The Red Review | Issue #9 (May 2024)
The Red Review | Issue #9 (May 2024)
Editor: Gary Porter
Managing Editor: Yener Kara
Federal Secretary: Barry Weisleder
Editorial: Workers and Oppressed Peoples of the World, Unite!
International Workers’ Day, May 1, represents more than a celebration of past gains such as higher wages, improved benefits, better working conditions, and shorter hours. IWD signifies the class struggle to abolish capitalism and to establish a system free of exploitation and oppression. Only by socialist revolution can the immense majority of humanity create the basis for freedom from want, for a bottom-up economic and political democracy, for a world cleansed of national and gender-based tyranny. It is the only way to save nature and humanity from the growing threat of extinction caused by a system dominated by carbon energy profiteers and their servants in state power.
Fighting climate change – Beyond Canada’s carbon tax
by Richard Fidler - First published at Life on the Left.
Climate change is the most visible, most threatening expression of a larger, planetary ecological crisis, the result of a fossil-fueled economic system with its pursuit of endless growth which ensures that the exploitation of natural resources (both renewable and non-renewable) exceeds the carrying capacity of nature.
Our approach must be commensurate with the structural challenge that crisis poses to the way society is organized if we are to halt and reverse the ecological catastrophe toward which we are now hurtling – and which is fueled by our dependency on fossil fuels.
Expropriate the Cynical Price Gouging Pharmaceutical Cartel
by Gary Porter - As the Trudeau government readies to develop a formulary (list) of drugs to be covered for Canadians in the new pharmacare program, assuming Pierre Pollievre isn’t elected in the next federal election, a major concern will be the cost of the drugs. This does not appear to be a concern when it comes to the military. The recent announcement that Canada is spending 8 billion immediately and 73 billion over the next 10 years to meet our “commitments ” to NATO prove the point. NATO is an American led alliance of US domination, aggression and war, far more important to the Canadian ruling class than the health of Canadians
The drug cartel is in private hands and they wring the last nickel of profit out of suffering. The very idea of letting private profit gougers run the pharmaceuticals business is insane of you think about it.. Here’s one example of many.
Massive Canadian Public Sector Unions Demand an End to Arms Sales to Israel
Source: CUPW, April 2, 2024.
As Israel continues its bombardment of Gaza, which has resulted in a devastating number of civilian deaths, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE), and the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) are calling on the Canadian government to immediately suspend the trade of arms and military equipment with Israel.
More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. This is in response to the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel, which killed approximately 1,200 people, mostly innocent civilians. Over 200 people were taken as hostages, including children. An estimated 100 remain in captivity, and their families and communities are suffering. A ceasefire is urgently needed to ensure Israeli civilians return home safely and to end the devastation and deaths in Gaza. (Ed, in the view of Socialist Action, because Gaza is illegally occupied by Israel, the Palestinians have the right to carry out actions such as occurred on October 7, and as occupiers, Israel has no right to reply by arms)
The Revolution Will Not Be Managed
by Susan Rosenthal - First published at susanrosenthal.com -
We all want to make our own choices and resent others imposing their choices on us. Yet our lives are externally managed from birth to death. We are told who we must be and what we can and cannot read, think, say, and do with our bodies and our lives. This suffocating control is justified as necessary for a complex society to function. This is a lie.
While all societies require people to be organized, the need for external management is a unique feature of class-divided societies.
The Conservative Party of Canada Policy Declaration is an Anti-Worker Manifesto
A review by Gary Porter
Recently I came across the Conservative Party of Canada’s Policy Declaration as updated by its membership in September 2023. This appears to be the collective view of a broad layer of Tory activists.
Pierre Pollievre's face appears frequently on every medium to tell anyone who will listen how hard he is fighting for all Canadians and especially for the interests of workers. Carefully reading this small 65 page book makes it clear that Pollievre is blatantly lying.
China’s unfair ‘overcapacity’
by Michael Roberts, MR Online, April 18, 2024 - The recent nonsense issued by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on China’s ‘overcapacity’ and ‘unfair subsidies’ to its industries is particularly pathetic. As Renaud Bertrand put it:
The so-called threat of China’s ‘industrial overcapacity’ is a buzzword that actually means that China is simply too competitive, and by asking it to address this, what Yellen is truly asking of China is akin to a fellow sprinter asking Usain Bolt to run less fast because he can’t keep up.
Indeed, let me quote Bertrand’s rebuttal of Yellen’s claims of ‘overcapacity’:
Let’s start with capacity utilization rates. It’s crystal clear they’ve been pretty much constant in China for the past 10 years, standing at roughly 76% right now, which is in the same ballpark as America’s own utilization rates, at about 78%. So, there’s no issue there.
Zionist fascism on the march in Canada
by Yves Engler - Extreme nationalism and the worship of power, no matter your religion or ethnicity, leads to the same place.
In their bid to defend the slaughter in Gaza, the Israeli nationalist Jewish establishment has deepened its ties to fascist groups and escalated its anti-democratic rhetoric.
In recent weeks Israeli nationalists have repeatedly taken their cues from the former head of the thuggish and racist Jewish Defence League (JDL). The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), B’nai Brith, Honest Reporting Canada and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center have all supported long-time JDL head Meir Weinstein’s harassment of anti-genocide protesters.