We socialists are often accused of being accused to reforms: social legislation to ameliorate some more or less intolerable situation – Medicare, Social Security, etc. “Not so,” we respond. We of the World Socialist Movement are not opposed to reforms per se, any more than we advocate them. We do not support or agitate for them precisely on the grounds upon which they are ostensibly presented. For they do not cure the ills to which they are addressed. We contend further that the interest of the ruling powers lies in attracting votes for their various political programs. Witness the...
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I have been bombarded throughout the past half-century from many quarters to write about this event. Hitherto I have refused, being reluctant to do so, feeling that one cannot deal with events in which one may have been involved and do so with the objectivity necessary. For the same reason I refrain from reviewing books in which I may have been (honorably or otherwise) mentioned. But now, this year being the fiftieth anniversary of that historic event, receiving an official request from the Executive Committee of The Socialist Party of Canada, and simultaneously one from The United Steel Workers...
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From the Western Socialist, #2, 1969 “PRODUCTION FOR USE” – a phrase uttered so often by socialists as to become almost a cliché, yet understood (in a superficial fashion) by both enquirers and opponents. It describes our concept – our visualization – of a future social system superceding the present “un-social” system we call capitalism. Our enquirers and opponents alike recognize this. But the full implications of the term are not grasped, even by many who consider themselves to be socialists. The thinking of these people is so conditioned by the institutions of the present order that their thoughts...
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Water! The life-giving fluid without which man perishes! A dire necessity for any society and its use (or misuse) a serious problem for this one. While society as a whole has persisted down through the ages, societies have, for various reasons, disappeared from the face of the earth – “The place that knew them once knows them no more.” It was in the yet warm seas of a slowly cooling planet that life on earth began, eons and eons ago and trhough a long and torturous evolution reached its high point in modern man – egotistic “Homo Sapins.” Society,...
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IN THE LAST DAYS of 1915 a request came to the DEC from the Alberta executive that I be sent to that province for a three months’ propaganda tour. The DEC agreed, urging me to accept. I talked it over with my wife, since it meant leaving her with two small boys, the youngest only three months old. In this, as on many other occasions, my wife was sympathetic and cooperative. “If the Party thinks you should go Will, I think you should.” So I went first to Calgary, where I met the members of the local, and a...
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Thanksgiving
Featured in the Western Socialist, 1975 Shall I give thanks? To Whom? For What? This Mad Chaotic World, its Schizophrenic Society, Where Affluence Parades and Struts side by side The Unmitigated Poverty of Stinking Ghettos; And holy clerks pour the Slime of their Hypocritical Blessings Over the Horrendous Fetid Mess? For this Predatory Economy, this Organization of Status, Where, over-night, Mere Mediocrity is catapulted Into the Category of Celebrity. While Genius, disregarded, molds and withers In some fouls and Darksome Garret, With Millions passing Blunted and Stunted Lives In the Grind of the Industrial Mill. ...
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