Submissions to YCL-LJC Convention Discussion Bulletin Contribution

1. Democracy vs. Bureaucracy: Cutting Red Tape or Taping Up Reds?

I think some of us have “democracy” and “bureaucracy” completely mixed-up.  More than one YCL leader has referred to additional procedures, meetings for making decisions, and committees as being “bureaucratic”, but nothing could be further from the truth.  This concept of bureaucracy is the bourgeois concept expressed by the sociologist Max Weber, who said bureaucrats are full-timers who just try to expand their functions.  In a progressive organization functionaries (staff) do work decided on by the membership, this is not the “bureaucracy” those who have mixed up democracy for bureaucracy are talking about though.

Maximizing collective discussion, the opportunity for members to say “wait a minute!  You're about to make a big mistake!”, and having someone designated as accountable and responsible (e.g. a chair) is NOT bureaucratic but democratic.  The democratic part of democratic centralism means the maximum discussion, this is the only legitimate basis for any decisions that we are centrally holding anyone accountable to.

On the other hand I have seen a real danger of bureaucracy, but this is the exact opposite of having more meetings, chairs, or procedures.  I have seen instances where meetings aren't held collectively but instead are one-on-one's with follow-ups in a group, or decisions are made beforehand by higher bodies before a lower body has exhausted discussion, or where in the name of saving time or getting things done decisions and even presentations are handed down from higher up and as a consequence those lower down don't develop, don't make their own mistakes and don't grow.  I was even in one provincial meeting where comrades were looking to the centre for action on a provincial matter, and I had to ask myself: are these Marxist-Leninists or Marxist-Mannequins?  I would much prefer we messed thing up but learned from it, then doing something perfectly but only be going through motions or mouthing words already scripted for us.

Pop quiz: what's the difference between a puppet and a mannequin?  A puppet at least moves when you pull the strings.

To loosely quote Fidel Castro from a speech to Havana University students on March 13, 1962, “In a yoke.  And that is not a revolution!  What becomes of the revolution?  A school for pets.  And that's not revolution!  What has to be the revolution?  The revolution has to be a school of revolutionaries ... must lead people to study, to think, to analyze, to take deep conviction, so deep that there is no need for those (bureaucratic) tricks...  We believe in revolutionary ideas, because we know that our people is revolutionary and we know that our people will be increasingly revolutionary because we believe in Marxism-Leninism, because we believe that Marxism-Leninism is an undeniable truth.”  To paraphrase Maurice Thorez, leader of the French CP, from his 1931 newspaper articles, “No mannequins in the YCL!”.  We should push for more taking-of-ownership by YCL bodies and members even if at first there are growing pains as we learn and struggle.

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2. Odds about our ends: Can the YCL influence the labour movement, “is” our members learning, leadership communication, and “bigging up” ourselves

Four short thoughts that aren't enough to make a separate contribution by themselves:

1. Labour: I have heard from some YCL leaders that that the labour movement's problems should be solved within the labour movement, but I think we as the YCL have a role even if many of us are outside of organized labour. 

There is a premium in having not just youth attendance but also a youth perspective, which young communists can give the best.  When we show up at strike pickets and labour movement events, with one exception I know of, we are welcome and make an impact in people's minds.  Communism is not just for old fogies, many sensible youth are young communists and we're here to stay.  Our presence as the YCL and our fight for more militancy will give courage to the pro-struggle anti-collaboration forces within organized labour.  It should be a standing club agenda item to organize picket support and build relationships with workplaces.

2. Education: Many members are impressed with classes at YCL schools, but I don't think we are being effective with actually changing and developing ideas.  We need to set the context for our classes in the political life our club members have confronted, and explicitly show how what is taught should change our way of thinking about the political fights we are involved in.  It is so rare that youth in general get to have an organized political discussion that people are happy just to be able to express their opinion, but we need to do more in our classes to actually change each others' opinions.

3. Leadership: As a CC and provincial executive member I am foremost guilty of this: executives and committees need to always send their minutes or a summary of meetings down to the club level.  Each member should be clued in on what the provincial and central leadership is working on.  These document can tend to become public so even something short like what was discussed and decided should be routinely e-mailed out.

4. Member development: Capitalism develops unevenly and our members have uneven development, some are much more experienced and developed than others.  This can be intimidating for those who are in a political discussion with someone who is quicker with facts and ideas.  But it would be a mistake to make a “little kids table” to accommodate people who feel uncomfortable, we want to bring newer people in deeper and so they should hold their heads high and take their rightful place at the “big kids table”.  Yes it's intimidating, but if you can't take on your fellow YCLer in a political discussion what chance do you stand in taking on capitalism, or the boss at work?  We need to “big up” ourselves and get right in there with the people who can quote Lenin and Marx at the drop of our hat, quote from your own life experience or even Big Bird if that's where your politics are coming from for now.  We need more new people, but we also need them to develop rapidly and bloom with a bang.

Against Cinderella Memberships, Yes We Can Have Blood-Soaked Steaks On Every Plate (not that we should), and Other Comments on Bulletin #2 (YCL-LJC Convention Discussion Contribution)

I think that the convention contributions about Constitutional Amendments and By-Laws and also about Vegetarianism in Bulletin #2, and Third Worldism more recently, are exactly the kinds of contributions we need before the YCL Convention and exactly the kind of issues we need to hash out a the Convention.  These contributions are a sign that we have a healthy organization with people who can use their brains to think for themselves, that we’re not just a collection of pets and mannequins who are (barely) warm bodies for other people’s words and ideas. 

Of course, that does not mean I agree with what these contributions say, and I hope to address some of the Constitutional Amendments and By-Laws from the Trail Club as well as the article on Vegetarianism here. 

I am against the age-ceiling to YCL membership in the proposal (by-law 4 Ageing Out) from Trail.  I think this is a reckless change, to say that you should not be a YCL member when you hit 30, because it automatically removes membership without looking at the need for a careful transition to younger members.  Leaving the YCL should not be something determined by a clock, but is a political task that isn’t always conveniently managed like a calendar.  It takes figuring out to see who to transition the tasks and roles to.  Also a 29-year old YCLer might be in the middle of finishing a responsibility or task close to their 30^th birthday, it would be arbitrary to say they cannot finish their job because of their birthday. 

Having an automatic cut-off for membership when the clock strikes midnight on your 30^th birthday would also create 2 tiers of membership, those who are eligible for election as leaders because of how far they are from being 30 and those who are not.  This is undemocratic, YCL members should be allowed to elect ANY member regardless of their age to leadership positions. 

The age-limit is a mechanical proposal.  I confess, I am 32 years old and would not have been eligible to be elected to the Central Committee if this rule was in place then.  But my reasons against it are that it handles the question of transition without regard for the consequences of people leaving the YCL when the clock strikes 12 on their 30^th birthday and also is undemocratic because it creates two classes of members.  I have worked out a transition out of the YCL in a way where I can take proper responsibility for my work up to the convention, something that depends on more than the Earth’s revolution around the sun. 

Amendment 7 asks for National and Provincial Committees to meet at least monthly.  I think this is impractical, executives might meet monthly at best.  Full committees, which are larger and not executive bodies, would probably need to meet less frequently if they are not just going to be an executive. 

I am in favor of gendered speaking lists and use them sometimes where there is a big gender imbalance, but I think it would be wrong to make that a bylaw as for parliamentary meetings like a Convention we need a more simple straight-forward democratic mechanism of every member or speaker having the same rights, even if the composition of the meeting is imbalanced.  In a non-parliamentary meeting it’s worth promoting voices that are not often heard, but where top policy decisions are being made we should use parliamentary procedure that is designed to give  elected representatives equal voice like in Roberts Rules of Order. 

I like the idea of a pro- and con- speakers list, but what about those who are not pro or con? 

By-law 6, requiring a uniform and pins, is too much like a paramilitary organization or the boy scouts or girl guides, which is not what the YCL is.  We are not an organization of youth with para-military aspirations of uniformity, but have an uneven mix of people struggling against capitalism from different levels of development.  Uniforms and pins, especially those differentiating Communist Party members from non-Communist Party members which should be irrelevant as the YCL is independent of the CPC, are the wrong kind of discipline. 

Lastly, I call for rejecting the idea that our personal consumption should be restricted.  Our personal consumption is not the main danger to the world, the capitalist rule of the world is.  While meat eating is certainly less efficient than vegetarian lifestyles, the fact is that we can actually produce enough beef for the whole world under the current system.  I calculated that if you took the highest per-capita beef consumption (from Argentina) and calculated how many cows would be required, based on the highest carcass yield statistics by country (so pick a Japanese beef cow), assuming a cow is slaughtered at age two, and from that figured out how much grassland would be needed for 2.5 acres per cow (the low end of the range for organic farming), current grazing lands can cover this amount of cows.  Under the current level of agricultural technology we actually can have steak for dinner for everyone every day, but we don’t not because the Earth can’t support it but because production is for profit and not need. 

Under socialism we might decide not to have steak every day because we might want to use the resources for something else, but if we decide to have steak every day for everyone we can.  The idea that we should restrict our consumption under socialism because of valuing restricted consumption itself, instead of some rational trade-off with an alternative uses of resources, is a defeatist revision of Marxism-Leninism championed by people like Hans Heinz Holz of the German CP who claim the USSR should not have tried to out-produce capitalism but should have tried to pursue alternative non-consumptive ethics.  Marxism-Leninism says socialism can outproduce capitalism in terms of making things we need because socialism transitions us to where we can eliminate scarcity and produce for needs and not profit, the way forward is to be able to provide steaks for everyone who wants one rather than saying we should all be vegetarians.  Of course, this doesn’t mean we should not be vegetarians for other reasons, just that production capacity under socialism should not be one of them.

Third World-ism is Not a Challenge but Rather is “Challenged” (YCL-LJC 25th Central Convention Contribution)

Third World-ism is Not a Challenge but Rather is “Challenged”

Saleh Waziruddin from Niagara YCL

A Toronto Comrade writes that Third Worldism, the idea that the world can be divided into three income brackets and wealth is produced by those who are in the poorest countries, has some facts to offer us and explains why there is less of a fight-back in imperialist countries like Canada. Actually Third Worldism is not based on facts at all and does not challenge us into recognizing realities but instead tries to confuse us to accept the boss’s lies about ourselves. The outcome of believing the boss’s lies that many Canadian workers have it too good already is to give up any hope of fighting Canadian capitalists, perversely in the name of helping people exploited by our capitalists in other countries when what they need most is for us to bring Canadian capitalists to their knees, something Third Worldism says we can’t do because we are bought off.

The lowest paid Canadian does not make $36,000 a year, but $0 a year. The fact is most Canadians are not comfortably well off, many are either starving and homeless or one cheque away from it. It’s not scientific to take the average income and say this represents the bottom income. The 2004 Stats Can Survey of Household Spending shows that the bottom 20% of Ontarians by income spend about 140% of their income on basic necessities.

But there is a bigger fact Third Worldism gets wrong, which is that even though it is on a small scale, the Canadian working class and youth ARE fighting back. We are going on strikes, supporting picket lines, protesting the G20, organizing solidarity campaigns despite not even having the right to use the word “Apartheid”. Third Worldism is blind to this reality and tries to make us ignore the real fight-back as it is and the potential for growing it, by telling us we are all bought off by the labour of workers in neo-colonies, which itself shows a completely muddled interpretation of Marx.

Third Worldism mixes up income, which is how much physical money we get, with the social relationship we are in. Capitalism is not defined by income but by the social relationship of producing wealth. As far as understanding capitalism goes it’s not so important whether your income is high or low, but whether you are producing wealth for the capitalists or if someone else is producing wealth for you. Often relatively higher-income auto and steel workers are producing much more wealth and are much more exploited (in the Marxist sense of producing wealth for capitalists) than low income workers who might not be producing as much wealth for capitalists. Third Worldism tries to make us forget capitalism is about social relationships by telling us it is about income, which robs us of the revolutionary analysis needed to change Canada.

Instead of income tiers, the world should be looked at as consisting of imperialist countries like Canada, socialist countries like Cuba or Democratic Korea, and what I will call neo-colonies which are countries targeted by capitalists in imperialist countries for making money off of them. Looking at the world through imperialist relations directly, rather than income brackets, shows that wealth is produced by workers in imperialist countries too and this has nothing to do with the size of your paycheck.

Third Worldism as presented by the Toronto Comrade, and I think this is a distortion in the presentation, confuses retail with service. A “mall economy” is a retail economy, and according to Marx’s analysis in Capital II retail workers do not produce wealth but instead circulate it. However, not all service workers are retail workers, and service workers such as those in outsourced call centres like myself do produce wealth for capitalists, in fact a lot of it. Marx’s analysis of capitalism is about looking at wealth production, not the production of physical stuff. The fallacy that those who do not produce physical goods are not producing wealth was smashed by people who came long before Marx, like Adam Smith. What’s important about capitalist exploitation is whether the capitalists as a class makes a profit off of the work, which they do for outsourced services, and to focus on income alone is to turn back the clock on Economics over 200 years.

Stats Can’s Labour Force Survey released August 6 2010 shows manufacturing workers increased by 26,000 in July and make up 1.7 million workers (productive and non-productive of capital e.g. in administration and maintenance). The goods-producing industries have 3.7 million workers vs 13.5 million for the service industries, but only 2.7 million of those are in trade. Most of the other service workers are not in retail and produce capital and so are “productive” of capital and exploited in the same way as workers in manufacturing industries or workers in neo-colonies. These are the facts that Third Worldism wants to confuse us about by mixing up retail and service work, and mixing up paycheck sizes with the social relationships of capitalism.

All of these workers in manufacturing and non-retail services produce wealth for capitalists, and their paychecks are not from the third world or neo-colonial countries but from their own labour. So it’s wrong to say that we make gains from the exploitation of workers in neo-colonies, we make gains from the struggle against our own capitalists, who workers in neo-colonies are also struggling against. In fact we can only beat the Canadian capitalists if we work together with workers in neo-colonies to take them on, something Third Worldism will never let us do because it wants us to close our eyes to the realities of the struggle in Canada in the name of confusing income disparity as a short-hand for imperialist social relations. To say workers in imperialist countries are collaborators is to ignore the fight back as it is, and to ignore the reality of our responsibility in Canada to increase the resistance and win the leadership of the working class here as a means of overthrowing capitalism.

Nothing to lose but your chains does not mean you literally have nothing other than chains, but rather that socially we are nothing under capitalism even if we have good food or a good apartment because we don’t control the means of production, and so “we have been naught but we shall be all” as in the song Internationale not because we have naught but because despite what material things we might have we are still naught. This is the difference between physical income vs our social relationship. Capitalism is not about how much stuff you have but about the social relationship of making the stuff.

The Right is successful because it uses demagoguery backed up by its wealth, and we have limited success because we need to improve in our leadership of the struggle and our work and not because Canadian workers are living large. Third Worldism buys into the ignorant stereotypes of capitalist demagoguery that tries to convince us Canadian workers have it good and so should accept pay cuts and layoffs, and plays into the hands of the capitalists to make us forget the potential around us of rebellion by having us focus only on what is happening in neo-colonies.

We don’t need theories of fetishism to tell us a fight-back is happening in Canada, we just need to open our eyes (at least a couple of millimeters). The reason capitalism is strong in Canada is not because workers are weak through living off the workers in neo-colonies, but because capitalists are strong through living off the workers in neo-colonies as well as Canada. “Third worldism” has this backwards and does not offer a scientific solution forward, and tries to confuse us about the basics of Marxism by playing tricks with the idea that your income determines your social relationship in the economy.