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Branded as Samajwadi Attar, and bottled in red and green glass, the perfume has been made from 22 natural scents. The box comes with a picture of Akhilesh Yadav, with the Samajwadi Partys election symbol on it. (Photo: India Today)

Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav has launched a perfume to attract voters to the party in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly election. Branded as Samajwadi Attar, and bottled in red and green glass, the perfume has been made from 22 natural scents.

The scent will have its magic in 2022 [polls], Akhilesh Yadav said on Tuesday. Uttar Pradesh is due for assembly polls in February-March next year.

The box of the perfume comes with a picture of Akhilesh Yadav, with the Samajwadi Partys election symbol on it. The Samajwadi Party leader from Kannauj and Uttar Pradesh MLC Pushpraj Jain inaugurated the Samajwadi Attar.

Jain said that when people will use the perfume, they would smell "socialism" in it. "Samajwadi perfume will end hate in 2022," Jain said.

This is not the first time the party has launched a perfume. In 2016, Akhilesh Yadav had reportedly launched a range of perfumes named 'Samajwadi Sugandh' to mark four years of his party government in the state.

The perfume was made of four fragrances, with each bottle capturing the fragrance of four different citiesAgra, Lucknow, Varanasi and Kannauj.

READ: Expelled BSP MLAs join SP, Akhilesh Yadav says UP CM may 'change name of cylinders'

ALSO READ: Akhilesh may even convert to get Muslim votes: UP minister

WATCH: Akhilesh slammed for invoking Jinnah: Will it help Samajwadi Party or will it backfire?

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'Scent of socialism': Akhilesh Yadav launches 'Samajwadi ...

SOMERVILLE, Mass.Four years ago, Willie Burnley Jr. was forced to move out of his rapidly gentrifying city after alayoff, followed by asteep rent increase. Two years later he had saved enough to return to the city where hed built his post-collegelife.

In summer 2020, Burnley helped found the group Defund Somerville Police (Defund SPD) to combat the citys plan to protect the police budget and cut social servicesincluding the Office of Housing Stability, established the year after Burnleys displacement to help priced-out renters like him. Pressure from Defund SPD, including abike caravan to the homes of city councilmembers, pushed through a7.7% decrease in the citys 2021 police budget, freeing up hundreds of thousands of dollars for housing and foodaid.

On Nov. 2, Burnley, now 27, won aseat on Somerville City Council with aplatform focused on housing and public safety beyond policing. Burnley is no stranger to electoral politics, having worked as afield organizer to re-elect Massachusetts Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey, but his own campaign deviated from the standard protocol. It was jointly run with two other first-time candidatesCharlotte Kelly, alongtime education organizer and co-founder of Defund SPD, and Eve Seitchik, aformer co-chair of the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which Burnley joined in 2018. The three shared campaign staff and aplatform to create aDSA slate for at-large councilseats.

Working in collaboration was the embodiment of the politics that we wanted to bring to the city council, Burnleysays.

Burnley, Kelly and Seitchik placed second, third and fifth (respectively) among eight at-large candidates, with just the top four candidates winning seats. But come January, Burnley and Kelly will join two DSA-backed incumbents on Somervilles 11-person council, with plans to push apragmatic agenda theyve dubbed sidewalk socialisman homage to the sewer socialists who held office in Milwaukee acentury ago.

On the campaign trail, they connected big-picture priorities with the daily facts of lifelike how aGreen New Deal might expedite sewer upgrades and alleviate flooding. Canvassers also hammered on what Spencer Brown, co-chair of Boston DSA, calls the two Rsrats and rent control. Housing affordability is aperpetual issue, but after hearing complaint after rodent complaint from renters, Kellys campaign released a rat white paper with solutions from experts and community members, such as afree municipal compost program and the expansion of existing rat mitigation programs to includerenters.

Kelly cites that process as an example of how she plans to govern as a movement elected official, to allow people to take ownership over the direction of the policies and structural changes that we need to see, shesays.

Boston-area socialists and progressives also see an opening after the upset victory of Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who ran on fare-free transit and alocal Green New Deal. She was the sole mayoral candidate to endorse rentcontrol.

To pave the way for sidewalk socialism in Somerville, Boston DSA had hoped to clinch atotal of seven at-large and ward seatsa would-be socialist takeover in the city of 80,000, per aspring 2021 Politico headline. The group also made endorsements in Boston, Cambridge and Medford, deploying some 500 canvassers to knock more than 100,000 doors in four cities. Of 12 endorsed candidates, seven won, most of whom had backing from progressive groups like Our Revolution or Run for Somethingincluding Kendra Hicks, afirst-generation Afro-Latina and self-described socialist who overcame redbaiting and racist attacks to represent Bostons 6thDistrict.

The losses sting, but Brown puts them in context: A few years ago, just getting anyone on acity council would have been adream.

Thats abroad theme for the Left coming out of Election Day, where perhaps the biggest news was insurgent mayoral candidate India Waltons loss in Buffalo, N.Y. But socialists won in at least 23 of the 30 local races where DSAs national organization made endorsements, clinching unlikely victories in cities like St. Petersburg, Fla., and sending multiple members into office in New York City, Ithaca and Rochester, N.Y., andMinneapolis.

Minneapolis also voted down ahigh-profile ballot question that would have allowed the city to replace its police force with adepartment of public safetythough support was highest in the three wards where socialist city council candidates campaigned. But Burnley rejects the narrative that these results represent areferendum on last summers uprising. He cites aTufts University survey showing amajority of Somerville residents think police arent needed in situations involving mental healthcrises.

People know something needs to change. Theres not necessarily aclear consensus on what that [change] needs to be, Burnley says. But thats what organizing isabout.

Burnley adds he didnt shy away from the defund slogan but took the time to talk through adifferent plan for community safetyincluding anew civilian crisis responsesystem.

I cant say Ichanged everyones mind, he says, but thats not the job of acampaign cycle. Thats lifelongwork.

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These Three Candidates Worked Together to Bring "Sidewalk Socialism" to Their City Council - In These Times

Since 2008 half of America was lured into voting socialist despite the harsh lessons of our socialist beginnings. Plymouth and Jamestown rejected socialism and so must we to provide the level of universal prosperity America has provided its citizens for centuries.

This Thanksgiving Day, we think of the Pilgrims enjoying abundant food, but this was not their true reality. Too few note the difficult times of their first year in 1620 when half died of starvation. Harvests were not bountiful the first year nor the next. Plymouth was beset by laziness and thievery.

William Bradford, the governor of the colony, in his History of Plymouth Plantation, reported that "much was stolen both by night and day" to alleviate the prevailing condition of hunger. The somewhat mythical "feast" of the first Thanksgiving did fill their bellies, he reported, and they were grateful, but abundance had been anything but common. Why? Because they had fallen victim to the socialistic lure of "share the wealth." This disincentivized the productive base of society.

Then suddenly, as though night changed to day, the crop of 1623 was bounteous, and those thereafter as well, and it had nothing to do with the weather. Bradford wrote, "Instead of famine, now God gave them plenty and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God." He concluded later, "Any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day." They ended universal poverty.

One variable alone made the difference and ended the famine. They abandoned the notion of government (or corporation) owning the means of production and distribution in favor of the individual having property and being responsible to take care of himself. Every family was issued its own land. Before, no one benefited by working for the common store because he received the same compensation as those who did not. After the change, everyone retained the benefits of his labor. Those who chose not to work basically chose also to be poor and the government (corporation) no longer confiscated from those who produced to give to those who did not. There were no government food stamps here.

Ironically, all this could have been avoided had Plymouth consulted history and communicated with their neighboring colony some distance south, which had previously been down the same trail. Jamestown too was first a socialist society where each produced according to his ability and received according to his need, which, of course, affected supply. One cannot divide what does not exist. Our textbooks tell us that only one of twelve survived the first two years for precisely the same reason, starvation. The problem, as noted by Tom Bethel in his work, The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity through the Ages, was identified by an unnamed participant as "want of providence, industrie and government, and not the bareness and defect of the Countrie."

Captain John Smith is credited with having saved the floundering colony by his "no workie, no eatie" government program (the Virginia Company was the government) and was hated for it. Addicted to the promise of getting something for nothing, even if it is always less than promised, the receiving part of the population will always oppose their not getting their "fair share."

Sound familiar? Captain Smith was eventually carted off to England in chains as fast as the parasitic population could do so. Once again, why? Philip A. Bruce, in his Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, page 121, called it agricultural socialism. "The settlers did not have even a modified interest in the soil. ... Everything produced by them went into the store, in which they had no proprietorship." When settlers finally were allowed to own their own property and keep what they produced, things changed overnight.

Colony secretary Ralph Hamor wrote of incoming prosperity, beginning in 1614 after ownership of land was allowed: "When our people were fed out of the common store, and labored jointly together, glad was he [who] could slip from his labor, or slumber over his tasks he cared not how, nay, the most honest among them would hardly take so much true pains in a week, as now for themselves they will do in a day, neither cared they for the increase, presuming that however the harvest prospered, the general store must maintain them, so that we reaped not so much corn from the labors of thirty as now three or four do provide for themselves."

This Thanksgiving, let us be grateful for the prosperity that we have -- even the poorest among us. Jamestown and Plymouth set us upon a course that recognized that prosperity requires an incentive to flourish and that the profit motive stimulates industry. We are so grateful that, having recognized the poison of the "share the wealth" philosophy, they purged it from their midst and proceeded to make what eventually became America the most prosperous country on earth.

On January 20, 2021, democratic socialists took over the White House and both branches of Congress. In ten short months of socialist rule, food prices have skyrocketed and shelves are emptying. Once totally energy independent, we now see fuel prices soar and severe shortages are predicted this winter. Joe Biden's prediction of a dark winter appears on the horizon under his administration rather than Trump's. Socialism kills the incentive to produce -- it always has and always will.

Plymouth and Jamestown rejected socialism and so must we. Will we be as smart as they? Let us share this message at the table as we feast upon turkey and pumpkin pie this Thanksgiving Day so that our children will know how prosperity is really produced.

Harold W. Pease, Ph.D., is an expert on the United States Consitution and a syndicated columnist. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for more than 30 years. To read more of his weekly articles, visit http://www.LibertyUnderFire.org. Opinions expressed are those of the author.

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OPINION: Plymouth and Jamestown rejected socialism, so must we - Westside Eagle Observer

The Socialist Equality Partys (SEP) fight against Australias anti-democratic electoral laws continues with long standing and new electoral members encouraging workers, students and young people to join the campaign.

The laws threaten the SEP, along with 35 other parties, with deregistration if they fail to submit a list of 1,500 members, treble the previous number, by December 2. Rushed through parliament in late August by Prime Minister Scott Morrisons Liberal-National Coalition government, fully backed by Labor, the laws are aimed at preventing the developing opposition to the major parties from finding a socialist and left-wing expression.

To join the SEP campaign against the legislation, sign-up as an electoral member today.

****

Rick, 64, a decades-long supporter of the SEP, met the Socialist Labour League (predecessor of the SEP) when he was a teacher in the 1980s.

Ive been interested in history since I was a young man and that led me to an interest in socialism. Capitalism has no answers to the problems that confront the world. It has systems of oppression that exist to keep working people down and that includes the Australian Labor Party and the trade union movement, he said.

The new electoral laws are terribly undemocratic. Democracy and people having their say in the system, all this ideology is thrown out the window with this law.

Why now? The system is weak, its diseased and theres no longer any pretence about freedom of expression or allowing the peoples will to be heard. Its all about maintaining those structures of oppression.

Rick commented on the recent book launch of Vadim Rogovins Was There an Alternative? and noted that in the 70s and 80s the Stalinist groups were strong in Australia and there was confusion about socialism in the working class and still is today. One of the problems when talking to people about socialism is that they immediately think of Russia and China. They see Stalinism as socialism and say that kind of oppression is inevitable.

Rogovin demonstrates and documents the struggle that took place in the Soviet Union against Stalin. In previous works he wrote about the mass murder of socialists and members of the Bolshevik Party. These pose questions about how this happened? What qualities did Stalin have that allowed him to come out on top? Understanding all this is vital in order to answer the question as to whether or not socialism leads to oppression, he said.

Commenting on the rising danger of war with China, Rick said, The idea that its impossible for trading partners to go to war is false by reading the history of the First World War. Theres a wonderful passage by Leon Trotsky where he talks about how before the war the great powers were tobogganing towards conflict, although no-one wanted it. The UK and Germany were major trading partners and there were even familial connections between the ruling classes. But it happened. If we end up in a war, by any kind of analysis, the results are going to be absolutely terrible and Australia is likely to be on the front line. War is certainly not in our interests.

Rick urged workers and youth to become SEP electoral members, firstly to oppose these anti-democratic electoral laws and secondly, its a good first step to developing a resistance to the terrible reactionary forces that are leading us to war, vast inequality and ecocidethe destruction of the environment. Capitalism not only has no answers to those problems, it is the problem. Becoming an SEP electoral member, he concluded, is a great chance to develop a good understanding of whats going on. Its certainly something you wont get anywhere else.

Biljana, 58 and a former teacher, emigrated to Australia from Yugoslavia 31 years ago. She became an electoral member this year. Im a socialist deep in my heart because my family has always been a socialist family, she said.

We care deeply for social justice and ensuring that people have equal opportunities, decent standard of living and all the interests that a socialist party should stand for. When I arrived, I was only 27, raising a family and furthering my education so I didnt have a lot of time to understand politics in Australia. I was happy that the Labor Party was in power, she continued.

It was only when I started working for the unions that I understood that Labor and Liberal were basically playing a game. They werent sincere in their claims to be serving the people. I started voting for the Greens, but they supported the Labor Party too.

When enterprise bargaining was introduced by Labor it had disastrous results on vulnerable sections of the population because they couldnt negotiate fairer wages for themselves. It was an opportunity for people in power and ruthless employers to underpay them and take away their conditions of work, she said.

I came across the Socialist Equality Party, took a couple of brochures and thought, Wow, that sounds really interesting and decided to support the SEP. The world is a mess and I needed to find a party that I was confident in. I believe in social justice, freedom and democracy and equal distribution of wealth, these are the values that the SEP represents. No other parties have these values. I started reading the SEPs Statement of Principles and I continue to find points that reflect my ideas and ethical values. Im happy to support the SEP in any way because there is a global movement and its going to change the whole global atmosphere, she said.

Apply for electoral membership of the Socialist Equality Party (Australia)

Cost: $5 (waged) / $2 (unwaged/student)

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Electoral members call on workers and youth to join the SEP and fight Australia's undemocratic election laws - WSWS

The petty-bourgeois Left Bloc (Bloco de Esquerda, BE) is calling for an alliance with the ruling social-democratic Socialist Party (PS) in legislative elections set for January 30, 2022. The snap elections were called by Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa at the start of November, after Prime Minister Antnio Costas six-year minority PS government collapsed amid mass strikes.

The previous week, Costas government had failed to pass its 2022 budget in parliament, as its long-term allies, the BE and the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), suddenly voted against it. It is the first time that a budget has been rejected since the 1974 Carnation Revolution toppled the Estado Novo regime of fascistic dictator Antnio Salazar.

The vote against the Budget by the BE and the PCP was not due to any genuine opposition to the austerity measures the PS planned to impose and had already implemented for several years. Both parties have loyally supported all the PS budgets since the PS came to power in 2015, and are fully complicit in the attacks on workers living standards that have come with them.

The last-minute decision of the BE and PCP to vote against the government came amid a massive wave of strikes across Portugal, involving tens of thousands of workers from multiple different industries. Rail workers, teachers, pharmacists, subway workers, nurses, firefighters, civil servants and prison guards have all taken part in industrial action between September and November, mostly calling for increased wages as the cost of living continues to skyrocket.

Terrified of the growing upsurge of the working class and of anger at years of declining living standards, the BE and the PCP felt compelled to vote against the budget in parliament, to maintain the charade that they oppose austerity, and avert an uncontrollable social explosion.

Far from breaking with the right-wing, pro-austerity politics of the PS, however, the Left Bloc is campaigning for an ever closer relationship with this party. Catarina Martins, national coordinator of the BE, has complained that her party had not been in a formal coalition with the PS over the last two years, presenting such an alliance as a stabilising force.

According to Martins, the Left Bloc had proposed a written agreement in 2019 which, unfortunately the Socialist Party refused. The fact that in 2015 we had an agreement didnt resolve all the problems, Martins continued, but it gave a perspective of common change and common responsibility to the parties which made the agreement, as well as to the country which brought stability.

From 2015 to 2019, the minority PS government ruled thanks to an alliance known as a geringona (or odd contraption) with the BE, PCP and Greens (PEV), a confidence-and-supply arrangement whereby the pseudo-left and Stalinist parties agreed to support the government on all major votes. Since the elections of 2019, the BE and the PCP have continued to back the PS from outside the government, with no written agreement in place.

For five years, the BE made the budgets possible for the minority PS based on agreements to resolve the countrys problems, Martins continued. This is our willingness.

In a separate statement on Twitter, Martins grovelled before the PS leader in her efforts to promote an alliance, replying to claims that she would like to see a new leadership in the Socialist Party by declaring that After the elections, it is with Antnio Costa that I hope to negotiate solutions. And I will raise them during the [election] campaign, even if it hinders the appeal to an absolute majority.

This was in response to statements by Costa himself that he doubts whether a new agreement with the BE would be feasible, declaring in an interview last Monday that I cant say that I will continue the geringona, when the PCP says it is unrepeatable and the BE leader says that it is necessary to change the leadership of the PS.

In an appearance at the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Lisbon, Martins again pleaded for collaboration with the PS.

Asked about potential governance scenarios after the January elections and the possibility of the conservative Social Democratic Party (PSD) once again coming to power, she responded: I dont speak for the PS. But the Left Bloc can say two things. The first is that we will never have a right-wing government if the Left Bloc can prevent it. The second thing, Martins stated, is that the BE has always been clear about how we can construct majority agreements.

The truth is that Portugal already has a right-wing government, which the BE fully supported. Martins calls for further collaboration with the PS is an exposure of the Left Blocs own anti-worker, pro-austerity politics. With the backing of the BE and the PCP, the PS government imposed a series of European Union-dictated austerity measures, which have slashed living conditions for the Portuguese working class.

Average monthly wages in Portugal are a pitiful 984, one of the lowest figures in the whole EU. Meanwhile, a fifth of Portugals 10-million strong population face poverty and social exclusion, and nearly 10 percent of the employed population live on incomes below the poverty line.

The hostility of the PCP and BE towards the working class was utterly exposed in 2019, when the PS government called out the army to break a nationwide truckers strike, which led many fuel stations to run dry. The BE endorsed the mobilization of the army against the working class, with Martins declaring: In certain fundamental sectors, it is understandable that there are minimum levels of service; in other sectors it is not understandable. About fuel availability, she added, The government will have to do whatever is essential for the country to function.

The last two years of the PS government have also coincided with the global COVID-19 pandemic, which has had disastrous consequences in Portugal. Over 1.1 million people have been infected with the virus in this country, and over 18,000 have diedthe equivalent of nearly 600,000 deaths in a population like that of the United States.

The BE has seen its popularity plummet since the elections of 2019, with its vote share falling from around 10 percent that year to a predicted 5 percent in current opinion polls. The PCPs support has stagnated at approximately 6 percent. This is a direct result of these two parties support for PS policies of austerity, strike-breaking and mass infection. The BE and PCP are correctly seen as entirely complicit in these reactionary attacks.

The main beneficiary of this fall in support for the BE has been the far-right Chega (Enough) party; opinion polls suggest it may win as much as 9 percent of the vote in January, soaring up from 1.3 percent in 2019. The reactionary role of the Left Bloc and PCP has allowed Chega to falsely posture as the sole opposition party.

No opposition to the emerging far-right will be forthcoming from the PS, Left Bloc or PCP. The task of workers in Portugal is to build a politically independent movement to oppose austerity, the growth of fascism and the herd immunity policies of the whole ruling class, as part of a struggle for socialism in Europe and internationally.

WSWS Review

What is the pseudo-left?

This review examines the response of pseudo-left political tendencies internationally to the major world political events of the past decade.

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Left Bloc pleads for alliance with Socialist Party in Portuguese elections - WSWS