Thursday, September 12, 2019

Canada's Coming Election

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau formally met with the country's governor general, Julie Payette, to ask her to dissolve the current Parliament, setting the stage for the October 21 general election. Once again it offers the Socialist Party of Canada opportunities to put forward our objective, socialism, to as many people as possible.
The SPC is not putting forward candidates in this election because we feel that it is more important to devote our meagre resources to putting our case to as many workers as possible than confining our activity to one or two electoral districts. Unlike our political opponents, therefore, our motives are beyond suspicion: our purpose is not to get your vote but to gain your attention in order to state our case.
No matter how enthusiastic you are in support of a particular candidate or party you know that their political success will not make any real change in your conditions of life. Yet that is what it is all supposed to be about: the speeches, the promises and the plans are all designed to persuade you that it all means something to you but, despite your enthusiasm, experience has taught you not to expect any real change and your only consolation afterwards is in the thought that it might have been even worse if the ‘other crowd’ had been elected. It is for the purpose of getting into parliament and tinkering with such law and its social and economic by-products that you are now been showered with speeches, promises and pamphlets by the various candidates and parties. You are being asked to give your assent to the continuation of the very system that denies you even the hope of a full and happy life
 If we are to change things the working class must organise for the purpose of electing its own representatives to parliament and making the means of production the property of society to be used solely for the satisfaction of human needs. 
Socialism is a feasible proposition NOW! Its introduction is delayed not by the capitalist class but by the working class: it is your lack of awareness that prevails against it; your reluctance to look beyond the narrow limits of capitalism that keeps that system in operation; your vote that gives it legality. Look again at the question of what you should do with your vote when there is no representative of SPC to give it to. If you accept the socialist position, you will realise that in giving it to any candidate or party in this election you are pledging your support for capitalism; but you can register your disapproval of capitalism by going to the polls and writing across your ballot paper the word “World Socialism”.


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