Introduction
I have pointed out that the major Canadian unions use cliches like “fair contracts.” In particular, I have pointed out in another post ( Fair Contracts or Collective Agreements: The Ideological Rhetoric of Canadian Unions, Part Five: The Ontario Public Services Employees Union (OPSEU)) that the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) has used such social-reformist or social-democratic cliches. In this post, I will show that OPSEU uses another social-reformist or social-democratic cliche: corporations should pay their “fair share of taxes.”
Let us look at this phrase for a moment. For corporations to pay their “fair share of taxes,” it is necessary that corporations in some way express something fair. If, for example, corporations were based on slave labour, would unions and social democrats call for the corporations paying their “fair share of taxes?” Or would they call for the abolition of such corporations since slave labour as such is unfair–no matter what the proportion of taxes corporations paid?
To call for corporations to pay their fair share of taxes assumes, without question, the legitimacy of corporations and the profit they receive. However, the profit corporations obtain is a result of the exploitation and oppression of workers (see for example The Money Circuit of Capital or Employers as Dictators, Part One). To talk about corporations paying their fair share of taxes involves implicitly accepting and legitimating such exploitation and oppression.
Hardly any of the so-called left question the use of such phrases by these unions.
I have compiled some quotes from publications or notices of OPSEU. For the most part, emphases (bold) are mine.
Corporations Paying Their Fair Share of Taxes: Another Cliche or Abstract Slogan of the Social-Reformist or Social-Democratic Left
- From Convention 2023, page 13: ( https://opseu.org/information/188959/188959/ ):
Whereas it is time the Ford government ensures banks, corporations and top
income earners in Ontario pay their fair share of taxes, closes tax loopholes, and fines those that don’t pay their taxes; - From about April 2023 ( https://opseu.org/event/toronto-international-workers-day-rally-and-march-to-queens-park-april-30/ ):
Toronto International Workers Day rally and march to Queen’s Park – April 30
OPSEU/SEFPO is joining dozens of other unions and activist groups in Toronto at the International Workers Day rally and march to Queen’s Park, organized by the Labour May Day Committee!
…
We demand real wage increases, keeping schools and health care public, affordable groceries, gas and basic goods, rent control and affordable housing, and for banks and corporations to pay their fair share.
- From February 10, 2023, OPSEU/SEFPO 2023/24 Pre-Budget Submission to the
Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs (https://opseu.org/news/186473/186473/), page 7:Finally, we need to make the banks and corporations pay their fair share in
addressing the cost of living crisis. This includes taxing the record profits of the
banks and corporations, making the top one per cent pay their fair share and restoring tax rates for the highest earners, ending tax breaks and tax loopholes for banks and corporations, and imposing fines on banks and corporations that fail to pay their taxes. - From November 4, 2021 (https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/opseu-sefpo-pleased-to-see-recovery-not-austerity-as-top-government-priority-804610727.html):
“I firmly believe in supporting small business by shopping locally,” said Thomas. “While I can get behind a ‘staycation’ tax credit to support travel and tourism in Ontario, it’s time that corporate taxes were raised, especially for those who’ve seen their profits skyrocket during the pandemic. It’s about time they pay their fair share and contribute to Ontario’s economic recovery too.
- From June 13, 2020 (https://opseu.org/news/thomas-wide-ranging-poll-reveals-seismic-shift-in-how-ontarians-value-public-services-workers/107420/ ):
But I’ve never seen results like the ones on a survey OPSEU asked pollster Nik Nanos to do late last month. The pandemic has spurred a seismic shift in the way Ontarians think about public services and public service workers. We have never been more appreciated for the incredible value and importance we bring to the table, our contributions to public health and safety and our role in stimulating the economy. Ontarians are ready to invest in public services, protect them, and ask the wealthy to contribute their fair share.
…
Ontarians want a recovery and a new normal built on strong public services, respect for front-line workers, and fair taxes for all.
- From August 2017 (https://opseu.org/information/tools-and-resources/autumn-view-edition-4-2017/17025/): The following is from the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) ,but it is on the OPSEU website as well:
Moral responsibility starts with fair taxation
…
Fair taxes first step towards moral responsibility
Solving many of the world’s problems — whether it’s cleaning up the environment or ending poverty — requires well-funded public services. Well-funded public services require both corporations and wealthy individuals to pay their fair share of taxes.No matter how good their intentions, corporations will not pay their fair share in taxes unless they are required to do so.
- From May 8, 2014 (https://opseu.org/information/minutes/convention-2014-minutes/12108/):
Convention 2014 Minutes
President’s Address
More than ever we need to get involved in the upcoming election. This is a crucial time for us and a time where we can have our voice heard and make a positive change in the province. We want to make Ontario a better place and give Ontarians confidence that things could get better today and for the next generation. Ontarians are about “good jobs, fair taxes, income equality” and about “building Ontario, not tearing it down. This is our vision and we need to act on this vision”, said Smokey.
- From March 21, 2014 (https://sefpo.org/information/general/robin-hood-tax-2/9680/):
Financial services corporations benefited for decades from the absence of meaningful regulation and are largely responsible for the crisis. It is time for them to pay their fair share of the costs of recovery. A Financial Transactions Tax would be the most effective instrument to secure this.
- From 2012 (https://region7areacouncil.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/we-are-ontario-make-it-fair-for-everyone/):
Instead of making harmful cuts that will hurt people, we believe that our governments should ask banks and corporations to pay their fair share. After all, corporate tax cuts and loopholes deprive the Ontario budget of billions of dollars each year, while these measures have failed to deliver on promises of greater corporate investments in jobs or our economy.
- From 2008 (https://opseu.org/information/general/history-of-opseu-2000-2008/9998/):
History of OPSEU: 2000 – 2008
…
2004
- Casselman calls on the government to restore taxation to rebuild public services. The province has a revenue problem, not a spending problem, she said. The first McGuinty Liberal budget introduces a new “health premium,” but it is a regressive tax, with the wealthy paying less than their fair share.
Lack of Criticism of Such Cliches by the So-Called Radical Organization Socialist Worker
Julius Arscott, a Toronto member of the far-left organization Socialist Action is a member of OPSEU and a former executive member of that organization. As far as I can tell, he has never provided any written criticism of such OPSEU’s cliches, including fair contracts and corporations paying their fair share of taxes. Is there really any wonder why the so-called radical left fails to organize workers into an effective fighting force?
Conclusion
OPSEU, in addition to using such a social-reformist phrase as “fair contracts” uses the social-reformist or social-democratic phrase and cliche of “corporations paying their fair share of taxes.” Such a phrase implies that if corporations somehow pay their fair share of taxes, then they are legitimate and have a right to continue to exist. Since corporations exist only by exploiting and oppressing workers, however, such legitimation papers over such exploitation and oppression. The radical left should criticize such cliches and the organizations which express them.
The Abolitionary 
Well I think paying taxes is more of a distributional question rather than one directly concerning the relations of production. It is about the division of surplus value between profits and wages (so, yes, of course it presupposes exploitative capitalist social relations). Presumably you would have no qualms about workers demanding better public services so I think higher taxes for capitalists falls under the same category (of course it is also true that tax revenues are spent not just on public services but also on things we might object to). Did not Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto call for progressive taxation? While I endorse your broader project of exposing social democratic reformist illusions, in this case I think you are choosing a target which is not really worth much consideration. There are far more important targets to aim at.
What would be helpful, in my opinion, is to show that to call for more progressive taxation, in today’s world of global financial flows of capital, is basically a utopian demand. It would simply drive capital out to other countries with more lax tax and regulatory regimes. Even more utopian are demands for something like a Tobin tax levied on financial transactions coordinated internationally, which obviously is never going to happen given divisions between different capitalist states. In my opinion, we need to concentrate on the critique of the totality of capitalist social relations, not get bogged down in debating the merits or otherwise of a couple of percentage points up or down in tax rates.
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Some disagreements here. Firstly, the issue of corporations paying their fair share of taxes is hardly just distributional. But let us say that it was just that. Even then, it is the social-reformist left who use this phrase to justify fighting only against distributional issues. To neglect this persistent use of an ideology that workers here often enough is to abandon ideological struggle.
Secondly, it is hardly just a distributtional issue that has little to do with relations of production. If workers believe that corporations can somehow pay their fair share of taxes, then the idea that they are exploited goes out the window. If corporations can somehow pay their fair share of taxes, then how can there be exploitation.
As for progressive taxation and references to the Communist Manifesto–I wonder what tax policies flow from Marx’s critique of capital in Capital and not from a document published 19 years earlier. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx also advocated, it seems, centralization of state power. In the Civil War in France, he seemed to criticize centralization of state power and advocate workers’ councils and communes a la Paris Commune.
As for expansion of public services–this is an abstract phrase used by the social-reformist left that needs to be criticized. I have criticized the demand for the expansion of public services that does not engage in any criticiism of the form of those public services. Education, for example, often involves oppression of students via grades and curriculum streaming. Expansion of the public services in such cases? The Chicago Teachers’ Union published a pamphlet on what students deserve–merely an expansion of the present form of educational services (such as an expansion of “art without any conception of how to integrate art into the curriculum rather than just “adding” art to it as an appendix or just another subject).
What of heatlh care? Expansion of heatlh care for research on treating cancer rather than on preventing cancer in the frst place?
The social-democratic left here in Toronto idealize the expansion of public services without any reference to how workers experience such public services often enough as oppressive.
As for critiques of the utopian nature of demands for progressive taxes in the context of globalization, that is perhaps a valid point–but I will leave that for those better equipped to provide such critiques. I have not studied the issue very much. Do you have any recommendations for posts, articles or books that address the issue?
More generally, the issue of taxes seems to be underdeveloped in Marxian theory. Ingo Stutzle seems to have published a book that is perhaps relevant for it in German (Google translate can translate it). John Brewery has also written about the different kinds of states that emerged in France and Ecouple of percentage points up or down in tax rates.ngland due to the different tax apparati, but I got lost in the details.
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