#Canada imported thousands of #Nazi collaborators and far-right nationalists after WWII as part of a conscious policy, worked out with industrial capital, to smash the organizations of the working class. The #mining industry in particular worked to crush #socialist influence.
In order to grow the economy after WWII, Canadian capital needed to re-open the country to mass immigration to grow the absolute size of the labour force, the source of all value creation. But what kind of new immigrants would be preferred?
"There's one man in the group of recent arrivals who threatened to crack heads when the Communist line is expounded..." Anti-communist workers were preferred because they were subordinate to capital, could be manipulated using religion and nationalism, and would accept lower pay.
The already-existing pool of labour from Eastern Europe was too much under the influence of socialist ideas. 'Displaced' Eastern-European Nazi collaborators languishing in 'DP camps' provided the mining and other industries with labourers who obeyed authority.
By 1950, mine output surpassed $1 billion, compared to the entire $40 billion GDP that year. Agriculture remained Canada's largest single industry, contributing $2.45 billion. But the SOURCE of all capitalist profits was then, and remains today the same: workers' labour power.
#Ukrainian and other Eastern European Nazi collaborators and far-right nationalists continued to be deployed as company henchmen and scabs against industrial strikes into the 1960s.
Today's crisis of capitalism has driven Canada's ruling class towards fascism once more. As it arms and funds Ukrainian fascists to overthrow the Russian state, a section of the ruling class cultivates the far right at home.
wsws.org/en/articles/20…
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