Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly Solidarity Platform

GTWA
October 2011

Preamble:

In the fall of 2008, the third great crisis of capitalism steadily brewed and then nearly boiled over. For a brief period of time, it was not just radicals that questioned capitalism – the ruling classes themselves were starting to question their continued hegemony.

While a global meltdown did not occur, criseswithin-crises became the new normal in capitalist relations, and has provided a key tool to the ruling classes for maintaining their control. This exposes the defining constitutive feature of capitalism: the formal separation of economics, the realm of the market, from politics, the realm of parliament and official state power. The new patterns of governance – punitive austerity, increased criminalization and militarized law enforcement, growth of far-right populist movements – are correlative but distinct social relations from the economic mechanisms of the capitalist market itself. As such, we must take the official domain of politics, seemingly separate from the domain of economics, seriously in the struggle against exploitation and oppression.

The objective of the Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly in developing a Solidarity Platform is to fight capitalist social relations on all fronts – ‘political’ and economic. Yet it is also to undertake a scientific analysis of the balance of forces, the capacities, both operationalized and latent within and beyond our organization. In turn¸ this must be examined against the context of the global conjuncture, of capitalist crisis and recovery, of imperialist rivalry and co-operation, and as well, how successful and unsuccessful various fightbacks have been in both the North and the South. In examining our own capacities, we can hone in on where we can make a contribution, either modest or profound. In examining the global context, we can see ourselves as part of an international struggle that unites the human race.

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