James D'Arcy
Source: Socialist Party election leaflet, 5 May 1977.
Transcription: Socialist Party of Great Britain.
HTML Markup: D. Whitehead
Copyleft: Creative Commons (Attribute & No Derivatives) 2007 conference "Be it resolved that all material created and published by the Party shall be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs copyright licence".
Greater London Council elections, 5 May April 1977
THE SAME OLD STORY
THIS election will produce nothing new in Westminster. The same sterile parties with the same sterile reformist policies, will continue to administer capitalism at local level whilst their equally impotent big brothers do so at national level. By voting for its continuation you condemn yourself to live within its appalling environment in your accustomed role as a wage slave.
WE ARE HOSTILE TO THEM ALL
YOU, and your fellow workers, can choose the Party which would best represent your interests, but have you considered where your true interests lie? Will the Labour Party with its policies of extending Nationalisation, or will the Conservative Party with its encouragement of private capitalism serve you? Practically all Left wing parties, including the Communists support Labour, and the shallow opportunist Liberal Party will support one or the other. The S.P.G.B. is hostile to all these other parties because we want a fundamental change, not merely in Westminster.
WHAT CHOICE IS THIS?
THE miserable choice which is placed in front of you is public capitalism versus private capitalism. All that this Election does is to provide you with an opportunity of changing the administration without changing the economic basis which gives rise to it. You move the furniture around different rooms in the same house, but you never think of changing the house. Your 'free choice' consists of deciding which employer will buy your labour power.
WEALTH, WAGES AND POVERTY
YOUR labour is responsible for the production of all wealth and the working class is the only socially useful class. The production of wealth depends entirely on labour but you believe that it depends on capital. The means of wealth production and distribution are neither owned or controlled by the producers — the working class. They are owned by a small ruling class composed of parasites supported by the power of the State. Working for wages is accepted as an unchanging condition of your existence. You are always under stress because of the economic demands of paying rent, buying food and clothes, bringing up a family or helping your ageing parents.
IN election after election you find yourself on the reformist roundabout. Housing problems, unemployment, health and poverty problems. These have all increased faster than the means to deal with them.
WHAT a distorted world we live in when wealth of all kinds from houses to food, clothing to art can be produced beyond any reasonable need and yet scarcity exists.
THE ALTERNATIVE
SOCIALISM will alter that. The substance of Socialism lies in the common ownership and democratic control of the means to produce and distribute wealth. Production would be for direct use instead of market sale. The producer would not be a reluctant wage earning chattel owned by capital, but a willing creator working with dignity and enjoying the respect of his fellow men.
SOCIALISM is possible now — do not be deceived into thinking otherwise — and it has never been tried before. Agents of capitalism control the political machinery — but only because you allow it.
YOU have the means to vote them out. Your interests can only be served by the abolition of capitalism.
LABOUR, CONSERVATIVE or LIBERAL — there is no significant difference between them.
IF you think SOCIALISM is the answer you will support us and work for its early establishment.
James D’Arcy, The Socialist Party of Great Britain candidate for St. Marylebone.