Socialist Sonnet No. 235: Reformation (2026)

 From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Reformation

Maintaining ‘Socialism’ as watchword

Can seem unlikely, when realpolitik

Is succumbing to the three card trick

Of the slight of hand dealer in absurd

Demagogy, when the popular vote

Is placed on populist blandishments,

Falsified promises; reason relents

Its influence. Without considered thought

Reform, however tempting it appears,

Remains a mistaken gamble to make,

Especially with the future as the stake:

Gamblers regret can last for years and years.

There’s none as asleep as the mistaken,

Being so, so difficult to awaken.

D. A.

SPGB Snippets: Looking forward to retirement? (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

June 3, 2026

Workers toil not just to live, eat and raise a family, but also to prepare for retirement by building a pension pot. However, recent reports from the Pensions Commission have argued that fifteen million people in the UK are not saving nearly enough to have a secure retirement, even by the miserly standards of capitalism.

Nearly half of working-age adults are not saving into a pension at all, with just 4% of ‘self-employed’ workers doing so. Future retirees may well be worse off than today’s.

Not only does capitalism dominate people’s working lives, the pressures of daily life also make it much harder to get ready to live comfortably after their days of toil and exploitation are over.