When belonging to a leftist organization called the Toronto Labour Committee (Ontario, Canada), I worked on, in a minor position, on some statistics related to financial campaign contributions for the Toronto elections. Not being satisfied with this, I proposed that we start trying to develop a class analysis of Toronto. I indicated, though, that I did not really know how to proceed in this. I sent this over the Toronto Labour Committee listserve, and the response was–silence.
The following attempts to fill in, however inadequately, that silence, but it is first addressed at the more macro level of Canada. If others can provide more detailed and sophisticated statistics and analysis (while still being comprehensible), I would much appreciate it.
I thought it would be useful to provide a list of some of the largest employers in Canada. The reason why I think such a list would be useful is that it provides at least a somewhat concrete picture of who really has power in society and the extent of that power. Since most social-reformist leftists ignore the power of employers and assume such power as a background which they can assume as constant, they then consider their reformist policies without calling into question such power.
I hope to expand this later. If readers have better statistics or statistics from other countries, feel free to comment. This should be a work in progress.
It is taken from the following: Largest Employers in Canada.
Obviously, there are different ways of considering what the largest employers are. At least four come to mind readily: according to profit, according to employment, according to total revenue (sales) and according to assets.
The following list of the 20 largest employers lists them according to (after-tax) profit for the year 2012. The profit is indicated in parentheses. The currency is Canadian.
Statistics relating profit to wages and salaries would be useful to obtain an approximate rate of exploitation (undoubtedly Marxian economists would find the procedure faulty, but if so, then they should provide their own correctives at a concrete level–unless they are only academics who are little concerned with bridging the gap between theory and the more empirical experiences of the working class).
1. The Royal Bank of Canada ($7 billion 442 million)
2. The Bank of Nova Scotia ($6 billion 466 million)
3. Toronto Dominion Bank ($6 billion 367 million)
4. The Bank of Montreal ($4 billion 115 million)
5. Imperial Oil ($3 billion 766 million)
6. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) ($3 billion 339 million)
7. Suncor Energy ($2 billion 783 million)
8. BCE ($2 billion 763 million)
9. Canadian National Railway ($2 billion 680 million)
10. Potash ($2 billion 79 million)
11.Thomson Reuters Corp. ($2 billion 70 million)
12. Husky Energy ($2 billion 22 million)
13. Great-West Life Co. ($1 billion 930 million)
14. Canadian Natural Resources ($1 billion 882 million)
15. First Quantum Minerals ($1 billion 772 million)
16. Goldcorp Inc. ($1 billion 749 million)
17. Manulife Financial ($1 billion 736 million)
18. Rogers Communications ($1 billion 730 million)
19. Sunlife Insurance ($1 billion 674 million)
20. Power Financial ($1 billion 626 million)
If you sum up the amount of profit for these 20 companies, you get $59 billion 991 million.
To get an idea of the meaning of this amount of profit, we can do several calculations:
- Divide this amount by the total population of Canada: 37, 177, 886 (estimated, March 10, 2019, but for calculating convenience let us say 40,000,000): That is $1500 extra per year more for every person in Canada.
- Divide this amount by the total employed in February 2019: 18 million 991 thousand workers (for convenience, 19 million): An extra $3157 per year for every employed worker.
- The redistribution of all profits according to the whole population or to those who are employed would probably not have a great impact on many individuals and families; of course, a more refined analysis, with incomes lower than the average being affected relatively more than others with incomes greater than the average.
- This can be seen if we divide this amount by the total unemployed in the last three months of 2018: 1 million 30 thousand (for convenience, 1 million): That is $59,991 per year more for every unemployed Canadian.
- If we combine #3 and #4, and divide by the sum of the two (unemployed, 1 million, + employed, 19 million, or 20 million in total): $3000 per year extra for every unemployed or employed worker. Again, as an average, the redistribution would not have a major impact if spread out equally among all employed and unemployed workers. Its impact would be all the greater the more the redistribution would be limited to those who are unemployed or to those with limited incomes. However, this does not mean that such redistribution of profits would merely involve propping up the level of income of unemployed and those with limited incomes. As I have argued in several other posts on the nature of socialism, a substantial portion of profits would be allocated to an investment fund that would be distributed nationally, regionally and locally to various communities. Some profits might be allocated initially to provide for those who are unable to work, but with the elimination of a market for workers and the abolition of a class of employers, workers would increasingly not need to resort to such supplementary funds.
- It should be remembered that the above statistics are limited only to the 20 largest private companies. There are many other companies with profits, and if all those profits were included in the calculation, the impact on total income would likely be much larger and more significant than it is here indicated.
The position of the social-reformist left, of course, is for some kind of redistribution of such profits–but not to the complete redistribution of such profits. For them, there is such a thing as “fair share of the profits” via changed tax policies.
For example, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) published a work by Toby Sanger entitled Fair Shares: How Banks, Brokers and the Financial Industry Can Pay Fairer Taxes (page 23) (The title itself shows confusion since something that is fairer need not be fair):
As other Canadians are paying for the costs of the financial crisis, Canada’s under-taxed financial industry should also be required to pay its fair share.
Again, at the provincial level, in Ontario on the Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP) website (https://www.ontariondp.ca/platform)-a social-reformist political party linked to unions).
Protect middle class families by having the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations pay their fair share
At the federal level, the NDP, in its pamphlet POLICY OF THE New Democratic Party of Canada EFFECTIVE FEBRUARY 2018, page 3 reads:
Ensuring that large profitable corporations pay a fair share of taxes.
According to the money circuit of capital, though, there is no such thing as a fair share since it is inherently unfair to treat human beings as means for obtaining more money (see The Money Circuit of Capital).
What do you think of the profits of such companies? What is the source of such profits? What should be done with them? Should workers control them? Communities at various geographical levels?
Is there such a thing as a fair share under existing economic conditions of a class of employers controlling our selves.
The Abolitionary 