Thread by @ClassIssuesInWR

A face that most of us recognize, Galen Weston Jr., heir of billionaire Galen Weston, never had a day of need in his life, is one of the oligarchs cannibalizing our healthcare system.

Why? Because it makes him tons of money of course! Where did this wealth+power come from? 1/x

https://twitter.com/L329Opseu/status/1559710416581844998

According to Forbes, his family is the third wealthiest family in Canada and in the top 200 globally. His family is among a number of ultra wealthy and powerful families, like the Rogers (telecom, TV+news, etc), or the Irvings, who control much of Atlantic Canada's economy. 2/

The Weston's focus was food, which through Loblaws etc spread to include healthcare services, hence their intense lobbying efforts to privatize healthcare. But how did we get here? And what does it illustrate about how capitalism concentrates ownership into fewer hands? 3/

First, clarification: capitalism is an economic system that is not just about exchange of goods&services via money, but includes a process where production itself can be privately owned (in other words, by individuals), bought, sold, and labour is also bought and sold. 4/

Thanks to a little bit of, *checks notes*, genocide, Canada was settled as a kind of blank slate with plots of land and businesses set up by wealthy dudes. Poorer families were recruited to settle to do work or farm. It was hard but many prospered (and many didn't). 5/

As an economy developed, with various kinds of production and supply chains emerging, new industries could open up rapidly with much business competition as new businesses fought to capture market share. This largely stopped by the great depression, but got a post-WWII boost. 6/

George Weston, our current Weston's great-grandfather, came from a fairly poor family, in the outskirts of Toronto in 1864. He started apprenticing as a baker at age 12. He worked closely with a bakery owner, learning and earning more, until he was able to open his own. 7/

He experimented with mixers and other new technology to save on labour costs, a recurring pattern in the dynamic of capitalism - labour is expensive, so mechanize as much as you can, if you need to cut costs to compete, of which there was a lot at the time. 8/

He opened a factory & by 1901, was shipping bread to 100+ towns in Ontario. The business merged with a flour mill company, which faced backlash for monopolizing production, but he was able to convince politicians it was simply to "save the customer money". 9/

He later expanded into biscuit production, contributed to notable charities, became a pro-business city councillor (never seen that move before...), made money selling food for the WWI war effort, etc. Lots of levers of power and influence developed & used to grow his wealth. 10/

Upon his early death, age 60, of course his son, W. Garfield Weston, took over and pushed a number of mergers and acquisitions.

He made use of levers of power much like his father. 11/

As WWII broke out, with 38 British plants to his name, he was elected to Britain's parliament as an MP to push for the war effort and presumably push Canada into their war effort (you can see how economic+military blocks like NATO can be formed by networks of capitalists). 12/

After the war and returning to Canada, acquisition opportunities opened up: he acquired Western Grocers and a paper manufactury from a friend who just so happened to be a former prime minister (hmm), as well as Loblaws (grocery), buying other food factories as well. 13/

By 1948 he was the "biggest manufacturer of bread in the world, the largest biscuit maker in the British Empire and Canada's largest wholesale grocer." And he kept rapidly buying up factories - since he now had grocery stores it cut costs to cut out the middle-men's profits. 14/

He grew Fine Fares to become the largest grocery in the UK. His expanding business empire started to include products sourced from parts of the British Empire, such as South Africa. This illustrates the international character of "imperialism" very well. 15/

I think of imperialism as where these conglomerates and cartels (cooperating blocks of companies/businessmen) of capitalists have formed, and expand as much as possible globally to extract resources & draw them to higher $ value centres of production/finance (imperial core). 16/

This of course becomes interwoven into government via businessperson-politicians and is highly anti-democratic, pro-expansion & pro-war (as needed) to continue this process. Also very pro privatization - new markets to profit off. The British Empire was one such imperialism. 17/

He continued acquiring stores, including drug stores, in North America, and also continued snapping up production businesses as well, such as large fish processors in BC and NB in the 1960s. 18/

To maintain popular support, he set up a foundation to benefit "Canadians" (he loves nationalism) as well as one in the UK. These charities continue to give out morsels of cash for political gain and improvement of the Weston's image and brand to this day. 19/

1968 press: "George Weston Limited & subsidiary Loblaw Companies Limited as the 5th largest merchandiser in the world. They further indicated that Garfield Weston, in... international holdings, was the 2nd most profitable merchandiser in the world, & the 3rd largest in sales."20/

As power transitioned to his son, Galen Weston, they nearly went bankrupt due to the aggression and messy expansion. Consolidation, shut down of unprofitable stores (half of Loblaws in Ontario! Rough for workers), etc salvaged things into more neatly integrated companies. 21/

Special brands were created, such as "No Name" and "President's Choice", allowing more easy sale of their products in various groceries that they owned/renamed sorta separately. US trade agreements pushed them out of US retail, focussing more heavily on Canadian expansion. 22/

Rinse, repeat, fast forward to now: "markets" are much less competitive and feature much more (sometimes blatantly illegal) price fixing, because of the level of consolidation into big companies owning/controlling whole supplies chains. Just look at all their brands! 23/

And they own much of the production/processing/packaging parts of the supply chain for these brands as well, forming a huge consolidated hierarchy of economic control. This is why politicians bend over backwards to appease capitalists - this is where the real power really is.24/

Overcoming such concentrated power will require deeply organized working class communities + unions connected in mass coalitions (eg federated into a party) at the provincial and federal level.

Thanks for sticking with me thru lots of neat concepts I've been thinking about. End/

@GroundUpWR @CUPEOntario @PSACOntario
@YGOntario @NDPLabour @WatNDP @OntarioNDP
@ONCommunists @demsocialistsca

#Weston #Loblaws @LoblawsON

@bidetmarxman Your threads have inspired me to attempt to dig deeper and think through examples (in this account's case, local examples) in relation to concepts from Marxist theory. Many thanks. :)