And this is just a miniscule portion ($100,000 according to the Star) of the more than $900 million budgeted for security during the G8 and G20 summits (security tab for G8 and G20 summits could top 900million), even more than we wasted in Vancouver scaring the hell out of potential activists, in a clear warning of what´s in store for protestors this June in Toronto: ("In a security operation even larger than the Vancouver Winter Olympics, thousands of police officers are being called in from across the province and the country to provide security for the two summits. New estimates show the RCMP is getting an extra $321 million with another $262 million going to the Public Safety department and $63 million for national defence").
Clearly the spending cuts on the table at these summits won´t include a reduction in state terrorism, police repression of democratic protest, or corporate welfare. If recent announcements by Spanish Socialist President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (a typical European "free market socialist") are anything to go by--slashing civil servants´ salaries by 5%, freezing pensions, 600€ million in cuts to foreign aid, elimination of $2,500 in assistance to new mothers, cuts to caregivers of disabled family members, etc.--than we can expect more of the usual: more cuts to social programs and investment in public infrastructure, the tabling of cuts to public pensions and unemployment insurance (now euphamistically referred to in Canada as "EI or, employment insurance"), another round of privatization of public institutions, tuition increases, continued elimination of support for progressive social organizations (Since 2006, Harper has cut funding for women’s advocacy by 43 per cent, shut 12 out of 16 Status of Women offices in Canada...), a renewed attack on public employees and unions in general, a revamped onslaught against and commodification of nature, the continued and growing abandonment of the poor, the weak, the young, the old, and everyone in between, all in the name of reducing the deficit. Actually, it´s the other way around: reducing the deficit (and other cost-cutting measures against "the crisis") is invoked in the name of cutting social spending.
It´s capitalism pure and simple: privatize the profits; socialize the losses--and beat the hell out of anyone who doesn´t like it. Owen.
According to the Toronto Star's online Map of the week(March 19, 2009), there were 1,068 bicycle accidents reported to Toronto police in 2008. Some of these accidents occurred while cyclists were using dedicated bike lanes, such as the College St. or Dundas St. E. bike lanes. This should come as no surprise: a painted line on the side of the road, as any cyclist can tell you, offers little protection from passing cars or the suddenly-opened doors of cars parked between traffic, cyclists and the sidewalk. Clearly, there should be NO accidents involving cars on Toronto bicycle lanes. By definition, a bicycle lane must be SAFE for cyclists, but our bike lanes don´t even look safe. Would you feel safe with cars whizzing past you on the Bloor Viaduct?
Out-of-touch conservatives like Justin Van Dette consistently miss the point when they suggest that bike lanes should be relegated to Toronto's ravines. For too many car crazy Canadians a bicycle is a toy to be taken out the occasional weekend with the kids: it´s not a serious mode of transportation. But bicycles are a valid, efficient and clean way to get around the city. We need to make opting to bike a more viable alternative for the average Torontonian, who is not willing to risk life and limb to get from point A to point B, like the courageous cyclists of this city do every day.
Maybe it´s because Van Dette, and others like him, intuit the inherent challenge cyclists and bike lanes represent: more bike lanes mean fewer cars; they´re not really complementary. Once you start creating a dedicated space for cyclists, sooner or later people will have no choice but to get on a bicycle (“if you build it, they will come”). As things stand, my mother wouldn´t even think of hopping on her bike to get around the city: she´s too scared —and for good reason. If, on the other hand, there were a genuinely safe and intelligent bike lane system in Toronto, she just might not be able to resist a nice bike ride down to the lake; because if we build them right, bike lanes allow cyclists to move around the city faster—and far cheaper (if not basically for free, once you factor in the initial purchase of the bicycle and the odd flat tire, etc.)— than they could with public transit or driving. Design, backed by a dedicated citizenry —and working in their interest—, has the potential to change a city and to change the way people live in it. This probably is not a pleasant recipe for somebody fundamentally opposed to change and to maintaining the status quo.
It is not true that the decision to build more bike lanes “comes down to spending”. Money is not the only criteria on which a society can base its decisions —even if it were, encouraging cycling through ambitious infrastructure investment is arguably a lot cheaper than subsidizing new car purchases, highways, road repairs, and the health care costs associated with pollution and an increasingly overweight population. This is precisely the kind of discourse that neo-liberals have been shoving down our throats in Ontario for the last 20 years: if it doesn´t add up to more money and less taxes for the rich it doesn´t “function”.
The question is not whether having a bike lane on the Danforth “functions” —according to the Slovenian critic Slavoj Žižek, the real political act is not simply whatever functions in the context of existing relations (drivers on the road/pedestrians on the sidewalk/cyclists in the bike lane; the rich in Rosedale/the poor in Parkdale, etc.), rather precisely that which modifies the context that determines how things function. In other words, bike lanes are not just an unhappy appendage to highways, designed to curtail further protest and change. Our goal is not simply to be assigned our appropriate —and very vulnerable— space in the transport hierarchy: at the side of the road, between the cars and the people, marginalized yet somehow assuaged by a bit of paint. Nor is it to build a fluid and harmonious network of interacting cars and bicycles. Rather, our task is to progressively relegate the car to a space as limited and uncomfortable as bicycles have heretofore occupied. This is not about revenge: it´s a revolution. We need to radically reconsider how and for whom our cities work: for them (drivers), or for us (cyclists).[1] And we have to be prepared to start fighting for ourRight to the City. A cyclist has at least as great a claim to the road as a driver. Bike lanes are just one example of a space that citizens need to win back if freedom and democracy are to regain a foothold in this city. A wonderful example of how people can come together to regain and rebuild these spaces is the West Toronto Rail Path, a community-based initiative that has transformed long-abandoned rail lines into a “green transportation artery”.
If we are going to invest in traditional bike lanes —instead of simply taking over the road—, we should at the very least construct functional and, above all, SAFE bicycle lanes. This would be a start. It would allow more people to get onto their bikes and leave their cars at home and would be one more step towards the ultimate goal of re-shaping the urban landscape.
So what should a real bike lane look like?
This is a bike lane: it is clearly marked, visually separated from traffic, since it forms part of the sidewalk, and physically marked by a barrier that separates it from the road. There is even room for bikes to pass in opposite directions. The picture is from Cordoba, Spain. Not exactly bicycle Mecca, but it is nevertheless far better prepared than Toronto to keep its citizens and visitors peddling safely.
After a few, brief moments of euphoria, I realized that the New York Times article I was about to post as a shining example for us all, was in fact a digital remnant of the fake, utopian version of the New York Times published last year by the Yes Men, in which George Bush was impeached for war crimes, and U.S. troops were immediately pulled out of Iraq. One article reported that the New York Department of Transportation had just announced that: “over the next two years, every other avenue will receive a full bike lane, blocked off from traffic, while every fifth crosstown street will be opened exclusively to bicyclists and pedestrians beginning next month.” Even the traffic lights would be adjusted to change in sync with riders (New York Bike Path system expanded dramatically). It may be a utopian fiction, but it would be a good start. Really, there is no such thing as too many bike lanes, only too many cars. The more bike lanes the better, I say, but let them be real bike lanes!
[1]This “us and them” stuff sounds a bit crude, but let´s not kid ourselves: real change will always encounter resistance. It therefore requires a fight. The good thing is we don´t need to eliminate “them”: we just have to convert them into cyclists, pedestrians or happy transit users.
Sometime in the last century pigs went from being raised on farms to being grown inside factories. In the process, pork production has become a heavily concentrated industry. In 1965, for example, there were 53 million pigs in the U.S. spread across 1 million farms; today there are 65 million pigs on only 65,000 sites. In Spain, where I live, there are 25 million pigs: that’s half a pig per person or, for jamón Serrano-loving Spaniards: 2 legs per persona.
The more pigs the better, you might say: “eat and be merry!” Fine, I appreciate the sentiment, however, the conditions under which pork is produced and the environmental and health consequences of large-scale, industrialized meat production ought to make you reconsider your earlier enthusiasm and flippancy. Not to mention human and animal rights abuses, and, of course, swine flu: just some of the high prices of cheap meat.
I won’t bother going into further detail, since other people have already done a wonderful job of denouncing conditions in the meat industry: If you haven’t read Eric Schlosser´s Fast Food Nation you’re in for a disgusting treat. This short but scathing comparison of capitalist pig production and the piggish production of capital, is also highly entertaining: Capitalist Pigs: what the Wall Street meltdown and swine flu have in common. For a thundering condemnation of human rights abuses in the meat industry, see this report by Human Rights Watch: Blood, Sweat, and Fear. If you need visual confirmation, there’s a new HBO documentary on the subject:Death on A Factory Farm, or check it out on youtube:
So, I’ve been reading Karl Marx’s Capital with David Harvey. It has a kind of all-consuming effect on you. I’ve begun to see just about everything through a Marxian lens: “hey! That’s just like when Marx says…” which is probably starting to piss people off, but it’s been a lot of fun and, dare I say it, rather illuminating. I don’t feel any smarter or smug and superior—on the contrary—, but I am beginning to feel kind of intellectually empowered: like the opposite of going to vote for the European parliament. Things take on new shades of meaning. Questions abound. A sort of grim satisfaction arises from your new-found ability to put your finger on the daily injustices of the world around you. There’s this fancy new word that shares a pleasing assonance with diapers: dialectics.
One of the questions that have been bouncing around my head recently:
If a pig lives on a farm we call it an animal, if a dog lives in a house we call it a pet, if a man lives in a concentration camp we call him a prisoner, what then do we call a pig who lives in a factory?
A worker?
Marx says that labour is the only commodity capable of producing more value than it consumes: If it only takes 5 hours for a worker to pay for himself, the rest of his time on the job—say another 5 hours—is spent making money for the capitalist. He only gets paid for 5, but he produces 10. The trick is to reduce the time it takes the labourer to pay for his upkeep, and therefore increase the time he spends producing profit for the capitalist—because we all know that cutting-back on his hours is completely out of the question.
There are lots of interesting ways to do this: you can reduce his cost of living (through agricultural subsidies, cheap meat and animal feed, corn starch, Wal-Mart and Chinese labour, “free” trade, publicly-funded health care,), you can increase his productivity; lengthen his work day, etc. This is how profit gets created for the capitalist: in the factory, not in the market.
And how do you make a profit in the factory? That’s right: by screwing labour.
Are pigs labour?
They certainly get screwed (which would seem to almost qualify them as labour under the above definition). But let’s extend the analogy a little further: How long does it take to prepare a pig for market? Really, I have no idea (which is in itself rather disturbing). But, let’s say 300 days. Okay, so the pig works 300 days. We will pay him, say, $2/day x 300 days = $600, not bad for a pig, assuming that this amount corresponds to the cost of the pig’s basic necessities of life. What are a pig’s basic necessities? Well, he needs a place to live (rent), some potato skins and maybe a carrot peel (food), and the same for his family (reproduction). Being a pig is a fairly low-skilled occupation, so we can save money on his education and eliminate his college fund entirely.
But wait: this pig is a modern worker. Not only does he now work in a factory, he also lives in the factory. He doesn’t need to pay—and hence be paid—for his housing anymore. The sty has been converted into just another element of the means of production because the boss has offered to put him and his family up in a handy stall at work—how convenient! Just like in those cosy Chinese garment factories! (Except the garment workers are charged rent to sleep above their sewing machines). We don’t need to pay him for his leisure time either; he no longer has leisure time! The post-modern pig works a double shift (24 hour day!), so you needn’t pay 2 pigs to do the job of 1, and there’s no sleeping on the job, no night and day, because the lights never go out! Moreover, the pig saves time and calories because he eats, shits and pisses in the same stall in which he sleeps and works. Now Mr. Piggy costs the capitalist less per cold cut, but he still produces a pig at the end of the day: productivity gain!
So, the pig takes a pay cut.
And more. He once lived in a pretty little patch of mud in the country, where he could happily roll in his own shit. Now, having taken up shop in the factory alongside 1,000 or more of his brethren, he only costs the capitalist half of the $600 he used to cost him. Accordingly, his new salary is only $300, or $1/day. There are a number of reasons for this: 1) economies of scale: it now takes the (human) labourers less time to feed the pigs because they’re jammed into one place, and pig feed for 1,000 pigs can be more cheaply supplied, etc. etc.; 2) co-operation and division of labour: the pregnant pigs make babies in the making babies cages, and the babies make adult pigs in the baby pig bins, the male adult pigs make pregnant pigs (from behind the lady pig cages), etc. What is more, the communal energy summoned by cooperation has raised our pig’s spirits to new heights of productivity.
So, we have already realized a certain amount of savings simply by relocating the pig from the farm to the factory; however, this cataclysmic event must now seem so remotely buried in his past as to have acquired a near mythical status in the mind of the pig: “the farm” as paradise lost.
Pig as product vs. pig as labour:
Now, suppose that $1/day—which represents his basic upkeep—instead of getting paid to him, gets accumulated in him in the form of fat and meat and blood: kind of a fucked-up version of Hansel and Gretel. Our “fattened calf” (piglet) becomes in this sense more like a product of labour than labour itself. This is exactly what happens to any other product produced by labour. Take a baseball bat. The bat costs $25 at Canadian Tire. That $25 represents the accumulated cost of the raw material (wood, varnish): $10 + a portion of the cost of the means of production (bat-making machine, and the factory in which it operates): $5 + the labour of making a bat: ($10) = $25: the total cost of the bat. If the labourer is only paid $5, then the profit is $5 on every bat.
It’s easy then to see the pig as a mere product. As a product, the pig has accumulated in it the value of the raw material (food), means of production (factory), and labour (feeding, hitting, and slicing) that goes into its production. As labour, on the other hand, it adds value to itself by eating, breathing, shitting, sleeping, growing, etc. Now, if you can reduce the cost of some of these activities and begin to pay him only $.85/day instead of $1/day, you can begin to squeeze even more surplus value out of him. As we have seen with mad cow disease, it is possible to reduce the cost of feeding the poor fuckers even further by feeding them themselves (pigs in the pig feed), a pleasingly holistic cycle of food production. Of course, this is supposed to be illegal in America. But American pigs, like Volkswagens, are now being made in Mexico. Are, as Orwell suggests, some pigs more equal than others? It’s even easier to exploit Mexican pigs than American pigs, especially if the factory is in Mexico.
In a sense then, the pig is both product and labour: it both produces and is produced, has labour added to and accumulated in it, and adds value to itself.
Pork, on the other hand, is clearly a product; however, as a meat product—especially when it is carved up and sold in little Styrofoam trays at the supermarket—it is only the dead version, the carved-up incarnation of a once living thing: a pig. The animal is the process and the meat is the product; the pig in the factory is merely a living corpse: a breathing (whole) premonition of its final (butchered) product.
But, can products have rights? Is it possible to improve the working conditions of products? If you can treat an animal as a product can you treat a human as an animal? Do the workers who see the pigs lined up in their stalls recognize themselves in their porcine comrades? Do they see how their bodies have been turned into machines, how the pig, like the worker that is made into a mere appendage or organ of his tool, fixed at his workstation, mechanically reproducing his motions all day long at the mercy of the rhythm of his machine, has been dehumanized, even deanimalized?
We don’t see the pig at work, just the pork loin at the supermarket, like our clothes or our shoes, or any other product we purchase; we don’t know if this pig was a well-paid unionized worker or modern day slave toiling away in some Mexican factory for $.30 a day. It’s a significant problem, as my friend Dave pointed out: if we were forced to stomach the gruesome reality of a modern day pig farm on a daily basis, fewer of us would tolerate the continued dehumanization of labour and of animals. This distance between our food and its production has allowed us to commit untold atrocities both on the factory floor and on the ground in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo: the violent disconnect between the slaughterhouse and the dinner table is eerily re-enacted between the soldiers on the ground and on our television screens, between the bombs dropped from 30,000 feet and the horrible result 30,000 feet below.
Pigs—cheap pigs—are fundamental in feeding workers cheaply, and therefore in keeping wages low and profits high—until, of course, we realize that none of our workers can afford any longer to buy our products and we have to lend them heaps of money to keep the whole system going. Pigs, in a uniquely labour-like way, not only create value; they increase the productivity and lower the cost of the human labour working upon them and consuming them later at home in front of the television.
So, it’s not as simple as: we get cheap pork; the pig gets screwed. Cheap pork means cheap labour, which means more money for the capitalist. In other words: pig gets screwed; labour gets screwed.
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