What’s Left, Toronto? Part Seven

As I indicated in an earlier post, on September 19, 2018, several leftist activists gave a talk about what was to be done in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The talks were posted on the Socialist Project website on October 7, 2018 (also posted on YouTube) (What’s Left, Toronto? Radical Alternatives for the City Election). As I indicated in my earlier posts, over the next few months, I will be analyzing some or all of the talks from a Marxian perspective.

This post is the last post in the series since it looks at the last talk by David Kidd, introduced by Herman Rosenfeld as a community worker, trade-union activist and as a political activist. Mr. Kidd was supposed to talk about some of the challenges and options the left have.

Mr. Kidd opened by claiming that he was going to provide a Twitter version of some of the left-activist projects in Toronto since he had limited time. It was indeed a Twitter version–and the weakest “analysis” of all the talks.

Mr. Kidd first outlines how, in the 1970s, he took a stance between either the choice of liberal or Tory (conservative) at the municipal, provincial or federal level (Canadian politics is usually analyzed at one or more of these three levels). Mr. Kidd acted negatively by tearing down any Conservative signs since he aimed to ensure, where he immediately lived, that it was a Tory-free zone.

He then refers back to the 1950s and 1960s. The Toronto Labour Council was instrumental in obtaining a public transit system and a public education system. In the 1950s, it campaigned against the racist discrimination of blacks and other people of colour to gain access to restaurants and other places as well as against the anti-Semitic and racist policies of exclusion to recreational facilities.

The 1970s and the 1980s were a period of struggle of massive community mobilizations and organizations for, for example,tenants’ rights and against gentrification. Women’s groups emerged to fight for their rights. This period also saw opposition to the far right and to fascist movements. A movement against carding also was initiated as was a movement for police accountability. The fight for gay and lesbian rights started to develop despite violent attacks against gays and lesbians.

Fights against business-oriented initiatives, such as the attempt to bring the Olympics to Toronto, were defeated in 1996 as organizations for the rights of the homeless fought back. The left gained a victory in this instance.

The 1990s and 2000s saw the public-sector unions and environmental groups fight back against privatization. This period saw the fight against the amalgamation of the city and the emergence of such leftist organizations as Black Lives Matter, No One Is Illegal and the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP).

Mr. Kidd then tries to explain the shift towards a right-wing populism because of two economic crises in Toronto and the increase in homelessness. Deindustrialization has led to a decrease in decent paying jobs. The emergence of a substantial working-class poor has led to their blaming others and to a shift towards right populism. The municipal left also failed to offer solutions to problems they were facing.

Municipal activism is rooted in the communities in the city, but so too is the fight for democracy. The fight for democracy is like the fight against oppression. Both involve a daily fight and should not be conceived as something that you win and then is finished.

What is necessary is to renew the left’s analysis and its strategic sense of how to build working-class power.

Mr. Kidd then refers to Doug Ford’s elections and the need to build community councils again. In particular, it is necessary to build parent councils once again that, in the past, had some decision-making power at the school-board level.

Ultimately, the left cannot count just on the elected officials at City Hall but need to build local community organizations that will fight for people’s needs.

Mr. Kidd then claims that, as socialists, the left need to build programmatic unity on where it needs to go. The fight against the Conservative Harris Ontario government in the past was purely negative–to stop Harris. Consequently, welfare rights 20 years later are still at the same level. Subsequent governments did not raise them nor did they undo some of the attacks on welfare rights instituted by the Harris government. The same logic applies to subsequent governments after Ford loses power, Mr. Kidd implies–unless the left does something different.

What Mr. Kidd means by “programmatic” is what the audience has heard from other presenters, who have shown what is necessary in order to talk to people about where to go. The free transit movement and Stefan Kipfer’s presentation on housing are examples of what needs to be done (descriptions of these are found in my previous posts on this topic–as are criticisms of them). The left cannot count on the market to achieve its goals. It needs public land banking, expropriation, public housing, co-ops and nationalized affordable housing. It needs to maintain free public education and healthcare. The left needs to protect and expand public assets in Toronto.

Finally, what is needed is a Municipal Human Rights Code since discrimination is still the daily experience of queer, racialized and elder members of Toronto. What is needed is a city that is for all its citizens and not just taxpayers.

Mr. Kidd’s description of various struggles sounds very radical–but it really is a rehash of social-democratic demands of an expanded public sector, supplemented by non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) that are linked to community organization. Mr. Kidd’s socialism is really welfare capitalism. Not once does Mr. Kidd question the power of employers as a class.

Mr. Kidd mentions necessary community organizations required to fight for what he calls socialism, such as the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), and yet as I showed in a previous post, OCAP, although it recognizes economic coercion via the power of employers as a class with one hand, ignores it subsequently when dealing with social proposals and solutions with the other hand (see “Capitalism needs economic coercion for its job market to function” (Ontario Coalition Against Poverty: OCAP)

Mr. Kidd, like much of the social-democratic left, idealizes the public sector. What is needed, for them, is the expansion of the public sector. The social-democratic left, however, rarely inquire into the adequacy of the public sector to express either the interests of public sector workers or the interests of workers in general. They assume that the existing relations will prevail and that all that will change is the quantitative weight of the public sector relative to the private sector.

Mr. Kidd, like many of the social-democratic left, do not bother to consider the adequacy, for example, of the current educational system in terms of quality. What they propose is an expansion of services under present conditions rather than a radical restructuring of education in relation, for instance, to work.

Rather than repeat what I have written elsewhere, I refer the interested reader to links to some of my publications and writings as found on my home page. I am adding another link that is directly more relevant to educational issues: A Deweyan Review of the the Chicago Teachers’ Union Publication The Schools Chicago Students Deserve: Research-Based Proposals to Strengthen Elementary and Secondary Education in the Chicago Public Schools (2012).

Although Mr. Kidd’s proposals may help people in one way or another, they also can be co-opted and integrated into the capitalist economic and political structures. Each proposal he has made has nothing specifically socialist about it. Such proposals are socialist only if they are linked to a more radical program of eliminating both the power of employers as a class and the social, economic and political structures associated with that power.

The same could be said of Mr. Kidd’s reference to the need for a Municipal Human Rights Code. Although this and other such measures may help workers and citizens in particular situations, such measures fail to address the issue of the power of employers as a class. None of the references made by Mr. Kidd have any link to questioning the power of employers as a class. They are reformist measures as such. Furthermore, in a post that I will send in the distant future, I will point out the inadequate nature of “human rights” personally, when I filed a human rights complaint for political discrimination (something which Mr. Kidd fails to mention–typical of the social-democratic left).

Mr. Kidd did indeed provide a twitter version of the struggles in which he has been involved. Such struggles are reformist through and through. This should surprise no one. Mr. Kidd has been a Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) organizer and executive member of local 79. He evidently prides himself on his activism–but there is no indication whatsoever that Mr. Kidd has ever intended, through his activities, in contributing to the creation of a new kind of society without classes in general and without employers in particular. His reference to “decent paying jobs” tips his hand.

There is no indication that Mr. Kidd has ever intended to contribute to the radical restructuring of social, economic and political institutions in such a way that human beings finally control their own life process rather than having their lives controlled by objectified social, economic and political structures which they create but do not control. His aim is to achieve “decent paying jobs” supplemented by a welfare state–hardly anything “radical.” Mr. Kidd, like much of the social-democratic left, want to turn back the clock to the 1950s and 1960s, when workers obtained increased wage gains and expanded their benefits–but he forgets that the economic times have changed and that the capitalist economy is not the same as it was then. Moreover, even during the 1950s and 1960s, workers were treated as things–something about which Mr. Kidd is silent. As long as workers receive “decent paying jobs” while being treated as things, Mr. Kidd will be content. Such is the implicit view of those who refer to “decent paying jobs.”

In general, then, the series of talks which claim to be radical fall far short of being radical. They are all in one way or another reformist and have no intention of questioning the class structure of modern society. Even the most radical of them–presented by Michelle Lee of No One Is Illegal–fails to live up to its own potentiality.

This series of talks should have been named: What’s Left, Toronto? Social-Reformist Alternatives for the City Election.

I will leave these radicals to their own delusions. I hope that by exposing the limitations of such views, others will abandon such delusions and see more clearly what needs to be done.

What’s Left, Toronto? Part Five

The fourth presenter is preceded by a few comments from Herman Rosenfeld, the moderator of the series. Mr. Rosenfeld made the following remarks about the next presenter, James Nugent: “James was involved in some of the struggles to try to reclaim and create decent jobs in a number of neighbourhoods in Toronto.” I had occasion to remark about a similar comment when Mr. Rosenfeld opened the series. I wrote in the first post:

He [Mr. Rosenfeld] mentions “decent, secure jobs with decent pay.” Why any self-declared socialist feels compelled to declare, at this stage of capitalism, to pair the term “decent” with “jobs” and “decent” with “pay” other than fear of alienating his social-reformist allies or due to opportunism is beyond me.” I leave it to the reader to make her/his own judgement. (See further What’s Left, Toronto? Part One).

Now, let us proceed with an analysis of James Nugent’s presentation. Mr. Nugent refers to community benefits agreements (CBAs). They have employment equity or affirmative action conditions attached to them. Mr. Nugent refers to the Eglinton Crosstown CBA and the Woodbine Casino CBAs. A CBA imposes conditions of employment that are linked to benefiting the community or communities where a project is being built. For example, in the case of the Woodbine Casino CBA,

The agreement requires that 40 per cent of all new employees will be hired from the local area, with some of those jobs filled with the assistance of social organizations in the community. The agreement also stipulates that 10 per cent of all construction-related job hours will have to be filled using apprentices or journeypersons from the surrounding area. (Council Approves Community Benefits Agreement for Woodbine Casino)

Mr. Nugent argues that there are several problems with such agreements, ranging from trade offs between different neighbourhoods or different social groups to merely reformist efforts or even neoliberal CBAs or negotiated neoliberalism.

Nonetheless, he identifies some positive aspects to CBAs, such as bringing to the public eye in an the idea of employment equity again, which had been suppressed since the 1990s; employment equity or affirmative action has an advantage over protests of being an offensive rather than an offensive tactic. Furthermore, it also permitted grassroots social groups and unions to meet in the same room in order to discuss issues rather than going their separate ways, which is usually the case.

Despite these positive benefits, Mr. Nugent’s focus is allegedly elsewhere: he argues that the CBAs have a radical potential if the focus is not on the outcomes but rather on the potential for radical organizing. He outlines five principles for transforming CBAs into a radical movement.

The first principle is that work on a CBA should not focus on results or outcomes but rather on organizing for power and building a radical movement that is capable of forcing the government to give them what they want. There should not be a continual process of negotiations for meager reforms. The goal should be for building a powerful social movement.

The second principle is that it is necessary to raise expectations. This raising of expectations, however, needs to be done honestly. It is necessary to indicate that no positive outcomes may result but that if no one tries, then there will automatically be no positive changes. It is in the process of trying to win honestly that power structures will be created.

The third principle (it is unclear to me whether raising expectations honestly is the third principle, but I assume it forms part of the second principle) is that coalitions that lead to the creation of structures of power need to be led by grassroots groups, not by social agencies that are too tied to the state and funding.

The fourth principle is the building of a broad-based coalition for struggle. Our strength is in numbers. What is necessary is link up issues, such as the CBA with affordable housing groups, anti-poverty groups, groups working with ex-offenders and anti-privation groups.

The fifth principle is that it is necessary to engage, to organize and not focus on servicing the needs of a few (however real such needs are). Employment equity is important, but what is more important is consciousness-raising. People involved in CBAs need to understand the broader picture, understand that they are part of a social movement and themselves become leaders of such a movement.

Mr. Nugent then seems to add a sixth principle: leadership needs to emerge from the social movement itself and not from some professional individuals (such as unionists). In this way, a radical democratic and decentralized organizing structure of power will emerge.

Mr. Nugent sums up by arguing that CBAs need to become a movement building tool to build radical and lasting power.

These principles seem sound for developing some power, but what kind of power? And what does Mr. Nugent mean by radical? Like other presenters, he never gets around to discussing what that means. He never relates this to the issue of how the building of power is to be related to the power of employers at work–a daily experience for billions worldwide and millions of workers within Canada.

The idea of radical democratic organizations sounds very fair and open-minded. However, it is, in the context of lives dominated by the power of employers as a class, just rhetoric. Building structures of power that fail to have the focus of taking back control of our lives by taking back and reorganizing the property of the conditions for producing our lives (the machines, buildings and land required for us to produce our own lives) are bound to fail.

In other words, it is an issue of the kind of structures of power that are built that will decide whether they are really radical or not. Are such structures that are built designed to fight against the power of employers as a class? Or are they designed to fight within such structures? For example, what is Mr. Nugent’s position with respect to collective-bargaining structures? To unions? Such structures, if challenged by grassroots leaders, are bound to push back and fight against such grassroots leaders. He skirts the question entirely by claiming that leadership needs to arise organically and not be part of professional organizations (such as unions).

He also skirts the question by claiming that traditional work in CBAs is valuable in itself; he probably fears alienating union leadership directly. Thus, John Cartwright, president of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, indirectly endorses traditional CBAs; in the fall 2016 Toronto & York Region Labour Council newsletter, Labour Action, Mr. Cartwright, in his “Message from the President,” refers to such agreements; he is also a member of the Community Benefits Ontario network.

Employment equity or affirmative action as a goal need not of course be opposed and can be beneficial to certain groups, but if they are framed entirely within the general social relation of employer-employee relations, then they will inevitably have limits imposed on them not just externally but internally. The participants will subjectively consider employment equity without considering how to frame such a policy in such a way that it questions the class of employers.

Where is there evidence that Mr. Cartright questions the legitimacy of the power of employers as a class? As I wrote in another post:

Consider the rhetoric of John Cartwright, president of the Toronto & York Region Labour Council, in his open letter of January 30, 2018, wrote the following: “We need to fight for labour law reform including broader based bargaining so that precarious workers can have a vehicle in which to achieve dignity and economic justice.”

What does Mr. Cartwright mean by economic justice? Collective agreements? Since he does not explain what he means (a characteristic of rhetoric), we will assume that he means collective agreements between employers and unions.

Collective agreements, as I have persistently argued, are generally better than just relying only on employment law, but to imply that they somehow embody economic justice as Mr. Cartwright does justifies the continued treatment of human beings as things, as means to ends defined by dictators called employers (see The Money Circuit of Capital).

Mr. Nugent, perhaps, believes, like Mr. Rosenfeld, that the goal should be “decent jobs.” That is to say, the goal is to create unionized jobs for all. For anyone who has read some of the posts on this blog, it is obvious that the concept of “decent jobs,” with their associated collective agreement (and collective bargaining), are generally better than jobs without unions, without collective bargaining and without collective agreements.

Collective agreements, however, as this blog constantly stresses, are holding agreements that continue to express exploitation and oppression. A few privileged sets of workers (such as tenured university professors) may seem to have decent jobs, but even that situation has eroded over time. Furthermore, it should not be forgotten that such relatively privileged workers exist in a sea of workers, whether unionized or not, who are things to be used by employers systematically and legally. University professors cannot engage in research, teaching and administrative activities unless there are other workers who produce their food, clothing, cars and so forth.

This division of labour is implied in a poem by one of the most famous poets of Gutemala, Otto Rene Castillo (from Apolitical Intellectuals):

Apolitical Intellectuals

One day
the apolitical
intellectuals
of my country
will be interrogated
by the simplest
of our people.

They will be asked
what they did
when their nation died out
slowly,
like a sweet fire
small and alone.

No one will ask them
about their dress,
their long siestas
after lunch,
no one will want to know
about their sterile combats
with “the idea
of the nothing”
no one will care about
their higher financial learning.

They won’t be questioned
on Greek mythology,
or regarding their self-disgust
when someone within them
begins to die
the coward’s death.

They’ll be asked nothing
about their absurd
justifications,
born in the shadow
of the total lie.

On that day
the simple men will come.

Those who had no place
in the books and poems
of the apolitical intellectuals,
but daily delivered
their bread and milk,
their tortillas and eggs,
those who drove their cars,
who cared for their dogs and gardens
and worked for them,
and they’ll ask:

“What did you do when the poor
suffered, when tenderness
and life
burned out of them?”

Apolitical intellectuals
of my sweet country,
you will not be able to answer.

A vulture of silence
will eat your gut.

Your own misery
will pick at your soul.

And you will be mute in your shame.

Collective agreements do not exist in a vacuum but form part of interrelated social relations; to exclude such relations when considering the nature and legitimacy of collective agreements is to empty collective agreements of the background conditions which give them meaning in the first place.

In relation to Mr. Nugent’s presentation, the vagueness of the concept of what is radical permits Mr. Nugent to propose what he calls radical without really detailing what he means–a very unfortunate characteristic of these presentations so far. Vagueness of meaning permits individuals to evade intellectual (and, ultimately, practical) responsibility for their beliefs, as John Dewey, the American philosopher of education noted long ago (from How We Think, 1910/2011, How We Think, pages 129-130):

A being that cannot understand at all is at least protected from mis-understandings. But beings that get knowledge by means of inferring and interpreting, by judging what things signify in relation to one another, are constantly exposed to the danger of mis-apprehension, mis-understanding, mis-taking—taking a thing amiss. A constant source of misunderstanding and mistake is indefiniteness of meaning. Through vagueness of meaning we misunderstand other people, things, and ourselves; through its ambiguity we distort and pervert. Conscious distortion of meaning may be enjoyed as nonsense; erroneous meanings, if clear-cut, may be followed up and got rid of. But vague meanings are too gelatinous to offer matter for analysis, and too pulpy to afford support to other beliefs. They evade testing and responsibility. Vagueness disguises the unconscious mixing together of different meanings, and facilitates the substitution of one meaning for another, and covers up the failure to have any precise meaning at all. It is the aboriginal logical sin—the source from which flow most bad intellectual consequences. Totally to eliminate indefiniteness is impossible; to reduce it in extent and in force requires sincerity and vigor. To be clear or perspicuous a meaning must be detached, single, self-contained, homogeneous as it were, throughout.

Mr. Nugent is certainly correct to emphasize the need for focusing on having individuals and groups start to look at the bigger picture, but he fails to delve into the nature of that bigger picture.

My prediction is that, in say three years, the issue of the power of employers as a class will not be addressed by Mr. Nugent; his radicalism probably will extend only within the limits defined by such power.

What’s Left, Toronto? Certainly not a radical agenda–so far.

What’s Left, Toronto? Part Four

As I indicated in an earlier post, on September 19, 2018, several leftist activists gave a talk about what was to be done in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The talks were posted on the Socialist Project website on October 7, 2018 (also posted on YouTube) (What’s Left, Toronto? Radical Alternatives for the City Election). As I indicated in my earlier post, over the next few months, I will be analyzing some or all of the talks from a Marxian perspective.

Taraneh Zarin is a graduate student at the University of Toronto and active in the Free Transit Toronto movement. She spoke about the primary aim of that movement as the abolition of fares for public transit. The abolition of fares would permit the racialized poor the same access to mobility as those wealthier inhabitants of Toronto. Ms. Zarin argues that this is unfair.

It would also limit climate change by reducing the carbon imprint and would reduce the experience of gridlock which characterizes Toronto (like many other capitalist cities). It would, on th one hand, eliminate the need for transit fare officers, who often harass the poor by obliging them to show proof of payment (and, if found guilty, are fined $200); on the other, it would eliminate the need for expensive fare systems (such as the recent switch to the Presto card system, which has now cost $1 billion).

If free public transit were available, there would undoubtedly be a surge in ridership. Indeed, Mayor John Tory’s decision to eliminate fares for children under 12 years old led to the doubling of ridership, from 11 million to 22 million in 2016. Hence, if free public transit were available to all, we could expect an even larger increase in ridership. Hence, it would be necessary to expand public transit infrastructure.

Ms. Zarin justifies her call for free public transit because it is unfair for some with more money to have greater power to be mobile than others.

What must be asked is: How is the call for free public transit a reform that may lead to challenging the class power of employers? The answer is: It is unlikely to lead to a challenge to the class power of employers by itself. It is a reform that is consistent with the power of employers (although the extent to which it is consistent is probably dependent on the specific circumstances of each city/region/country).

For example, as Ms. Zarin points out, free public transit exists in Tallinn, Estonia and that it is being extended to the whole country. This move has certainly not challenged the power of employers in Estonia. One analysis of Estonia characterizes it thus (M. Feldman(2017). Crisis and opportunity: varieties of capitalism and
varieties of crisis responses in Estonia and Slovenia. European Journal of
Industrial Relations, 23(1), page 7):

Estonia has been characterised as a liberal market economy with decentralized market institutions (Feldmann, 2013b) and a very limited role for social dialogue or wage bargaining (which tends to occur mostly at the firm level). Estonia has also consistently had one of the most open economies, and its state has been described as pursuing a neoliberal version of capitalism with a small welfare state (Bohle and Greskovits, 2012).

In relation to industrial relations and the market for workers, the same author comments (page 8):

Estonia has decentralised industrial relations, incl. the lowest unionisation rate amongst the new member states and relatively low collective bargaining coverage. As in most of Central and Eastern Europe, the company level is the primary bargaining level in Estonia, with the transport and energy sectors being the most successful examples of social dialogue and collective agreements at the sectoral level (Espenberg and Vahaste, 2012: 32-3). In addition, there have also been a few social pacts at the national level, usually when the Social Democrats (until 2004 known as the Moderates) have been part of the government (Vare and Taliga, 2002).

As can be seen, free public transit as a policy need not conflict with the class power of employers.

One of the reasons why Estonia has been able to implement free public transit is the heavy subsidies that this sector already received before the implementation of the policy–something which Ms. Zarin fails to mention (from Estonia Will Roll Out Free Public Transit Nationwide):

Why is Estonia going so big on free transit now? At its root, this is a form of fiscal redistribution.

That’s because Estonia’s public transit already gets extremely generous subsidies. The state-owned railway operator Elron, for example, will get a €31 million boost from taxpayers next year. The rural bus routes due to go free, meanwhile, are already subsidized to up to 80 percent of cost as it is. Making them entirely fare-less should only cost around €12.9 million ($15.2 million) more—not a vast amount for even a small country such as Estonia.

Getting rid of ticket sales and inspections, meanwhile, will eliminate some overhead—and also cut down on delays. I couldn’t turn up any figures on the actual cost of charging for Estonian bus travel, but on larger, more complex networks such as New York’s MTA, it can reach 6 percent of all budget. When only 20 percent of the bus network’s costs are being recouped from fares, it’s easy to see how maintaining a ticket sale and inspection system can come to seem like a burden worth shedding.

As Ms. Zarin admits, the largest part of the operating budget for the TTC comes from fares, so the implementation of free public transit in Toronto would likely encounter much more resistance from the municipal and provincial governments. This implies that such a reform has more potential for challenging the power of employers than is the case in Tallinn, but in itself it is unlikely to constitute a major challenge since other cities and capitalist countries besides Tallinn and Estonia are either contemplating implementing free public transit or have already done so.

Dunkirk, France (population around 200,000), introduced free public transit, several cities throughout the world have also done so, and some European cities are contemplating it (from ‘I leave the car at home’: how free buses are revolutionising one French city):

Free urban transport is spreading. In his research Wojciech Keblowski, an expert on urban research at Brussels Free University, says that in 2017 there were 99 fare-free public transport networks around the world: 57 in Europe, 27 in North America, 11 in South America, 3 in China and one in Australia. Many are smaller than Dunkirk and offer free transit limited to certain times, routes and people.

In February this year, Germany announced it was planning to trial free public transport in five cities – including the former capital Bonn and industrial cities Essen and Mannheim. In June this was downgraded to a slashing of public transport fares to persuade people to ditch cars.

The largest in the world is in Changning , in China’s Hunan province, where free transit has been in operation since 2008. Passenger numbers reportedly jumped by 60% on the day it was introduced.

A study into free public transport by online journal Metropolitics found an increase in mobility among older and younger people, and an increased sense of freedom

It cannot be said, then, that this proposal of free public transit is radical since it does not generally question the power of employers as a class.

Should such a policy be supported by the radical left? Yes–but with the necessary condition that any attempt to claim that this is somehow radical or revolutionary should be criticized. Life may be enhanced through free public transit immediately for the poorer sections of the working class and, in the medium to long term, environmental conditions may improve.

A further aspect should be considered–about which Ms. Zarin was silent. What about the Estonian bus drivers? Even with free public transit, bus drivers are still used as means–as things–to ends over which they have very limited say (for a general view, see in general The Money Circuit of Capital). Furthermore, strikes have occurred in Estonia by bus drivers due to relatively low wages when compared to workers in Helsinki) (see Bus drivers to hold warning strike in 3 Estonian regions and Helsinki and Tallinn compete over bus drivers). Ms. Zarin completely neglects to look at working conditions in Estonia in general and the working conditions of bus drivers in Estonia in particular.

Should the reformist left present this policy as somehow “fair” or “just,” then it should be criticized. Just as free public healthcare can make life more livable for the working class (as it does in Canada), so too can free public transit. That would not change the general tenor of life in Canada–unless a movement towards free public transit were linked to a movement towards challenging the power of employers as a class.

So far in this series, there has really been no discussion of radical politics. Up to now, all discussion and proposals fail to challenge the power of employers as a class–a typical social-reformist left tactic of presenting what is not in fact radical as something essentially radical.

What’s Left, Toronto? Part Three

In two earlier posts, I looked at the introduction and first talk of several leftist activists on September 19, 2018 in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, about what was to be done politically (presented just a little over a month before city elections on October 22). The talks were posted on the Socialist Project website (What’s Left, Toronto? Radical Alternatives for the City Election) on October 7, 2018 (15 days before city elections).

The second talk was made by Stefan Kipfer, professor of environmental studies at York University. Professor Kipfer talked mainly about the housing issue in Toronto. He indicated that housing has two senses, one narrow and one wider. The wider sense has to do with how people appropriate space and make life livable for themselves within that space. The narrow sense has to do with the provision of housing (its production and distribution presumably). He points out that any solution to housing problems has to be wider than the narrow sense and needs to take into the labour market, for example.

Unfortunately, he then restricts his reference to solutions to two models that address problems in the narrower sense. Both the right and the left agree that there is a housing problem, but they differ in their solutions. The first, right-wing model is the private-market model of housing, or the supply-side model, which requires the market to dictate housing production and distribution. Social regulation is to be minimized. Such a view is characteristic of the Board of Trade of Toronto, and the two mainstream mayoralty candidates John Tory and Jennifer Keesmaat.

The left-wing solution is purely negative–it does not rely on the private market model for solving housing problems. Diverse solutions have this negative quality about them. otherwise, they differ somewhat in their approach. For example, there is a housing struggle over the expansion of shelter space, led by OCAP, and there are struggles over establishing coop housing. Despite the differences, they all suggest an expansion of social, non-profit housing, coop housing or at the least the maintenance of existing housing infrastructure.

The exclusion of such vital issues as the labour market from explicit consideration mars the presentation. Indeed, it distorts the definition of the problem and its solution. Thus, Professor Kipfer argues that housing is not like the production of pies or bicycles since it permits capitalist developers, banks and insurance companies an increasing flow of rent payments. Now, there is certainly a sense in which an increasing flow of rent payments (rather than a steady flow of rental payments) makes the production of housing different from the production of pies and bicycles in a capitalist society; professor Kipfer implies that there is a monopoly in production that permits such an increasing flow of rental payments. Presumably the supply of housing is constantly less than the demand so that the prices of housing do not correspond to their value over the middle term since there is an artificial restriction of the supply due to the monopoly in land. That is, presumably, why housing in Toronto is becoming more and more unaffordable.

Although the production of housing may differ from the production of pies and bicycles in a capitalist system of production and exchange due to the monopoly of land (ultimately a non-produced part of the world), there is also the commonality of the principal purpose of land use, the production of pies and bicycles in such an economy: obtaining more money than initially invested (see The Money Circuit of Capital). Construction of housing is just as much dictated by the logic of capital as the production of pies and bicycles. As Ira Katznelson wrote (Marxism and the City. Oxford: Clarendon Press, page 227):

As capitalism entered the industrial epoch, the concept of the land-rent gradient that pointed toward the highest economic use by introducing a profit motive into land use and housing was already established. With the explos:on in the demand for land for factories as well as for working-class housing, this market logic accelerated the processes oi segregation of both uses and social classes.

Since Kipfer does not elaborate at all on how solutions would differ if the wider context were considered, it is difficult to determine whether his proposed solutions within a wider context would be any different from the social-reformist left. Given his emphasis on how housing is supposedly substantially different from the production of pies and bicycles and given his reference to the nationalization of land (but not the overthrow of the owners of the factories where workers produce pies and bicycles, replacing it with democratic control), his preferences may lie in aligning himself with the social reformist left.

Indeed, the nationalization of land has been proposed by such socialists as Henry George–but not the seizure of the produced means or conditions of production. Similarly, as Meghnad Desai notes (Marxian Economic Theory, 1974, pages 40-41):

A few years before Bohm-Bawerk’s criticism (which had to wait until all the three volumes of Capital were published), Philip Wicksteed in a celebrated debate with Bemard Shaw had demonstrated that relative prices were in fact explained by relative scarcities and therefore by the ratio of marginal utilities which they yielded to a consumer. Wicksteed’s demonstration did not deal in detail with Marx’s theory but showed that an explanation based on Jevons’ theory of utility was a superior logical explanation. If prices are explained by relative scarcity rather than by labour content, then the notion of surplus value ceases to have rational foundation. Profits become a legitimate income as a reward for relative scarcity of capital. (Bernard Shaw was to admit the force of this argument and later in his life concentrated on the Ricardian notion of land rent as unearned surplus. To this day land nationalisation and appropriation of profits in real estate have been a part of the Labour Party’s economic philosophy. Profits in industrial activities are regarded as legitimate).

It is certainly illegitimate to single out housing and rent as somehow substantially different from profits, and yet Kipfer seems to imply this. There may indeed barriers to realizing an equal rate of profit in housing construction due to the monopoly of land, thereby restricting competition and increasing housing prices accordingly (without countermeasures, such as the production of social housing and coops). Even if there were no such barriers, though, the situation cannot by any means be characterized as fair for the workers in the construction industry since they are still treated as things or objects, mere means for employers to obtain more and more money. Reducing housing prices through increased social supply in no way questions the legitimacy of the power of employers as a class.

Nothing in Professor Kipfer’s presentation suggests a “radical alternative.” His proposals for social housing and nationalization of the land do not question the principle of capitalist production and exchange–the use of the produced means of production and consumption to exploit workers on an ever-increasing scale through the accumulation of capital. It is a social-democratic presentation and in no way addresses the class power of the employers as a class.

By the way, although I never produced pies for an employer, I did work in a capitalist bakery in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, producing bread for Safeway Inc. (an American supermarket chain). I lasted about a week since the pace of work and the heat were brutal.

One final point: professor Kipfer does not address the possible conflict of interests between sections of the Toronto working class who possess some form of housing and benefit from rising housing prices and those who do not. I learned about this discrepancy fairly recently. In 2014, I bought a relatively inexpensive condo not too far from Jane and Finch in North York (Toronto) for $86,000 Canadian. A few months ago, a real estate agent came to the building, seeking to buy a condominium for someone. Curious as to how much my condominium would be worth, I had him come to estimate its price. He informed me that it would be worth between $200 000 and $227 000. In a little over four years, the price had more than doubled.

Given this situation for some members of the working class in Toronto, support for housing policies that would limit the rise of prices and expand social housing may be lackluster. Some members of the working class may even oppose such policies.

In any case, so far the moderator’s introduction to the series and the first and second talks do not express any radical policies–unless you define radical as limiting your policies to those that are consistent with the power of employers as a class. This series is looking less and less radical.

What’s Left, Toronto? Part Two

As I indicated in an earlier post, on September 19, 2018, several leftist activists gave a talk about what was to be done in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The talks were posted on the Socialist Project website on October 7, 2018 (What’s Left, Toronto? Radical Alternatives for the City Election). As I indicated in my earlier post, over the next few months, I will be analyzing some or all of the talks from a Marxian perspective.

The first talk is by Dan Karasik, an activist in the movement for the fight for $15. He claims that the goal now is to hold on to the gains that have been made through the passing of Bill 148 (reform of employment law, which introduced a number of employment laws beneficial to unorganized workers and increased the minimum wage to $14 an hour as of January 1, 2018 and was scheduled to increase as of January 1, 2019). In the short term, such a goal is of course realistic; organized opposition to the class of employers will not occur overnight.

However, Dan likely overestimates, like much of the social-reformist left, the immediate potentiality for radicalizing sections of the working class in terms of the immediate conditions prior to an election. He claims that a radicalization of working-class politics can occur because of the elections. Alternatively, his definition of radical politics is social-reformist and is radical only in relation to Doug Ford’s immediate political position. Both likely share similar positions concerning the necessity of the class of employers (see my earlier post about a social reformist who claims that the fight for $15 is indeed fair, Social-Reformist Leftist Activists Share Assumptions with the Right).

Dan argues that Doug Ford is a populist who was elected the premier of Ontario, Canada, in June 2018 in part to represent “the people,” with a substantial part of the people, according to Dan, expecting Doug Ford to maintain the provisions set out in Bill 148. With the Ontario Chamber of Commerce calling on the Ontario government to completely repeal the Bill, the mood among the social-reformist left has shifted from being celebratory to a mood characterized by a mood characterized by increasing jitters Nevertheless, there is now a space for radicalization since the fight for $15 and what Dan still calls “fairness” potentially has done is to open up a struggle amongst racialized and gendered sections of the working class since minimum wage jobs in Toronto are predominantly filled by racialized and gendered members of the working class–should Ford ultimately decide to follow the recommendations of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce.

Although there may indeed may be some space for organizing along these lines, Dan at no time indicated what he meant by radical politics. Somehow the false promise of Doug Ford to represent “the people” is to magically transform racialized and gendered working-class members into radicals.

Dan never gets around to indicating what he means by “radical politics,” let alone “radical working-class politics.” Since he never does question pairing the term “Fight for $15” with the term “fairness,” his radical politics probably is defined entirely within the limits of the social-reformist left’s definition of radical politics–social reforms that in no way question the power of employers as a class. The questioning of such power is implicitly “off the agenda.” See several of my posts for criticisms of the positions of politics of the social-reformist left.

Dan briefly referred to the situation of capital and labour in Toronto–without stating anything further. What is the situation of capital and labour in Toronto? When I was a member of the Toronto Labour Committee (with Sam Gindin, Herman Rosenfeld and Paul Gray practically being the leaders), I proposed a class analysis of Toronto (but indicated that I did not really know how to go about doing that–although I was willing to learn–I was involved in another project in gathering data pertaining to the ruling class analysis in Toronto, but it could not really be considered directly related to the ruling class, but perhaps to the class of self-employed and small to middle-sized employers–but that would have required more refined tools than those used). The response was–silence.

So, what is the situation of capital and labour in Toronto? You would not be able to tell at all from anything Dan had to say. (Perhaps someone can refer me to recent articles and books on the subject? I would definitely appreciate it.)

In general, Dan’s talk refers to a radical politics, but it really contains very little in the way of specifying what that may mean. The audience is left to “fill in” what that may mean. Since the moderator already filled in part of it by referring to “decent work,” (see an earlier post), it is highly probable that Dan’s radical politics really means more of the same social-reformist politics that has been circulating since the employer class went on the offensive in the 1970s. In essence, this radicalism wants to return to a renewed welfare state, with social housing, enhanced unemployment benefits, improved welfare benefits, reductions in austerity, reformed employment laws and so forth. Such a politics, however, has no intention, though, of questioning the legitimacy of the power of employers to dictate to workers. That is not on the agenda.

It certainly was not mentioned by Dan at all. Such is the radical space left untouched in the first talk in the series.

What’s left, Toronto? So far, social-reformism and the acceptance of the power of employers as a class.