peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP (Peter Rowley) (10/25/83)
Tonight (Mon), the CBC National News gave prominent coverage to the retirement speech of Grace Hartman, outgoing president of the Cdn Union of Public Employees. In it, she claimed that the recent recession was a plot designed to break the unions. Quite a statement if true. I have no clue of where to look for evidence or counter-evidence to this-- I wonder if any net readers have any information on this. I don't usually subscribe to conspiracy theories, but with all the interlocking directorships in Canada, one never knows. I think it more likely that a number of companies and governments took advantage of a recession to further their aims, acting independently. In fact, given the profit motive, I'd be surprised if companies *didn't* take advantage of the recession in some way. I know replies should normally be sent by mail, but I might suggest that in this case they be sent to this newsgroup-- Cdn politics is more interesting than the amount of traffic on this group would suggest. p. rowley, U. Toronto
tbray@mprvaxa.UUCP (10/27/83)
An orthodox Marxist (which I am not) would quote chapter and verse out of Marx & Engels to the effect that: 1. Every period of prosperity in the history of capitalism has been followed by a period of hardship, due to the built-in tendency of profit margins to decrease with time (the argument for this is quite technical but seems strong if you accept the Marxist premises concerning where profit comes from). 2. The initial reaction of capitalism to this occurrence has always been to make up the difference out of the backs of the working classes. The examples M & E used were the wage-cutting practices of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century industrialists, but there seems a fairly straightforward isomorphism between those examples and what's been going on in North America the last year or so. 3. Finally, there is no necessity for any actual conspiracy to occur for this to happen - the various classes are acting in an inevitable response to the economic forces which affect them. As I said, I do not feel that Marxist theory gives a fully correct analysis of our society, and certainly not a complete one. I reject both Hegelian logic and full economic determinism. However, Marxism does claim to be `scientific' and we are supposed to judge scientific theories on the basis of the accuracy of their predictions. Hmmm... ...decvax!microsoft!ubc-vision!mprvaxa!tbray