Carshalton Environment Fair (26/8)

Carshalton Environment Fair

Venue: Carshalton Park, Ruskin Road,
Carshalton, SM5 3DD

From 10.30 am

The Socialist Party will have a stall at this event  

The socialist is discontented, but then so are many non-socialists. The only major obstacle to socialism is the non-socialist outlook of the workers. Many of our fellow-workers unquestioningly absorb capitalist ideas from its media such as the cause of discontent and unrest among ordinary people is caused by political agitators. The media seeks to deny that the degrading conditions of employment and the low standard of living are the cause of dissatisfaction.

Millions of wage-earners co-operate, directly and indirectly, in the production of the wealth of the world, which is so abundant that it suffocates the markets. The means of production are so huge that they have long ago passed out of purely individual control. The individual capitalist only holds so many shares in a giant concern which may extend its operations over the whole earth. The vast mass of the producers are disinherited. For them private property has long ago ceased to exist. They have nothing to struggle over of an individual nature except wages; and these can only be defended (and but seldom extended) by collective action. If under these conditions the workers still idealise private property, that is only because they have not yet fully realised their position. The only people whose interests are served by worker’s ignorance are the parasites, the ruling class.

Only the Socialist Party holds a clear and consistent course. The Socialist Party at its inception pointed out definitely the essential facts of the working-class position, and laid out its policy with clearly formulated principles. No weak spot have been found in those principles, nor any weakness revealed that required any need to add anything to them, or to take anything away. They have proved sufficient, as they have proved sound. Over the decades, events confirm our position as impregnable. When it is seen how helpless our fellow-workers are in face of the organised forces of repression, and are compelled to surrender because they know the futility of attempting to withstand the forces controlled by the State, then the extreme importance of the political weapon and necessity for obtaining control of that political machinery as the essential preliminary to taking possession of the means of life is irresistibly borne out as the correct strategy.

The Socialist Party, firmly founded on the class struggle, holding resolutely to the need for the workers to advance to their emancipation through the conquest of the political machinery, is the hope of the working class. Our party policy prevents us from leaning on any but class conscious workers. It can not be betrayed by ambitious mis-leaders.

When with the bitterness of disappointment eating into the hearts, sapping the courage of those who have had their fingers burned with misplaced trust and blind faith in leaders, the Socialist Party will stand between them and despair, as the only party that has consistently fought for socialism, the only party that has never confused the issue by compromising with the masters, the only party that has never led the workers into the swamp of confused reformism. Working people will find one policy they have never tried, one path they have never trodden, one weapon they have never employed — the policy and path of the Socialist Party — the weapon of political action on class-conscious, uncompromising, revolutionary lines.

The Socialist Party will go on as we have always gone on, declaring that the only path to success is by the capture of the State machine by means of the ballot, by the organised, politically educated workers. This implies that the first need is to politically educate and organise the workers. In the pursuit of which purpose the first essential and should leave no doubt as to what the issue is or who the enemy are, and make clear the class nature of the fight.