A Socialist Lesson

The Socialist Party calls itself scientific for we substituted socialist principles for dreaming.  Long before Marx and Engels, workers struggles had begun. Dissatisfaction with existing conditions had arisen and schemes for a better society developed. These thinkers, among whom the Englishman, Robert Owen, and the Frenchmen, Saint Simon and Charles Fourier harshly criticized the existing system. They saw the root evil of existing society in private property. They understood that because wealth is in the hands of the capitalists, which gives them power to use the labour of other at low wages and under bad conditions, poverty and suffering prevailed among great numbers of the people. They regretted the evil and sought a better society where such misery would not exist. They wished for a society where the means of production would belong, not to the individual, but to the community. They eloquently preached such a society. But they never saw clearly the way a society without private property could be established. The preachers of the ideal society did not believe that the workers themselves could establish such a society. Marxists call such thinkers utopian, the same thing as a dreamer. They see with their mind's eyes a better system, but do not see the road which can lead to their promised land. A utopian can only hope and wish.

 Marx and Engels put the struggle of the workers on a scientific basis. They made a scientific analysis of existing society and saw that it was a society where capitalism rules, and is, therefore, a capitalist society. They studied the forces that operate in the capitalist society. They discovered the laws governing capitalist society. And they pointed out as clearly and accurately, as only science can do, that the laws of development of capitalist society inevitably lead to the workers’ revolution which will establish socialism. Marx and Engels showed the working class what they must do to liberate themselves and the world.  They taught the working class to know itself and become class conscious. They clearly understood and taught the workers that political democracy is not their final goal, that the workers interests is in abolishing exploitation altogether, which means abolishing capitalism. “What was new...was to prove the following: (1) that the existence of classes is connected only with- certain historical struggles which arise out of the development of production; (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship is itself only a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.” With Marx and Engels it is not a mere wish. It is the law of social development.

Modern society is divided into classes. By and large there are two great classes: the class of capitalists and the class of workers (proletarians). The class of capitalists owns most of the wealth of the nation. That wealth consists to a small extent of ready-made goods to be consumed. To a much greater extent it consists of buildings, tools, machinery and raw materials. The owners of wealth strive to increase their wealth by hiring workers whom they use to put the machines and materials into motion. Long before Marx and Engels, the utopians spoke of exploitation. But they could not explain the meaning and the driving force of exploitation. Engels and Marx discovered the importance of the law of surplus value.

Their theory reduces itself to these simple propositions. Wealth of modern times consists of commodities. Commodities are being exchanged in the market according to their value. The value of a commodity is determined by the amount of labour used up in producing the commodity. When we speak of labour in this sense we mean social-necessary labor, which is only another word for saying average labour used with the aid of average tools and with average speed. Socially necessary labour is that which determines the value of commodities. When a pair of shoes exchanges for twice as much as a shirt it is because the production of the pair of shoes has absorbed twice as much socially-necessary labour as the production of the shirt. Money is nothing but one of the commodities selected to facilitate the exchange of commodities. A chair worth $3.00 will exchange for $3.00 worth in gold or silver because that amount of gold and silver contains as much socially-necessary labour as the chair under consideration.

The activities of the manufacturer reduce themselves to buying in order to sell. He buys machinery, raw materials and labor power in order to produce commodities which he sells at a profit. His motive is profit. How does he come to get profit? He exchanges commodities according to their value, i.e., according to labor sunk in them. He may cheat here and there (no business without cheating) but on the whole the law of exchange is maintained. When he buys he pays the value of the goods he acquires. When he sells his products he receives according to their value. What then is the source of his profit? The source, say Marx and Engels, is labour which is producing surplus value.

Labour power is a commodity. Its owner is the worker. It is the only wealth he possesses. He is forced to sell it on the open market. He or she sells it to the manufacturer who applies it to the machines and raw materials. (Labour power, machines, raw materials together form the means of production.) When a merchant sells a commodity he does not have to be present while it is being consumed. When the worker sells his or her labour power they have to be present while the manufacturer consumes it, because the consumption of labour power is the process of work. The worker has to work.

What is the value of the commodity called labour power? The value of the labor power is the value of the worker’s upkeep. It is the value of all the commodities necessary to maintain the worker in tolerable health and to insure the existence of future workers through the raising of a family. For simplicity’s sake let us say that the value of one day’s labor power is equal to the value of the worker’s necessities during a day plus a little addition for his family. Expressed in money, let us say that the value of the labor power for one day is $5.00. Let us assume that these $5.00 can be produced in five hours. Five hours of socially-necessary labor will produce value equal to the value of the labour power for one day.

But once the labor power is sold, it is used by the manufacturer. The manufacturer will use it not five hours but, let us say, eight hours. In five hours the workers will merely reproduce the value of his or her labour power. In the remaining three hours he will produce surplus value. That value is unpaid for. The manufacturer is using it because he is in possession of the means of production and because the worker cannot live unless he sells his labor power. If the worker insisted on working only five hours, the manufacturer would not be willing to purchase his labor power. He purchases it just because he can force the worker to work more than five hours. How much more that depends upon the relation of forces. Here it is where the class struggle comes into play.

The worker is interested in diminishing the surplus value. The capitalist is interested in increasing the surplus value. The worker is interested in receiving for his labor not only necessities but also comforts, security for old age and the possibility of bringing up a family in decency, which means higher wages. The capitalist is interested in paying the worker below the value of his labour power, which means, to cause the worker to starve, to deteriorate physically, to have to send his wife and children to the factory, to have to resort to charity while still on the job. The worker is interested in cutting the hours of work so as to save his own health and to have a little free time for recreation and culture. The capitalist is interested in lengthening the labour hours so as to have more surplus value. The worker is interested in less speed, which means less labor power consumed per unit of time. The capitalist is interested in squeezing into one hour as much labor power as possible.

The capitalist sells his commodities in the market not according to the value produced in his own factory but according to prevailing prices. The prevailing price expresses the value of the commodities not of a single factory but of the average for all the factories at a given time. If one manufacturer can succeed in producing cheaper than the others he can secure a greater profit. He can do so by speeding up the workers, which means forcing them to spend more labour power per hour; he can do so also by introducing labour-saving machinery and improving the methods of production. This is why the entire history of capitalism has been the race to introduce labour-saving new technology for better methods of production. Why is labour-saving machinery useful? Because then the capitalist uses less labour power and naturally has to pay less to the producers. At the same time, however, he sells at the prevailing prices and garners an extra profit until the time when the other capitalists will also introduce the same labour-saving machinery and the same methods of production. But then there will begin a new race for still better machinery and still better means of production, while the workers will be continually pushed out of production into the ranks of the unemployed (they call it “technological unemployment” but it is an old story).

In this mad race, the bigger concern will defeat the smaller concern. The bigger concern will be able to use better machinery and better equipment and to save on labor much more than the small concern. The big fellow will, therefore, eat up the small fellow. Accumulation of means of production will take place at an accelerated pace. This accumulation will proceed in two ways. The individual capitalist will keep on increasing his own business, using part of his surplus value for expansion. In due time his business may grow to gigantic proportions and into a global corporation. This is called concentration of capital. The individual capitalist, on the other hand, may swallow up a number of other capitalists, or many capitalists may combine in partnerships or corporations or trusts. This is called centralisation of capital. Concentration and centralization of capital are the law of capitalist society. The capitalists boast of having introduced mass production which is a boon for the people. But in truth they never thought of the people. They thought of their profits. Profit-seeking is the basic driving force of capitalist production and distribution.

Engels and Marx pointed out that these forces are beyond the control of the individual capitalist or even of the capitalists combined. As long as they are capitalists they cannot help producing for profit. Else they would not be capitalists. As long as the profit motive is moving them they must try to produce cheaper and that means to exploit the workers more and more.

Let us look at the contradictions of capitalism.

Engels points out that the products which are produced in modern industrial establishments are produced socially. They are not like the shoes or the coats or the furniture produced in feudal times by the independent tailor or shoemaker or cabinet maker where the individual producer possessed the tools, the material and the ready-made product. At that time the individual producer could point a finger to his product and call it “his”. Today an automobile or a Grand Rapids table or a Haverhill pair of shoes is the product of hundreds and even thousands of workers combined, working with a division of labor. The mode of production is social. But the products belong to one man or to a group of men who appropriate them for their own private purposes. The mode of appropriation is individualistic. “This contradiction, which gives to the new mode of production its capitalist character" says Engels, “contains the germ of the whole of the social antagonisms of today.”

The higher the development of capitalism, the more glaring is this contradiction, this incompatibility between socialized production and capitalist appropriation. The basic contradiction is that between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Why is this the basic contradiction? Because the proletarian sees his labor appropriated by the bourgeoisie. Because he sees that all of capitalist society is maintained on his surplus value, which is another name for unpaid labor. Because the whole structure is based on the exploitation of those who work by those who do not work. “The contradiction between socialised production and capitalistic appropriation manifested itself as the antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie,” says Engels.

The producer is entirely separated from the means of production. The owner of the means of production is entirely separated from production. He says he “manages”, but he does it through hired men: supervisors, technicians, accountants.

Production in the individual factory is socialised, which means it is run on the basis of a very detailed division of labour, which means, it is planned to the last man, the last rivet and the last ounce of work. But production as a whole is not organized. Each manufacturer, or each group of manufacturers, are producing according to their own lights, which means according to the expected profits. Nobody ever maps out a plan for the industry as a whole or for a branch of industry, for a year or for five years. In the capitalist world, there is anarchy, chaos. Production is haphazard. 

Socialism will come as the result of the class struggle leading to the socialist revolution, creating a class-free society. The Socialist revolution is the only way out of unemployment, misery, starvation, oppression, hopelessness, degradation, despair.

The Real Fight for Real Socialism

The Socialist Party proposes, in brief, that all resources, all land, and buildings, all manufacturing establishments, mines, all the means of transportation and communication, should be, not private property, but the common property of all. We propose that production will be made to serve the needs of those who work, rather than to serve the needs of a few parasites. We hold production and distribution of goods can be planned to avoid anything resembling the crises in capitalist society. Planned production on the basis of common ownership without any class division is what we call socialism. Experience has proved that planning under capitalism is impossible. When the Socialist Party speaks of a society organised on the basis of planned production and distribution we mean do away with production for profit. Make a survey of all available resources, plant and man-power. Figure out how much of the products of each industry can be produced, say, in a year. Fix the annual consumption of the population at this rate. When you do so you are sure that nobody will go hungry or without a roof over his head. But this is not sufficient. Make it your purpose to increase production. Use the best scientific minds to improve your machinery and your methods of work. Encourage research to advance technology for the purpose of improving life. Extend this improvement not only to industry and agriculture but to all realms of life. The output of industry is sure to increase. Distribute the fruits of increased production among all the members of society. Improve their well-being. Increase production still more by further improving machinery and methods according to the latest research. Distribute the benefits of the increased production again among the population without exception, always improving the technology to enrich the economic and cultural life of all the members of society and to ease their labour. Continue this process indefinitely. When you do so there will be no crises, no unemployment, no exploitation, no wars, no fear of the future. Socialism builds and encourages scientific advance on a colossal scale. It makes mankind complete master of the social system. It reduces human labour to the easy task of supervising machinery a few hours a day. It leaves mankind free to engage in the higher intellectual pursuits. It makes every worker a highly cultured being and everybody responsible for the welfare of all. It inscribes on its portals: Let everybody contribute according to ability; let everybody receive from the common stock of goods according to needs. There is no exploitation, no oppression, no insecurity, no poverty, but everybody is working, the badge of honour. Life is made humane. With this begins the great ascent of man.

Isn’t all this utopia, socialist dreams? Yes, socialists are dreamers. But we are practical dreamers. We see the forces of present day society at work. We see the trend of this work. We realise the absolutely unavoidable outcome of the clash of social forces. We realise what has to be done in order to hasten the unavoidable outcome. We have in our mental eye a complete picture of the fundamentals of society to be erected on the ruins of capitalist society. We see the social instruments whereby this stumbling block of a capitalist system can be cleared away to give room to a new socialist society. We do not expect people to sit idly by and wait until a socialist society has fallen into their lap like a ripe apple off a tree. How can it be done? Once you agree that capitalism is your enemy the answer to the question is not difficult. The working class is placed in this capitalist society in a position where to live it must fight and fight begins in factory, mine, and mill. It is, first of all, a fight for higher wages, for shorter hours, for better working conditions. History has proved, however, that they never grant anything to the working class unless forced to do so by the fight of the workers. This is why the very existence of the working class is under the slogan, Fight. The working class has long created agencies for the economic struggles: the trade unions. Their main purpose is to secure for the workers a larger share of the products created by their own labour. They challenge the economic power of the ruling class. The more the workers fight, the more their strength grows. The stronger they become, the more successful is their fight. m must be fought for and this fight cannot wait. It is a matter requiring action right now and every day. Your employers try to prevent you from organising: organise! They will try to fire your organisers: stand firm and defend them! They will try to discharge you, so answer with a strike call and picket the plant! They will send police to break up your picket line, they will send in union bureaucrats to persuade you to accept arbitration but call other workers to help you in your struggle; make your struggle the solidarity struggle of great numbers of class-conscious workers. There are many more struggles. Each day brings its own tasks. Every day the capitalists and their State demand new struggles from the workers. These struggles are not separated from each other. They are intertwined into a united whole. One struggle helps another. One victory makes others more easy. All of them strengthen the working class. These struggles have not been invented. They are a necessity. They are an outcome of existing conditions. They are vital to the very existence of the workers. These struggles will be the more effective, the greater the masses that participate in them and the stronger their unity and will to fight. We, therefore, appeal to the workers to unite. We explain to them the vital necessity of unity. We say: You may belong to any party, or to any union or you may belong to none; what we urge you to do is to unite and fight on the issues that are of basic importance for the working class. In calling you to join together we have no other interests at heart but the interests of the working class.

We, the Socialist Party, are in favour of the unions because every kind of struggle requires its own organisation. But we also hold that every class struggle is a political struggle.  The overthrow of the capitalist system, grows out of the everyday struggles of the workers. One is historically inseparable from the other. These struggles are the reaction to the misery wrought by capitalism. There comes a time when people say that this simply “cannot go on”. Politicians seem to be entirely inept to cope with the political and social difficulties. The belief in the wisdom and omnipotence of the “men higher up” is shaken and people are losing their confidence while all the time growing more confident in their own strength. The struggles of the people is becoming broader and deeper. The Government cannot stem the tide. The clearer the class-consciousness of the workers, the more steeled they are in fighting and the more capable they will be to deal the final blow. Capitalism creates a situation where large numbers of the population are dissatisfied, embittered, emboldened by intolerable hardships. Capitalism itself prepares the conditions for a social revolution. The guiding golden rule to be established is “from each according to ability, to each according to need” Each person will contribute to the collective welfare they best they can and each person will receive from the common stock of goods what they require. This is socialism. Humanity itself will change from such conditions. Soon the State is no more needed. In a classless society, there is nobody to suppress or keep in check. Men and women, bred in a spirit of collective life, running their own affair of their own society, do not need the big stick of the State. They manage their lives without the State force. Mankind is free, forever.

Violence Takes Many Forms

Two short articles in the Toronto Star of December 3 focused on violence against women. A new E.U. Survey disclosed that 27% of Europeans say there are circumstances that make sex without consent justifiable, like drunkenness for example. Lillia Mouline, a T.V. host for Moroccan state television, caused an online uproar prompting an apology from the station. Ms. Mouline gave advice on how to use cosmetics to hide domestic violence, saying "Use foundation with yellow in it. If you use the white one, your red punch marks will always show." Though the reaction to Ms. Mouline's comments are understandable and though domestic violence and rape are inexcusable, nevertheless violence take many forms.

 The violence of the capitalist class in its blatant genocide of indigenous people, because it wanted their lands (and still does) is contemptible. The violence of workers fighting and killing each other in wars so their bosses can amass fat profits is also contemptible. In a socialist society all the economic pressures that drives capitalists and workers to commit violent acts will no longer exist.

 We cannot say there will be no personal violence, but we can say it will be considerably less, and any who commit such acts, as a result of bad mental health, will get all the help they need. 

Steve and John

There Are Better Protections

Reports are coming in that call centre employees, which number about 175,000 in Canada, are being exposed to racial and sexist abuse on the phone. One said, ''I've been asked if I am in Canada, or if I'm Canadian. In addition there is sometimes swearing, racial slurs, threats of violence, or even sexually explicit comments.'' One call worker in Vancouver was asked what colour were the panties she was wearing. Another who is Black, received a call saying,''Thank God I'm talking to a white person.'' 

The United Steelworkers Local 1744, which represents 10,000 call centre workers, is launching a campaign called,''Hang Up On Abuse,''urging employers and governments to protect workers. 

Better to launch a campaign to get a new society where such sickness and abuse won't exist. 

Steve and John

Home In The Unsaid Answer

A survey conducted by Forum Research Inc. and provided exclusively to The Toronto Star, described homelessness as a severe problem in Toronto. The survey, in which 1,080 people were questioned, revealed that a third if them thought there should be more shelters. Others said shelters were not the answer, which is pure genius. 

They thought that income equality would solve it and the Government should tackle the problem and, ''Improve the many economic challenges and conditions that lead to people losing their homes."

 No one said a radical change in the fundamentals of society would be the answer. Wake up and smell the coffee guys! 

Steve and John

Crapitalism or socialism?

You are working for a boss. You are his “hands.” He uses you to make profit. How is this profit possible at all? Because he makes you work more than is necessary to defray your wages. In other words, when you work you are not only reproducing the value of your own up-keep but you are also producing surplus value which goes to the owner. The quicker the pace of your work, the more surplus value you produce within a given time. The capitalist will sell the produced commodity in the market. He will sell it at the price fixed, not by himself individually, but by the market of which he is a part. If he can produce more cheaply than his competitor, his profits will be greater. This is why he drives you on to work faster and faster. This is why he introduces labour-saving new technology which results in increased unemployment or under-employment. This is why he uses efficiency experts of every kind. He calls it industrial progress, but he doesn’t think of progress at all. He thinks of profits. Every other manufacturer thinks of profits. Every other manufacturer speeds his workers ever faster and introduces newer and better machines. The result is that ever greater numbers of workers are being displaced, while the production capacity of the plants is enormously increased. The numbers of actually employed workers grow smaller. The production capacity of the factories and plants grows bigger. It is the madness called capitalism. It is the outcome of an insane system where wealth is owned, not by those who produce it, but by those who do not produce anything, who have amassed it out of the work of others under the protection of the law; a system where production is directed, not towards satisfying human wants, but towards making profits for the owners of wealth. This is capitalism in its modern form. This is capitalism. Progress running amuck, built on crushed human bones and on oceans of blood, sweat, and tears of the many, devouring itself and devouring untold human lives. Expansion made possible by killing and maiming huge masses of innocent people. Scientific advances are made to serve the purpose of destruction. Security for the non-producers; starvation for the producers. The elite parasites held in great esteem and respected; the workers downtrodden and despised.

You have had a job for a number of years. Your pay was not high, but you managed to get along. You were a faithful worker. You never shirked. Perhaps you saved up a few dollar to buy a house, get married and raise a family. You were decent, law-abiding. One fine morning you are told your services are no longer needed. In plain words: you are fired. You are thrown out. There is a recession, they say. Your employer has no more need for you. He is cutting back on production, or he is shutting his plant altogether so to open another factory where operating costs are lower. While he leaves you without a livelihood, he continues to have a good time in plenty of luxury. No cut-backs in his opulent life-style. He no longer cares what will happen to you. A company has no obligations towards its ex-employees.

But think on. You were not a stranger to his factory or mill or shop. You and the likes of you built its success. You and the likes of you have created all the machinery, all the raw material and all the fuel which is necessary to run an industry. You and the likes of you are the real power that puts life into the dead matter of every industrial undertaking. It was your blood, your sweat, your muscle and your brain that produced everything that came out of that factory. You staked much into his establishment — your whole life. It is yours, more than any owner's or investor’s. It was part of your very being.

The solution to capitalism's many problems is socialism, a democratic system of society where the wealth is owned and controlled by the people who produce it. In a cooperative society we can pool our abilities and resources to create more for everyone, and to share it out fairly. Capitalism is the control of the means of production by a small minority who organise the wealth they control to their own advantage, and to the disadvantage of the people who work for them. Capitalism, the rule of the rich minority, is the enemy. The State is an instrument of power in the hands of the big industrialists, bankers and landlords, who by this token are the ruling class. The State is there to effect the exploitation and oppression of the workers and the poor.

The State is the executive committee and the strong arm of entrenched wealthy. There is war. It is class war. It is waged by the representatives of one class, the oppressors, against the mass of another class, the oppressed.  In this war, the State is always and invariably on the side of the oppressors. Some of its representatives may try to achieve the ends of capital by cajoling and wheedling. But they always keep the big stick ready. The State — that is the tool of the owners of wealth, the weapon of the big corporations. Everyone who tries to persuade you that the State is your friend, your defender, that the State is impartial and only “regulatory,” is lying to you. Under capitalism, you cannot protect both “industry” (meaning the capitalists) and labour (meaning the workers)! When you protect “industry” you give it freedom to exploit “labour”. The State may change its appearance. The form changes and the phraseology differs according to time and place but the essence remains. The essence of the capitalist State is service in the employ of capitalism for the preservation of capitalism. It may use the parliamentary system, with a limited freedom of speech to opponents — as long as this opposition is not too dangerous. It tightens the screw and tries to silence the opposition when the situation becomes too threatening to the capitalists.

Reformists are often dissatisfied with the functioning of the State. They sometimes see and point out its “shortcomings.” They do not close their eyes to the fact that there is inequality. But what do they propose to do? They propose a little tinkering here and there. But propose nothing to do with the very nature of the State as a bulwark of private property and capitalist exploitation. The reformist does not touch upon the fundamentals of the capitalist State, namely, it being an instrument of power in the hands of the big owners of wealth. Radical reformists sometimes wax eloquent in denouncing the evils of the capitalist system. But what do they propose? They propose to “improve” the capitalist State. Improve the State to make it more flexible, more adaptable to circumstances and you have made it a better instrument of oppression. The reformists say there is no need of a revolution, no need for the expropriation of the exploiters. Our dispute with the reformists is not a dispute in words and policies. It is a clash in class politics. Do not call us vindictive when we say that the reformist politicians are traitors to the working class. We merely call a spade a spade. We are realists. They spread illusions among the workers to the effect that by using the instrumentality of the capitalist state, they can abolish the evils of capitalist oppression. Their palliatives are not harmless, but a poisonous theory. It is a smoke screen behind which cruel capitalist exploitation is hiding.

The Socialist Party never for a moment loses sight of the goal of the movement — the destruction of the capitalist system. The Socialist Party says the huge waste of human energy and human resources under capitalism, this colossal amount of human suffering, this humiliation of starving in the midst of plenty, this living in the dumping grounds of big cities at a time when humanity knows already how to build palaces, this debacle which is worse than war and pestilence, can be avoided. Life can be made liveable. Life can be made a continuous and uninterrupted stream of cultural growth. This can be achieved only by the working class rising to take over and organise society on a new basis. This basis is socialism.

Struggling For Global Control

Vladimir Putin is seizing on Trump's pledge to reverse US policy on Syria to press for a military victory that could mark Russia's return as a great power rival in the middle east. Assad's military backed by Russian firepower and Iranian-trained soldiers had, by late November retaken Aleppo. 

This shows that the fall of the Soviet Union didn't change anything fundamentally. 

There are still two Capitalist superpowers struggling for global control and there is no reason the working class, anywhere, should support either. 

Steve and John

Rising Prices In Canada

A typical Canadian family will spend about $420 more on groceries next year, suggests a report by researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax, which was released on December 5. Food inflation will increase in 2017, driven by a falling loonie and Donald Trump's first year in office. Food prices are expected to rise between 3 and 5 per cent, with meat, especially chicken and pork, vegetables, fish and other sea food among those that are projected to jump by 4 to 6 per cent. 

So, obviously life 'aint getting any easier under crapitalism is it dear friends? So why not chuck it into the trash can of history.

 Steve and John.

Drug Overdosiing Rising Numbers

Overdose deaths in the city of Toronto have leaped 77per cent in a decade, to 258 in 2014, from 146 in 2004. 

The deaths have been driven by the rise of Opioids like Fentanyl and Heroin, according to the Board Of Health, which plans to improve monitoring the places where overdoses occur and ease access to Naloxone, an antidote. Councillor Joe Cressy, the chairman of Toronto's drug strategy, wants to see drugs brought into supervised injection sites. Cressy said,''We have a rapidly escalating overdose crisis facing the city of Toronto, the province and Canada. Traces of Fentanyl which can be very deadly in very small doses are turning up in other drugs and many users don't know exactly what they're taking. 

The issue received national attention earlier this year when a Kamloops, BC, man died after overdosing on Cocaine laced with Fentanyl, at a wedding. ''If we are going to prevent the scale of an overdose crisis we've seen in Western Canada, we need to move quicker now'', said Cressy. Toronto City Council has approved three injection sites and is awaiting for Federal approval and Provincial funding.

 Notice, nowhere does any one suggest there may be something wrong in a society that drives people to drugs and that just maybe needs changing - no way Jose! No Sir - intellectual giants like Mr. Cressy and his buddies on the Council try to contain the problem within society as it exists which is self-defeating 

Steve and John

The Death of Liam Tumilson - No Surrender

From http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/14/the-death-of-liam-tumilson-an-irish-anti-fascist-in-spain/

The Death of Liam Tumilson, an Irish Anti-Fascist in Spain

by PAULINE MURPHY

• Email

• 

Approximately 30 Belfast men went to Spain in the 1930s to fight against the spread of fascism. It marked the first time since the 1798 United Irishmen rebellion that Laganside Catholics and Protestants came together to fight for a common cause. One of those was Liam Tumilson whose life expired March 14, 1937 on the Jarama Front during the Aragon offensive.

Tumilson arrived in Spain in 1936 on the Winter solstice December 21st. Back home in Belfast he worked as a Crane Driver, in Spain he was a driver of revolution.

William James Tumilson was born and reared in the mainly Protestant East Belfast but religion didn’t matter to him, the only side he was interested in was the side of the working man.

In 1929 he joined the Short Strand IRA and in 1934 followed the left wing of the organisation into the Republican Congress. That same year he was one of those who carried the banner of the ‘Shankill James Connolly Socialists’ at the Wolfe Tone commemoration in Bodenstown. This caused controversy when some members of the east Tipperary IRA tried to grab the banner. There had been a rule on ‘no banners’ at Bodenstown.

Tumilson was a well-known face to hold banners and flags at events and was seen at the annual May Day trade unionist rally in Belfast proudly holding up the banner with the words ‘break the connection with capitalism’ emblazoned across it.

In October 1932 10,000 unemployed men held a protest in Belfast against the low relief paid in distress schemes but the protest quickly turned into a riot which went down in Belfast history as the Outdoor Relief Riots and of course,  Tumilson was in the thick of it! The Outdoor Relief Riots pushed many working class protestants towards socialism and would lay the foundations for many of them supporting the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War.

Tumilson emigrated to Australia where he joined the Communist party. His migration was a brief one and he would return to his home on Thurndyke street in Belfast.

In 1933 Tumilson was in Dublin where he joined his fellow comrades in defending Connolly House from a contingent of rightwing blueshirts who were hell bent on besieging it. The defenders of Connolly House won out but this minor event would play out in a much larger scale three years later when opposing ideologies would clash in the Spanish Civil War.

In early December 1936, Tumilson left his Belfast home for the last time and made his way to Dublin from where he departed to Liverpool on a ferry. His intended destination was Spain and the fight against Francos fascists. His comrades in Belfast had a slogan associated with him for years: "Wherever the fight is, Tumilson will be there.!”

By the time he reached Liverpool Tumilson found he did not have enough of money to get to London and only had enough for his passage to Spain so he decided to hitchhike to London. Such was his determination!

In Spain, Tumilson showed tremendous character on the battlefield, it was a hardy steadfast one built on the streets of working-class  Belfast, and he rose to rank of adjutant in the famous Liam Mooney machine gun company.

Tumilson had left a fiancé back in Belfast, Kathleen Walsh, but wrote almost everyday to her. In his last letter, dated March 11, he informed Kathleen: “we are still driving the fascists back and still confident of victory.”

Three days after writing his last letter home to Kathleen, Tumilson and his comrades entered the hellfire of the Jarama front and would fall in the Aragon offensive. On March 14, 1937 fierce fighting occurred between francos forces and the International brigades for possession of the Valencia Road. Supreme pressure was being put on the International Brigades as the Francoists were closing in.

In a break in machine gun fire, Tumilson stood up on a hill to view the situation. He needed a clear view of where he could get his men out safely from the advancing enemy. As he turned to give orders a Ffrancoist sniper shot him in the head.

The33-year-oldd Tumilson was buried in  Morata town, just south west of Madrid. By the time his last letter to his fiancé Kathleen reached her, Tumilson was already dead and buried in Spanish soil. His last words written to his fiancé eexudes his steadfast character: “I’m still determined to stay here until fascism is completely crushed. Impossible to do other than carry on with the slogan of Cathal Brugha– no surrender!”

Socialism is a new society

The Socialist Party is primarily concerned with analysing the capitalist system, pointing out its defects and advocating the replacing of the capitalist system by the common ownership and democratic administration of the means of production and distribution. The success of the socialist movement and the rapidity of its progress will depend very largely upon the method of education and the political tactics of the Socialist Party. Mere economic development in itself cannot bring the cooperative commonwealth. Socialism does not advance necessarily in response to or because of great industrial distress. These crises may point out the fact that something is wrong, but the suggestion of the remedy and the cure for these ills is quite a different problem.

The objective conditions for socialism, the productive capacity of society to produce an abundance of goods - have been long over-ripe; the subjective prerequisites for a decisive social change – the class consciousness and the political will are, however, absent. Too many of our fellow workers are conservative They hold to a tendency to adhere to old ideas which is far stronger than the desire for change. Some say the world has changed so fundamentally and produced too many new problems for the socialist movement to answer. If socialism is about creating and modifying an amazing array of manifestoes, then perhaps the charge is true. Has our world changed drastically over the past years? Undoubtedly. Has it changed socially? No doubt. Culturally? That also. And psychologically? True. But has the world changed socially, culturally and psychologically enough to invalidate the socialist analysis? That is the question.  Every epoch in capitalist development has ushered in new problems, demanding new criteria. Marx and Engels furnished the working class with a tool of criticism, the materialist conception of history.  We adhere to the basic conceptions of Marxism because they have proved again and again to be the most efficacious tools of social understanding. Socialist consciousness lies in the awareness in which the worker realises that he or she is the creator of the revolution and socialism. The Socialist Party does not believe socialist consciousness arises automatically but recognises the class struggle as a school of socialist education, in which the working class, by its own experiences and also by the introduction of socialist ideas reach the level of socialist consciousness. So long as capitalism exists, so long as an exploitive society resting on industrial production exists, so long as a working class remains indispensable to modern production, the necessity of socialism will remain. And if that is true, then there are no other means by which the working class can emancipate itself except through its own organisations, economic and political.

Socialism is the free association of completely free men and women, where no separation between ‘private and common interest’ exists. A socialist economy is a planned economy. Marx saw socialism as implying, in the economic field, ownership of the means of production by society as a whole; a rapid increase in the productive forces, planned production. The entire world's production and distribution in socialist society develops in a planned and proportionate way.  In capitalist society, the capitalists own the means of production and engage in production for the sole purpose of making profits and satisfying their private interests.  Although there may be planned production in a few enterprises, competition is rife and lack of co-ordination prevails among the different enterprises and economic departments as a whole. Cyclical economic crises which break out in capitalist society are the inevitable result of anarchy in production.

Nowhere in Marx’s writings is there to be found a detailed account of the new social system which was to follow capitalism. Marx wrote no “Utopia” of the kind that earlier writers had produced – writings based only on the general idea of a society from which the more obvious evils of the society in which they lived had been removed. But from the general laws of social development Marx was able to outline the features of the new society and the way in which it would develop.

Under capitalism, where everything enters the field of exchange and becomes the object of buying and selling, a man’s worth comes to be estimated, not by his really praiseworthy abilities or actions, but by his bank account. A man is “worth” what he owns and a millionaire is “worth” incomparably more than a pauper. A Rothschild is esteemed where a Marx is hated. In this cesspool of universal venality, all genuine human values and standards are distorted and desecrated. The person without artistic taste can buy and hang pictures in his mansion, or put them in a safety vault, while the creator and the genuine appreciator cannot view or enjoy them. The meanest scoundrel can purchase admiration from sycophants while worthy individuals go scorned and unnoticed. 

Charity And The Working Class

An SPCer recently met a lady who asks people for eye-glasses they no longer use. She gives them to the Lions' Club which finds senior citizens who can't afford glasses and can use them. This shows how nothing has changed.

 Engels, in his 'The Condition Of The Working Class In England' makes it clear that when it comes to charity the working class looks after its own, because, let's face it, the capitalists don't give a crap.

 Steve and John.

Trudeau's Worry?

On December I, Justin Trudeau, understandably, had a meeting with some fellow reformists, the editorial board of the Toronto Star. Among the pearls of wisdom the PM spoke we find this little goodie,''Unless we make significant changes around who gets the benefit of economic growth - unless we are much better about including everyone in the success of the country - then people will start to lash out.

We Socialists know who gets the benefit of economic growth and it sure as hell 'aint the working class, they should be the ones to lash out, and they can start that by working for Socialism.  

Steve and John.

You can't beat something with nothing

“Labour cannot emancipate itself in the White while in the Black it is branded.” (Marx)

WORKERS! Why do you live in slavery? Why are you not free? Why are you kicked and spat upon by your masters? Why do you toil hard for little money? And again thrown into prison if you refuse to work. WHY? Because you are the toilers of the earth. Because the masters want you to labour for their profit. Because they pay the Government and the police to keep you as slaves to toil for them.

Let there be no longer any talk of different nationalities. You are all labourers. Let labour be your common bond. Wake up! And open your ears. The sun has risen, day is breaking. For a long time, you were asleep when the  rich man was grinding and breaking the sweat from your work for nothing. Deliver yourselves from the chains of the capitalist. Social Revolution is the objective of the World Socialist Movement. Unity is our strength. Workers of all lands unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have the world to win.

The Socialist Party speaks to our fellow-workers, and above all to those workers who look forward to the emancipation of labour from wage slavery. There can be no appeal to any other section of society outside the working-class, as their interests are opposed to labour and their opinions therefore of no account to us. One section of the workers cannot benefit itself at the expense of the rest without betraying the hope of the children. Those who receive favours from the master class may lift themselves out of the propertyless proletariat: but their children will inherit the fear of the abyss which their fathers helped to create.The power of labour lies in its ability to stop or to control industry. All the workers are needed for this. Labour, not race, nationality nor gender, is the watchword of solidarity. If all those who labour cannot share in the emancipation of Labour, none can be emancipated.

Speed the Social Revolution!

 

The economic emancipation of the working class will be achieved only by the transfer to common ownership by all the people of all the means and products of production and the organisation of all the functions of social and economic life in accordance with the requirements of society. The modern development of technology in civilised societies not only provides the material possibility for such an organisation but makes it necessary and inevitable for solving the contradictions which hinder the quiet and all-round development of those societies. This radical economic revolution will entail most fundamental changes in the entire constitution of social and international relationships. Eliminating the class struggle by destroying the classes themselves; making the economic struggle of individuals impossible and unnecessary by abolishing commodity production and the competition connected with it; briefly, putting an end to the struggle for existence between individuals, classes and whole societies, it renders unnecessary all those social organs which have developed as the weapons of class oppression during the many centuries it has been proceeding. Without falling into utopian fantasies about the social and international organisation of the future, we can already now foretell the abolition of the most important of the organs of chronic struggle inside society, namely, the state, as a political organisation opposed to society and mainly in the interests of the ruling class. Society is divided into two classes: the working class, doing all the labour; and the idle class, living on the fruits of labour.  

Wait And See.

California State government recently passed tough clean air rules mandating that Auto-Makers sell only nonpolluting vehicles there. Nine other states have followed suit. This means that GM stands to lose $9,000 on every Chevrolet Bolt that leaves its showroom once the all electric sub-compact starts rolling out.

 So here we have a contradiction - a government has passed a law which makes it difficult for capitalists to make a profit. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

 Steve and John