Odds are few would peg him as a meat packer, fewer still guess that this most unlikely class warrior is the Communist candidate for mayor of Toronto.

As always, appearances can be deceiving. Which, as it happens, is more or less the message Steele wishes to send to those who believe that communism, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellites, has been consigned to history's dustbin.

Oh, you might think so, he admits, if you follow only mainstream media. Steele finds he has to read The Militant to really know what's going on. And, as he sees it, working folk still have a world to win and nothing to lose but their chains.

"Communism is alive and well in Cuba, in small organizations like ours," he says.

"What is happening today is that the obstacles to the development of the communist movement are being removed by the development of capitalism itself as it heads more and more to another historical period of fascism and world war."

Which are probably not issues the current mayor was planning to discuss much in the campaign for the Nov. 13 vote. Though he will be relieved to know Steele does not hold him personally accountable.

"We're not saying [Mayor] Mel Lastman is the problem. The issue is what capitalism is doing to humanity and the need for working people to realize that we can actually change society.

"There are a lot of young people out there who do not like the values of this society, the dog-eat-dog ethic. I'm quite convinced we'll get a hearing."

It was as a young man himself that Steele, who's worked in textile plants, cleaned aircraft and ran once before for mayor, joined the Communist League.

"Many years ago I concluded that capitalism has no future for humanity. And one of the big influences on me was the Cuban revolution."

There, if perhaps not paradise, is a living example of human solidarity at work, he says. Elsewhere, most notably here, fewer workers are asked to produce ever more ever faster for less pay and benefits in order to lower prices and increase profits for a minority.

"And that," he says, in terms even [pro-business Canadian newspaper magnate] Conrad Black would appreciate, "is the bottom line."

Still, given times trumpeted as the very flowering of capitalism, given the popularity of the incumbent, some might regard Steele's mayoral campaign as quixotic in the extreme. Especially when you consider he has no entourage, no spin doctors, no swank office or limo, no campaign funds or organization to speak of.

Voters might find it refreshing, however, to know Steele also has no interest in talking about his religious views or fitness regimen, or in thrusting his family into the spotlight. He will talk, he says, only about ideas.

"There are two Torontos, two different worlds. One is the Toronto that Mayor Lastman speaks and acts for, a small minority, the rich. The other Toronto is the vast majority of people like myself who face tremendous social and economic problems."

For now, Steele's campaign is run from Pathfinder Bookstore on Bloor St. W. On its shelves rest volumes chronicling struggles through the decades of working folk, the oppressed, dispossessed.

"The history of all hitherto existing society," The Communist Manifesto begins, "is the history of class struggles."

And to John Steele, so it remains.

"Why shouldn't somebody other than people in tuxedos run for mayor?"