Another Example of What They Say and What They Do.

On January 20 at the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, Greenpeace accused the Royal Bank of Canada and 23 other major banks of being hypocrites. 

RBC participated in December in the massive Initial Public Offering ($26 billion US) of Aramco, the Saudi Arabian oil company, which is predicted to produce the equivalent of 27 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide - more than any other company on Earth. 

RBC CEO, David McKay, recently wrote the following note of cheer to his investors: ''Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our age and the financial system needs to be leading efforts to support clean economic growth and the transition to the low-carbon economy.''

for Socialism – 
SPC members & GAC

















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"What They Say" and What they Do is Another thing

Iqra Khalid, federal MP for Mississauga-Erin Mills mailed her constituents a calendar which included a list of the promises her government had made. 

They were - To give families an extra $1,500 a year by cutting taxes to the middle class and lowering cell phone bills by 25%. 
To help Canadians lower their energy bills, make their homes more energy efficient and give them the tools to prepare for climate related disasters. 
To make sure every Canadian has access to a family doctor, mental health services, affordable prescription drugs and national pharmacare.
 To increase Old Age Security by 10% once a senior turns 75 and boost the Canada Pension Plan survivors benefit by 25%.
 They will help Canadians buy their first home through the First-Time Home Buyer Incentive, which provides up to 10% off the purchase price. 
They will cut taxes in half for companies who develop technologies or manufacture products that have zero emissions.
 They will make it easier for Canadians to start and grow their own businesses, including cutting the small business tax rate from 11% to 9%.
 They will plant 2 billion trees, using the power of nature to help fight climate change and reach net-zero emissions by 2050. 
They will help 250,000 more public school kids get a spot in before and after school programs and nearly double federal spending on child care. 
They will continue to work to eliminate all long-term drinking water advisories on reserves by 2021. 
They will increase the Canada Child Benefit by 15% for kids under the age of one, make maternity and parental benefits tax free and bring in a 15 week leave for adoptive parents. 
They will implement a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour, starting this year and rising with inflation.

 Some of that sounds, to say the least, far fetched and even if they did keep some promises it would only be to make life more bearable under capitalism because that's all reforms can do.

However, it will still be interesting to see how many of wild promises they keep.

for Socialism – 
SPC members & GAC

"To the Stars"

The happiness of the humanity is not in the past, but in the future. The Socialist Party holds that the exploitation of labour, with all of its dire consequences will not disappear until the day the means of production –– land, machinery, and in general all that serves production –– will be transformed from private property into common property.

 Our fellow-workers are capable of understanding how socialism is in their interest. Our fellow-workers cannot remain apathetic in the face of those who explains to them that they bring the cure to the abuses that you suffer in society. Thus, it is of absolute necessity for a worker who cares about his or her fate and the fate of others to know socialist doctrine and its methods of struggle. And, any worker who closely investigates our ideas will be quickly convinced that they need to become a socialist, not only because in these teachings they will find the satisfaction of their class interests, but also because socialism is the final word to real social progress. Socialism is the sole solution.

Why do socialists hold that only with the socialization of the means of production can we find the solution to the social question? On one side we have labour disarmed and alone, represented by the working class, and on the other side all-powerful capital, under the control of the capitalist class. Primitive communist society did not know a single antagonism between the means of labour and labour itself, because both were under the control of all of society.

A socialist society is a free association of completely free men and women, with no separation between ‘private and common interest’ existed: a society where ‘everyone could give himself a complete education in whatever domain he [or she] fancied’. A man [or woman] would be given ‘the possibility to do this today and that tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to go fishing in the afternoon, to do cattle breeding in the evening, to criticise after dinner’, whatever they choose. If we want to believe that we shall see this happen still in our life-time, then we must act at once.

Our aim is not the division but the unity of our fellow-workers. There are many people who have not given up and reject all the lies told to them. Solidarity has always been our strongest weapon. Others, though, are tired out by the cynicism of present day politics. Let us fight for every single thing, in the struggle that is going on at all levels, everywhere, in families, in our places of work, everywhere. We think working people should demand nothing less than control of the society. They should take the industries out of the hands of the capitalist class and reorganise society on a rational basis so as to put an end once and for all to the dreadful mess into which we have all been hurled by capitalism. 

Our fellow-workers are fighting for too little. We cannot fight for too much, because if we had everything it would only be our due. The working class must take the destiny of our world into its hands – and it must do so if modern civilisation is to survive – we can all proceed to organise society and our lives in it in such a. manner as to wipe out all social inequality and antagonism and bring into existence the new socialist world. Such a world would be worth fighting for.

The Socialist Party campaigns for socialism

It is perfectly certain that the economic forms of society are fully ripe for the transformation to complete common ownership and control. What, then, is it that stands in the way? Nothing but the want of education and organisation on the part of the people themselves. 

The Socialist Party’s work, therefore, is still that of agitation, education and organisation. This is the reason why the Socialist Party is the only organised party which alone look with hope and even exultation to the future, because we alone base our confidence because we can see reconstruction on a sure basis inevitably arising out of the rottenness around us, because we alone declare no compromise. Revolution not reform is the object of organised democratic socialism. It is for us then, as revolutionary socialists, to appeal to our fellows in all lands to work for the interests of themselves and of others, in order to bring about social revolution which can alone give freedom and happiness to mankind.

It has been the aim of civilised mankind to gain freedom from want and from arduous toil. Malnutrition and hunger threatens people around the world until the production and distribution of food is taken out of the hands of the capitalists and politicians. The burning question of food for the people is now clearly defined: Will the people eat or will the food corporations be allowed to accumulate profits as usual? The bosses of the food industry will not produce food except for profit. The food industries must be under the control of the people themselves.

The object of the Socialist Party is to secure economic freedom for the whole community,  that all men and all women shall have equal opportunities of sharing in wealth production and consumption untrammelled by any restriction

The Socialist Party’s programme is nothing less than the socialist reconstruction of society and the abolition of the wages system. This is no programme for some distant future. When it comes to socialism, we are told “It’s a fine idea, but it’ll never work,” “It’s against human nature.” “There always have been rich and poor and there always will be,” Be a realist. Don’t waste your life on a Utopian dream that can never be realised. If you want to get ahead in this world, you’ve got to be practical and look out for Number One.”

Yet the socialist movement is capably demonstrating how socialism could end poverty, unemployment and war by eliminating private ownership of the means of producing the things of life, national and international competition, and the struggle for existence by the overwhelming majority of the population in this and all other countries. The Socialist Party campaigns for socialism with, exposing the evils of capitalist society, its murderous exploitation of the workers, its utter hypocrisy in human relations, and the most evident feature of its class character: the impoverishment of the masses and the enrichment of a small class of capitalists. The struggle is not confined to one people but covers the whole of civilisation. 

The clearly avowed object of the Socialist Party is to hasten the change already begun, of transferring from private ownership to common ownership, all the agencies of wealth production and distribution, to control these agencies on a co-operative basis in the interests of all alike, and to aim constantly at securing for all citizens the highest standard of mental culture, industrial efficiency and social well-being. Without knowledge of the right sort the workers cannot properly discern the subtleties of political charlatans who are ever alert to turn aside the movement from the straight path that leads to common ownership of the means of production.

The future of the world is to be co-operative, and not competitive. As socialists we have no quarrel with the workers of any nation on earth. There is ample room for all in the world, it is only the conduct of industry for profit-making on behalf of the plutocracy that makes it appear each nation must fight every other nation. Stop this, and begin to produce for use and there is room for all and work for all. 

The Socialist Party always declare in favour of the solidarity of the interests of the workers of every country. Socialists urge international peace and universal goodwill among all peoples. More and more are realising and learning that the irrepressible conflict of today is not between the workers of one nation and the workers of another nation, but it is a conflict between the capitalists and the workers of all nations, and so above every appeal to national pride, above every appeal to religious prejudice, above every appeal to race hatred, sounds high and clear the clarion call of the socialist movement. Workers of all countries, unite. You have the whole world to win and nothing but your chains to lose.

 The Socialist Party is the enemy of all wars, and pledges that neither the sound of the trumpet nor the roar of the cannon, neither victory nor defeat will swerve us from our common purpose, the union of the children of toil of all countries. That is the spirit of the working class movement. That is the spirit which above all others is making for human brotherhood and universal peace.

The banner under which we muster is the worldwide red banner of socialism, not the flag of bloody insurrection. Future fights must not be between the workers of one country and the workers of another, that is madness. The fight we are called upon to engage in is as a part of the world’s workers battling against the workers’ exploitation in every country alike.

Scotland's Poverty

Scotland currently has 19% of households living in poverty, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) said.

That is just over one million people.

More than three in five people in poverty are in a working family and in-work poverty has risen from 10% of workers 20 years ago to 13% now.

In Scotland, 19% of the lowest income households have problem debt - the highest across the UK. Among the richest fifth in Scotland, the figure is just 1%.

Understanding capitalism to understand socialism

For a hundred years the world has known no rest. Hunger, poverty, illiteracy, and all kinds of degradations make the lives of hundreds of millions of men, women, and children scarcely tolerable. War has continued to wreak destruction. Humanity’s resources are wasted while people’s basic needs remain unsatisfied, land is spoiled, misery increases, and poverty spreads. National chauvinism, racism, and ethnic hatred are developing at an alarming rate. There is an increasingly evident imbalance between humanity’s capacity for progress and the wretched reality that hundreds of millions of people must live under daily. While factories are closed down, prisons are opened up. The economic base of this social regime is the capitalist system.  The vast majority of the people share a common condition: that of living in a society where the owners of the means of production impose their will over those who possess nothing or little. In other words, people live in a society divided into social classes where the propertied class, the capitalists and landowners, dominate those who have little or no property, the working class. The key to the economic and political power of the capitalist class is the private ownership of the means of production and exchange (land, buildings, factories, machines, stores, transportation, etc.) and the exploitation of the labour-power of the working class. The capitalists are a class whose reason for existence is the accumulation of capital, i.e. the continual growth of its economic power; a capitalist who does not grow is, as a general rule, a capitalist condemned to disappear.

The capitalist is nothing if he cannot find in society a large number of people who have no other means of subsistence but the sale of their labour-power in exchange for a wage equivalent to the strict minimum for survival. The secret of capitalist exploitation lies precisely in the fact that what the capitalist buys from the worker is not his work but rather his labour-power. If the capitalist had to pay for the work furnished, he would not be able to make the profit he does. Suppose that a worker produces 10 pairs of shoes a week which sell for $25.00, thus making a total value of $250.00 per week on the market. This worker receives a weekly wage of $100.00. Where does the value of the shoes come from? The raw materials – the leather, thread, and glue – along with the other means of production such as electricity, the machines, etc. alone account for $75.00 to which is added the value added by the worker’s labour, i.e. $250.00 less $75.00 or $175.00. This sum represents the amount that the worker added by his work to the value of the materials that he was given at the beginning. If the capitalist paid the worker according to the value of his labour, he would have to give him $175.00. However, this is not what happens because the wages paid to the worker do not correspond to the value of the work he furnishes; rather, they correspond, on the average, to what it costs the worker to reproduce this labour-power or, in other words, to recuperate his energies and ensure his subsistence given the cost of living and the living conditions at a given time.

There lies the essence of capitalist exploitation: the worker gives a certain value of work to the capitalist but his wages do not correspond to this value but to only a fraction of it. The value of the non-paid work is called the surplus-value; the capitalist appropriates this non-paid fraction which constitutes the source of his profit, the source of capital. Here lies the key to the exploitation of the workers by the employers and investors, the key to the enrichment of the capitalist class on the backs of workers.

It is important to see that the means the employers are using today to increase the exploitation of the working class are designed to re-introduce, in a new form, mechanisms that the workers’ movement had successfully and efficiently fought in the past. For example, the working class obtained the 8-hour work-day. To get around this legal obstacle, the capitalists do two things:
a) they speed up the work to obtain more products in the same time, and
b) they institute compulsory overtime.

With this second method, the capitalists considerably increase the proportion of surplus labour, i.e. the unpaid labour that they appropriate. By making the same worker work longer, they avoid the costs involved in hiring another worker. This, of course, increases unemployment at the same time that it increases profits. Through legislation limiting the increase in wages below the increase in the cost of living, the boss-class does not reduce the actual amount of money received by each 56 worker as it did in the past but the result is the same: a drop in the real wages of the working class and a rise in the profits of the capitalist class.

But to attain their ends, the capitalists have to weaken the means of resistance of the working class and of the people in general. And to achieve this goal, there are no methods they won’t resort to.

On the whole, the bourgeoisie combines two types of tactics to check the workers’ movement: on the one hand, minor concessions, crumbs, and superficial reforms, the carrot, and, on the other hand, political and economic repression to intimidate, the stick.

The working class has nothing to lose but its chains. This is why we say that it is the only class whose interests are fundamentally opposed to those of the capitalists. It is the only class which has nothing to lose and everything to gain by the overthrow of the ruling class and the destruction of capitalism, even though they want improvements to the present situation, limit their demands to partial changes which don’t put into question the present economic base – the private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of wage labour. What characterises the working class, on the other hand, is that it does not own the means of production and that it is the object of exploitation. As a class, it has no other future but the total elimination of exploitation of man by man. This is why we can say that the movement for the emancipation of workers has to lead to the liberation of all of humanity. In attacking the foundation of the capitalist system – the private ownership of the means of production and wage labour – the proletariat undertakes at the same time the elimination of classes themselves. In effect, to eliminate the private ownership of the means of production is to destroy the material basis on which all exploiting classes are founded. Consequently, it is also to eliminate classes themselves. This is why we say that “the ultimate aim of the proletariat’s struggle is the class-free society, i.e. the socialist society, a community in which no person exploits the labour of another.

By the socialist revolution, the proletariat suppresses the private ownership of the means of production. It thus suppresses the material basis which allows the exploitation of labour by capital. By the socialist revolution, the proletariat puts in the hands of society the necessary means for the subsistence and development of its members. While under capitalism, production is done solely in order to make profits for those who own the factories, the transport and the media, the big stores, etc., in socialist society, production is planned according to the needs of all workers. With socialism, factories won’t shut down because their lordships, the investors don’t think they’re making enough money from them. Neither will we see the economy of a country collapse because their lordships, the investors don’t have enough “confidence” in the social climate. With socialism, it is the workers who dictate the rules of the game and their fundamental rule is the material and cultural well-being of the vast majority of the people. No more will working class houses be demolished to build luxury towers for a tiny minority of the population. And no more of capitalist anarchy which provokes crises of overproduction in some sectors while the essential needs of the labouring masses are not satisfied. Production will no longer depend upon the wishes of a handful of capitalists whose only goal is maximum profits, but on the collective will of all of the workers.

The Socialist Party speaks of replacing the capitalist production of goods by the socialist organisation of production. While the capitalist is interested in the product of labour only insofar that it makes him a personal profit, the workers have, above all, a collective interest in that the product be the best possible and that it be adapted to the needs of the labouring masses. Under socialism, the private accumulation of capital, the profit system itself, will not be the motor of the economy. These are only a few examples of what replacing the capitalist production of goods with the socialist organisation of production means.

 A transformation of such magnitude of the economic base of society can only be accomplished by revolution, by socialist revolution.