In mid-January, the Ford government leaked news that it would be reducing tuition fees by 10 per cent across Ontario. The decision was immediately met with suspicion by students. Their suspicion, it turns out, was justified.
Edmonton City Council recently passed its 2019-2022 municipal budget—and austerity is on the menu for the next four years. Mayor Don Iveson himself admitted that this was the hardest budget passed in more than a decade. What will follow are cuts in services and programs reducing their overall quality, putting a heavier daily workload on city workers, and imposing higher living costs on Edmonton residents.
The following article from 1932 is a short but impassioned defence of the legacy of the German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, murdered 100 years ago in the cause of working class liberation. The article, authored by Leon Trotsky, skillfully refutes the slanders made by Josef Stalin against Luxemburg in a 1931 article—slanders which include her not being a revolutionary. In particular, repeated attempts were made by Stalin to drive a wedge between Lenin and Luxemburg. While certain disagreements did exist between these two figures (and these are by no means unimportant), Luxemburg stood firmly in the camp of Bolshevism after 1917, and this was recognized by practically everyone at the time.
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of Rosa Luxemburg, we share this article by Marie Frederiksen, author of The Revolutionary Heritage of Rosa Luxemburg. Marie explains how the Spartacist Uprising of 1919 was defeated due to the weakness and mistakes of the young German Communist Party, ultimately resulting in Luxemburg’s execution. These events are also explored in Germany 1918-1933: Socialism or Barbarism, available now from WellRed Books.
Recent studies by the Conference Board of Canada brought to light the horrible food situation in Nunavut. In 2016, they released their Food Report Cards that looked at industry prosperity, diets, food safety and household food security in each province and territory. This revealed a food insecurity rate of 51 per cent in Nunavut, which means 1 in 2 people cannot get enough to eat. Balanced healthy meals are out of the question and smaller meal sizes are necessary to make food last. This crisis that silently lingers is greatly affecting the indigenous population - which makes up 95 percent of the population of Nunavut.
Since the beginning of the crisis of 2008, anti-immigrant parties and movements have made headway in Europe and the United States. They have even managed to win over certain layers of the working class to their programme. This has led a section of the labour movement to adapt itself to these ideas, calling for stricter border controls, justifying its position with quotations from Marx. Such short-sighted policies have nothing to do with Marx or the traditions of the First, Second or Third International, as we shall demonstrate.
Asylum seekers and the hypocrisy of Canadian imperialism
New defence policy: Canadian imperialism flexes its muscles
Trudeau's marijuana legalization: Seeing through the smokescreen
__________________
