In nine days, Toronto will host the largest capitalist get together in Canadian history. It will also see the city and country’s largest anti-capitalist protest in years.
On September 14 and 15 Carney will host what the Globe and Mail called “the largest gathering of top business leaders ever to assemble in the country.” Senior officials from firms managing $120 trillion in funds will be at the Four Seasons. The CEOs of two dozen of Canada’s biggest companies, including the major banks and large arms firms CAE and Bombardier, will be in attendance. Probably the most powerful man on Wall Street, Larry Fink, will lead the largest international delegation. Over 30 US investment funds are expected to be represented in Toronto alongside representatives from two dozen other countries.
Attendees at Carney’s carnival of capitalism will be there for profit-making opportunities. Some want to buy up privatized airports. Others are interested in a plan to make Port Churchill Manitoba a resource export hub. Still others are seeking to profit from arms contracts and Carney’s bid to further marry high finance with war. Making money from AI data centres and expanding fossil fuel extraction is the principal aim of others. Some might hope to get a small piece of all the action.
Several hundred — maybe a thousand — will march from Nathan Phillips Square to the Four Seasons near Bloor to ‘unwelcome’ the capitalists. A Carnival Against Capitalism with puppets, satirical clowns and giant props will weave through downtown to the fancy hotel. It will include street theatre and a “Billionaire Strut” lampooning the corporate titans gathering. A big “Capitalism can’t be fixed” banner will be part of what’s likely to be the largest anti-capitalist mobilization in some time.
Preceding the march a Carnival against capitalism forum will take place Sunday evening at Toronto’s Workers Action Centre. That event will include speakers from several socialist groups on the path forward for the anti-capitalist movement.
At the same venue in late May the “Capitalism Can’t Be Fixed” campaign organized a highly successful daylong conference, which called for a mobilization against Carney’s CEO summit. The upcoming carnival against capitalism is the latest effort of a campaign that produced a comprehensive platform called Capitalism Can’t Be Fixed—Onward to a Socialist Future! during the NDP leadership race. Since the October release of that platform, which was put together by 45 activists and researchers, it’s likely been the most widely read anti-capitalist pamphlet/book in Canada. Unfortunately, that is not saying too much. Beyond a few small revolutionary groups, some anarchist bookfairs and ever diminishing number of Marxist academics, there’s little anti-capitalist activity in Canada today.
But more than ever we need an organized movement questioning wealth concentrating, ecocidal capitalism.
A system of minority and class rule, capitalism is based on the private ownership of our social means of livelihood. Capitalist collectives (corporations) have socialized labour while operating as privately owned workplace dictatorships that centralize power in the hands of a small elite. It’s created the world’s first trillionaire and a near unprecedented level of inequality.
At the same time capitalism’s need for constant profit maximization and growth is imperilling human survival. The last three years were the hottest in 100,000 years and CO2 levels are the highest in millions of years. Canadians have among the highest per capita GHG emissions, yet Carney’s summit will seek ways to expand extraction of heavy GHG emitting tar sands.
It’s not just the climate crisis. The search for corporate profits is driving mass species extinction, soil depletion, ozone layer thinning, loss of arable land, freshwater depletion and other ecological crises.
As capitalism has spurred ecological collapse and further concentrated wealth, direct challenges have largely dried up. For social and ecological reasons that must change. We need movements pushing to replace one dollar one vote capitalism with one person one vote economic democracy. Wherever there’s social labour, there should be community ownership and workplace democracy.
Challenging capitalism is more important than ever. Join the Carnival Against Capitalism on September 14.