The Election and the SPC

As the federal election approaches, Canadians must make a choice. The staus quo or real change. The working class need to break with the pro-capitalist parties and forge their own political movement. This requires much work – to establish socialism as an international force. Obviously this has yet to be achieved, but encouraging a vote for one of the bourgeois parties will only weaken the working class’ efforts to develop its own force. This is why all working people should cast no vote for any of the candidates of Big Business.

The Socialist Party of Canada is often accused of neglecting the fight for the bread and butter issues. But it is for bread and butter too - permanent bread and butter, for revolution. No half-measure platform of reforms, full of compromise and concessions. The SPC never ignores the elections and uses them in our agitation, as a way to put forward our aims.

Our fellow-workers should reject all those “friends of working people” as they handshake their way through campaigns, talking the talk about giving working people a “fair” shake yet always it ends up us a shakedown.

More and more refusing to vote. Time and time again we’ve seen politicians promises and phony solutions turn sour as they sweetened government policies with the honey of money for their Big Business sponsors.

Every day we working people endure the reality of no jobs, bad working conditions, crappy health care, dilapidated housing and lousy education for our kids. We can see our whole lives going down the drain. But there’s a growing consciousness among working people that we don’t have to take things as they are. It scares the hell out of the ruling class to see that workers can unite to fight for what we need. The rich try to divert our anger by telling us to vote for one of their front men to keep us under control. They tell us, “everything will alright if only you trust in the system and use your ’right’ to vote for the best man to do the job.”

We need medicine to kill the infection but all the capitalists offer are more bandaids.

It’s not that they’re withholding the cure, though. They offer no cure because they have no cure. Unemployment is a natural part of their system and making a law to get rid of it is like trying to cure cancer by making it illegal. For the capitalist there is only one law–the law of profits. The closing of companies, low wages, speed-up, and layoffs are part of everyday life under a system where capitalists compete with each other by squeezing out as much wealth as they can from our labor. Only as long as the capitalists can make a profit from our sweat do they give us the “right” to slave for them.

As their rate of profit continues to fall, the only way to keep their profits up is to grind more from workers. As more and more of these attacks are launched, workers have responded with walkouts, demonstrations and other forms of resistance. The capitalists hate and fear this growing fight back. But they are even more afraid that people will begin to see that all our problems are a result, not just of a handful of greedy bosses, but that these problems are a permanent part of life under the ruling capitalist class and their whole rotten system. Elections offer incomparable opportunities for political organising and education, and an excellent opportunity is presented by the very sterility of capitalism

POLITICIANS FIGHT FOR $$ INTERESTS, WE MUST FIGHT FOR OUR OWN!