Introduction
I had a debate of sorts with Marianne Cerilli, a self-defined social activist located in Winnipeg (she has her own business in the area). In the debate, she implied that “green labour” and a “just transition” would solve current economic, political, social and environmental problems.
I questioned her view, but she vaguely referred to a “circular economy.”
When I asked her to explain what she meant by the term, she was evasive. I then copied part of the page on this blog The Money Circuit of Capital , based on the first chapter of volume two of Marx’s Capital.
I then did some research on the issue (with the help of artificial intelligence, which is indeed a useful tool in gaining an understanding of some issues, just as the internet is), and wrote a reply to her claim. In her reply, she claimed that it looked like a reply based on artificial intelligence. When I pointed out that I had a doctorate in the philosophy of education from the University of Manitoba and had a number of articles published, she still was evasive, claiming that she had written a lot on the issue.
Frankly, radical leftists need to engage critically with these so-called radicals who offer vague solutions to real problems.
The Rhetoric of Social-Reformist Leftists
I did some further research, trying to see if Cerilli had used some cliches used by the social-reformist left. She has. In particular, she has persisently used the cliche that 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–see below a quote from this post, from Elizabeth Anderson’s book). 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.
She has, as well, occasionally used such cliches as “fair wages.” Leftists and unions persistently claim that, through collective bargaining and a collective agreement, there can arise somehow (by magic?) “a fair and equitable collective agreement.” There can be no such thing as long as there exists a market for workers, where human beings are treated as things and as means for purposes over which they have little control. To claim otherwise is to bullshit workers–and workers deserve much better than this.
In the private sector, all profits come from the surplus of value produced by workers. The wage they receive, even if unionized, is less than the value they produce (see for example The Rate of Exploitation of General Motors Workers ). In the public sector, workers receive a wage, but have to subordindate their wills to the power of the employer (the government); they have little say over operations that control their lives. They, like private-sector workers, are means for purposes not defined by them (seeThe Money Circuit of Capital). What, then, is a “fair wage” under such circumstances?
She has also used the phrase “decent work” occasionally. By decent work does she mean the following characterization of the typical power relation at work (whether unionized or not)?
Elizabeth Anderson, in her book Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk About It) questions the assumption of the social-democratic or reformist left by pointing out how the power of employers resembles the power of communist dictators (pages 37-39):
Communist Dictatorships in Our Midst
Imagine a government that assigns almost everyone a superior whom they must obey. Although superiors give most inferiors a routine to follow, there is no rule of law. Orders may be arbitrary and can change at any time, without prior notice or opportunity to appeal. Superiors are unaccountable to those they order around. They are neither elected nor removable by their inferiors. Inferiors have no right to complain in court about how they are being treated, except in a few narrowly defined cases. They also have no right to be consulted about the orders they are given.
There are multiple ranks in the society ruled by this government. The content of the orders people receive varies, depending on their rank. Higher- ranked individuals may be granted considerable freedom in deciding how to carry out their orders, and may issue some orders to some inferiors. The most highly ranked individual takes no orders but issues many. The lowest-ranked may have their bodily movements and speech minutely regulated for most of the day.
This government does not recognize a personal or private sphere of autonomy free from sanction. It may prescribe a dress code and forbid certain hairstyles. Everyone lives under surveillance, to ensure that they are complying with orders. Superiors may snoop into inferiors’ e- mail and record their phone conversations.
Suspicionless searches of their bodies and personal effects may be routine. They can be ordered to submit to medical testing. The government may dictate the language spoken and forbid communication in any other language. It may forbid certain topics of discussion. People can be sanctioned for their consensual sexual activity or for their choice of spouse or life partner. They can be sanctioned for their political activity and required to engage in political activity they do not agree with.
The economic system of the society run by this government is communist. The government owns all the nonlabor means of production in the society it governs. It organizes production by means of central planning. The form of the government is a dictatorship. In some cases, the dictator is appointed by an oligarchy. In other cases, the dictator is self- appointed.
Although the control that this government exercises over its members is pervasive, its sanctioning powers are limited. It cannot execute or imprison anyone for violating orders. It can demote people to lower ranks. The most common sanction is exile. Individuals are also free to emigrate, although if they do, there is usually no going back. Exile or emigration can have severe collateral consequences. The vast majority have no realistic option but to try to immigrate to another communist dictatorship, although there are many to choose from. A few manage to escape into anarchic hinterlands, or set up their own dictatorships.
This government mostly secures compliance with carrots. Because it controls all the income in the society, it pays more to people who follow orders particularly well and promotes them to higher rank. Because it controls communication, it also has a propaganda apparatus that often persuades many to support the regime. This need not amount to brainwashing. In many cases, people willingly support the regime and comply with its orders because they identify with and profit from it. Others support the regime because, although they are subordinate to some superior, they get to exercise dominion over inferiors. It should not be surprising that support for the regime for these reasons tends to increase, the more highly ranked a person is.
Would people subject to such a government be free? I expect that most people in the United States would think not. Yet most work under just such a government: it is the modern workplace, as it exists for most establishments in the United States. The dictator is the chief executive officer (CEO), superiors are managers, subordinates are workers. The oligarchy that appoints the CEO exists for publicly owned corporations: it is the board of directors. The punishment of exile is being fired. The economic system of the modern workplace is communist, because the government— that is, the establishment— owns all the assets,1 and the top of the establishment hierarchy designs the production plan, which subordinates execute. There are no internal markets in the modern workplace. Indeed, the boundary of the firm is defined as the point at which markets end and authoritarian centralized planning and direction begin.
Most workers in the United States are governed by communist dictatorships in their work lives.
Proof of Cerilli’s Reformist Cliches
Here is proof of her use of the cliche that corporations should pay their “fair share of taxes” and other social-reformist cliches (bolded words and phrases are often my emphases]:
- From May 8, 2024 ( https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/2024/05/08/the-clear-benefits-of-progressive-taxes ):
The clear benefits of progressive taxes
Although things have changed since 1995 after years of austerity and anti-tax rhetoric it is still true — people, including people in corporations, must be willing to pay their fair share of taxes, knowing that is how they will receive quality public services. Taxes are how we share, how we take care of each other, and how we pay for things we do best collectively, like infrastructure, and health care, education, and social services. Taxes pay for this thing called civilization. Taxes are good.
2. From around March 15, 2000 (according to artificial intelligence–ChatGpt ( https://www.gov.mb.ca/legislature/hansard/36th_3rd/vol_037/h037_4.html)
The other point then is, what we really have to see is a change in the tax system so that people do pay, but they pay through their taxes. Then it does not even just rest on the individual. It rests on society and those that generate wealth for the large part in our society, industry and business and commerce. We could get into a long discussion about the inequities of our tax system and how we are not doing a very good job of ensuring that they invest into the community through paying, what I would say are, fair share in terms of taxes to ensure that the employees that work in their factories and offices do, indeed, have adequate health care and education.So that is the big picture and I do not know if the minister is now going to defend the banks that some of his colleagues had and claim that the banks indeed are paying their fair share…. [The implication is that banks should pay their “fair share.”]
3. From October 23, 1996 (according to artificial intelligence, ChatGpt) ( https://www.gov.mb.ca/legislature/hansard/36th_2nd/vol69/h069_7.html ):
I just want to say that the reason that we support unions is so that it is there when you do need it. You support it when you do not need it so it is going to be there when you do need it. That is something that this government does not seem to understand. It is something that they do not seem to care about, and that idea of solidarity that you support others in your workplace in their support for the union when things may not be in a conflict state so that when you do need the union it is going to be there for you and you are going to have a chance to maintain a decent work environment and standard of living and some fairness in dealing with the employer in your workplace. [some fairness–yes–unions are generally better than no unions since they do provide “some fairness” in the sense of better working conditions and wages/benefits, but such conditions hardly constitute “decent work.”]
4. From around December 12, 1995 ( https://www.gov.mb.ca/legislature/hansard/36th_2nd/hansardpdf/6.pdf ):
The government and others who share their view try and make people feel that they have no responsibility to their community, and this is the argument. I could not believe hearing the debate opposite with members trying to defend bank profits of more than $5 billion in one year, trying to defend that and saying that there should not be an increased tax so that those profits are going to be reinvested into community services. I cannot believe that they would try to encourage people that they would not want to pay taxes, particularly corporations, thinking that corporations should not want to pay their fair share of taxes.
5. From September 19, 1995 ( https://www.gov.mb.ca/legislature/hansard/36th_1st/hansardpdf/31.pdf):
In 1993, the combination of all of these tax increases by the provincial Conservative government amounted to about $400 for a family of four in Manitoba So what this government is doing is stacking the debt against having more fair taxation in our province, because the other thing that they are allowing with this provision in the legislation is that as long as the total revenue in the tax system of Manitoba does not increase they can continue to change our taxes and from collecting taxation for businesses and corporations and passing it off onto citizens and families, which is what I would say is causing or contributing to some of the problems we are having where individual families have taken more than their fair share of the tax burden, and we have had governments, Conservative and Liberal governments, give more and more tax breaks to wealthy corporations and individuals.
The issue for Cerilli is not whether corporations’s profits are derived from exploiting workers and therefore unfair by their very nature but rather the different issue of the relative proportion of taxes that corporations pay in relation to families and citizens. The implication is that if corporations somehow pay a higher share of taxes, then all will be good.
6, From April 13, 1994 (https://www.gov.mb.ca/legislature/hansard/35th_5th/vol_05.html):
The deficit is caused because governments, Conservative governments and Liberal governments, yes, Liberal governments, have refused to make industry pay their fair share.
7. From April 30, 1993 ( https://www.gov.mb.ca/legislature/hansard/35th_4th/vol_53.html):
They fail to talk about the side of the equation where that money used to come from, how much of revenue used to come from industry. Oh, we could say, that is just the way it is, and we do not have money to fund education. The argument that industry will just leave if we have them pay their fair share of costs for things like education, educated people that they are going to benefit from in their workplaces, well, they will say that those industries will leave, and then they will bring in policies like the trade agreements which make that even easier.
8. From June 18, 1992 ( https://www.gov.mb.ca/legislature/hansard/35th_3rd/vol_89a.html):
This kind of legislation fits in with the whole approach of the Tory agenda as directed by their corporate backers. It is so clear, when we see the communique from the Chamber of Commerce, who the real designers are in the party across the way, but it fits right in with their attack on Government Services, the tax breaks for corporations, the fanaticism with the deficit and, as I said, the other cornerstone of Tory policy, to attack labour and to attack workers’ rights to ensure that they have fair wages, decent working conditions and decent pensions. Those are the kinds of things that organized unions are there for. They, I do not think, have ever been shown to put undue pressure on any corporations. Some of the best organized unions in our country, and in our province, are in industries that are certainly still making large amounts of profit. They are not hurting the corporate interest at all.
It always amazes me how this government continues to show its true colours, how they devalue workers, how they devalue the work that workers do and try to treat workers as a commodity, thinking that they can push them around and set up legislation that is going to do that, set up legislation that is going to infringe on their democratic right to organize and to sign up to join a union.
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The communique from the Chamber of Commerce talks about its mandate to bring about changes in labour legislation that will improve the climate for business and investment in Manitoba. It is so one‑sided how this fits in with the economic policy of this government that they cannot see that having employees who are working in decent working conditions, who are making a decent wage, can contribute more effectively to an economy. We are going to have a standard of living in this country that will attract more development of industry in different sectors to develop our economy.
But in a capitalist economy workers are commodities–whether unionized or not. They sell their capacity to work to the employer, and employers then have the power to direct their work as they see fit (subject to legislation and the collective agreement, if unionized).
For example, this is the management rights clause from the collective agreement between Stella’s Circle Community Services Inc. and the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Public and Private Employees (NAPE–a union affiliated to NUPGE), which expires on March 31, 2028, page 4:
Article 4 Management Rights
4.01 Management Rights
The Union recognizes that the Organization has the sole and exclusive right, except as otherwise specifically limited by the express provisions of this Agreement, and subject to the grievance procedure contained herein, to determine all matters pertaining to its business, the conduct of its management of the Organization and its affairs, the right to hire, the right to evaluate performance, classify, discipline, suspend, discharge for cause, promote or demote, transfer or layoff, and require employees to abide by Organization rules and regulations, safety systems and standards consistent with this agreement.
That clause includes such management rights as hiring, disciplining, suspending, discharging and evaluating the peformance of employees–subject to the limits of the collective agreement and relevant legislation. Workers are commodities, and to imply that they cannot be commodities in a capitalist society distorts the real nature of the situation of workers in a capitalist society.
Management rights hardly are “fair” since they permit management to control workers’ lives in various ways and, ultimately, to treat them as means for purposes undefined by the workers themselves (see The Money Circuit of Capital and Employers as Dictators, Part One). How can wages in any way compensate for the loss of freedom of public-sector workers (and workers who work for employers in general)? Perhaps some “leftist” can explain it. More likely, though, the so-called left will remain silent about the issue.
My argument from another post also applies to the issue of “fair wages”:
Social-reformist leftists and unions persistently claim that, through collective bargaining and a collective agreement, there can arise somehow (by magic?) “a fair and equitable collective agreement.” There can be no such thing as long as there exists a market for workers, where human beings are treated as things and as means for purposes over which they have little control. To claim otherwise is to bullshit workers–and workers deserve much better than this.
Cerilli’s idea that corporations can somehow pay their fair share of taxes, her idea that there can be such a thing as “fair wages,” “decent working conditions” and other typical leftist and union cliches do not go beyond the limits of trying to humanize capitalism–not transforming it into a socialist society without a class of employers. Her socialism is really a “humanized” capitalism of the pre-1970s era.
Conclusion
I have shown that Marianne Cerilli uses typical social-reformist cliches, such as “corporations paying their fair share of taxes,” “fair wages,” “decent work,” and “decent working conditions.” These reformist cliches simpy ignore the real nature of working conditions of workers in a society dominated by the class power of employers, with its associated economic, political and social structures.
Workers in the private sector are necessarily exploited and oppressed. Corporations can never pay their “fair share of taxes” since all their profit is derived from exploiting workers. Her use of such a phrase indicates a complete lack of understanding of the nature of the kind of economy in which we live. Furthermore, since they produce more value than they receive without any say into what the surplus of value that they produce is to be used for, they can hardly receive any such thing as a “fair wage.”
Workers in the public sector are necessarily oppressed, and no wage that they receive can compensate for such oppression, and therefore there is no such thing as a “fair wage” for either private-sector or public sector workers. The same applies to such cliches as “decent work” and “decent working conditions.”
I fail to see much difference between Cerilli’s cliches and those of many unions.
So much for the “progressive left” in Canada. Workers deserve much better.
The Abolitionary 