November 11, 1975 -- Vintage Leftist Leaflet Project
Communist Party of Canada leaflet from 1975. A submission to the Royal Commission on Corporate Concentration.
Key/interesting quotes:
The Canadian state is used as a vehicle for the implementation of the policies of monopoly capital. The state collaborates with the corporate elite in its efforts to maximize its control over the political, economic and social life of the country for the purpose of assuring maximum monopoly profits at the expense of the working people.
Monopoly dominates the state and the state is run for its purposes. The government's advisory boards such as the Economic Council of Canada consist mainly of the representatives of the monopoly corporations. Even the boards of the universities, hospitals and charity organizations are controlled by monopoly. Government policy and monopoly policy are closely meshed. Both strive to create the necessary conditions for the making of maximum monopoly profits. In fact the make-up of this very Commission and of its legal advisors reflects the close affinity of the government and the corporate community.
and:
The corporations use their extensive power to attack the living standards, democratic rights and interests of the people. They raise prices at will, close plants and lay off workers at will, and generally pursue policies inimical to the public interest and the all-sided development of the Canadian economy. As a consequence the anti-monopoly classes and groups, in defence of their own economic and political interests, are compelled to fight back against the power of the monopolies much of which is wielded through state channels.
finally:
We advocate nationalization of all multi-national corporations in Canada as a first step toward the nationalization of the banks, trusts, insurance companies and the credit system to secure the necessary capital for the planned balanced development of the economy under public ownership and control serving the public interest.
The Communist Party is not opposed to bigness as such. What we are concerned with is: who owns the bigness and whose interests does it serve. Centralization and concentration of capital into the hands of a small group of huge corporations, which in reality constitute a government within government, is an objective process under capitalism.
