Starmer's "on the side of working people"

 

… and he’s “fighting” for the millions of people on low pay and insecure jobs. “Millions of people who don’t get the dignity. The respect. The chance that they deserve, to go as far as their talent and effort should take them. Millions of people held back because the status quo in this country does not work for them.”

Yeah, but your figures and your scope are wrong, Starmer. Billions of people around the world are ensnared for life in wage labour, all being held back because capital must, and will, keep them permanently on the edge of destitution. How else could they be forced to provide the profits on which the capitalists depend?

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/

Socialist Sonnet No. 235

Reformation

 

Maintaining ‘Socialism’ as watchword

Can seem unlikely, when realpolitik

Is succumbing to the three card trick

Of the slight of hand dealer in absurd

Demagogy, when the popular vote

Is placed on populist blandishments,

Falsified promises; reason relents

Its influence. Without considered thought

Reform, however tempting it appears,

Remains a mistaken gamble to make,

Especially with the future as the stake:

Gamblers regret can last for years and years.

There’s none as asleep as the mistaken,

Being so, so difficult to awaken.

 

D. A.

Let 'em eat cake

 

Less than twelve months ago SOYMB posted this:

‘When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let's have three pennorth of chips!’

George Orwell The Road to Wigan Pier

‘Fish and chips, a traditional British meal valued for its affordability, has seen a significant increase in price over the past five years, several UK media outlets reported  citing data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

According to July figures, the cost of fish and chips has surged by around 52% to nearly £10 ($13) per serving from an average of £6.5 in July 2019. According to the ONS, the cost of the popular dish has seen the largest increase over the reporting period in comparison to pizza, kebabs, and Indian and Chinese food...Western sanctions and Russia’s countermeasures also affected energy supplies, which triggered a rise in energy costs for British businesses. As a result, the price of fish and chips spiked by 19% by March 2023... According to the latest Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs’ Agricultural Price Index (API), in the 12 months to May 2024, potato prices posted the largest increase among UK agricultural goods, surging 4.1%.Industry representatives warn that fish and chips is becoming less affordable, and may soon lose its status as an iconic British dish...“People think that fish and chips is a cheap meal and it just isn’t. People are prepared to pay £15-20 for a pizza but they’re not prepared to pay it for a portion of fish and chips,” Angela Cartwright, the owner of Kingfisher Fish Bar in Salford, said.’

https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2024/08/tell-capitalism-its-time-to-cod-off-sic.html

A new piece in The Sun notes that out of the nine thousand fish and chip shops in the Uk five hundred of them are now closing down yearly This number may increase due to the triple threat of spiralling costs of energy, cooking oil and fish. Red diesel fuel used by Trawlers has doubled. One fisherman quoted said that his fuel costs had gone from ten thousand pounds to over twenty thousand pounds for a week’s fishing. The average cost of fish and chips is now twelve pounds per portion.

The National Federation of Fish Fryers criticised Energy Secretary Ed Miliband’s Net Zero drive for “lacking common sense”.

President Andrew Crook said Chancellor Rachel Reeves should cut fuel duty while the Strait of Hormuz closure is impacting on trawlers and distributors.

He said: “We’re in danger of throwing our economy away to try to meet the arbitrary Net Zero goal. Independent fish and chip shops are feeling the brunt. The price of cod has doubled and it’s very difficult to turn a profit.’

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/38936139/fish-and-chip-shops-face-closure-amid-soaring-costs/

A BBC investigation found that some North Western chip shops were selling a catfish species, known as pangasius or river cobbler which is £3.40 per kilogram wholesale, whereas cod and haddock typically go for £15 per kilogram without customers being fully aware of what they were buying.

‘Much like in the 2013 horsemeat scandal, eating cheaper fish does not present a health risk, but concerns have been raised about consumer deception.

"It probably does go on," said Andrew Crook, president of the National Federation of Fish Friers.

"It is fine to eat, ( pangasius) there's nothing wrong with it, but when you go and get fish and chips most people expect a marine species, so cod, haddock or plaice.

"I think if you've got something that's farmed, like pangasius, as long as it's advertised as such that's fine.

"It's when it's being sold at a cod price that's a problem and shops need to be careful about doing that."’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg0337n0y1o 

Profit is the name of the game under capitalism so all sort of subterfuges are employed to acquire more and more.

Vote for World Socialism

Editorial from the April 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘We live in a world of inequality where wealth is the real source of power, profits come first and billions are poor through no fault of their own.

All communities are blighted by inequality and deprivation.

In the local elections in 4 May, as in all elections, you have a choice.

You can vote for candidates who would work within this system and help keep it going. Or you can use your vote to overturn it and end these blights once and for all.

Real power today does not lie in elected bodies but in the hands of those who own the world’s wealth. Labour, Tories, Liberals and the others in this election are just arguing over how to use the scraps thrown from the billionaire’s table. A system based on private property has to be run in the interests of its owners. Their profits have to come first.

So long as inequality of wealth and power exist elections such as these are just about who is to run this system. The only rational choice is to reject the compromisers and reformists and use every resource available to end it.

You don’t need to vote for any particular party to get rubbish collected, schools built or amenities provided. Communities don’t need leaders to get those things for themselves. You know what you need better than any careerist councillor ever could and, if there was real democracy, could easily arrange this. Under the present system, though, you only get them, so long as those who own the world make the resources available. But they alwaysgive priority to making more profits, so these things are always under-resourced and never done properly.

You can instead send a clear signal to other people like yourselves upon whose hard work this system is built that you want to put an end to it, by refusing to vote for any of the capitalist parties and instead writing“World Socialism” across the ballot paper.

When enough of us join together determined to end inequality and deprivation we can transform elections into a means of doing away with a society of minority rule in favour of real democracy and equality.

Our common efforts could feed, clothe and house every man woman and child on Earth without exception but we are held back because the owners of the world demand their cut before they’ll let us use the world’s resources. The iron laws of No Profit, No Production and No Profit, No Employment are a cage for us.

If you agree with the idea of a society of common and democratic ownership where no-one is left behind and where things are produced because they are needed, and not to make profits for some capitalist corporation or to enrich some bloated millionaire, and are prepared to join with us to achieve this, then vote for World Socialism.’

(7 May, 2026, The Socialist Party is standing candidates in three wards in Lambeth.)

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2020/04/elections-what-for-2006.html

Socialist Sonnet No. 234

Patriotic States of Mind

 

Problem is not simply Zionism:

Nation states however constituted

Are, by definition, ill-reputed,

The foundation of discord and schism.

Meanwhile, picking on one to vilify

And then promoting another to toast

Is to risk taking route to holocaust,

In which not only the selected die.

Power may grow from the barrel of the gun,

But justice doesn’t, nor finds solutions,

As conflict grows from national illusions:

Poll the too many dead as to who’s won.

Patriotism might motivate crowds,

While patriotic flags turn into shrouds.

 

D. A.

Tough times ahead

 

The 2026 Global Report on Food Crises presents an alarming picture. 226 million people experienced ‘acute food insecurity’ in 2025, and there were two famines, in Gaza and Sudan, the first time that two famines had been declared in the same year. Over 35 million children were acutely malnourished in countries with nutrition crises.

For 2026 there is a risk of famine in South Sudan as well. And the conflict in the Middle East may well increase disruptions to global food markets.

The main reasons given for food insecurity were conflicts, insecurity and weather extremes. Behind this is a world based on profits, wars and environmental damage, where producing enough food for all is in reality perfectly feasible.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/

Karl, still going strong

 

It’s his 208th birthday and the joke may be an older but it’s a good ‘un.

SOYMB blog pays tribute to Marx on his 199th birthday. Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in the city of Trier on the Moselle, close to what was then the French frontier, born to a lawyer. He could have become a lawyer or a university professor, but he became active as a writer, championing the cause of the agricultural workers and small farmers in the Rhineland in their fight against the land-owners.  He died an exile in London (on March 14th, 1883,) after he had been forced to flee from Cologne, Paris, and Brussels to escape the persecution of the ruling powers of the day.  Karl Marx has been variously described as an economist, philosopher, historian, sociologist and revolutionary. 

Unlike many other thinkers, Marx's core fundamental theories remain valid. The endless stream of books to prove that Marx was wrong is a sign of respect to Marx in showing how his writings still demonstrate insight and continue to inspire. They have all claimed to prove Marxian theories incorrect and outdated, but events have been against them. Marx’s labour theory of value and his materialist conception of history have been vindicated again and again.  Marx bore witness to the old saying that the pen is mightier than the sword. He offered the working class the knowledge to establish a class-free society. The world socialist movement is indebted to Marx for two important discoveries—the materialist conception of history, and the source of surplus value.  Because of this, his name will be remembered long after his revilers have perished. They have all claimed to prove Marxian theories incorrect and outdated, but events have been against them. Marx’s labour theory of value and his materialist conception of history have been vindicated again and again. 

Marx continues to remain relevant after 199 years because his ideas appear in every form of struggle against exploitation, oppression, and injustice by the ruling classes in every part of the world. Yet, when praising Marx, we should not overlook the fact that he built upon the work of his predecessors. Marx had already obtained a storehouse of information from English economists, Utopian Socialists and German philosophers. 

Marx held that, on every count, political action was the "first duty" of the working class.  Marx thought that the working class should use the state to abolish capitalism, but this was to be a temporary affair leading fairly rapidly to the dismantling of the state and the establishment of a state-free socialist society. Marx adhered to the principle that "the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself". So do we (it is incorporated into our Declaration of Principles.) Marx's studies led to the conclusion that capitalism had brought into being a class that would be able to free itself from exploitation without having to rely on leaders to do it for them. "We cannot therefore co-operate", said Marx, in a criticism of Leninism before its time "with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must first be freed from above" 

Karl Marx died and is sent to Hell.
Three days later, the Devil, desperate, telephones Saint Peter, begging for an exchange.
"This one here has already unionised all the demons, nobody is working. I can't carry on like this!"
So they made the exchange and two days afterwards, the Devil telephones again to see how things were going.
"So then? How is God getting on with that Marx ?"
"God ??" answered Saint Peter. "He doesn't exist!"

https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2017/05/happy-birthday-charlie.html