From Corporation to Crisis: A Landmark Work of Historical Materialism

A Review by Mel Watkins

Canadian Dimension

March 29th 2013

The Making Of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy Of American Empire
Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin
Verso Books, October 2012

The authors tell us this book has been “a long time in the making.” It has been well worth the wait.

The dust jacket bears endorsements, fulsome even by the necessities of the medium, from four distinguished scholars and writers, David Harvey among them. Living next door to the United States, bearing the fullness of its embrace, can be an advantage in understanding global capitalism. Panitch and Gindin have understood the early intrusion of the American-based multinational corporation into the Canadian economy and polity as being the quintessence of subsequent American imperialism world-wide — American Manifest Destiny results in the Canadianization of the globe, which may or may not make you feel proud — and made of that insight, and all it contains, this excellent book.

Regina Tenants Getting Screwed? A look at house prices, rents and wages

SaskatoonHousingBubble

March 6, 2013

Media have been all over the story of the Regina tenants who are looking at a 77% rent increase after the building they live in now has a new owner from Calgary.

From the cbc

According to the residents, the typical rent for a unit was around $700. For some, the new rent was set at around $1,200.

Residents compared notes and estimate that, on average, rents were going up by about 77 per cent.
"I realize a rent increase is inevitable," Donna Kerr, who has lived in the building for 31 years, told CBC News Monday. "But they didn't have do it $520 in one foul swoop."

For some, the notice of a rent hike may as well have been an eviction notice as they can not afford the higher rent.

The increases, however, fall within what is allowed in Saskatchewan as residents were notified six months in advance.

Is Saskatchewan Thinking Globally and Acting Locally?

By Jim Harding

No Nukes
February 27, 2013

All of us everywhere on the planet must think globally while acting locally. Parochialism is counterproductive; our industrial practices anywhere act upon one planet, and the blowback from “Gaia” doesn’t occur proportionate to ecological abuse. The climate crisis is already dramatically affecting areas like the circumpolar Arctic, which contribute little if any greenhouses gases into the global mix; the early victims aren't necessarily the main perpetrators. The pursuit of global justice therefore goes hand in hand with the pursuit of sustainability.

How is our province doing facing up to this global challenge? The Wall government likely believes it is thinking globally and acting locally. We are after all, building our provincial economy out of world demand for non-renewable resources here. But this isn’t exactly what we mean. This is similar to the kind of thinking that was used to continue to ship slaves across oceans because there was still an economic demand; or for that matter, the thinking still used to try to justify exporting illicit drugs to lucrative markets abroad; the end justifies the means.

Saskatchewan’s Anti-Poverty Plan, From Dependence to Independence: Does It Measure Up?

Paul Gingrich and Brian Banks

CCPA

Saskatchewan Office

ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION

In the summer of 2012, the Saskatchewan government published its anti-poverty strategy, From Dependence to Independence, claiming that no previous administration in the province had approached the challenge of poverty “with a comparable commitment to holistic, cross-government solutions.” A new report from the Saskatchewan Office of the CCPA assesses the claims of the government’s strategy, critically comparing Saskatchewan’s anti-poverty plan to that of other provincial programs to reduce poverty. Saskatchewan’s Anti-Poverty Plan, From Dependence to Independence: Does It Measure Up? by Brian Banks and Paul Gingrich demonstrates several serious shortcomings within the government's anti-poverty strategy arguing that the government has not committed to the development of a comprehensive and integrated plan even though it claims to have done so.

Download this publication HERE.

The City of Regina’s Unquenchable Thirst for Bad Ideas

By Simon Enoch
Saskatchewan Office CCPA
February 13th, 2013

It seems the City of Regina just can’t get enough of bad deals. Hot on the heels of the City Plaza debacle and the stadium funding mess, the City has now announced its intention to enter into a 30-year contract with a private corporation to upgrade its waste water treatment facilities. Just as the City seems immune to the evidence that sports stadiums are a poor use of taxpayer money it seems equally oblivious to the mountain of evidence that essential public infrastructure should remain in public hands. In the case of contracting out wastewater treatment, the record is anything but reassuring.

Making Sense Out of the Current Economic Crisis

By John W. Warnock 

Act Up in Sask.
Wednesday, 02 January 2013

For several months now the mainstream media, political leaders and business commentators have focused on the “Fiscal Cliff” in the United States. President Barrack Obama and the Republicans in the U.S. Congress have been at loggerheads over how to deal with the very large federal budget deficits of the past five years. Another interim agreement was reached last night, and the stock markets have responded positively.

But it is easy to discover that nothing has really changed. The U.S. politicians have bought two months of peace; by the end of February they will once again have to face the reality of the enormous budget deficit and the fact that the United States Congress has legislated an upper limit to the debt that the federal government may undertake. The debt ceiling of $16.4 trillion was reached on New Year’s eve.

How can we make sense out of this economic and financial mess? It is difficult in that mainstream economists are committed to abstract models of the free market, focus on the current situation, and ignore the patterns of history. The mass media, owned and controlled by very large corporations, reflects this free market political perspective.

Global Capitalism and the Left

By Jamie Stern-Weiner, Leo Panitch

New Left Project

December 20, 2012

Leo Panitch is Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University. A leading left-wing political economist, he is a long-standing editor of The Socialist Register and the author, with Sam Gindin, of The Making of Global Capitalism(Verso, 2012).

He spoke with NLP about the role of states in global capitalism, elite cooperation in the wake of the 2007-08 financial crisis and the possibilities for left politics in an economically integrated world.

---------------------------------

In what sense is capitalism a 'global' system?

Our world is still very much made up of nation states with quite discreet economies and class and social structures.

That said, many of those economies are integrated into the production networks of multinational corporations (MNCs), which produce, outsource or contract in many different countries. Many states are now highly dependent for a massive proportion of their GNP on exports and trade, which is in turn linked inextricably to international banking (through trade credits, currency market derivatives, and so on). Investment and commercial banks have become thoroughly internationalised. In these respects one can say that what Marx spoke about in the 1850s—capitalism as a system with globalising tendencies—has been more or less realised.

Mapping Corporate Power in Saskatchewan

By Simon Enoch
Saskatchewan Office, CCPA
December 17, 2012

ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION

"Mapping Corporate Power in Saskatchewan" traces the ties between the major corporate contributors to both the Saskatchewan Party and the New Democratic Party, and their links to other corporate interest and advocacy groups. The research demonstrates that Saskatchewan corporations have the networks, the committed leadership, the organization, and the access to government to play a large role in shaping public policy. As record amounts of corporate money flood our political system, Saskatchewan urgently needs a publicly accessible lobbyist registry to let citizens track corporate lobbying. As one of the few provinces that do not currently have a lobbyist registry, Saskatchewan is vulnerable to the perception that corporations have undue influence over both major political parties.

Download Here

Raising Saskatchewan’s Minimum Wage

By Erin Weir

Progressive Economics Forum
August 29th, 2012

Saskatchewan Federation of Labour president Larry Hubich and I have the following joint op-ed in today’s Regina Leader-Post (page A10).

It’s been fourteen years since I first wrote into The Leader-Post advocating a minimum-wage increase.

Why higher wages make economic sense

Recent Saskatchewan government news releases trumpet record numbers for wholesale trade, building permits and exports. But as Labour Day approaches, we should consider that many Saskatchewan workers do not share in the prosperity they create.

Capitalism in our Time: Crisis, Austerity and What Spaces for Change?

Matilde Adduci 

TEORIA POLITICA. NUOVA SERIE, ANNALI II

2012: 401-410

The present crisis scenario —which came into being with the 2007/8 financial meltdown triggered by the US sub-prime mortgage crisis and which, by 2009,  had turned into an economic contraction of worldwide proportions— is ever more pervaded by insistent calls for austerity politics. In some countries, such as Greece and Italy, these politics are being implemented by so-called technical governments, as if such a label could ratify the supposed ineluctability, as well as the neutrality, of austerity measures. As a matter of fact, while the spaces for politics may appear to be all the more shrunken in the face of the austerity dogma what with the vast majority of the political spectrum in many different countries sadly echoing Margaret Thatcher’s famous slogan, «there is no alternative» —austerity politics are fundamentally affecting the labour arena. The increasing normalization of the process of labour precarization, together with the rise in unemployment levels, is in fact accompanied in the core capitalist countries by a new wave of cutbacks casting a gloomy shadow over the social entitlements of the labouring classes. With a severe shrinking of social welfare and pension systems, this politics looks like a bitter farewell to the welfare institutions that came into being during the «golden age» of capitalism and constitutes a major setback in the struggle for social rights.

In the face of this scenario, the two most recent volumes of the Socialist Register —Socialist Register 2011: The Crisis This Time 1 and Socialist Register 2012: The Crisis and the Left 2— provide the reader with important analytical tools to fathom the social, economic and political depths of the current crisis. Starting from the centrality of the materialist conception of social development, the various essays in the two volumes interrogate economic processes in the light of the historically underlying class dynamics and power relationships, bringing a plurality of arguments into the debate. In so doing, they provide a multifaceted
and nuanced analysis of the current capitalist crisis and its social implications, which takes into account both general trends and specific regional contexts. The present review is pursued with the aim of accounting for some crucial and wideranging issues which cut across both volumes and which, taken together, can be used to draw up a sort of conceptual map which contributes importantly to a critical understanding of our times.

Read more HERE.

Free Book: A Brief History of Neoliberalism

By David Harvey

Open publication - Free publishing

The Fraser Institute's Global Petroleum Survey

By John W. Warnock 

ActUpinSask  
04 July 2012

Near the end of June 2012 the Fraser Institute released their latest survey of the oil and gas industry. They reported that 623 managers and executives from 529 oil and gas companies had ranked Manitoba and Saskatchewan near the top of 147 political jurisdictions as good places to invest. In contrast, New Brunswick and Quebec were given fairly low ratings.

A great deal of the reporting was of no surprise and the results were not that controversial. For example, the political turmoil, international wars, and civil wars naturally led corporation representatives to warn about investing in much of Africa and the Middle East. There was also the issue of government corruption, well known in many of the countries surveyed. But these were not the important issues.

What I Learned at Fraser Institute's 'Economics for Journalists'

Andrew Coyne argues left and right now converge on economy issues. Not in this classroom.

By Jonathan Sas

TheTyee.ca

June 23, 2012

In front of a packed audience at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto in mid-May, National Post columnist and political commentator Andrew Coyne presented a compelling, if controversial, talk entitled "Post Economic Politics in Canada." He offered a bold assertion: the great ideological fights over economic issues that characterized Canada's public policy debates in the past have come to an end.

Yes, Coyne is referring to the country north of the 49th parallel, where a controversial budget bill has starkly divided Parliament and where one of the largest protest movements in the country's history continues to play out in the streets of Quebec over proposed tuition hikes. No, Coyne is not delusional. But with debates over austerity and the future of the welfare state raging across the Western world, one might wonder whether Coyne chose to stake his position at the wrong time.

A triumph of failed ideas: European models of capitalism in the crisis

By Steffen Lehndorff 
Publication date : 2012

The current crisis in Europe is being labelled, in mainstream media and politics, as a ‘public debt crisis’. The present book draws a markedly different picture. What is happening now is rooted, in a variety of different ways, in the destabilisation of national models of capitalism due to the predominance of neoliberalism since the demise of the post-war ‘golden age’. Ten country analyses provide insights into national ways of coping – or failing to cope – with the ongoing crisis. They reveal the extent to which the respective socio-economic development models are unsustainable, either for the country in question, or for other countries.

The bottom-line of the book is twofold. First, there will be no European reform agenda at all unless each country does its own homework. Second, and equally urgent, is a new European reform agenda without which alternative approaches in individual countries will inevitably be suffocated. This message, delivered by the country chapters, is underscored by more general chapters on the prospects of trade union policy in Europe and on current austerity policies and how they interact with the new approaches to economic governance at the EU level. These insights are aimed at providing a better understanding across borders at a time when European rhetoric is being used as a smokescreen for national egoism.

Open publication - Free publishing - More capitalism

Democracy in the Age of Austerity: Beyond the Robocall Scandal

By James Cairns
New Socialist webzine
19 April 2012

A lot of people are angry about the robocall scandal. Even by the low standards of the Harper Conservatives, the covert attempt to block thousands of people from voting in the 2011 federal election is pretty disgusting.

In a recent poll, 75 percent of respondents said they want a formal inquiry into the Conservative Party's dirty campaign tricks. Anti-robocall rallies have been held in more than 25 cities. At a rally in Saskatoon last month, protestor Nayyar Javed told the crowd: "Democracy is very important to me. […] We are complacent or are in denial about the erosion of democracy."

To people who recognize that real social change isn't going to happen through the existing democratic system, being concerned about robocall can seem like a waste of time and energy. But when robocall is viewed from a broader perspective, it can begin to take on real significance. In fact, there are good reasons for viewing robocall as but one covert episode in a whole series of attacks on democracy that are happening right out in the open.

The Geopolitics of Speculation: Oil-price makers and takers

By Ali Kadri

Triple Crisis
April 12, 2012

Every market is a process of social and power relationships. In every market there are price makers and price takers. The oil market, however, is no ordinary market, and the struggle to control the oil market, therefore, is no ordinary struggle. With oil being rudimentary to global accumulation and the monetary system remaining in part commodity-based, the degree of control of the oil market translates into some degree of enhanced power in all other markets.

But to control an oil market, the principal player, which is undoubtedly the US, has to develop a strategy of intervention at the source, military or otherwise, which cuts down to size other players. Consequently, the extent to which the US infuses tensions in oil producing areas, calibrates the degree to which oil-states relinquish sovereignty over oil and keeps at bay other major players are measures that represent the collateral necessary to lay the foundation of the oil-dollar standard. This unending power exercise constitutes the cornerstone of the commodity-money or, more concretely, oil-dollar based global monetary system.

SK Budget: Where’s the Inter-governmental Love?

By Erin Weir 
Progressive Economics Forum
April 7th, 2012

A hallmark of Brad Wall’s premiership has been cosy relations with municipal governments and the two westernmost provincial governments. Since taking office, the Sask. Party has been throwing money at municipalities. It pledged not to sign the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement with Alberta and BC, but then did so through the New West Partnership.

A couple of tax changes from the recent Saskatchewan budget are worth examining through this prism of intergovernmental relations. Much has already been written about Wall’s bizarre decision to axe the Film Employment Tax Credit and partial climb-down.

Despite the inconsistency of zeroing in on this one relatively inexpensive measure amid the province’s myriad of other tax expenditures and business subsidies, the Sask. Party had a point. The main rationale for continuing the Film Employment Tax Credit is that every other competing jurisdiction offers similar credits.

Canada's Austerity Budget Wonderland

By Dave Broad
Monthly Review
February 2, 2012

Canada's federal and provincial governments are falling in with other Western countries in delivering austerity budgets that foist costs of the global capitalist crisis onto the backs of workers and the poor.  Canada's federal government is trying to package its latest austerity budget as something that must be done to reduce government debts and deficits but really won't hurt too bad.  Listening to the spin put on this is much like a trip through Alice's surreal Wonderland.¹

Before Canada's federal budget was released, Canada's Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tried to reassure Canadians that his government was out to create jobs and sustainable social programs, and that job and program cuts would be "moderate."²  The March 29, 2012 budget announcement itself was that $5.2 billion per year would be cut from federal programs, and 19,200 federal jobs would be slashed over three years, along with further cuts and privatization of public programs over the longer term.  Minister Flaherty still asserts that his budget cuts are "modest" and not "draconian."³  He obviously shares with Humpty Dumpty the notion that a word can mean whatever he wants it to.  While doing the opposite of what most people want and need, the Tories are trying to convince us that what they are doing is in everyone's best interests.

Brad Wall’s Wonderful World of Laissez-Faire

By Simon Enoch
CCPA, Saskatchewan Office
March 23, 2012

In the wake of Wednesday’s Saskatchewan budget which saw the elimination of the Saskatchewan Film Employment Tax Credit and with it the almost certain demise of the industry in the province, Premier Brad Wall tweeted: “If an industry cannot survive at all without a permanent taxpayer subsidy, should the taxpayers subsidize indefinitely?”

This is an excellent question posed by our premier. So let’s look at all those industries that manage to “stand on their own two feet” as it were and forgo any and all government assistance in our province.

Oil and gas, the economic powerhouse of the province and awash in profits must be a model of laissez-faire integrity. Surely it doesn’t need government handouts to make a go of it in Saskatchewan? Let’s take a look:

FSIN appalled by provincial budget

FSIN
March 22, 2012

The Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) is disappointed that the provincial budget did little to address critical issues facing First Nations in the province.

FSIN Interim Chief Morley Watson said that despite Finance Minister Ken Krawetz's comment, 'People are going to understand that there are going to still be many great things that are going to occur in this budget', there is very little evidence that First Nations people are being considered in a meaningful way.

"While the Government's theme for this budget is keeping the 'Saskatchewan Advantage' the government could certainly involve First Nations directly in the 'Saskatchewan Advantage' but, has chosen not to," said Interim Chief Watson.