Lothian Socialist Discussion (23/10)

Lothian Socialist Discussion

Wednesday, 25 October 

7:30pm - 9:00pm

Venue: The Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh, 

17 West Montgomery Place,

 Edinburgh EH7 5HA

The Lothian Socialist Discussion group's name can be shortened to the LSD and you never know, if you attend it might expand as much as the mind might.

Class consciousness has never more needed than now.  Today, mankind's future is under a shadow without precedent. The working people of the world have it in their hands to end poverty, fear, hatred, and war. Nationalism is not their interest but their rulers'. Submission is taught, not conceived. To the Edinburgh members of the Socialist Party, class-consciousness is the breaking-down of all barriers to understanding. Without it, militancy means nothing. The conflict between the classes is more than a struggle for each to gain from the other: it is the division which reaches across all others. The class-conscious workers know where they stand in society. Their interests are opposed at every point to those of the capitalist class; their cause can only be the cause of revolution for the abolition of classes. Without that understanding, militancy can mean little. It is not mere preamble that the Socialist Party's principles open by stating the class division in capitalism: it is the all-important basis from which the rest must follow.

Socialist Party members have has seen movements rise and fall, they have heard party slogans fade away, and they have known all manner of panaceas acclaimed and then forgotten.  Incredibly, the gradualists and reformists tell the Socialist Party that we are impractical: impractical when through their denial of the socialist case they have fallen and with them the hopes of millions!

The Socialist Party’s proposition is the only practical one. Class-conscious people need no leaders. The single, simple fact which all working people have to learn is that capitalism causes capitalism's problems so that the remedy – the only remedy – is to abolish capitalism. In that knowledge, they must take hold of the powers of government – for one purpose only: that the rule of class by class shall end. Socialism is not a benevolently-administered capitalism: it is a different social system.

Many disillusioned and now filled with skepticism and cynicism question that their fellow-workers can accomplish that. But who doubts needs only look round him. The wonders and the splendours of modern civilization all are made by the working class. The knowledge, the skill, the vision are theirs. 

Reform is no answer, even though at times – rare times – it benefits working people. The reformer has not even set out to change the world but has agreed that capitalism shall continue, and is merely trying to alleviate its worst effects with palliatives. Was life made more satisfying by the Welfare State, a transitory concession to workers now being dismantled.

Members of the Socialist Party have been intractable in their opposition to reformists. Working class action must be revolutionary. That is the real message we deliver to people. The need for socialism grows more urgent each passing day. It awaits the conscious will of the workers of the world, and nothing more When they desire it, it will be so.  Exploitation and conflict must be ended; the catastrophe of worker killing worker must be prevented.

The struggle for socialism is a long and arduous one, needing the help of every class-conscious man and woman. We urge the need to work for socialism within a structured democratic organisation like Socialist Party. To widen the spread socialist understanding is the great task of our time: every fresh adherent to the Socialist Party is another step towards the emancipation of mankind.