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Here
it is, then: Universities and Left Review. Very well got up,
good typography; indeed, the Abbey Press (the people who print it)
are to be complimented on having a range of bold, large and display
types almost sufficient to keep up with the editors' delight in
Names. The cover bears the contributors' names (Isaac Deutscher,
Claude Bourdet, Peter de Francia, E. P. Thompson, G. D. H. Cole, Joan
Robinson, etc..) in massive black letters, their topics in small
ones. ( . . . )
What
purpose, then, does the Universities and Left Review serve?
Pretentious, empty of ideas, its material picked from ideological
dust-heaps, it has set out to make a splash—or, as the first
editorial put it, to take a beachhead. Its avowed purpose is to
publish discussion on “the common ground of a genuinely free and
genuinely socialist society.” Its way, the editors say, is “to
take socialism at full stretch — as relevant only in so far as it
is relevant to the full scale of man's activities.”
If
that were true — “the full scale of man's activities” — it
really would be interesting. But, of course, it isn't. Search the Universities
and Left Review, and
only in a line here and a
phrase there will you find the working class mentioned. Professor
Cole has a good word for them, and there is a little lofty patronage
from David Marquand (“in the thirties, there had to be an effective
mass movement for the intellectuals to join”) and E. P. Thompson
(“the experience of rank-and-file political activity teaches us and
keeps our ideas on the ground”). The names in the Universities
and Left Review see themselves (bear witness, the articles on
art, the cinema, architecture) as members of an élite: the
General Staff on that beach-head, the upper crust of the “genuinely
socialist society.” ( . . .)
Universities
and Left Review seeks comment
from the socialist viewpoint. It can be simply made. There is not a
word concerning Socialism from beginning to end of the Universities
and Left Review. Reformist
claptrap, yes; pretentious verbiage, indeed; chatter about how things
are for the intellectuals, above all. But of the interests of the
working class, the great majority of mankind—not a whisper.
The
most useful left-winger we ever saw was Tom Finney. The day he scored
against the Arsenal—now, that was worth three-and-six.
(from
article by Robert Coster, Socialist Standard, February 1958).
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This
declaration is the basis of our organisation and, because
it is
also an important
historical document dating from the
formation
of the party
in 1904, its original language has been retained.
Object
The establishment of a system of
society based upon the
common ownership and democratic control of the
means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in
the interest of the whole community.
Declaration of Principles
the Socialist Party of Great Britain
holds,
1.
That society as at
present constituted is based upon the ownership of the means of living
(i.e., land, factories, railways,
etc.) by the capitalist or master class, and the consequent enslavement
of the working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced.
2.
That in society,
therefore, there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a
class struggle between those who possess but do not produce and those
who produce but do not possess.
3.
That this antagonism
can be abolished only by the emancipation of the working class from the
domination of the master class, by the conversion into the common
property of society of the means of production and distribution, and
their democratic control by the whole people.
4.
That as in the order
of social evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its
freedom, the emancipation of the working class will involve the
emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex.
5.
That this
emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.
6.
That as the machinery
of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to
conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from
the workers, the working class must organize consciously and
politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and
local, in order that
this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an
instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the
overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.
7.
That as all political
parties are but the expression of class interests, and as the interest
of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all
sections of the master class, the party seeking working class
emancipation must be hostile to every other party.
8.
The Socialist Party of
Great Britain, therefore, enters the field of political action
determined to wage war against all other political parties, whether
alleged labour or avowedly capitalist, and calls upon the members of
the working class of this country to muster under its banner to the end
that a speedy termination may be wrought to the system which deprives
them of the fruits of their labour, and that poverty may give place to
comfort, privilege to equality, and slaver to freedom. |
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