If Ken will pardon my unsympathetic executive summary, I find the following main points in his argument (which Paul Phillips "heartfully endorses"): 1. The Canadian welfare state was shoved down the throats of the ruling class by the revolutionary demands of the Canadian working class. 2. Government monopolies, credit unions, union control of pension funds, worker-owned businesses and retail and producer co-ops are a threat to capital. and 3. You don't get a socialist garden by cultivating the prettiest capitalist weeds. This doesn't even lead you along the path to a socialist garden. 1. Perhaps it would interest Ken to look at some of the parliamentary discussions and policy papers that preceded adoption of such "working class victories" as the Canadian Pension Plan and Unemployment Insurance. Those programs are the ones I am most intimately familiar with and I have no reservation in pointing out that "linkage" between contributions and benefits was and is held to be of utmost importance in keeping those programs essentially "market-based" and intra-class in their income redistributive effects. The image of a recalitrant Canadian ruling class capitulating to the revolutionary fervor of the workers sounds like something out of a 1970s maoist pipe dream of the future. But Ken is saying that is what actually happened in Canadian history. Show me the documents, Ken. 2. and 3. Government monopolies, credit unions, worker-owned businesses and retail and producer coops do business with private capital every hour of every day. Unions are in the business of COLLECTIVE BARGAINING with capitalist employers. I will simply point out that Ken's positions on 2 and 3 are contradictory. How could the institutions Ken lauds be "a threat to capital" if they DON'T have any criteria for distinguishing between the ugliest and prettiest "capitalist weeds"? 4. "The game plan. I grant you the proper game plan for a revolution doesnt seem clear." I will be presenting an executive summary of the game plan on Friday. I'll let you know what kind of reception it gets. regards, Tom Walker
