It Has Got To Change

Socialism means no privileged elite, only the right of people themselves to manage their own affairs. It means creating an worldwide brotherhood and sisterhood. We must resurrect socialism from its present graveyard of opportunism, we must study socialism. We hold to the socialism of Marx, and Engels, the economic doctrine, the character of the state and the class struggle.

Working people are not for socialism as yet, that we acknowledge. The absence of a viable socialist movement today is an indisputable and depressing fact. This is hardly a profound observation. It has been noted by many others who offer differing explanations to account for our marginalisation. 

The Socialist Party remains politically isolated and ineffective. Some on the left blame our alleged sectarianism but there is no easy cure for our woes. The struggle for socialism in this country and worldwide is a formidable task, to say the least. There exists an ideological indoctrination of the population that pervades society which includes the educational system, the media, the church, cultural and labour organisations, etc. Fear, suspicion and hysteria are spread throughout by sensationalist news and social media. The result of all this is that the worst of capitalism–consumerism, rampant individualism, jingoism, xenophobia, racism and sexism increasingly prevails. It is entrenched and permeates all facets of cultural life.

Socialism is an imperative if humankind is to avoid the path of barbarism or self-annihilation. War can solve no working class problem. It cuts across the fundamental identity of interest of the workers of the world, setting sections of this class at enmity with each other in the interests of sections of the capitalist class.

War elevates force into the position of arbiter in place of the common human desire for mutual peace and happiness. Its effect is wholly evil. It depraves all the participants by forcing them to concentrate upon the best methods of producing misery and of annihilating each other. War elevates lying, cheating, disabling and murdering opponents into virtues, confers distinctions upon those who practice these means most successfully.

Young men and women, in their most impressionable years, have the vile methods of warfare impressed upon them so thoroughly that they lose a balanced outlook on life and are impregnated with the idea that force, with all its baseness, and not reason is the final solution in all problems.

To suggest to the national ruling classes of the world that they must abandon “the use of force” when their commercial interests are at stake, is asking them to stand aside while their rivals take the lot. Nothing could be more foreign to the nature of capitalism than this.

Socialism is completely opposed to war and to what war represents. At the same time it is the only solution to the conditions that breed war. It is a new form of society in which the people of the world will work harmoniously together for their mutual benefit, for there will be neither privilege nor property to cause enmity.

No coercion will be needed in socialism because each will gain from co-operating harmoniously with his fellows. But it is a new social system that demands understanding of its implications from those who seek to establish it. With the establishment of socialism war will disappear and humanity will have taken the first step out of the jungle.

Capitalism? The Best Of All Worlds?

Since I wrote about Ford being stingy allocating money to senior citizens nursing homes, the Canadian Union of Public Employees has run an ad on TV which revealed that shareholders in for-profit homes have received $58 million in the last 3 months. 

Meanwhile patients are dying in them through lack of medical attention. The dead were found dehydrated through lack of air-conditioning and laying in their bodily waste.

Nor is this bullshit as it happened to a friend in my building. 

The only bullshit involved is when the propaganda mill tells you that capitalism is the best of all worlds.

S.P.C. Members.

A Society Without Homeless People! That’s Worth Cheering For.

Canada's Federal Families, Children and Social Development Minister, Ahmed Hussen, announced on Aug.7, the government would give $276 million to support the development of affordable housing units and beds in Peel County, Ontario, over the next 8 years. Peel comprises the cities of Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon. In 2019, Peels regional council endorsed a housing plan that would build 5,364 rental units, 226 supportive units and find 60 shelter beds by 2034. 

This is all very interesting: one may well wonder what the homeless will do for the next 14 years. Mr.Hussen may expect people will cheer, but the only thing worth cheering would be a society without anyone being homeless.

S.P.C. Members.

Changing the World

The employing class will fight bitterly to retain their superior position over the workers. The only class that can be relied on for the abolition of privilege and power to exploit, is the unprivileged propertyless working-class. The recognition of the class struggle is consequently the only effective basis of working-class action, for it is childish indeed to expect that the capitalists will of their own accord get off the backs of the workers. Obviously, the immediate interests of all except the working-class are opposed to the abolition of private property in the means of life.

The strife of today is, then, not created by socialists, but is the result of economic conditions maintained by the ruling class. Socialists seek to enlighten their fellow-workers on the causes of this struggle, and to show how utterly futile it is to expect the owning class to abolish the cause of strife, or abandon in any way its own interests. We wish to point out above all, that since the interests of all sections of the capitalist-class are fundamentally opposed to the interests of the workers, therefore the sane policy of the working-class must be in consistent opposition to all capitalist political factions however these may name themselves. The capitalist class have to get workers to do their dirty work for them. — workers are not only exploited in the interests of their parasitic masters but are also persuaded to tighten their bonds ever tighter about themselves. The struggle is already going on. The Socialist Party endeavours to give it definite and consistent aim, that the conflict may the more speedily end. The power to exploit must be wrested from the parasites. 

Clearly then, the cause of the present struggle (i.e., the private ownership of the machinery of wealth production and distribution), can only be abolished by waging war on the class which defends and maintains private ownership. And since the only class that, by its material interests, is unfettered to the maintenance of private property is the proletariat, on this class must fall the toil and the battle for freedom. Thus the only means of ridding mankind of conditions which now bind the mass in degradation and slavery, is the active opposition of the workers to the parasitic class as a whole; and what is this but the prosecution of the class war?

The victory of the socialist working-class is the only possible ending of this great struggle. This, however, does not mean the subjection of the capitalist-class by the workers; it means the abolition of capitalism and an end of classes, for the great unprivileged masses cannot secure equality of opportunity without abolishing class privilege, and privilege is based on private property. The triumph of the great working majority thus involves the emancipation of all from class oppression, for the interests of the toiling masses are fundamentally the interest of humanity. The workers are now the only necessary class in society.

The democratic ownership of the means of wealth production must necessarily abolish the economic basis of classes and of class antagonisms, and unite all in a bond of labour with identical interests. Under such conditions it must be unnecessary and above all unprofitable for the vast majority to exploit a few. Hence society will have but one aim, to lighten the toil and increase the well-being of all by the greatest possible economy of labour and life. In the society of harmonised material interests that must result from the abolition of class parasitism, the greatest well-being of the individual will only be possible by promoting the well-being of all. Thus will the welfare of all become, for the first time, the immediate interest of each.

The revolutionary makes a stand upon the same code that has served to carry so many exploiters, to power, and which last must help the workers to their emancipation. There is no right but might. We deserve nothing but what we can get with our teeth and our claws. Against the might of the strong few shall be put the might of the many weak ones. Before that might capitalism and private ownership will go down for ever. 

Then, when society founded upon common property in the means of life, has become one harmonious whole, the brutal dictum, might is right, will hold good only between the social organism and external nature, while among humanity a new ethic will arise that only the social good, the well-being of mankind as a whole is right.

The Capitalist Class Will Do Nothing Decisive About I

  In late July and early August the 4,000 year old Milne Ice Shelf, north of Canada's Ellesmere Island, broke up, with 43 per cent of it sinking into the Arctic Ocean. An ice shelf is a massive expanse of ice that is tens of meters thick. While it is buoyed by ocean waters, it is fixed to the shore creating landscapes that are unique to the polar regions. The shelf broke apart due to melting ice, caused by hotter air and warmer water. This was an event scientists predicted would happen in 2022. 

This follows a worldwide trend of global warming meaning its happening faster than predicted. 

The capitalist class will do nothing decisive about it, because their primary consideration is making profits and to heck with the environment.

S.P.C. Members.

Taking Sides Won’t Help.

Canada's Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freedland, hit back quickly and bitterly at Trump, for his announcement, on Aug.7, that he would reimpose a 10 per cent tariff on Canadian raw aluminum, because Canada had broken a promise not to flood the U.S. market with the product. Freedland called the decision, ''Absurd, useless and unjustified.'' She said Canada would retaliate within 30 days with $3.6 billion in import tariffs on U.S. goods that contain aluminum, and that imposing trade penalties in the middle of the pandemic is, ''unnecessary, unwarranted and entirely unacceptable.'' Freedland added that, ''Any American who buys a can of beer or a soda or a bike or a car, will suffer,'' though that would hardly bother a big creep like Trump. 

On the one hand we could say that it’s just another stupid trade war between rival capitalists, or their political stooges. But on the other hand, workers will, as Freedland pointed out suffer; nevertheless taking sides won’t help. There is only one way out of this mess and that is to get rid of its cause.

S.P.C. Members.

For a world socialist society

Capitalism, putrid and stinking, has long ago been only fit for the grave. There is no way out but the workers’ revolution. The Socialist Party is dedicated to the task of promoting this revolution.

 The workers’ revolution can and will eliminate war be-cause, by overthrowing capitalist economy and supplanting capitalism with a socialist economy, it will remove the causes of war. Under socialism there will no longer exist the basic contradictions that lead to war. Artificial economic barriers based on national boundaries will be removed. The expansion of the means of production, under the ownership and control of society as a whole, will proceed in accordance with a rational plan adjusted to the needs of the members of society. Socialism will remove the limits on consumption, and hence permit the scientific and controlled development of production. Thus, under socialism, war will disappear because the causes of war will be done away with.

Under capitalism the ownership of land and the means of production and distribution is in private (individual, state or corporate) hands. The distribution of the means or instruments of production under capitalism puts the possessors of capital in command of society, and of the proletariat, which is divorced from property and has only its own labour power at its disposal. Utopians who still dream of developing socialism right in the heart of capitalism by means of “producers’ cooperatives  but working class acquires economic supremacy only after it has seized political power. Under state-ownership the workers still has no property. It remains a propertyless class.

It is in the best interests of the working people that the  struggle for political power should be carried through by peaceful means, without civil war. Political power must be won; and in the struggle for power, the winning of a majority in Parliament, supreme organ of representative power, is one of the essential steps. When a socialist majority in Parliament is won it will need the support of the mass movement outside Parliament so it can be made into the effective instrument of the people's will to replace capitalism by socialism. It is necessary for workers to support this party, to vote for it, to be actively involved in it. Our primary purpose, what have always said as the necessary first step, is the launching of the whole working class, and getting it moving forward as a class in the right direction towards socialism.

We claim our ‘Right to Live’ and to live well. Let us scorn all these decoy ducks and organise to bring about the common ownership of the means of life, which alone will enable us to secure the only Right we are concerned about. Then and not till then shall we recognise our social obligation to perform our share of the necessary work.

The Socialist Party is not the evangelists of a new revelation. We do not believe in the permanence of capitalism. We aim to build – and we invite you to join us in building – a party which will be a worthy of the Marxist tradition. We are a party that honestly tells the truth to the workers, a fully democratic party,  united with one goal, the victory of humanity. The strength of the mass movement will be felt in Parliament, and the strength of the socialist movement within Parliament will strengthen the movement outside. The one supports the other. The real movement is to end a social system that imposes unnecessary suffering on the majority of people as part of the everyday normal life. 

How comes it that the men and women who till the soil, who dig in the mines, who tend the machines, who toil in the factory and the houses, and, in a word, who create the whole of the wealth, receive only sufficient to maintain themselves and their families on the border line of bare physical efficiency, while those who do not aid in production – the employing class – obtain more than is enough to supply their every necessity, comfort and luxury?

To find a solution to this problem is the task to which the Socialist Party applies itself. We see clearly that only by studying the economics of wealth-production and distribution can we understand the anomalies of present-day society. We see, further, that having gained a knowledge of the economic causes of social inequality, he must apply this knowledge through political action – through the building up of a socialist organisation for the capture of Parliament and the conquest of the powers of the State. We ask you, therefore, to study the principles upon which our party is based, to find out for yourselves what socialism is and how socialism and socialism alone can abolish class society and establish in its stead a society based upon social equality. Socialism is, then, the ethics of humanity, the necessary economic foundation of a rational code of morality.

A NEW CLARION CALL TO ALL WORKERS

 

The most depressing aspect of identity politics is the claims of “who is the most oppressed”. Oppression cannot be quantified. The result is increasing fragmentation and confusion, at a time of major attacks on working class living standards and individual liberties. Class struggle is a unifying force. It is the one thing that all workers have in common, whatever their country, their industry, their gender, colour or sectional interests. Identity politics and single issue campaigning, on the other hand, divides by its very nature. Particular privileges will continue to be defended and even enforced by capitalist ruling classes for as long as they have power. That is, until they are overthrown by a working-class revolution. Divided and at each others’ throats by many forms of discrimination we will not take up the fight against our masters. We strive for the complete social, economic and political equality for minority people. The Socialist Party’s role is to strengthen the class movement against capitalist exploitation. We will struggle for the revolutionary unity of all working people. The division of society into the exploiting and exploited are rooted in the same social development – the private ownership of the means of social production. In primitive communist society hierarchal oppression did not existed. 

Only the socialist revolution can lay the basis for the complete emancipation. In socialism, men and women will not be oppressed. It is only a socialist, planned economy that can provide full employment for all who are willing to work. This lays the economic basis for equality among men and women. It is the capitalist system that is the main cause of oppression today. The principal contradiction in capitalist society is between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie tries in every way that it can to sabotage the struggle for socialism. It tries to divide the workers through a system of national privileges and by spreading the poison of nationalism and racism. The capitalists try to justify, in the minds of white or native workers, the oppression of nations and peoples by saying that other nationalities are “inferior.”

Only the destruction of capitalism and the establishment of socialism will guarantee the liberation of all oppressed. Working people are the ones who built this world, its industries, farms and cities. Our planet is rich in natural resources. It is capable of satisfying the needs of all its people. But today cut-backs in health and other services. The two basic classes in our society, the working class and the bourgeoisie, are locked in a bitter struggle. The bourgeoisie represents the old system of exploitation and oppression. The working class represents the fundamental progressive force, the most consistent social force in the struggle to eliminate capitalism. A handful of capitalists control our country and make fabulous profits off the labour of working people. All the major means of production - the factories, the mines, telecommunications and transportation – are concentrated in the hands of a few capitalists.  They control whole  sectors of the economy. All the misery we suffer is created so a small clique of very wealthy individuals can continue to line their pockets.

For workers, their lives and their future is less and less certain. An alarming number of working families are in debt. Every bit of capitalists’ vast possessions was stolen from the people. It’s the capitalists that get rich by appropriating the fruits of our labour. At the end of a work week the worker collects his pay. The capitalists claim this is a fair exchange. But it is highway robbery. In reality, a worker gets paid for only a small part of the value he produced. The rest, the surplus value, goes straight into the boss’s bank balance. The employers get rich, not because they have “taken risks” or “worked harder,” as they would have us believe. The more they keep wages down and reduce the number of employees with speed-ups, the more they can steal from us and the greater their profits. And if the boss thinks he can make more profit somewhere else, he just closes his factory and moves elsewhere or another industry. The idea that everyone can get rich under this system is a lie invented by the rich themselves.

 Under capitalism, the only way to get rich is to trample on someone else. This is why workers have only one choice: either submit to this wage slavery or fight it. Capitalism is a system based on exploitation. A handful of parasites live off the backs of the workers and could not care less about their situation.  

 

Day Care? Sorry. Can’t Commit.

 Day Care? Sorry. Can’t Commit.

On Aug.1, Doug Ford said he could not commit to providing nursing-home residents with 4 hours of day care. This was in response, (if one can call it that), to a report about the lack of staff in these homes, made worse by the pandemic. Already 5,900 patients in Ontario nursing homes have caught the virus and 1,844 have died. Ford also said he needs to take a closer look at the report. Considering his foremost consideration is the needs of capitalism, you bet he is reluctant to commit, especially since the additional cost will be $1.6 billion!

S.P.C. Members

One Law For The Rich Another Law For The Poor.

An analysis compiled by CGLytics, a compensation analysis company, revealed findings which should surprise nobody. When the pandemic forced companies to fire workers, some executives decided to show some solidarity,(what a joke), by taking a pay cut. The survey of 3,000 companies showed that the cuts were tiny compared to their pay last year. Their total pay includes bonuses and stock awards, which more than compensates for the salary cuts. On the one hand, very few companies cut salaries for their senior execs., but on the other, many companies laid off workers. 

There's no getting away from it - One law for the rich, another law for the poor.

S.P.C. Members.