UK in poverty denial

Philip Alston, the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, whose warning of deepening poverty in Britain was this week dismissed as “barely believable” by ministers, has said the government’s denial is as worrying as the poverty itself.

Alston, an eminent New York-based human rights lawyer, said the government response amounted to “a total denial of a set of uncontested facts” and that when he first read its public comment “I thought it might actually be a spoof”. He said he feared it showed ministers were not willing to debate official figures that showed 14 million people were living in relative poverty and therefore consider what he believes are essential changes to the welfare system.

Ministers responded that it was “a completely inaccurate picture of our approach to tackling poverty” and instead claimed the UK was among the happiest countries in the world.  It appeared to be a study that placed the UK 15th behind 12 other European countries including Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and the whole of Scandinavia.

“That takes the denial on the part of the government to new heights,” Alston said. “The government is proceeding as if the problems I have reported don’t exist. Is it the case that 14 million people do not live in poverty? Do they contest the child poverty predictions? That is what it seems to be.”

Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, said she felt it was politically biased and alleged that Alston did not do enough research, only visiting the UK for 11 days. 

But far from backing down, Alston, has pushed his argument harder.

“The statement is as troubling as the situation,” he said. “There is nothing that indicates any willingness to debate over issues which have generated endless very detailed, totally reputable reports across the political spectrum in the UK. All of these are dismissed...I think breaking rocks has some similarity to the 35 hours of job search [required per week to receive universal credit] for people who have been out of work for months or years,” he said. “They have to go through the motions but it is completely useless. That seems to me to be very similar to the approach in the old-style workhouse. The underlying mentality is that we are going to make the place sufficiently unpleasant that you really won’t want to be here.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/24/un-poverty-expert-hits-back-over-uk-ministers-denial-of-facts-philip-alston

The Iniquity America's Inequality

The bottom half of Americans combined have a negative net worth," Ben Steverman wrote in a recent Bloomberg article.

This statement is based on the research of economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, who study wealth inequality. Zucman is a "wealth detective" who spends hours combing through spreadsheets of tax tables, macroeconomic datasets, and international money flow calculations to find the secret money stashes of the world's richest people.

Saez and Zucman's research on wealth inequality also found that 20% of American wealth is controlled by the top 0.1% of taxpayers - or about 170,000 families. The top 1% control about 39% of the country's wealth, and the bottom 90% hold only 26%, despite years of economic growth in the US overall.

"The pie has not become bigger" in the US, Zucman told Bloomberg. "It's just that a bigger slice is going to the top." 

French economist Thomas Piketty, one of Zucman's former professors, has been spotlighting findings from the 2018 World Inequality Report, which he coauthored. 

The authors found that while the income of the top 1% of American taxpayers made up 11% of the national income in 1980, it now makes up more than 20% of the country's income.

And the income of the bottom half of Americans, which was 20% of the national income in 1980, has fallen to just 12%.

In other words, the country's rich have been getting increasingly richer while the middle class and the poor get poorer. 

Millennials are saddled with more than $1 trillion of student loan debt. ore than 3 million Americans aged 60 and older are still paying off their student loans.

Credit card debt is also on the rise. More than 40% of US households carry credit card debt, and the average debt balance is $5,700, according to a 2018 report. 

And about one fifth of Americans don't have any money saved up.

No "green" capitalism! We champion green socialism!

“Capitalist development has dragged humanity down to so low a level that it no longer knows, and can no longer know, other than one incentive: money. Money has become the prime mover, the alpha and omega of all human action.” Paul Lafargue

Greta Thunberg and other youth strikers for climate action from across the world are hoping for adults to join a global general strike on 20 September. Thunberg issued the call for a general strike in an article in the Guardian.

“We’re asking adults to step up alongside us … today, so many of our parents are busy discussing whether our grades are good, or a new diet or the Game of Thrones finale – whilst the planet burns,” they write. “But to change everything, we need everyone. It is time for all of us to unleash mass resistance … if we demand change in numbers we have a chance.”

“We’re asking adults to step up alongside us,” the youth strikers write. “Step out of your comfort zone to make this a turning point in our history. This is about crossing lines – it’s about rebelling wherever one can rebel.”

We are well aware of the fact that the majority in the environmentalist movement are not acquainted, for the most part, with what the socialist case is all about. One of the reasons has always been the alleged urgency of the climate crisis that seem to be of a greater priority. It is difficult for those of us in the Socialist Party not to feel irritated at times because the urgency is exactly the clue to the lack of comprehension of what the problem is about. To save the environment has become the great discovery of the past decade. The words ecology, climate change, global warming and carbon emissions have become household terms. The end of the world is at hand unless we do something about the environment has become a common refrain. A planet fit for human beings to inhabit has become the question of ultimate survival. The Socialist Party maintains that as long as we hold the relationships of a market economy, that is, the pro­duction of commodities to be sold for a profit — the environment be damned, profits come first. The prime concern of business is to keep the costs of production as low as possible. Profits have to be of paramount priority. The Socialist Party's case boils down to this simple premise: Let us eliminate the rela­tionships of commodity production — let us produce goods to serve the needs of humanity instead of producing in order to make profits — let us organise our world on a democratically planned base instead of working for the benefit of the stockholders — let us harness the natural wealth of the universe and match it with the trained technology of the workers who live on this planet.

"Green" capitalism is illusory, simple wishful thinking. The destructive "grow or die" imperative of our market-driven system cannot be wished or regulated away. Capitalism is based on the premise of eternal growth. It is not a steady state, but a rapacious system that is never satiated. Under a capitalist system, not growing is not the same as standing still; it is moving backwards. This is the fundamental contradiction in a finite world. Countless studies have documented that limits to growth in such areas as energy, minerals, water and arable land (among others) are fast being reached. The energy corporations are desperately trying to crash through these limits with technological fixes such as fracking, tar sands exploitation and deep-water drilling, which are equally or more environmentally costly than traditional methods. Yet the trends continue. Capitalism has utterly failed us. It has destroyed our communities, our democracy and the planet we live on. As long as people believe that capitalism is sustainable,  they'll focus on reforming it -- smoothing around the edges, re-writing regulations and so on. Some of us though seek a revolution that overthrows the whole system, clearing the way for something entirely new. Maximising accumulation is the force that drives capitalism. Appropriating nature and labour is the cheapest way for maximisation of accumulation. Capitalism is always about the theft of the people's sustenance and the looting of the source of their sustenance – Nature. Capitalists hate any sort of cost. Corporations don’t care much for building environmental costs into their production and spend millions of dollars in political lobbying to thwart such policies. This system where the master class try their best to maximise profit by minimising cost, by appropriating labour, robbing nature, grabbing everything within their reach, creating pollution and destruction of the ecology and causing the ruination of nature are acts of crime - crime against the planet, against posterity, against humanity. It is eco-murder! These are crimes that not only harm present generations but hurt future generations. Vulture environmentalism is vulture capitalism’s hungry and greedy twin. Capitalism is a system that must continually expand, a system that, by its very nature, will eventually come up against the reality of finite natural resources. By its very nature the capitalism system stands against ecology and environment as its only concern is profit, nothing else. Standing up for environment will inescapably lead to questioning this ever greedy hungry economic system. Nobody as yet ever talks about the CAUSE of all these "issues" and underlying reasons but they eventually will arrive at such questions. 

Do we stand upon the brink of the destruction of the whole of mankind? If the catastrophists and those who predict social collapse are correct that ecosystem is in fact in the process of irreversible destruction, then all alternatives, even socialism, would seem to be not only utopian but futile. The popular media presents us with the dystopian vision of a Mad Max scenario rather than off a positive socialist alternative. The Socialist Party explains that we stand upon the threshold of a new age of peace, prosperity and plenty. What is the future of mankind? That is for humanity to decide. It must be decided by the majority of the working people. They must organise and speak with one voice: We demand life with socialism before death under capitalism. The fight for socialism has become the fight for the very existence of humankind. We have always said that the future belongs to socialism.

The Roma - No voice, no future?

10 million Roma, the population of a medium-sized EU country, are badly underrepresented at a time when populist forces are trying to vilify communities.

“The panic about refugees and migrants has subsided a bit and the Roma have become a scapegoat again,” said Bernard Rorke, of the European Roma Rights Centre.

Populists are stepping up a campaign to demonise them in many countries. In France earlier this year, vigilante groups attacked Roma people in Paris after fake news reports alleged they were kidnapping children. In Italy, one of the first acts of the far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, last year was to call for the creation of a register for Roma people. In Hungary, a newly founded extreme-right party called on its followers this week to fight “gypsy crime”. In central and eastern European countries such as Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, many Roma live in ghetto-like conditions, confined to ramshackle settlements on the edge of towns and often excluded from education and the jobs market. In Romania, where there are around 1 million or more Roma people, there is the self-perpetuating cycle of segregation and discrimination has long been part of society. The Hungarian government promotes itself as a model for Roma empowerment, but critics say the government has merely shunted many people into low-paid public works programmes, entrenching segregation.

Rorke characterised the Hungarian attitude to the Roma community as “keep them in poverty, keep them in public works schemes, and make sure they’re not doing crystal meth and not getting pregnant”. This reinforced segregation and discrimination rather than combatting it, he said.

There have been numerous national and European schemes and funding projects aimed at Roma people, but without proper consultations they often fail to make significant change.

“So far, quite a lot of money has been spent, but with little effect. We need to rely on public consultations and identify specific needs, rather than find them in the imagination of politicians,” said the Romanian EU official Ciprian Necula.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/23/no-voice-no-future-roma-ignored-as-europe-goes-to-polls

Passing the buck for the bucks

In recent weeks, Boeing has tried to shift blame for both crashes from its software systems. Dennis Muilenburg, the company’s chief executive, claimed the 737 Max was correctly designed and suggested the pilots did not “completely” follow the procedures that Boeing had outlined. US aviation officials said a bird strike may have triggered the faulty data that led to the MCAS system engaging. However, an Ethiopian Airlines spokesman said that the preliminary crash investigation report showed “no evidence of any foreign object damage”.

American Airlines’ pilots’ union has hit back at Boeing for insinuating that some responsibility for the two crashes of its 737 Max jets lies with the pilots, and claimed AA pilots made several suggestions to Boeing to fix the plane’s anti-stall systems before the second crash.

Describing Boeing’s position as “inexcusable”, Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, accused Boeing of unfairly blaming foreign pilots involved in the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes.

“Shame on you. We’re going to call you out on it. That’s a poisoned, diseased philosophy.” Asked if the Ethiopian crash might have been prevented if Boeing had acted on the US pilots’ concerns, Tajer said: “I think that’s a fair conclusion.”

Tajer said the Ethiopian Airlines pilots did what they were instructed to do, but that Boeing’s controversial anti-stall software (MCAS) forced the plane into such an aggressive nosedive that the pilots could not recover. “They had wired that thing so that it was irrecoverable. It just blew us away,” Tajer said

“These guys didn’t even know the damn system was on the airplane,” a pilot said.

Ethiopian officials have insisted the Ethiopian Airlines pilots repeatedly performed all of Boeing’s procedures, but were unable to recover the plane. Ethiopian Airlines also complained that Boeing did not do enough to warn them about the system or provide functioning cockpit alerts about problems with sensors.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/may/23/boeing-737-max-crashes-american-airlines-pilots-union-mcas

Who really cares about Yemen?

While Italian workers express solidarity with their Yemeni fellow-workers by refusing to load two electricity generators onto a Saudi Arabian ship. The 'Bahri-Yanbu' had been loaded arms in Antwerp earlier this month before pulling into port in Genoa.

Unions in the northern Italian city initially lobbied to have the vessel banned, but their efforts failed and the Bahri-Yanbu docked there earlier this week. It was met by protesters. Union workers then refused to load the generators. 

The 'Bahri-Yanbu' had also met with a hostile reception in France in early May when it docked in the Normandy port of Le Havre. The vessel left without a cargo of weapons on 9 May, after a rights group ACAT tried to block the cargo on humanitarian grounds.

Meanwhile, in contrast to these humanitarian efforts weasel politicians seek loopholes so that they can continue supplying Saudi Arabia.

In the UK, the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, negotiated a loophole in a German arms export ban to Saudi Arabia that will ensure UK-supplied planes will continue to be used in the war in Yemen. The aircraft, Tornado fighter bombers and Eurofighter Typhoons, are used in the Saudi bombing raids in the four-year civil war in Yemen.

The aircraft were developed by consortiums of European companies and Germany supplies spares for them. The two wings of the German coalition government became embroiled in a tense battle this year over whether to extend a pre-existing ban on arms sales to Saudi. They reached a complex compromise last month, which appears to have satisfied British concerns about the viability of the UK-supplied aircraft.

Andrew Mitchell, the former Conservative international development secretary, said, “It is shameful and a profound moral failure that the UK has been unable to persuade Saudi and Emirati allies to end the bombing of innocent Yemeni civilians.” 

In the United States, the Trump administration is considering an emergency declaration that would allow it to make an arms shipment to Saudi Arabia without the approval of Congress. 

The Property Owners

With 139 of the world’s 239 real estate billionaires, China accounted for a whopping 58% of the world’s total, leaving other countries far behind, according to the Hurun Global Real Estate Rich List released Thursday. The runner-up, the U.S. has 26 real estate billionaires, followed by the U.K., with 17. Hong Kong had the highest concentration of real estate billionaires in the world with 25.

"The urbanization megatrend in China has driven the biggest wealth explosion in the history of world, with the result that most of the world’s largest real estate developers today come from China," Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of Hurun Research Institute, publisher of the list, said.

Xu Jiayin of Shenzhen-based Evergrande Group ranked first with a net worth of US$37 billion. Li Ka-shing of Hong Kong conglomerate Cheung Kong Holdings came in second, with US$29 billion. Third place went to Lee Shau Kee of Hong Kong-based Henderson Development, with US$27 billion. Yang Huiyan of Foshan-based Country Garden landed fourth with US$23 billion. 

The richest U.S. real estate billionaire was Donald Bren, chairman and sole owner of California-based developer the Irvine Company. He had a net worth of US$17 billion. U.S. President Donald Trump came in at 82nd place with US$3 billion.

https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/china-has-58-of-world-s-real-estate-billionaires-leaving-u-s-far-behind-124189?reflink=outbrain_editorial_009701429222c9bc47cd33613ffb29ffaa

That's Different (1950)

A Classic Reprint from the May 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

A man with an ax flew by Socrates, chasing another man:

“Stop him! Stop him!” cried he of the weapon. “He’s a murderer!”

But the old sage wasn’t taking any chances, and jogged along imperturbably.

“You fool!” quoth he of the ax. “Why didn’t you stop him? He’s a murderer, I tell you!”

“A murderer! What’s a murderer?”

“ Fool! One that kills, of course.”

“Ah! a butcher.”

No, idiot! That’s different. One that kills a man.”

“ Oh! Ah, a soldier.”

No! No! That’s different altogether. One that kills a man in times of peace!”

“A hangman!”

No! No! No! That’s different. One that kills a man in his house!”

“ A doctor, then!”

No! No! No! No! No! That’s different”

Running along after him (2,000 years after) comes another man with flaming eyes : “Stop him! Stop him!” he cries, pointing to something he sees, or thinks he sees, ahead of him. “Stop him! He’s a Socialist!”

“A Socialist! What’s a Socialist?”

“Why a believer in state industries, of course.”

“ Oh. I see? The railways, post offices, customs, drains, and all that.”

“No, that’s different! I mean competing against private enterprise.”

Oh! schools, universities, and the like.”

“No! No! That’s different. I mean state trading. The fellows that expect everything done for them by the state! A loafer that wants to share the earnings of the industrious workers!”

Ah! Ah! A nobleman who has inherited land.” 

“No! No! That’s different. I mean—.”

Sydney Bulletin. (The above is reprinted from the Socialist Standard, September, 1909).

We are fighting for the planet.

On Friday the 24^th of May, it is estimated that that at least 1,351 separate school strikes are now scheduled to take place across the world in 110 countries.

"What we decide to do collectively as a species politically, globally, over the next decade is going to determine the future of the next generations in terms of the habitability of the planet." explained the author of the latest research that presents a scenario of sea-level rises of double the previous estimates.

Capitalism is the social system under which we live and is primarily an economic system of competitive capital accumulation out of the surplus value produced by wage labour. As a system it must continually accumulate or go into crisis. Consequently, human needs and the needs of our natural environment take second place to this imperative. The docility of the world population has contributed greatly to keeping intact the increasingly unequal, barbaric and rapacious society that is global capitalism. Because people believe there is no alternative to capitalism, it keeps on existing. The idea of a zero-growth, sustainable society is not new and in recent years has been put forward by many in the environmentalist movement. But while appearing to be desirable, the fatal flaw is they also stand for the continuation of the market system which is the cause of the problems in the first place.

Capitalist investors want to end up with more money than they started out with, but why? Capitalism is an ever-expanding economy of capital accumulation. In other words, most of the profits are capitalised, i.e. reinvested in production, so that production, the stock of means of production, and the amount of capital, all tend to increase over time. The economic circuit is thus money - commodities - more money - more commodities - even more money.

This is not the conscious choice of the owners of the means of production. It is something that is imposed on them as a condition for not losing their original investment. Competition with other capitalists forces them to re-invest as much of their profits as they can afford to in keeping their means and methods of production up to date. As a result there is continuous technological innovation. Defenders of capitalism see this as one of its merits and in the past it was insofar as this has led to the creation of the basis for a non-capitalist society in which the technologically-developed means of production can be now, and could have been any time in the last 100 years, consciously used to satisfy people’s wants and needs. Under capitalism this whole process of capital accumulation and technical innovation is a disorganised, impersonal process which causes all sorts of problems—particularly on a worldscale where it is leading to the destruction of the environment.

The result is waste, pollution, environmental degradation on a global scale. The ecologist’s dream of a sustainable ‘zero growth’ within capitalism will always remain just that, a dream. If human society is to be able to organise its production in an ecologically acceptable way, then it must abolish the capitalist economic mechanism of capital accumulation and gear production instead to the direct satisfaction of needs.

While a number of radicals within the green movement claim to advocate a society based on cooperation and production-for-use, a sustainable society where production is in harmony with the environment and affairs are run in a decentralised and democratic manner, promoting that only in such a system can ecological problems be solved, a deeper reading makes it is perfectly clear that this sustainable society doesn't challenge the continuance of the exchange economy nor the existence of private ownership. They are firmly wedded to a form of capitalism, albeit based on local smaller-scale enterprises, with a greatly-reduced dependence on the world market but still holding a belief that capitalism can be reformed so as to be compatible with achieving an environmentally sustainable society. Those green radicals have never been able to reconcile how they can achieve a zero growth, sustainable society whilst retaining a market system which includes an irresistible, built-in pressure to increase sales for profit and where if sales collapse, society tends to break down in recession, unemployment and financial crisis. Capitalism differs from previous class societies in that under it production is not for direct use, not even of the ruling class, but for sale on a market. Competitive pressures to minimise costs and maximise sales, profit-seeking and blind economic growth, with all their destructive effects on the rest of nature, are built-in to capitalism. These make capitalism inherently environmentally unfriendly. The ecological contradictions of capitalism make any sustainable "green" capitalism, a confidence trick.

The Socialist Party place ourselves unambiguously in the camp of those who argue that capitalism and a sustainable relationship with the rest of nature are not compatible. The excessive consumption of both renewal and non-renewable resources and the release of waste that nature can’t absorb that currently goes on are not just accidental but an inevitable result of capitalism’s very essence. The capitalist system creates vast amounts of energy waste in the military and its socially useless jobs such as marketing, finance and banking which are part of its profit making machine. Endless growth and the growing consumption of nature-given materials this involves is built into capitalism. If the environmental crisis is to be solved, this system must go. What is required is political action - political action aimed at replacing this system by a new and different one. There can be no justification, on any grounds whatsoever, for wanting to retain an exploitative system which robs workers of the products of their labour, which puts privileged class interests and profit before the needs of the community, which robs the soil of its fertility, plunders nature of its resources and destroys the natural systems on which all our lives depend.

The Bosses Game of Thrones

The Socialist Party today has candidates standing in the South East of England contesting the European Union elections. No doubt we will lose our deposit and harvest relatively only a few votes for our case for socialism. It makes observers wonder why we in the Socialist Party still persist. So, is a vote for the Socialist Party a wasted vote? The answer is no. By now some of you will have grown weary of listening to the mainstream candidates in this election. They have waffled on and on about Brexit and Remain. All nationalisms are reactionary because they inevitably clash with class consciousness and poison it with chauvinism. Our view is that a bloc of states such as the EU ultimately exists only to defend the property interests of the owning class and to protect the interests of the capitalists and their businesses at every turn. Those Brexiteers who say that the main enemy is in Brussels and Strasbourg mislead workers into thinking we have less to fear from the British capitalist class. Brexit has no answers for the working class and would continue to be used by the millionaires and multi-nationals to control and rule. Most of us don’t own a single square inch of the UK. It doesn’t belong to us: we just live here and work for the people who do own it. In or out of the EU, that won’t change. Society is run in the interests of those who own the wealth. They argue among each other over , GDP rates, profits, imports and exports, because where the borders lie matters only to the ruling class. Not to us. 

Our goal is socialism, a new social system based on common ownership of our resources and industry, cooperation, production for use and genuine democracy. Only socialism can turn the boundless potential of our class and resources to the creation of a world free from tyranny, greed, poverty and exploitation. Capitalism has failed, and so have efforts to reform it. That failure puts a campaign for the socialist alternative on the immediate agenda. We will recognise ourselves, not as British or European but as members of humanity. 

Running Socialist Party candidates is all about exposing the agenda of the employing class, challenging the false promises and policy lies of the pro-capitalist candidates, and putting forward socialism as the alternative for working people. Running candidates is about providing a platform to gain support for the idea of socialism. Elections are an organising tool to expose the powers that be and to confront the ideology of the bosses. Elections are one of the best ways for socialists to get a public hearing. Elections should be seen as a great arena to publicise and populise socialist ideas. It is marvellously morale–raising to discover while canvassing that there are already a great many socialists out there, and many more potential socialists. It would be difficult to campaign for election without making new contacts, new recruits and increasing the working class' understanding of political realities and socialist ideas. Party members and volunteers grow immensely as speakers, and organisers. And voters are refreshed by real solutions. If we socialists don’t speak up for socialism in the electoral arena, who will?

If you think you've been cheated over the years, you're right; capitalism is nothing but a racket. The proof of the failure of the world capitalist system to meet the needs and aspirations of the majority of the population of every country of the world is there for all to see, clear and manifest, if only they will open their eyes wide and acknowledge the overwhelming evidence. Politics, the activities associated with how a country or an area is run, is something which should engage the interest and activity of every citizen worldwide as it bears directly on all aspects of life. The reason for contempt or indifference towards politics comes from a history of being excluded, the expectation of being excluded and the acceptance of being excluded. To be heard, to be considered, to be represented honestly we need to be involved in the decision-making processes, not to be told what is in our best interest by self-serving professional politicians. We need a system that works for us all, of which we're all an integral part, a system we're prepared to work to attain.

The Socialist Party appeals to real socialists, those who, to quote the Communist Manifesto, “disdain to conceal their aims.” We take on those phony pseudo-socialists who pin their hopes on backing capitalist reformers as a way to build for socialism. Why head south to go north. 

A socialist is not a member of, or supporter of, any capitalist party whatever. This is the first test of socialist seriousness and sincerity. The problem is this gives socialist cover to a capitalist party. For example, though the Greens may desire a kinder, gentler capitalism, the practical outcome of their dreams can be seen in Europe where they have been in coalition. Greens prosecute wars, impose austerity, and more. Why would socialists feed the Green Party’s false hopes that capitalism can be fixed?

The Socialist Party and its 10 candidates are alone in speaking for the working class and fighting for its interests in these 2019 EU elections. The working class cannot defend its independent class interests except through a complete political break with all the parties and organisations that defend the profit system. Workers must reject all forms of racism, nationalism and xenophobia, including the demonising of migrant workers and political refugees. The aim of our campaign is to develop a working class, imbued with socialist consciousness, and armed with the understanding that nothing less than the abolition of the capitalist profit system and the establishment of world socialism can provide a future for humanity as a whole; free of war, poverty and oppression. Presently, the Socialist Party lacks the resources in this election. Some voters will support the candidate who is the “least worst” until such a time that there is a real candidate who truly represents us. In this election, the arguments don't pit capitalism against socialism. It's about trying to decide what kind of capitalism there will be – we have a choice of capitalisms. Sometimes not voting is the way to be heard yet non-voting is often indistinguishable from apathy. It sends no message at all. The only thing that can transform "apathy" into an actual political force is to organise the non-voters. This is why Socialist Party always advocate workers to vote even when there is no one to vote for. We suggest a spoiled ballot or as we describe it, a write-in vote for socialism. It may not help much – it might even seem to some just a pointless gesture — but at least it can’t hurt. We will be advocating a third choice - a spoiled ballot with the words “world socialism” written on it. The Socialist Party is committed to destroying the capitalist system, the root cause of all oppression. It aims to unmask the irrationality of Don’t degrade yourself by sinking to the “lesser of two evil” mentality. On this occasion, go to the polling-booth and inscribe, “WORLD SOCIALISM!” upon your voting paper.

Today, if you agree with the Socialist Party, vote:

Mandy Bruce,

Ray Carr,

Dave Chesham,

Rob Cox,

Mike Foster,

Stephen Harper,

Neil Kirk,

Anton Pruden,

Andy Thomas,

Darren Williams.