the buildings themselves must be maintained and beautified so that students may learn in a healthy, positive environment where they feel comfortable rather than being herded into brick and mortar prisons. Between-class breaks must be sufficient to allow for exercise and social interaction. After Grade 9, students should be allowed complete freedom of choice over the content of their education. Classroom attendance should not be compulsory but the course work must be handed in on an even basis. All in all, the curriculum must be based on three philosophies: students are not vessels waiting to be filled but fully-functional and aware humans being, that the purpose of education is not preparation for the next level but learning in the present that will consequently result in preparation, and that learning must be designed based on what’s best for the individual student.

One of the most pressing issues is that students are completely stripped of their ability to have a say in their day-to-day affairs. Students of any age, whether six or eighteen, are placed under the thumb of the educators and demonized if they attempt to step out of line. For high school students, the only solution is the organization of every single student into a fully participatory union divided into small, localized councils of no more than twenty students that feed into the union as a whole so that their voices may be heard. The current “student councils” are a farce made to look like a democracy, wherein over-achievers and the occasional class clown battle it out for a position of autocracy completely detached from the student body. Oftentimes, they bow to the demands of the administration and become nothing more than their proxies to try to legitimate anti-student policies. Private education must be scrapped – all education should be public and high-quality. Allowing the rich to buy their children a better education throws off the learning curve for public school students and siphons away valuable resources such as good teachers from the public schools. The place of schools in society must not be a place where they are bred to become productive citizens for the ruling class, but productive citizens for themselves and their fellow human. Schools of all levels, from pre-school to university, must be fully funded and free to all people from the cradle to the grave. Education is a right, not a privilege, and must be extended to all members of society and used for their personal direction of their own lives, not for them to find a place in a world of false dreams and envy for more and more.

Institutional education is not a bad thing, but when it becomes a haven for repression of curiosity and creativity then something must change. The fundamental philosophies, direction and place of education in society must change. Some cultures around the world today still value education as a means of enriching one’s life, and it is this attitude that must come to our side of the world.

New Economy

New Economy

By Rick Smith

Under the guise of economic prosperity, the upper class interests of Canada have attached a siphon to the resource of the general public. In this way, they have been able to consistently post record profits while simultaneously inflicting insufferable damage on the working class, the environment and the social fabric of Canada to distract the average person from their ravenous crusade for an infinite supply of wealth. To recover from this, Canadians must use the ideas of New Democracy to implement a new way to run the economy that allows for common ownership of the means of production (Mamlaka), community and individual management of smaller businesses, and democratic rule at the workplace. It is only through these ways that life can be enjoyed instead of remaining a trek to produce wealth for others while one waits their turn for riches that will never come.

Mamlaka is a concept drawn up to refer to community ownership of the means of production, but could go as far as to include national ownership. It is a Swahili word that means “right of ownership” and was selected because of the natural right of all people to control the mechanisms by which wealth is produced. This fits into the New Economy in several different ways. First off, it is important for a community to own the means of production that lie within their boundaries and extend little beyond them. The best example for this is a steel mill or other type of plant or factory, with the reasons for being placed in the hands of the community multitudinous. The discharge of the steel plant can have acute repercussions on the community, including environmental damage and health hazards. Not only would compensation through the profits earned be put into the community, but excesses could be avoided because of the loss of the reckless pursuit of profit. Factories typically surround poor neighbourhoods, so whatever money is made from production at the factory would go into improving the adjacent community’s aesthetics, structures, infrastructure and public services. In terms of what’s good for the workers, having to deal with members of a community as opposed to those with gold in their eyes would remove the burden of facing a financially powerful and aggressively oppressive collection of owners and their upper management puppets would likely mean greater results in the ongoing fight for good pensions, benefits and pay. It is well-documented that a common corporate practice is to take the money made at their individual chains at the end of every week and transfer it to their headquarters. This exploits communities not only of the profits that they earned but of the base of wealth and labour that they had to being with. With the means of production in the hands of the community, profits would not even leave town let alone transcend international borders. Essentially, Mamlaka is the belief that communities have a natural right to own the means of production within their borders, and that the same applies to different levels of government where the ownership must be of a wider scope, such as the case with railways being owned by the federal government.

Similar to Mamlaka, it is also advisable for Community Associations or Neighbourhood Congresses to seek out ownership of businesses. This could include convenience stores, grocery stores, ice cream parlours or anything of the kind. Unlike the means of production, however, these types of businesses do not qualify to be under Mamlaka under the principle that they are not depended upon for the finished product. Anybody who has taken a stroll in a more traditional marketplace than a mall (think of a Farmer’s Market) knows that the availability of independent retailers can be a good thing. Furthermore, opposition to big business and rampant competition is necessary because their reckless pursuit of cost-cutting leaves the workers as the inevitable victims while touching nothing of the multi-million dollar paychecks of the bosses. However, in a smaller marketplace whose products come from sources that are not competing for cheap costs, prices do not dip so low as to necessitate worker victimization. For this reason, while the marketplaces should be in public hands, the various stands should be managed by those with a good knowledge of the product in order to maximize the efficiency of the system. In order that this may happen, a degree of private business must be allowed, but the key is to limit their extent so as to limit competition. After all, what good is a marketplace that only sells one product? Ideally, this marketplace would have each stand selling unique products rather than place various stands in competition who sell the same produce, meat, dairy, baked goods or clothing. Additionally, there is a common practice in the business world that involves chains wherein the ownership transfers all profits made at the franchise to headquarters, effectively sapping the community dry of their money. Wal-Mart in particular is a common practitioner. Thus, chains should be discouraged and instead business should get back to its roots of being local and working for the community.

It is a common argument from the capitalist pundits that competitiveness is good because it keeps prices low for the consumer. While this is in some ways true, it is inescapable that competitiveness inevitably reaches the point where workers in the means of production become the victims, as has come to be the reality. Even with the means of production in the hands of the people, there is no guarantee that the retail sphere will not become a cataclysmic battleground. The solution to this problem is not without its complexities: small businesses must be encouraged and supported wholeheartedly by the community. To do this requires that the community councils and all members of the community alike donate their undivided support to local, small butchers, bakers, mechanics and convenience stores and turn away from chain stores. The advantages of small businesses as opposed to big businesses are many. For one, small business owners tend to live in the community that they operate in and are unlikely to take the money away from the community. This ensures that if the business does well, so too does the community. Another advantage is that small business owners tend to also work in their stores, as opposed to the investors and executives in large businesses who contribute nothing to the business yet make the most money off of it. Yet another advantage is that they are often more personable and integrated into the community than franchisees are and are unlikely to ruthlessly overcharge and more likely to provide quality service. Lastly, the bonds that they form in the community lay the foundation for the means of production being more interwoven with the business for the good of the common person. With the means of production in the hands of the community, the business is therefore answerable to the community, unlike large corporations who often dictate to their suppliers the prices that the retailer will pay – again, a common Wal-Mart practice.

In everything, the New Economy that will emerge must be made to work for the common person. The pursuit of profit for individual greed leaves communities shattered, tainting them with bitter divisions as well as sucking dry their wealth and placing it in the hands of a few manipulative people. For this reason, Mamlaka is desirable for the means of production and small businesses and marketplaces desirable as the means of distribution. In everything, people must look out for one another, and for this to happen there can be no allowance of greed.

The Story of Mouseland

Chairman's Note: This is a story by the Rev. Tommy Douglas, the man who is most famous for being a tireless campaigner for Medicare and prominent socialist activist. This is a story he told frequently at rallies to illustrate the perplexing nature of the Canadian voter.

The Story of Mouseland

as told by the Rev. Tommy Douglas

It's the story of a place called Mouseland. Mouseland was a place where all the little mice lived and played, were born and died. And they lived much the same as you and I do.

They even had a Parliament. And every four years they had an election. Used to walk to the polls and cast their ballots. Some of them even got a ride to the polls. And got a ride for the next four years afterwards too. Just like you and me. And every time on election day all the little mice used to go to the ballot box and they used to elect a government. A government made up of big, fat, black cats.

Now if you think it strange that mice should elect a government made up of cats, you just look at the history of Canada for last 90 years and maybe you'll see that they weren't any stupider than we are.

Now I'm not saying anything against the cats. They were nice fellows. They conducted their government with dignity. They passed good laws--that is, laws that were good for cats. But the laws that were good for cats weren't very good for mice. One of the laws said that mouseholes had to be big enough so a cat could get his paw in. Another law said that mice could only travel at certain speeds--so that a cat could get his breakfast without too much effort.

All the laws were good laws. For cats. But, oh, they were hard on the mice. And life was getting harder and harder. And when the mice couldn't put up with it any more, they decided something had to be done about it. So they went en masse to the polls. They voted the black cats out. They put in the white cats.

Now the white cats had put up a terrific campaign. They said: "All that Mouseland needs is more vision." They said:"The trouble with Mouseland is those round mouseholes we got. If you put us in we'll establish square mouseholes." And they did. And the square mouseholes were twice as big as the round mouseholes, and now the cat could get both his paws in. And life was tougher than ever.

And when they couldn't take that anymore, they voted the white cats out and put the black ones in again. Then they went back to the white cats. Then to the black cats. They even tried half black cats and half white cats. And they called that coalition. They even got one government made up of cats with spots on them: they were cats that tried to make a noise like a mouse but ate like a cat.

You see, my friends, the trouble wasn't with the colour of the cat. The trouble was that they were cats. And because they were cats, they naturally looked after cats instead of mice.

Presently there came along one little mouse who had an idea. My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea. And he said to the other mice, "Look fellows, why do we keep on electing a government made up of cats? Why don't we elect a government made up of mice?" "Oh," they said, "he's a Bolshevik. Lock him up!" So they put him in jail.

But I want to remind you: that you can lock up a mouse or a man but you can't lock up an idea.

No Violent Revolution

No Violent Revolution

By Rick Smith

“The more there are riots, the more repressive action will take place, and the more we face the danger of a right-wing takeover and eventually a fascist society.”

-the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., African-American civil rights activist

A troubling aspect of the right-wing is that they continually seek to paint leftism as necessarily involving revolutionary means of achieving their goals. This is done through a process known as “red-baiting”, in which obscurantist interests attack progressive activists as “commies”. In this way, they turn a population that seeks democratic means of achieving equality away from their champions. Fundamental to the ideas of the Canadian Renaissance, however, are that violence is an unacceptable means of initiating reform. As long as free political expression and assembly are allowed, no adherent of the Renaissance or other progressive forces would in their right mind advocate violence. After all, the Renaissance’s raison d’être is to advocate spreading knowledge and making cultural changes at a community level before making political changes, and then building on the unity of the common person to reinvent our democracy.

To be certain, those involved in the Renaissance movement are dissatisfied with the current fusion of big business and government. They dislike the elected-emperor nature of the top-down democracy that we currently have in place. However, as promoters of peace, disciples of the Renaissance must refuse to use the barrel of the gun to achieve political goals when avoidable, as it often is. The Rev. Dr. King’s quote introducing this essay denotes a correlation between the level of violent public resistance and the level of reaction by an anti-progressive government. While certainly by no definition of the word is Canada’s government fascist, they nevertheless display an affinity for the status-quo or to advance the interests of the upper class. This is evident in the axis of Liberals and Conservatives peddling neoliberal economics in the 1990s which resulted in downsizing, outsourcing, lay-offs, and a widening gap between rich and poor. However, for a movement that seeks to rid the country of that, the Renaissance is blessed with having a government that more often than not allows free expression. In this way, Renaissance ideas may be openly distributed without fear of legal repercussion – although contemptuous backlash from the ruling elites can only be inevitable. Taking to the streets in protest is a tried, tested and true of getting attention and should be used to challenge government activity that the people do not approve of. At all, though, the Renaissance is a movement of peace and mankind. To take up arms against one’s fellow human and killing is not a way to achieve lasting peace, whether the victim is a brutal police officer or an innocent bystander. Every human being is somebody’s child, was born, had their first giggle as they played, innocently saw the world as a place of love, and has loved and been loved. No human being has the right to take this from another. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?”

When deciding on how we wish to bring about the downfall of the corporate power-structure in Canada, we must consider that the options are not so limited to peace or war. Even so, as declared in two publications of the Canadian Renaissance Organization, the Renaissance Manifesto and Bottom-Up Organizing, the principle means of achieving democracy in the streets is to conceive it there. In accordance with believing in the need for a commonwealth of neighbourhoods, the basic beliefs it that units as low as city blocks must organize into legally democratic units. Despite the powerful media machine of high society, a combination of truth and this form of democracy can combine to place leaders who wish to see the empowerment of communities in the government that we presently do have. By taking this method we avoid the methods of uprisings, riots and rebellions, methods which would only fill with blood the streets that we seek to bring real democracy to. Revolutionary circles would have one believe that the capitalist-democratic complex can only be overthrown by violent seizure of the means of production, but there is evidence that change can be made without resorting to bloodshed. Multiple fronts of those opposed to the racist apartheid regime in South Africa, notably the African National Congress led by Nelson Mandela and the South African Council of Churches led by Desmond Tutu, and emerged victorious not by petrol bomb but by protest. The build-up of popular support for the end of apartheid summed up in the government bowing to the demands of a citizenry eager for universal suffrage. Mahatma Gandhi’s campaign to end British rule in India came to a conclusion after his philosophy of non-violence civil disobedience inspired the masses to silently rebel against the Crown. Even in the face of authoritarian regimes, the so-called Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia saw the downfall of the Communist dictatorship without a single shot being fired. While these are extreme examples, they make a point that a system need not be overthrown to be changed drastically.

Still, consideration must be paid to the possibility that all else fails. It is entirely possible that even after communities the country over organize and become fully capable of self-governance that the powers that be will not relinquish their hold. Such was the case of the Six Nations occupation of a portion of land slated for development near the southern Ontario town of Caledonia. After putting their claim into the courts in 1995, the land having been sold to Henco Industries Ltd. in 1992, the Natives waited patiently for years until in 2005 the province of Ontario approved plans to develop a subdivision of McMansions on the land. With their options now limited to do nothing and allow the land to be built over with no hope to ever reclaim it or to do something to call attention to their plight, protestors from the nearby reserve marched onto the land and blocked Henco’s access to the subdivision. The courts continually refused to hear the claims of the Natives, however, when an injunction was handed down ordering the protestors off the land. On April 20, 2006, the Ontario Provincial Police brutally attacked the Natives using taser guns and clubs which would be the catalyst to the chaos to come. Soon, Natives from the Reserve began pouring onto the occupation site to stop the OPP’s unprovoked violence. In a show of strength to the strong arming-OPP, the Natives dug a trench in Caledonia’s main street which rain by the site, pushed a van over an overpass and started a tire fire. Many saw their actions as violent and it served to show the degree to which Canadians are unwilling to listen to the claims of the Natives nor support them when they stand up to unjust police authority. This relates to the Renaissance in that it goes to show that even non-violent action can be met with excessive might from a feral police force. Now, nobody can deny that what happened in Caledonia should ever occur elsewhere. Nevertheless, it proves that sometimes kickback results when the government refuses to listen to reason. Consequently, while protests and political action should always be carried out peacefully, the use of mace and tasers by the police must not be tolerated. In the case of Caledonia, few could see past the surge in racial tension to listen to what happened that morning on the occupation site, and so the inner racist in many people emerged as they began to see the Natives as savage, unreasonable folk looking for a fight. This underscores both a need for unity between races as well as between communities, because the interests of the people of Caledonia and the Six Nations were both compromised by this divisive issue that could have been settled back in the 90s. Violence as initiated by someone seeking change will go nowhere, but exercising one’s fundamental right to self-defense should never be compromised.

Admittedly, it is a program without its uncertainties and flaws. The guidelines, however, remain simple: self-defense in the face of aggression, peace in the face of everything else. As demonstrated, revolution is therefore undesirable as a means of achieving the true society of community council-based socialism that seeks to unite mankind first in Canada and then across the globe. This must be done in peace, for in the words of Oscar Wilde, “When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her”.

Agents of Reaction and Stagnation

Agents Of Reaction and Stagnation

By Rick Smith

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."

-George Orwell, novelist

The gains won by the working class in their struggle for a more just share of the wealth produced by their labour are under frequent attack from an arsenal of ideological mercenaries, those that sell their oratory and intellectual skills to the highest bidder. It is these agents of right-wing thought that espouse unsubstantiated, half-witted, or otherwise fabricated “truths” to mislead the gullible and exploit the lack of time for genuine thought that most people suffer from. Their claims that socialism doesn’t work economically are most prominently that it slows innovation and efficiency and by extension the standard of living as a whole, that it necessarily invests too much faith in a bureaucratic and authoritarian government, or the favourite “it just doesn’t work”, all of which only stand to amateur scrutiny.

Addressing the matter of innovation and efficiency in a socialist economy must be taken in the context of the difference between socialism and capitalism. That is not to say that all socialists believe in the same economic brand in every sense of the term, nor all capitalists. Nevertheless, the central tenet to any capitalist theory remains that continual economic growth is desirable, let alone attainable, to maximize the wealth of those who participate in the system. Socialism relies on a slightly modified belief that economic growth, while desirable, cannot continually be sustained and that it should only be taken as far as is necessary to ensure a quality standard of living for all members of society. The reason socialists reject eternal economic growth is fundamentally environmental: that is, an economy is only as rich as the natural resources it can withdraw, and non-renewable and renewable resources alike can be exhausted so they must be managed wisely. So, when speaking of economic growth in socialist terms, it is important to understand the limits to the potential for an economy’s size before it collapses from its own over-consumption, which is possible in numerous ways. Innovation, despite the common myth, is not necessarily stumped in a socialist system. This belief comes from one of two sources: either the intrinsically spurious notion that advancements can only be made by individuals or the example set by the Soviet economies of the Eastern Bloc. To address the first, it is clear from many examples that innovation, even in capitalist economies, is done only through teamwork. The Canadian medical science duo of Frederick Banting and Charles Best may represent the public faces of the discovery of insulin’s use for treating diabetes, but there were multiple foundations laid before them that led to this discovery. Paul Langerhans, Oscar Minkowski, Joseph von Mering, and Eugene Opie, while possessing no such fame as Banting and Best, were just a few of the scientists who had done the work since 1869 that provided the studies that Banting and Best needed to make the connections that they did that would eventually lead to insulin’s use as a treatment for diabetes. In countless other innovations and discoveries, it was never just one person plucking an idea out of the air, but an addition to steps already taken. It is important to remember that advances in science and technology are made in teams, especially in this day and age, and not by individuals seeking personal glory. As for the examples of the Soviet Bloc, one must consider the nature of the Soviet economy. Because of the authoritarian government in the Soviet nations, control of the means of production was in fact in the hands of a bureaucratic mess that claimed to be a worker’s state but was in fact detached from those they professed to represent. Stringent quotas had to be met, and when the prospect for a more efficient method of production came about, managers the economy over passed up the opportunities to innovate because they knew that it would be met with only higher quotas. For this reason, the Soviet economy was never able to modernize and could not produce the quality of goods necessary to maintain a high standard of living. Without this, the system fell apart both because of backwardness and because of popular displeasure with these aspects and the authoritarian style of the Communist Party, not because socialism as a system cannot sustain itself.

On the topic of the myth of the necessity of dictatorship with socialism, there are multiple examples as well as basic logic to prove this incorrect. There is the common myth that socialism cannot equal anything but Stalinism, but also the belief of the likes of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman that the economic system is repressive. In terms of socialism and how it relates to Stalinism, nothing could be further than the truth than to suggest that the two cannot be mutually exclusive. Stalinism’s roots are that of an opportunistic strong man who manipulated the bureaucracy of an already too centralized government to consolidate his power without a thought in his mind for the common worker other than how they could produce wealth for his iron-fisted tyranny. This is in contrast to the basic principles of socialism, which advocates vesting the ownership of the means of production in the community as a whole, a principle fundamental to the Renaissance. Whereas a Stalinist would put all factories in the hands of the central government, Renaissance socialism would place it in the various Community Associations where they are located. While railways and airports would be put in the control of the federal government, the means of production should always be as localized as possible to ensure both community health and motivation for keeping up with each other’s technological advancement. Clearly, these are two conflicting ideas and could not co-exist in the same system. Furthermore, from the perspective of individual choice, socialists run the gamut from the dictatorships of a Stalinist to the anti-government sentiment of an anarcho-syndicalist, just as capitalism could either be implemented in Fracisco Franco’s fascist Chile or a libertarian paradise of Friedrich Hayek. Pertaining to the claims of Rand and Friedman that socialism’s emphasis on the working class eliminates personal freedom is centered on the principle that the right to become rich is an inalienable and natural right. When a squirrel gathers a nut, the squirrel gets a nut. When a wolf pack takes down a deer for kill, all the wolves eat. A squirrel does not gather nuts to nor does a wolf pack hunt to potentially be able to eat in the future. Similarly, humans must cast off the idea that we should work for tomorrow and instead being to collect the fruits of our labour today. It is natural that what work is put into a task should be received by a comparable output. The economy always maintains that sort of action-reaction effect: in the same way, while one person accumulates riches by moving ahead, others must sacrifice their own capital. As long as we continue to pursue this dream of riches in the future while sacrificing comfort today, we run the risk of never attaining either, and today that risk is never more acute or widespread than ever before. So, while a capitalist system promises the right to pursue riches and mongers fear of a communist dictatorship hiding behind every non-capitalist ideology, socialism indeed promises more than “everybody earning the same”.

The safety net of capitalist opposition to socialism is that it “simply doesn’t work”, the one that virtually everybody has heard and is brought out after the first two assaults fail. This is said so in the context of the failure of the Soviet Union and its allies to establish themselves permanently. To counter this argument therefore is to seek to understand the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet government beyond passing it up as being an impossible dream, which runs the risk of disgracing real debate. At the beginning of the history of communism is Karl Marx’s plan for the system. He said that it must occur in a rich capitalist Western European country first and spread from there, because these countries already had industry set up and would therefore not be reliant on a new authority to do so. Because subsequent revolutions in Germany, Italy and Hungary either failed or were very short-lived, Russia stood a lone, a country that was largely agricultural with only 10% of its workforce employed in industry. This made them dependant on the Communist Party which, following Lord Acton’s proclamation that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, became what the followers of Lev Trotsky called “state capitalists”. Thus, by the time Stalin challenged Hitler to a war, the Soviet Union was already corrupted beyond what either Marx or Engels would have ever wanted their ideas to be represented by. Nikita Khrushchev’s reforms only served to empower the nomenklatura, or the elite within the Communist Party and economic sectors. With the government so centralized, agriculture failed because of the detachment from those running the sector (the government) from the land and workers themselves who would otherwise have the knowledge to have made it work. Industry was told to produce with little thought for either environmental or supply and demand factors. Eventually, the Soviet Union had to import wheat from the United States and Canada because of the severe mismanagement of agriculture, and with little to offer them from industry, eventually faced economic hard times. When Mikhail Gorbachev came about with his campaign for perestroika, he was seeking to reform the most inefficient aspects of the economy. While these stayed generally true to the roots of the Communist Party, they were in no way similar to the original socialist doctrine, now that power was either in private investors or the government, neither of whom represented the common people. With glasnost, an alienated and disenfranchised people demanded an end to Communist Party rule. This collapse has been attributed to Ronald Reagan’s “heroic” pressuring of the Soviet Union and his knowledge that their system was not working. After the collapse of their system, despite bearing no similarities to socialist ideas of any side of the scale, the failure was attributed to a fundamental problem with socialism that simply could not be fixed. Rather than encourage legitimate public debate about how this came to happen, the upper class powers that be initiated a propaganda campaign to introduce a two-sided spectrum of ideologies to the 90s: neoliberalism and neoconservatism. By adding “neo” to the beginning of these former foes, liberalism became capitalist and conservatism became authoritarian. Understood in this context, with a preconceived understanding of what Renaissance socialism advocates, it should be clear that the events that preceded the downfall of the Soviet Union and therefore solely form the foundation of the maxim that “socialism/communism simply doesn’t work” are assumed and specious.

This is not all to suggest that when the Canadian Renaissance comes to fruition, socialism will be the automatic result. Nevertheless, socialism is compatible with the empowering of communities and workers, and not the state bureaucracies or gluttonous upper class that Stalinism and capitalism do respectively. The Renaissance’s economics are a form of socialism that believe in placing economic power in the hands of those who produce the wealth and to safely keep them within the hands of the local communities. This does not resemble Stalinism or post-Stalinist USSR and should not be treated as such.

Community Ownership as Mamlaka

Community Ownership as Mamlaka

By Rick Smith

Wealth that is made through the labour of working community members is currently being gluttonously drained by the ruling class. It is the members of the ruling class who own the means of production that are depriving communities of the ability to organize themselves into viable political units and increase the standard of living for their diligent members. To overcome this handicap in the system, the means of production must be reclaimed by the communities in which they operate so that the communities themselves benefit as well as the workers within the community. This requires defining what constitutes the means of production, justifying community take-over by exposing the evils of private ownership of the means of production, and outlining how a community can achieve this ambitious objective.

The means of production are, as the name suggests, the central tools from which wealth is produced. This includes things such as railways with which to transport goods, factories with which to produce goods, warehouses with which to store goods, and machinery and equipment with which to perform the labour. For this reason, it must be immediately clarified that the markets in which the goods are dealt are not considered to fall within the means of production, nor outlets from which services are offered. Thus, if as an example a factory were to come into the hands of the community in which it resides, it would be a fundamental case of the condition to strive for. However, a marketplace where goods are purchased by customers after they are bought by the vendors is not to be considered part of the means of production and should thus remain in the hands of private merchants. Furthermore, the means of production must be placed into ownership according to the region of impact. Continuing with the factory example, any community associations that the factory’s presence affects whether by its physical existence or the employment of a significant amount of the community’s population would own the factory. Profits from the factory would then be used to improve infrastructure, housing, schools, hospitals and other institutions that fulfill the needs of the community. A railway, though, could not conceivably be put in the hands of just a few communities nor be effectively managed by the multitude of communities it maintains a presence in. For this reason, the ownership of the railways as a means of production must be put into the hands of the federal government. It is therefore by a measure of whom it affects and practicality that determines which level of government should own a particular segment of the means of production. The placement of ownership of the means of production into the hands of a community should hereafter be known as “mamlaka” after the Swahili word for “right to ownership”.

Of course, this cannot be done without considerable opposition from the capitalist interests. Their trumpeting of such flimsy and increasingly unbecoming soundbites of “free markets” alongside spurious red-baiting will be heard once this idea emerges even among a handful of people. Of course, if one believes that libertarian free markets are necessarily a good thing because of the dubitable ablation of the word “free”, then the concept of community mamlaka would fall under the menacing category of “communism” and would hastily be discarded. Nevertheless, there is a plentitude of reasons to consider mamlaka as an alternative to unrestricted capitalism. Among them is the retrospective observation that prior to the influx of citizens into cities during the Industrial Revolution, communities were the primary means of organizing and managing resources, which at the time consisted mainly of agriculture products. For this reason, it is evident that microeconomic management of resources is entirely plausible. In addition to plausibility, there are both moral and logical arguments for this. As a moral argument, the allowance of private investors who have already accumulated ample fortunes to continue to deplete communities of their resources creates poverty and robs workers of a fair price for their labour. From a retail perspective, the Wal-Mart corporation has a practice of transferring any money earned at the end of the week from their stores across the United States to their corporate headquarters, and there is no reason to not expect a similar practice with their stores in other countries. This is the danger of corporate monopolies and is especially evident when the means of production are involved. Allowing corporations to monopolize the means of production empowers the ruling elite and further debases the resources of the working class. This continues the cycle of poverty by depriving families and communities of the assets necessary to advance themselves to financial freedom. To do so in the name of freedom is to do so in the name of a shadowy malevolence conveniently cloaked with a misrepresentative brand of freedom that in fact perpetuates the serfdom of the working class and their families. Allowing for mamlaka means that in addition to the payment that the workers receive for their work, they are additionally working for their communities and not to fill the bank accounts of an insatiable collective of plutocrats. Mamlaka also means that the community will not have to suffer the environmental damage from reckless profit-pursuit.

To reinvest the funds earned from mamlaka, the community must of course achieve ownership. This is indeed a daunting task, but must be done within the principles of the Canadian Renaissance movement. That is to say, we reject the Marxist call for violent revolution in favour of peaceful transition from capitalist democracy to community democracy. The right to property that is enshrined in the Canadian Constitution is defied by non-compensated nationalization of industry. However, the fact remains that a community that surrounds a factory is unlikely to possess the funds to buy the factory in the first place. Therefore, any community seeking mamlaka must seek the money elsewhere. Where luck is a factor, successful members of the community or former members looking to invest in the community could pool their resources to pull off the purchase, but this should not be relied on. Ideally, once community democracy is put in place – and it must be before mamlaka can take place – the provincial and federal governments would be completely answerable to community associations. With this in mind the need to purchase the means of production must be put on the front of the agenda of both the provincial and federal governments. Naturally, when a factory is close to bankruptcy – as they often are as a result of free trade with developing nations – they will sell for much less and it would thus be an optimal time to buy. It is fundamental in the process of achieving mamlaka that respect for the rights of property under the Canadian Constitution be respected and the need to acquire the means of production for the community as soon as possible under the best possible circumstances.

Mamlaka is absolutely essential to constructing a Canadian economy in agreement with the principles of community democracy. In this way, communities will be able to reinvest the profit at the place where the money was made, have the ability to regulate environmental impact, and have a harmonious partnership with the trade unions instead of the antagonistic relations that result from corporate-union co-existence.

In Defense of Affirmative Action

In Defense of Affirmative Action

By Rick Smith

"If you don't like affirmative action, what is your plan to guarantee a level playing field of opportunity?"

-Maynard Jackson, first black mayor of Atlanta

The continual legacy of discrimination in North America cannot be fully interpreted without a sentience for the robbery of labour-produced capital, land and community from, not to mention consistent social oppression of, those who have not fallen under a distinct religious, racial and sexual category. To counter this persistent trend in society, we must take steps to correct this problem, and this cannot be done without sacrificing the advantage of the white, male, Christian or all of the above cohorts. The only means of effecting justice to the subjugated elements of society is through affirmative action.

The trouble with affirmative action as a policy is that it meets with hostility by a population suffused with myths perpetuated by the right-wing agenda pundits. It appears that central myth is that affirmative action involves quotas and is therefore prone to involve the admission to university or hiring to a job of someone who is unqualified. Furthermore, affirmative action finds an audience in the narrow-thinking through the notorious sound-bite that it is “reverse discrimination”. To start, affirmative action does not involve quotas nor is it mandated by act of government. Instead, a workplace or institution takes up affirmative action as a policy to play their part in reversing the damage done by centuries of discrimination. To this end, they recognize that when someone who is white, male, Christian, or two or all of the above enters society, they do so with a distinct advantage in two ways. One of those ways is that they have folks similar to them in positions of power, and have the role models and connections necessary to reflect that trend. Secondly, they conclude that since humans organize into communities, it is conceivable that these communities can be as large as “white males”, or “black females”, or “Muslim Arab males”. Keeping that in mind, they also recognize that wealth is a component of communities and has been kept within these communities. To make affirmative action both practical and fair, the policy dictates that the company makes an honest, good-faith effort to search their applicants for racial minorities or women. The only cases in which quotas are set are when a judge rules that a company has racist hiring policies and must hire a certain number of minorities or women, and even these are often modest quotas. In fact, for businesses, one way to determine the number of members of disadvantaged cohorts is to determine the population of qualified members in their area. So, not only do they insist that those they hire be qualified, they hire proportional to the percentage of qualified members of disadvantaged cohorts in their area.

Nevertheless, the right-wing elements of society are typically less willing to listen to these arguments not because it collapses their network of lies, but also because it is simply against their fundamental beliefs. While claiming to not be racist, they oppose affirmative action for reasons mostly relating to individualistic approaches, feeling personally victimized by affirmative action, or they themselves have been wholly indoctrinated with nonsense tainted with racist undertones. Many people cannot warm up to affirmative action, and as it seems particularly so when it comes to race, as we live in a culture of individualism. They believe that they are separate from the society that enslaved and discriminated, and as such are not responsible for the repercussions. In essence, they believe that it should be about the “best man for the job, you do your best, you get the job”, (William Russ’ character in American History X). This begs the question not of who is responsible for the acts, but if the negative effects are still lingering today, then how can somebody not be held responsible? Affirmative action requires that people see themselves not as completely sovereign individuals in the past, present and future but rather components of a larger society and communities within that society. It is not about individual to individual interaction, but something much larger. This means that those who are white and male must be willing to give up the power they have accumulated on the grounds that it is illegitimate and was acquired through repressive, patriarchal and racist means. Just as women inherit the problems of sexism, Natives inherit the problems of genocide and cultural extermination, and blacks inherit the problems of having their people kept down and their wealth stolen for centuries, white males must come to terms with the past and seek to elevate those who continually suffer. In summary, the fact that we participate in society not as individual humans but as members of certain designations obligates us to ensure that these groups are equal before we can begin to see past them. Colour-blindness, for example, is a lofty dream unless we begin to correct our past mistakes. Otherwise, it is nothing but a cop-out of responsibility for the damage wreaked against non-whites.

Those who argue against affirmative action use the seemingly iron-clad argument that as affirmative action inherently involves discrimination, even towards a good end and because of the recognition of the current division of wealth and power as illegitimate, that we must search for other ways to equal things out. It would be wonderful if class were eliminated and this were not a concern, but even if that were to occur, the lingering psychological impact and the presence of discrimination still would not go away. The fact of the matter is that to transform Canadian, and indeed all societies, into these zones of equality, we must advance those who have suffered historically at the expense of those who have benefited from that suffering. It is not a slight to Caucasians or to males, but rather a demand that they cede their misbegotten power to those who have been barred from attaining it or had it outright stolen from them. If this happens, we will see many positive transformations in society. Many films seek to explore the roots of certain racial issues, and among these are race gangs. White neo-Nazi or supremacist gangs supposedly form in defense against other minority gangs. If this is true, those minority gangs can be eradicated by removing the need for them. That is to say, gangs most often form because of poverty – conflict logically being the natural result of being deprived of a livelihood in a dog-eat-dog atmosphere – and to remove inequalities would remove the imbalanced formation of minority gangs as opposed to white gangs. On top of that, greater social stability even among moderate elements would be attained. The Caledonia incident is a good example, where Native people occupied a housing subdivision just outside of the Southern Ontario town. The resulting assault by the Ontario Provincial Police left the community feeling attacked, and because of the history of suffering they have faced, there were predisposed tensions that resulted in an eruption. Hostilities materialized not just between Natives and the police but Natives and white residents of Caledonia. Had the Natives either been properly elevated in Canadian society or had reconciliation taken place prior to Caledonia, the crisis may have been averted. As it is, since Natives have no real power in Canadian society compared with others, they have no way of working on their behalf inside a government or society that at times allows the discrimination within to rear its ugly head. Evidently, policies which allow for the advancement of previously beaten down members of society would result in greater stability in society because conflict would not need to emerge as a means of dealing with problems.

It will come as no surprise that the more unprogressive folks will have a hard time understanding this. After all, they will either believe that Canadian society is utopian and are unwilling to shatter that dream, or they simply do not care as they are too hedonistic to recognize that they are not simply sovereign individuals as opposed to components of a functioning social web. Either way, it is learned, and to bring the opponents of affirmative action to a greater understanding of the roots, purpose and benefit of the policy is necessary in continuing a policy that has seen a phenomenon where, as Liberal commentator Steve Kangas put it, “between 1982 and 1995, the percentage of female managers and professionals in the U.S. rose from 40.5 to 48.0 percent; blacks from 5.5 to 7.5 percent, and Hispanics from 5.2 to 7.6 percent. By comparison, these groups form 51.2 percent, 12.6 percent, and 10.2 percent of the population, respectively. Progress has been steady, but still incomplete.” With results like that, and the morality to back it up, how can we continually reject such a protocol?