Half-way there

Five of us were out on Saturday, doing a stall outside Brixton tube station and leafletting the ward. More than half has now been covered and the rest will be this week.

We came across an arty event in Josephine Avenue and took a break in a cafe in Upper Tulse Hill. The owner told us it was frequented by the Labour candidate, so we left some leaflets for her (and anyone else).

Some householders will have found our leaflet and the TUSC one together on their doormat. This might cause some confusion as the TUSC candidate is taking a risk, for a vote-catching party, by declaring "I am a member of the Socialist Party". He isn't. He's a member of the Judean Peoples Front. His claim is risky as our candidate will be described on the ballot paper as "The Socialist Party (GB)" and there's a shop front in Clapham High Street saying "The Socialist Party". This could lead to some people who meant to vote for him voting for us, not that we want reformist votes.

Lambeth Council has published on its website more details of the 8 candidates from which it emerges that the mysterious Independent candidate is standing to protest against the closure and demolition of a sheltered housing unit in Streatham.

Brixtonblog are organising a hustings on Tuesday 23 July. Details here.

One day to go...

By this time tomorrow I will have voted. Voted for socialism, in fact. Since where I live there is no socialist candidate standing, I shall be taking part in the Socialist Party's write in vote, and writing "World Socialism" Across my ballot paper.

Lucky souls in Mertin & Wandsworth and Lambeth & Southwark constituencies can at least for for the socialist candidates there; but, to be clear, if you do, you are the one making the promise. The promise to campaign for, to build for, to work towards attaining common and democratic ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth. If you're not capable of making that promise, we really don't want your vote.

Since we're not standing a list or a mayoral candidate, if you're in those constituencies, you'll need to carry out a write in vote on two of your three ballot papers.

Of course, there are elections and referendums going on across the UK, and we hope socialist readers will write in their vote for socialism. The more of us rejecting the choice of the factions of the capitalist party, the better.

Let's take a risk, anyone out there reading this, if you intend to vote socialist, either directly or by write in, let us know in the comments box. The more the better.

Life in a democratic organisation

Well, so I had this wheeze, see, to get us a bicycle with a trailer to mount a billboard on for election advertising (and to let us have a "poster launch" press event). I submitted the idea to our elected executive committee: and they said no. One member told me he thought it was a low tech solution (actually, he said it would look like Steptoe and Son). Strangely, though, as I walked out of the room and along the street, I saw a commercial bicycle advertising hoarding, so it's not too low tech for the professionals.

Fair do's, though, I'm not going to waste the story; because it does illustrate that we are a democratic organisation, where our members call the shots, not candidates or organisers. That's what we mean by "It's up to you": we aren't leaders, we're not out to tell people what to do. If we're going to make change, you have to do it yourselves. Sometimes you'll be outvoted, others you'll win out, but, unlike the professional politicians, we're not staking "credibility" on an ability to "control" our members, in fact, it's the other way round.

Candidate admits error - shocker!

I was wrong, I misremembered the address on the posters, it was actually www.elections2009.eu I saw on the poster, and that is an EU advert for the EU's elections - essentially a political campaign to get people to support the election by voting. Here are some gems from their top ten list of reasons to vote:

It’s a small effort for a big outcome
Come on! It’s just a few minutes, maybe you can combine it with a walk in the park or a drink in a café. Not much effort to tell Europe what you want. After that it’s easy to follow what your elected members are doing for you - just visit www.europarl.europa.eu!
It’s for people and prosperity!
Young or old, student or retired, man or woman, employed or independent, mainstream or alternative, town or countrydweller, Europe concerns all of us, often without us realising! Thanks to Europe, we can easily travel, study and work abroad. The EP works tirelessly for a cleaner environment, safer chemicals, better services and jobs. It is an ardent defender of consumer rights, equal opportunities and human rights both in the EU and abroad.
In the pipeline, even weightier MEPs
With the new Lisbon Treaty, once it can be implemented, MEPs’ decision-making powers over EU affairs will once more increase. It will place the Parliament on an equal footing as lawmaker with Member States’ ministers in virtually all areas of EU policy. The Parliament will also elect the President of the European Commission, strengthening its control over the EU executive. Furthermore, you as an EU citizen will have a right to initiate European laws.

Really, a very weak list of reasons to vote, pathetic even. We suggest a better reason to vote: to pursue your class interest by letting your fellow workers know you are opposed to capitalism, and getting ever more of us to bring our weight round to that end. Not consumer rights, nor extra competences for parliamentarians (who will become, gasp, the equals of Ministers and Eurocrats). The best reason to vote is revolt.

It’s election time again

Well, we're back again, the go ahead has been given, we're standing a list of candidates in the European Election in June. We'll announce the list shortly, but first, our election address is below:

It’s election time again
Every few years groups of professional politicians compete for your vote to win themselves a comfortable position, this time in the European Parliament. All of the other parties and candidates offer only minor changes to the present system. That is why whichever candidate or party wins there is no significant change to the way things are. Promises are made and broken, targets are set and not reached, statistics are selected and spun.

All politicians assume that capitalism is the only game in town, although they may criticise features of its unacceptable face, such as greedy bankers, or the worst of its excesses, such as unwinnable wars. They defend a society in which we, the majority of the population, must sell our capacity to work to the tiny handful who own most of the wealth. They defend a society in which jobs are offered only if there is a profit to be made.

Real socialism
The Socialist Party urges a truly democratic society in which people take all the decisions that affect them. This means a society without rich and poor, without owners and workers, without governments and governed, a society without leaders and led.

In such a society people would cooperate to use all the world’s natural and industrial resources in their own interests. They would free production from the artificial restraint of profit and establish a system of society in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation. Socialist society would consequently mean the end of buying, selling and exchange, an end to borders and frontiers, an end to organised violence and coercion, waste, want and war.

What you can do
You can vote for candidates who will work within the capitalist system and help keep it going. Or you can use your vote to show you want to overturn it and end the problems it causes once and for all.

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 a society of real democracy and social equality.

If you agree with the idea of a society of common and democratic ownership where no one is left behind and things are produced because they are needed, and not to make a profit for some capitalist corporation, and are prepared to join with us to achieve this then vote for the SOCIALIST PARTY list.

Object:
The establishment of a system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.

The last leaflet

The last of the nearly 20,000 leaflets distributed in the constituency was put through a letter box in Woodsmansterne Road, SW16 this afternoon. This is a long road at the southernmost point of the constituency. It's actually in Streatham (part of Lambeth), but continue too far along it and you end up in Croydon, take a wrong turning and you end up in Merton (one Labour canvasser had done the opposite as we saw a Labour leaflet supporting their candidate in Merton).

This is a reminder that "Lambeth and Southwark" includes areas which are not traditionally associated with these two historic places. Another is a letter we received from a Miss Wright of Pymers Mead, West Dulwich, SE21. She wrote:

"Dear Sir/Madam,
I am returning the leaflet you put through my letterbox as I don't you putting anymore of your leaflets through my letterbox again".

We don't know if she wrote similar letters to the other parties about the leaflets they put through her letterbox, but they seem a polite lot down in Dulwich (she actually put a stamp on the letter, if she'd read the leaflet properly she could have sent it to our freepost address and saved herself 27p). Normally, people who don't like our leaflets tear them up in front of us and tell us they're voting for the BNP.

But the most common reaction we got on the doorsteps was "it doesn't make any difference anyway who gets in". Which corresponds with our analysis and shows that workers are not stupid: a lot of them do realise what's going on. Only they don't think they can do anything about it, so they just abstain and don't bother to vote at sll. It is highly likely that, tomorrow, the abstainers will be the absolute majority.

So, why if it makes no difference who gets in, were we standing? First, to use a period of heightened interest in politics to put across our case for a society of common ownership, democratic control, production for use, and distribution on the basis of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". And, second, because if workers use their votes intelligently in their own interest they could change things, they could use the vote to help get rid of the profit system and bring in socialism.

It's voting for leaders to try to run the profit system in the interests of the majority that makes no difference, not voting in itself. That's why, where there's no socialist candidate, instead of abstaining we go to the polling station and vote, even if it's only a write-in vote. A way of keeping a potential weapon sharpened for the time when a majority are ready to use it in their own interest. Where there is a socialist candidate standing, we vote for them.

And there is a socialist candidate in Lambeth and Southwark.

The last day

Yep. Today is the last day. After today, there are no more. Tomorrow is the apocalypse. Or is that election? I've tramped up so many stairs,. spiralled down so many 20-storey tower blocks, caught my fingers so many times in letter boxes, been so cold and wet that I quite forget the difference between the two. Tomorrow I may rest.

But, not until after I've been down to the polling station to cast my write-in vote for World Socialism (SPGB)! And you, faithful reader, especially if you live in Lambeth and Southwark where you can actually cast a ballot for the Socialist Party's candidate Danny Lambert.

Remember, we are the party that makes no promises - it's you that makes the promise when you cast your vote to say "I am a socialist, I will work for common and democratic ownership and control of the wealth of the world between me and my fellow workers."

Lets see, come Friday, just how many promises we can collect, eh?

More Unions

Last night I gopt a leaflet through the mail from my union - Unison - urging me to vote Labour. Unison is a registered third party, and so it can spend money on election campaigns that, unless I'm mistaken, don't count towards a candidate's campaign costs.

Given they have the names and addresses of about 150,000 (they claim) electors, this is a highly effective campaigning tool for the institutionalised labour party.

They are quite right that Labour has achieved many goals, and espouses many values consonant with those of the trade union. But, then, the trade union's demands and values are about a defence of market interests for workers within capitalism - seeing, particularly, its own interest wrapt up in the old conditions of public sector bargaining from nationalised and municipalised industries.

Of course, we could batter on at the union that the real interest of their members is socialism - but until the members of the union are socialists and are able to use their weight to move the lethargic democratic machinery of the union that just won't happen.

So, that makes it all the more important that trade unionists make this clear by voting for the socialist party, either by voting for Danny Lambert if they can, or joining the write-in if they're outside Lambeth & Southwark. And more than that, we need you to join the Socialist Party and stand up in your workplaces and unions to be counted.

A little try at my branch recently failed, we sent a motion to conference affirming that Unison has no leaders, and asking the NEC to make that clear, the standing orders ruled it out of order, because they can, but I'll keep on about it, and if thousands of socialists in the union started to camnpaign for that instead of saving the pittance and stopping the thing, we'd start to see real movement, and a real movement.

In the urban jungle

For the record, there's been a discussion of the election in Lambeth and Southwark in the Brixton section of the Urban75 bulletin board. The address is:
http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=245775 but I don't know if people can read it without having to sign in.

One of the issues discussed is who are the mysterious "The Socialist Party" listed as putting up a candidate. You'll see they get it right in the end, much to the annoyance of the Militant Tendency who give a hostage to fortune by suggesting that their candidate in nextdoor Greenwich and Lewisham standing as "Socialist Alternative -- Save Our Bus Stop" (actually, I exaggerate, he's standing only as "Socialist Alternative") will do well.

To tell the truth, the mystery was justified as the name on our nomination paper was "The Socialist Party (GB)". So who dropped the "GB"? The same was done in the official booklet of candidates sent to all London electors. It will be interesting to find if this has happened on the ballot paper too.

Not that we're complaining about this oversight as we are The Socialist Party or even the socialist party. After all, no other party stands for socialism, a world of common ownership, democratic control, and production solely for use not profit, and nothing but. All the others, even those who pay lipservice to the word from time to time or on special occasions, advocate only reforms to capitalism.

A party for the animals

Danny was taken ill on Friday night so I had to stand in for him at the hustings meeting organised by the Animals Count party in Kennington Park yesterday. It was held in the garden of the cafe as a vegetarian (probably vegan) picnic.

As, to be able to hire the venue from the council, they had to sign that they would be liable for anyone injured by a squirrel, the meeting commenced with the chair asking the audience to say in unison "squirrels, we mean you no harm". We thought "OMG, what have we come to", but the party which is standing a candidate in Lambeth and Southwark isn't the joke it might at first seem to be.

Animals Count is the UK equivalent of the Dutch Partij voor de Dieren ("Party for the Animals") which has 2 MPs and a Senator (see here). Its candidate here, Jasmijn De Broo, is in fact from Holland and stood for the Dutch party in the last European Parliament elections. Incidentally, this is a reminder that any EU national can stand for local elections in any other EU country. They can also vote. (UKIP must be tearing their hair out over this, but as far as we're concerned the more workers have the vote the better).

The candidate introduced the party and its policies, which are basically to defend on the political field the welfare of animals. She called for an NHS for animals "including subsidised veterinary treatment and emergency care". Other speakers seemed to be arguing for compulsory vegetarianism in "schools, hospitals, care homes, council premises, etc". At least that's how I understood the mention in the candidate's election leaflet of "banning products from intensively farmed animals" in these places, though I agree that this could be interpreted as saying that (more expensive) "organic" meat and cheese could still be served but I don't think they'd really like that either. In fact, the general impression given that this was a party for vegetarians and vegans as much as for animals.

Of the other candidates only us and the English Democrats turned up. Invited to speak, I explained that our party included vegetarians and even vegans as well as meat-eaters and that we regarded this as a private matter. We didn't want people to vote for our candidate just because he was a bit of a vegetarian. (I explained that, as another member, I was a meat-eater and enjoyed eating meat). We were standing on the single issue of socialism. I had of course to first explain what socialism was not (not ex-USSR, not China, not Cuba, not Labour Party, not nationalisation, not equal sharing, not communes) before saying what it was (a world wide society based on the resources of the Earth, natural and industrial, being the common heritage of all humanity, so there could be production to satisfy people's needs instead of as at present to try to make a profit).

On animal issues, I expressed scepticism about them being able to do much to achieve their aims within the profit system as this was a system governed by economic laws which meant that making a profit had to be given priority over any other consideration; intensive animal farming took place because it was profitable. I suggested that only socialism would provide the framework within which this could be ended and a rational food policy adopted. I added that animal welfare was not the only issue. There were also other problems like world poverty, wars and the threat of wars, bad housing and bad social conditions generally, which also needed addressing, some more urgently.

The English Democrat candidate (Janus Polenceus) spoke next. He said England should have its own parliament just like Scotland did. On animals, he made a fool of himself by saying that he loved them because he had 3 dogs, a cat, a budgie and a goldfish.

Afterwards Jasmijn explained to me that before joining the Party for the Animals she had been a supporter of the Dutch "Socialist Party". This is not the mainstream Labour or Social Democratic party there, but a reconverted one-time Maoist party (see here). She appeared to be unaware of its Maoist past, but this was an excuse for the witty comrade who was also present to say (sorry about this) that she had moved from Maoism to Meeowism.

We handed out our manifesto to the thirty of so people present (from all over the country) and partook of the vegetarian feast before setting off to distribute more election leaflets in the Simon Hughes part of Southwark.

The Big Issue in Southwark

This week's Southwark News (out on Thursday) has an 8-page supplement on the mayor and assembly elections. The same set of questions was put to all the candidates. Here they are together with the replies of "Daniel Lambert - The Socialist Party".

What can you do to alleviate the rise of gun and gang crime amongst the youth in Southwark?

Condemnation of gun crime is all very well but you have to go to the root of the problem, which is that young people are alienated. To change that we need to change the nature of society we live in.

How hard will you be fighting for the Cross River Tram and what more can be done to improve connections within the borough?

We are a single issue party and try to put information out to convince people of the merits of socialism. London is a business venture, and is a centre for processing information, with this workers have to be got here there and everywhere, in and around Southwark and London.

Are you aware of any regeneration schemes in the area? How effectively will they solve the issues in that area?

No I am not. We are so busy taking care of business we just don’t take care of ourselves, get rid of the profit system and we will have more time to take care of ourselves.

What is the big Southwark issue at this time?

Capitalism, because without this we the human species have the potential at our fingertips to create a really good human life.

What one thing can you promise to bring to Southwark if you are voted in on May 1?

Well I am not going to get voted in. We want to put our proposition to have a society where there is no money or trade, and no market. The thing we have to get across is all the time that capitalism is about working people getting screwed.

What else do we want?

Some more from Socialism as a Practical Alternative - this time on the practical organisation of a moneyless economy, and how we see production occuring without some sort of central planning or dictatorial centre:

Socialism will remove every factor of value, cost and price involved in production and therefore there will be no use for money. As marketable commodities under capitalism, bread, shoes, housing and, indeed, labour power are in value relationships to each other which are expressed through prices. In socialism these value relationships will not exist. Capitalism is an exchange economy which begins with an exchange of workers’ labour power for wages and ends with the realisation of profit through the exchange of goods for money in the market. Socialism will relate productive activity directly to needs. Production for use will begin with co-operation between producers and end with the direct supply of goods to the members of the community for whose needs they have been produced. Only socialism can be a practical system for the production and distribution ofgoods directly for consumption.

[...]

In practical terms, needs would arise in local communities expressed as required quantities of machinery, equipment, building materials, and the whole range of foods and consumption goods. These grammes, kilos, tonnes, litres, cubic metres of required materials and goods would then be communicated throughout the distributive and productive network.

The monitoring and communications of needs, expressed as a demand on stocks or required production, would be clear and readily known. The supply of some needs would take place within the local community, as for example with food production for local consumption, local building, maintenance and the running of local services. Other needs would be communicated to regional production units, For example, local building might require glass for housing which was produced regionally. A local need for glass would then be communicated through the distributive network and would pass to the regional glassworks. In its turn, the glassworks would have its own suppliers of the materials used in glass production, so the required quantities of these would then be passed on. This would be the sequence of communications through which a local need for glass would be transmitted to every unit involved in glass production within a region. Other needs would be communicated throughout the structure of production up to a world scale. Local food production might require tractors. Regional manufacture would produce and assemble the component parts of tractors for distribution to local communities. These would be required in a definite number and therefore a definite number of required component parts would also be known. Again, the tractor-producing plant would communicate these requirements to its own suppliers. Eventually this would extend to world production units which would be mining and processing the raw materials, such as metals, required for tractor production.

This could be a self-adjusting system of production for use.

What do we want?

A common complaint is that we spend a lot of time knocking capitalism and rival candidates - all well and good, people say, capitalism is terrible, but what are you saying should be done about it?

Thus, having spent the first few weeks of capmaigning concentrating on the failings of other parties, I'm going to spend the rest publishing excerpts from our literature on why we think socialism is the solution.

To begin with, and this is relevent to the comments on yesterday's post, an excerpt from Socialism as a Practical Alternative, on democracy.

Under capitalism, governments, through their control of the state machinery, lay down the law and impose it on the whole of society, if necessary by force.[...] With socialism this dominant feature of the structure will be immediately abolished. The power of the state, which operates from the concentration of centralized power in the hands of governments, will be replaced by a fully democratic system through which decisions will flow from the broadest possible social base to represent the views of the whole community.

A democratic system of decision-making would require that the basic unit of social organisation would be the local community which could elect is delegates to a local council which could be given the responsibility for local administration. If, for example, local communities in socialism began by operating from the basis of the existing structure of district councils in England, this would give 332 local communities. This would be a democratic development of the existing procedures for electing local councils which could become the basic means for dealing with day-to-day local issues. Then, regional councils could provide organisation through which decisions affecting wider populations could be made at the regional level. Similarly, global decisions could be made by delegates elected to a world council.

Don't vote for what you don't want

Two people commented on our election manifesto we posted yesterday, asking in effect what do we think they should do where there is no socialist candidate standing, as in Lewisham (sorry, Anomymous, we're not standing there or anywhere else in London, we just don't have the resources) and in the mayoral election. Basically, we never tell people how to vote but let them decide for themselves. We just say what we'll be doing: either abstaining or (better) writing "WORLD SOCIALISM" across our ballot paper.

The logic of this position is explained in the editorial in this month's Socialist Standard (see http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/standardonline/index.html ):

Don't vote for what you don't want

We don't have to accept the self-fulfilling prophecy that "capitalism is the only game in town".

Imagine that all the people in the world made a set of informed, collective and democratic decisions about what kind of system would best meet their needs and solve global problems. Would they choose a money and property system that forced nearly half their total number to try to survive on a dollar a day? Or would they prefer to organise production and distribution of goods and services on the basis of what they need, without the profit system?

Would they, if and when given the chance to vote, do so overwhelmingly for candidates who -- whatever labels they attached to themselves or their parties -- stood for the continuation of some form of capitalism? Or would they elect delegates, from among their own number, to initiate the process of setting up and running a fundamentally new form of world society, a system based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution?

Would they embrace nationalism, involving armed forces paid to kill and injure other groups ("the enemy") with whom they have no quarrel? Or would they regard themselves and behave as citizens of the world, regardless of any geographical, cultural or philosophical attachments they may feel?

Would they divide themselves into classes, rich and poor, leaders and led, privileged and unprivileged, dominant and submissive, superordinate and subordinate, master and servant, powerful and powerless? Or would they, despite individual differences in abilities, personalities, interests, tastes, likes and dislikes, think and behave as members of the one human race, not perfect, sometimes fallible or irrational, but never deliberately cruel or anti-social?

Whatever words they use to explain or sloganise their ideologies, all parties except the Socialist Party stand for the continuation of some form of capitalism. From their point of view, a vote for their own candidate is best; a vote for one of their competitors is second best. Not voting could be a worrying sign of alienation from the system. Worst of all, a vote for the Socialist Party candidate -- or, where none stands, writing "Socialism" across the ballot paper -- would indicate the beginning of a resolution to replace capitalism with socialism.

Don't forget:

Before the first Labour government came into power, and when some members and supporters used to profess socialism as their eventual goal, there was some justification for the argument that: "The Labour hell is one degree cooler than the Tory hell." So "Choose the lesser of two evils."

Today, after successive administrations of the same system, the difference in temperature is too small to get excited about. The same applies to others lining up to be our government -- the Lib Dems, etc. We don't want them and we don't need them.

Support for socialism isn't a matter of campaigning to make the poor rich in today's terms of material consumption. That wouldn't be environmentally sustainable. The socialist aim isn’t even equality in the sense of sameness, like amounts of work contributed or goods and services consumed. Socialism is essentially about social equality, encouraging and enabling every human being to realise their full potential as giver and taker, not buyer and seller, in the context of society itself moving towards reaching its full potential.

Danny's election address

Well, our election leaflets are on their way from the printer, if you live in Lambeth & Suothwark you might well see them in the flesh (they look good) - and of course, if you want to distribute any, just drop in and we'll be glad to give you a bundle.

Anyway, without further ado - here it is...


What’s the alternative to the profit system?

That's the issue in this election, says THE SOCIALIST PARTY candidate in Lambeth and Southwark Danny Lambert

On 1 May, you will have your occasional ration of democracy with the opportunity to vote for the Mayor of London and the Greater London Assembly.

It's all very well having a vote but are you normally given any real choice? Let's face it, if it wasn't mentioned on the front of the election leaflet, could you tell which party was which?

It's tempting – in the absence of any real alternative – to get drawn into the phoney war that is political debate today. Whether Labour, Tory, Lib Dem, Greens or the others, they all spout empty promises. And it all amounts to the same thing – vote, vote for us and we’ll do this, this or this for you. As if they could.

None of them offer any alternative to the present way of running society. That’s why they always fail to deliver. The profit system requires them to put profits before people, to put saving money above meeting people’s needs.

Do you really think who wins an election makes any difference to how you live?

And do politicians actually have much real power anyway? Can they control world market and financial forces or do they have to adjust and trim their policies to fit in with these?

Reality Check

Do any of the political parties address any of the real issues:

 Why can money always been found to fight a war while hospitals, schools and local services are always strapped for cash?
 Why do some people get stressed working long hours while others get stressed from the boredom of unemployment?
 Why are there homeless people in the streets and empty houses with "for sale" signs?
 Why is there still child poverty even in Britain?
 Why is there no world agreement to limit carbon emissions when scientists say this must be done to avert the threat of global warming?
 Why is there world hunger in a world that can grow enough for all?

So what's the alternative?

This time, in this constituency, you have a real choice. We in THE SOCIALIST PARTY are standing to put forward an alternative to capitalism and the madness of the market – a society of common ownership and democratic control. We call it socialism.

But real socialism. Not the elite-run dictatorships that collapsed some years ago in Russia and East Europe. And not the various schemes for state control put forward by the old Labour Party. For us socialism means something better than that. We're talking about:

 A world community without any frontiers where the Earth’s resources would be the common heritage of all.
 Wealth being produced to meet people's needs and not for sale on a market or for profit
 Everyone having access to what they require to satisfy their needs, without the rationing system that is money.
 A society where people freely contribute their skills and experience to produce what is needed, without the compulsion of a wage or salary.

If you agree

If you don't like present-day society ... if you are fed up with the way you are forced to live ... if you think the root cause of most social problems is the profit system, then your ideas echo closely with ours.

We are not promising to deliver socialism to you. We are not putting ourselves forward as leaders. This new society can only be achieved if you join together to strive for it. If you want it, then it is something you have to bring about yourselves. Nobody can do it for you.If you agree with what we say, you can show this by voting for THE SOCIALIST PARTY candidate, DANNY LAMBERT.

And if you want to know more about us, call in at our election office at 52 Clapham High Street, SW4 or return the reply coupon on the last page (no stamp required). You can also.phone or email us or visit our website at www.worldsocialism.org/spgb.