Basically Things Don't Change

A report on North Korean workers in Russia, issued by the Database Centre for North Korean Human Rights, and organization in Seoul, said the Workers Party of Korea seizes 80 per cent of the wages earned by them. More money is taken to cover living expenses, mandatory contributions to a so called loyalty fund, and other donations.

In other words they work for close to nothing, which is like it was in the major industrialized countries just after the industrial revolution.

So things, basically, don't change much under capitalism, which is one of many reasons it should be abolished. 

John and Steve.

Towards a free and equal world

Trade unions co-operate in the exploitation of their members by accepting the premise that the international capitalist class has the unquestioned and legally enforceable ‘right’ to exploit the working class. Of vital importance is the mental conceptions of revolutionary change held by workers and without a change in what people think about the prospects for change there can be no alternative other than a continuance of some form of capitalism. Socilists claim, that there is a way to reconcile our conflict with our masters, and it is to build on our economic and social power and organise collectively and politically to end the dangerous madness of the market system once and for all, rather than trying to beat the capitalists at their own game.  Any gains made in the class struggle for better pay and conditions are still open to being eroded by the inevitable capitalist counter-attack, and without a socialist understanding, the workers will not be able to climb out of the rut of capitalism. So the cycle would continue, with workers making some gains, but then the capitalist class launches a counter offensive by either attacking the gain itself or attacking from some other direction. 

A fundamental Marxian position is that class struggle is the motor that drives change. Built into capitalism is a class struggle between those who own the means of wealth production and those who don't and who are therefore forced by economic necessity to sell their ability to work to those who do. The class war, between the owners of the means of production (the capitalists) and those compelled by threat of poverty to sell their capacity to work (the workers) is an essential and continual feature of capitalist society. The class struggle is the irrefutable antagonism of interests in present society between the class that owns and profits from the means of production, and the class that creates the wealth but does not possess any means of producing wealth of their own. Those who yearn for change are aware of some form of injustice or antagonism inherent in present-day society. This class struggle is not just over the price and conditions of sale of the commodity workers are selling. Ultimately, it's about control over the means of production. The strength of the argument is that it puts the power and potential for change back where it belongs and where it in fact really lies: in our own hands. The problem we have to face is that, in the class struggle, the odds are nearly always against us, and that to build a socialist future, we need a mass organisation of people who know what it is they want and are prepared to work to achieve it. As Engels put it, “The period for sudden onslaughts, of revolutions carried out by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where the question involves the complete transformation of the social organisation, there the masses must be consulted, must themselves have already grasped what the struggle is about, and what they stand for.” 

Groups pursuing the tactic of trying to reform capitalism by concentrating on adjusting it is a wasted effort, since the entire system is based on a minority exploiting a majority. To expend all energy in demands for a more "friendly" capitalism is not what socialists should aim for, as, even in the event of success, the primary evils of capitalism would still remain i.e. production for profit and extraction of surplus value. The main effort of socialists should be aiming for socialism itself. Socialists should get involved in industrial struggles but without illusions, in particular the illusion that they can have a revolutionary outcome. The socialist revolution may start from some strike over wages spreading to the whole of the working class and certainly workers can learn from the experience of industrial struggles against employers that socialism is the only way out so, in this sense, strikes can contribute to a growth of socialist consciousness. But so can the many other experiences of the way capitalism works againt the interests of workers (bad housing, poor health care, pollution, wars, etc).

Which leads to the importance of who controls the state. At the moment, this is in the hands of people favourable to the continuation of capitalism, itself a reflection of the fact that most workers too don't see any alternative to capitalism. The state, therefore, upholds legal private property rights. The end of capitalism can only come as a result of a consciously socialist political movement winning control of political power with a view to abolishing all capitalist property rights and ushering in the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. The preconditions for ending capitalism are a majority socialist consciousness and workers democratically self-organised in a large-scale socialist party. Neither of which, unfortunately, exist. There is no way that an anti-capitalist social order can be constructed without seizing state power, radically transforming it the constitutional and institutional framework that currently supports private property. To ignore the state is a ridiculous and dangerous idea for any anti-capitalist movement to accept.

Questioning the future of capitalism ought to be in the forefront of current debate. Socialist ideas have to be communicated to other workers, but not from outside the working class as a whole. They have to be communicated by other workers who, from their own experience and/or from absorbing the past experience of the working class, have come to a socialist understanding. It is not a question of enlightened outsiders bringing socialist ideas to the benighted workers but of socialist-minded workers spreading socialist ideas amongst their fellow workers.  Our mission is to show clearly both how we are robbed and exploited by the system ruled by capital and how we can untap the wealth of our collective productive power by taking control of the means of production directly. Socialists recognise the necessity of workers' solidarity in the class struggle against the capitalist class, and rejoice in every victory for the workers to assert their economic power. Both raising and defending of workers' wages affects the amount of time and resources at the disposal of workers for control of their own lives. Romantic notions of class struggle – of battles on the barricades – concentrate on the exceptional forms, rather than the dull reality of the class struggle of every day life. Workers do have to engage with the issues of pay and work conditions and pensions, but the main issue is the overthrow of capitalism, not picking away at it and then having our gains eroded sooner or later. In thinking of the class war as an actual war, the drive for a socialist understanding in the working class and the creation of a socialist society should be the main front, demanding the most effort, while everyday issues of pay and conditions and defending the gains that have been made would be a secondary front. We should never lose track of the actual aim of the socialist movement, the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by a democratic association of peoples.

Severe Severence For Some.

In June, SEARS Canada said it planned to close 59 stores and cut 2900 jobs without severance pay under the companies creditors arrangement act.

What makes the whole situation so weird is SEARS plan to pay $9.2 million in retention bonuses to those who are not being laid off, many of whom, but not all, are in management. But then whoever said capitalism and sense go hand in hand?

 John and Steve.

A Disappointment If What He Wants Is Over $1,000,000

 Boxer, Floyd Mayweather, has 2 haircuts each week, and occasionally 3, each of which cost $1,000 US. Furthermore everywhere he goes he carries a briefcase with $1,000,000 in it, because, "I may see something I want to buy."

When one considers millions of folk have to live on less than a buck a day, doesn't it suggest there is something seriously wrong in the society we live in?

John and Steve.

A socialist planet for all

Fellow-workers, we are out to end this man-made hell on earth. We can show you that the greatest of our social evils are directly traceable to the fundamental wrong of stealing from you the product of your work. We ask you to unite with us for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the socialist cooperative commonwealth.

A careful reading of our Declaration of Principles will at once clearly and unmistakably show both the strength and the simplicity of the socialist position. Not one of the principles on which that position stands has been, or can be, refuted.

The Labour Party and their left-wing hangers-on have never taught anything but the pseudo-socialism of the reformist school. The idea that anyone could possibly obtain the most elementary knowledge of socialism from these parties is manifestly absurd. The schools of reformist thought may very well be good training-grounds for budding bureaucrats, Labour decoys and prospective  Cabinet Ministers but, except altogether in a negative manner, they are unthinkable as doing anything in the way of making Socialists. As a matter of fact, the confusion and mental decrepitude engendered by their teachings have done more to retard the progress of Socialism than all the efforts of the orthodox political parties.

One of the tragedies of misplaced enthusiasm and wasted effort by our fellow-workers has been the campaign for nationalisation. The idea gthat nationalisation would be good for the workers and a good vote-catcher for Labour Party candidates and the idea that nationalisation is socialism and would solve all problems is prevalent among the Left. It was supposed by Corbynites to be based on the principle of “public service” not profit. We have seen in the past the nationalised undertakings in operation under laws passed by the Labour Government. We see them being run on methods hardly distinguishable from those of any large private company. Disappointed about this, some workers have thought that the trouble is due to having the wrong people in control of the nationalised industries, not recognising that whoever is in control face the same obligation to make a profit.

No other method is possible under capitalism: the assumed alternative of running the industry at continuous heavy losses would merely lead to a demand either for reorganisation, so that profit would be made or a demand for selling back to private companies. Going in for nationalisation, in the belief that it would be a step to Socialism, was a false move. It has not achieved anything. Nationalisation, which was once the great plank of the Labour Party, is now a heap of sawdust which was quietly swept away. It never had the support of the Socialist Party. 

When we, as socialists, examine the records of government by all the parties, separately and in coalitions, we are reinforced in our conviction that the only solution is the one sneered at and rejected the “dream of a society altogether free from conflict and friction”—a socialist world. Socialism alone can foster the harmonious and brotherly behaviour of mankind which lies dormant in all of us, awaiting the freedom of expression and fulfillment that will accrue once the revolution has been accomplished. We call on our fellow members of the working class to stop voting for the continuity of capitalism, even though we acknowledge fully It is a hard task to educate workers away from support of capitalism and reform of capitalism, over to an understanding of socialism. When they can be got to consider the question they all will see that nationalisation leads nowhere and that socialism alone offers them the means to use the land and industry, without financial hindrance, to supply the needs of the human race, and at the same time enable them to enjoy, along with everyone else, all the amenities social production in field and factory can provide.

“DOCTOR, WHO CARES?” (A Fantasy, Part 1) - weekly poem

“DOCTOR, WHO CARES?” (A Fantasy, Part 1)

Some Feminists are rejoicing that the 13^th 'Dr Who'

will be a woman as, with their limited perspective,

they view this trifle as a revolutionary breakthrough.

The new Dr Who is a woman!

Or in sexist parlance, 'a gal';

He's now been transgendered,

His cojones dismembered,

He is, chaps, no longer a male!

The trend could have repercussions,

Will actors adopt the new creed?

A musical play,

About Mrs May,

Could star Brian May in the lead! (1)

A brand new production on Hitler,

That's filmed at his Berlin retreat;

Might feature Miss Rudd, (2)

As the failed Nazi dud,

Bunkering down in defeat.

Could Ann Widdecombe play a Dalek?

Or a male space-monster instead?

And could Catholics cope,

If she plays the Pope,

With nun Tony Blair in 'theys' bed?! (3)

These follies are feasible if,

Non-binary gender holds sway; (4)

With some men in drag,

Wayne Rooney a WAG,

And Prince Charles, the Queen of the May!

This is the most faux revolution,

Since Tsarism's Petrograd fell;

But for minds that ain't small,

It's a load of old ball,

And a load of old 'ballcocks' as well!

(1) Queen guitarist.

(2) Amber Rudd, home secretary.

(3) The latest Feminist fad is for woman to self-identify as being

of 'non-binary gender', i.e. something other than a man or

woman who insist others refer to them as 'they' rather than 'she'.

(4) If, according to Feminists, gender is ‘non-binary’ then

it is a spectrum applicable to the entire human species.

© Richard Layton

Hiding Things Under The Shelve.

A massive iceberg - double the volume of Lake Erie - broke off from the Larsen Ice Shelf in Antarctica during the first week in July. Scientists said it was a natural phenomenon unrelated to global change.

Of course, it was; 1 trillion tonne icebergs split off from ice shelves all the time.

 John and Steve.

No Wage Raise, Other Prices OK

The Bank of Canada raised its interest rate from 0.5 per cent to 0.75 per cent, on July 12. This was its first increase in nearly seven years. The hike was caused by expectations of stronger economic growth in 2017. It will raise the cost of mortgages, lines of credit and other loans linked to the prime rates of Canadian banks. 

What it will not raise are wages and salaries. 

John and Steve.

Class Struggle

The 2007/2008 crash drove capitalist states and capitalist companies towards some desperate measures to try and stabilise the system and restore and where possible increase real profit levels. But this is not to assume that particular capitalist governments or companies are stuck with only one set of inflexible policies.

The problem is that isolated struggles by workers in the context of intense capitalist competition will give the capitalists more ability to offload any gains made by one sector onto other workers The generalisation of struggle will make that harder for them to achieve this and can potentially push back the austerity measures across a wider front at least on a temporary basis.

Alexander Berkman, the author of the anarchist ABC, put it, "capitalism will continue as long as such an economic system is considered adequate and just". Until people see through it capitalism will continue to stagger on from economic crisis to war to ecological crisis. To simply denounce finance capitalism as the main enemy is to side with industrial capital in the struggle between the two over how much each is to receive of the wealth produced by the worker class. When we challenge capitalism, we challenge it all or we do not challenge it at all.

 For decades self-proclaimed "Marxists" (especially Trotskyists) fetishise the word "crisis", and describe every economic downturn and political turn of events as the "crisis of capitalism" or even prophesising the "inevitable" (Manifesto) end of capitalism. Its proposed that in a crisis, the closer we are to revolution. The worse conditions become - the more politicised and inclined to take direct action the populace become. Some communists welcome the economic crisis of capitalism and claim there is no perspective of revolution without it. Some of those "Marxists" say "bring on the crisis" because for the working class things will not be able to continue as before. It is argued that without some form of crisis there's no reason at all for the proletariat to revolt. As long as capitalism can offer us palliatives (or at least the illusions of them) to soothe our exploitation, the system will survive It is argued that crises open up the possibility of revolution, even if it doesn't guarantee it. But without a crisis there is no possibility whatsoever. There, unfortunately, won't be a perspective of revolution with it, either. Genuine socialists prefer that working class living standards aren't severely cut. How do we agitate workers around this issue? "Cheers for the crisis"!! Most of the vanguard Left seems to be basing all of its activity around either recruiting workers into their particular party or upon the vague hope that the working class will engage in some kind of spontaneous communist revolution. Wishing the massive impacts of a massive economic crisis/recession upon people's lives just in the hope that their fringe ideas will get picked up and perhaps adhered to by a handful of additional people, the contempt that it shows for humanity is disdainful. It also lays bare the complete and utter impotence of said movements in the first place. This overly optimistic wish fulfilment mixed with its crude utopian determinism does no justice to Marx.

Economic crisis and increasing misery for the working class doesn't necessarily and inevitably lead to revolution. Relying on the effects of the crisis seems to be the lazy way to try and approach social change, scrap all the groundwork and hope the crisis does it for you. While it is argued that downturns make people angry and more susceptible to revolutionary ideas, the opposite may be true. It may be downturns just lead to despair, fatalism, acceptance of misery and cynicism to things getting better. Upturns in the economy make revolution more likely because it is the human condition never to be satisfied and when you've got the job, house, wages, car and all the mod cons then you want more - security, control over your own life which can only be got by workers ownership and control of our own work, residents ownership of their own homes and individuals control over our lives, all of which can only be got by socialism, by way of social revolution. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That is our basic function: to develop alternatives, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable. The best we can hope for is to use this as an opportunity to re-group, in order to get the working class in a stronger position to start from when the boom returns. All we can do is to try to negotiate the best terms possible and try to resist as effectively as we can the increased downward pressures on wages and working conditions (for which we need collective organisation and action, even within the existing trade unions).

As to what the Socialist Party can do, at the moment being so small a minority, we can't do much more than keep on arguing that the only way-out is to replace capitalism by a system based on common ownership (instead of class ownership) and production solely for use (instead of production for profit) and to keep on urging workers to self-organise themselves democratically to bring this social revolution about.

The liberation of our class will only come about when we, the class ourselves, for ourselves, do the hard work of organising, which needs that we class conscious workers doing the equally hard work of convincing our fellow workers. At the end of the day , as pro-revolutionaries, it is not in our interest to try and save capitalism but rather to destroy it and to encourage current struggles to develop on an independent, self-organised, class basis and extend across national boundaries which may well give rise to an escalation of the social crisis and starts to challenge capitalism as a whole from a position of some class strength. Only the self-organisation of the proletariat contains the potential to defend its own interests both in the short-term economic and the longer term political. A working class that can't defend itself is also a working class that is incapable of making a revolution.

Marx wrote "Philosophers have only tried to understand the world. The point is to change it." 
The Industrial Workers of the World sang "Don't moan, Organise!"

We in the Socialist Party say “Join us.”

Drug Dealing Not Being Delt With

In 27th June issue of 24 Hours, the Toronto news sheet, the investigative reporter, Phil Gillies, commented on the drug scene in buildings "controlled" by the Toronto Community Housing Corporation.

According to Gillies, dealers could walk the hallways as freely as walking down the street. Security cameras had their wires cut and their lenses spray painted. Drug dealers came and went every five minutes.

Under Ontario Law, if a person is admitted by a tenant, they are not trespassing; they are guests. Eviction procedures are lengthy and often ineffective. It can take years to remove a drug dealer from social housing. the Toronto Community Housing Corporation lacks the resources to present a solid case to the Landlord and Tenant Board.

There is, though, one sure way to deal with the problem, which is to establish a society where no one will wish to use narcotics.

 John and Steve.

Moralising And Capitalism's Reality.

In its June 27 issue of 24 Hours, the Toronto newssheet, columnist Sabrina Maddeaux, bitched up a storm about manufacturers going gangbusters to cash in on Canada's 150th birthday. To quote, "Some of the more, shall we say 'unique,' items honouring the big anniversary include potato chips, caskets, condoms, $500 hair dryers, bars of soap, artisanal gummy candies and bottles of vodka. The opportunities to slap a maple leaf and a little bit of red and white on products seem endless."

Our girl ain't finished yet; she also complained that many of these products weren't made in Canada and that some were made in Bangladesh, "where workers are severely underpaid and mistreated."

It's time for Ms. Maddeaux to get real. The profit motive is the driving force of capitalism, therefore instances like the above will always happen.

If one doesn't like it; and what is there to like? one "can" do something about it. 

 John and Steve.

A plea for humanity

Poverty is a conditions from which all workers suffer to some extent or another. It is a basic factor of working class existence, whether you are comparatively high or low-paid.  Sometimes it comes as bad housing, malnutrition, inferior schools, inadequate clothing or as fear of what the future holds. These problems, which are unknown to members of the capitalist class, spring from the class division of society.

Take the word at its full meaning “want of means” and you will see that our claim is justified, for any person who has to depend on a wage or salary for a living must have a restricted access to the means of life, and can never broaden the access sufficiently to enable him to live without the need to work.

Poverty goes hand in hand with wage slavery at whatever income level. True, not every worker suffers as much as those we have mentioned, but capitalism exerts a downward pressure on all of us and no government can do very much about it. A contention we have always held is that capital exists to exploit the working class, not uplift them. 

Why do different workers suffer different degrees of poverty? All of them have the same problem—of getting the best possible price for their mental and physical energies. If they can’t sell those energies they are unemployed. If they can sell, in the long run their wage is fixed by the value of their labour power. Highly skilled surgeons and erudite professors of sociology are paid more than farm workers and builders' labourers because more effort is needed to produce their particular types of skill.

Workers who suffer extreme poverty —destitution—are those who are unable to work, or whose energies are not in any great demand. Many left-wingers claim a solution would be to pay lower wages to highly skilled managers and “professional” workers who they assert gain at the expense of the low-wage earners, the children in large families and the sick and disabled. The short term effect of this can only be, as we said in our pamphlet Beveridge Reorganises Poverty, “a redistribution of misery”. The total poverty of the working class would remain the same. 

The Socialist Party does not seek any reforms to this situation but stands for the abolition of wage slavery, of the wages system, of the capitalist system in favour of a system organised to prioritize satisfying the needs and requirements of the vast majority. A world in common with a place for all. Who needs wages when they have free access to all they require?  

Lest We Forget

Obituary: Alex Shaw (1967)

Obituary from the June 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The death occurred late last year of Alex Shaw, veteran member of Glasgow Branch. Alex joined the party over 40 years ago and was an active member for most of that time.

Alex was particularly active during the “Red” Clydeside era. and so much was he associated with the Party here in those days, that wags dubbed us the “Shawcialist Party. Indeed Alex Shaw was still speaking publicly up to the last, and Glasgow members heard him in excellent form only two days before his death.

The stories concerning Alex are legion and although well worth the telling there is not the space here. Suffice to say he was the most humorous speaker this writer ever heard.

We, in Glasgow, will always remember his contribution to Socialism and extend to his widow and family our deep sympathy.

Struggle to survive

Marx observed in 1865 that wage levels can only be "settled by the continuous struggle between capital and labour, the capitalist constantly tending to reduce wages to their physical minimum, and to extend the working day to its physical maximum, while the working man constantly presses in the opposite direction."

Hal Draper later remarked, "To engage in class struggle it is not necessary to 'believe in' the class struggle any more than it is necessary to believe in Newton to fall from an airplane. There is no evidence that workers like to struggle any more than anyone else; the evidence is that capitalism compels and accustoms them to do so."

Unlike peasants in a capitalist society the proletariat as the most exploited class divorced from the means of production and therefore condemned to live by selling the only commodity they are left with, their bare hands, or their labour power to the owners of capital. Therefore they are the most revolutionary class. They are located in the most progressive sectors of the economy i.e. large-scale machine production in urban areas and working together in large bodies under one roof. For that reason,  they are the most organised, the most disciplined and therefore the most revolutionary class in capitalist society. And as Karl Marx observed, having lost their property to the capitalists they have nothing to lose in the struggle but their chains. They see for themselves that they toil and live in deplorable conditions and yet they are the creators of the country's wealth which accumulate in the hands of a few rich people.  More than any other class, they are interested in the abolition of private property and exploitation of one person by another and the eventual collective ownership and management of the economy by workers' councils or soviets. This makes them the most revolutionary class once their class consciousness is awakened. Their class interests are irreconcilable with those of capitalism.

In a society of class antagonism, there are basically two socially opposing types of people - the capitalist exploiter and the exploited working-person. This polarisation is sharper in advanced capitalist economies where the bourgeoisie regards the working class as an object for the extraction of surplus value - the source of their profits. The workers are reduced to cogs in the machinery of capitalist production and denied all rights. However, it is important to note that in a capitalist society the workers have actually accomplished a great deal. Due primarily to their efforts, massive productive forces have been built up, which make it possible to create unprecedented  material and spiritual wealth for the benefit of all. The first condition, especially in advanced capitalist countries,  for building a society of equals in which the workers themselves become the aim and purpose of production have already been created.

Unions are important because of the centrality of the working class to the larger struggle for socialism. Karl Marx was the first socialist among his contemporaries to recognise this important role of the working-class and therefore trade unions, as the only leading force in the struggle for a socialist revolution. Utopian socialists before Marx had dismissed unions as irrelevant and some of them even opposed strike action. Marx understood the absolute importance at all times of organising this class to unite as a class against their capitalist enemy.

The trade unions are workers' front line of defense against their employers under capitalism. But as vehicles for struggle, they are also crucial to the future self-emancipation of the working class. But there is also a contradiction: unions both negotiate the terms of exploitation of workers under capitalism and also provide the vehicle for struggle that can prepare the working class for revolution. Capitalism forces workers into competition with each other-native vs. foreign born, skilled vs. unskilled, and so on-exploiting every opportunity to keep workers divided. Organising into unions, which presents the opportunity for collective struggle against the employers, thereby reduces competition between workers. Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto, "This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier."

In the the US, the number of strikes fell to their lowest point on record in 2009 and to the second lowest in 2010. These figures demonstrate the extent to which labour leaders have been unwilling to use labour's most effective weapon, the strike. Decades of concessionary bargaining-at first, claimed to be a temporary phenomenon-have made wage and benefit cuts routine aspects of union negotiations, thereby enabling the deterioration of working-class living standards. Conservative trade-union leaders are de facto agents of the employing class trying to hide behind the mask of trade-union neutrality in order to divert the workers from the path of class war onto a path of collaboration with the capitalist. Economics and politics are inseparably linked. In practice, trade union neutrality amounts to supporting the bosses.

History has shown that the rate of union membership corresponds to the rise and decline in the level of class struggle. If the current balance of class forces can only be reversed through a revival of class struggle, then the key challenge facing union activists is how to transform their unions into fighting organisations. For Marxists, this necessarily entails, step by step, strengthening the fighting capacity of workers in general, and union workers in particular.

The working class must now conquer capitalism. And history has bestowed the role of conquering capitalist society squarely on the shoulders of the working class - they are the undisputed 'grave-diggers' of capitalism. It is therefore totally inconceivable that this class can be denied the right to intervene in politics to liberate themselves and society at large. Every social and political movement tending in that direction should be aided by the trade unions. Unions must be champions of the entire class and should not form themselves into corporate bodies only of their members, shutting out non members. It is their duty to help organise those who cannot organise themselves easily and protect the interests of the worst paid trades like agricultural workers. Experience  bears testimony to the fact that trade union involvement in broader struggles has a salutary or beneficial effect on the working class than being stuck in the narrow and parochial rut. The trade union movement must fight to bring the marginalised into the mainstream, and the weakest into more advantageous positions in society. By their action they must demonstrate that they are not using their organised strength only to guard their interests, but for all the downtrodden.

Today working class consciousness has to develop to a point where they are in the process of becoming "a class for-itself" i.e. a class consciousness working class which enables them to see their real class enemy as capitalism.
Adapted from here and here 

Freedom And Liberty?

A survey commissioned by Historica Canada asked respondents a variety of questions, most of which were too inane to be mentioned here.

One that is worthy of dis-honourable mention is, "What is the best word to define Canada?" The answers were, "Freedom and Liberty."

They certainly had that right, we are all free to be unemployed and at liberty to be homeless. A country in the political context is a means whereby a small minority live well at the expense of the majority, therefore let's work to abolish countries. 

John and Steve.