Introducing the Socialist Standard (1977)

From the September 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Because of new distribution arrangements we hope that many people will be reading the Socialist Standard for the first time this month. This is to tell them more about it.

The Standard has been published continuously for seventy-three years. The front page of the first issue, in September 1904, said: “In the Socialist Party of Great Britain we are all members of the working class, and cannot hope that our articles will always be finely phrased, but we shall at least endeavour to lay before you on every occasion a sane and sound pronouncement on all matters affecting the welfare of the working class. What we lack in refinement we shall make good by the depth of our sincerity and by the truth of our principles . . . In dealing with all questions affecting the welfare of the working class our standpoint will be frankly revolutionary.”

That standpoint has never altered. That first issue told its readers that the Labour Representation Committee, forerunner of the Labour Party, was “not based upon Socialist principles and should not receive the adhesion of working men”. A few years later the Standard voiced the Socialist Party’s uncompromising opposition to the first world war, which was repeated in 1939. It was censored and its distribution restricted—but it still carried on. When the Russian Revolution came, the Standard published a series of analyses of what was happening and showed what “experts” discovered forty years later; that the Revolution was to turn Russia not to Socialism but into a massive capitalist state.

After the second world war the cure-alls of nationalization and Keynesian governmental economics were “taken apart” and the reasons for their inevitable failure shown by us. We opposed racism long before it became a fashionable issue. Many other unique analyses have been made down the years, and are still being made, in the Socialist Standard. It is not written by academics or paid journalists. The contributors and editors are working men and women who give their spare time to it. It has no advertizing, and is supported from the funds of the Socialist Party whose journal it is. From time to time we produce special issues on important questions; some of these are still available from our literature department, as are other back numbers (and bound volumes).

If you like the Socialist Standard, place a regular order or take out a subscription. Tell other people about it. If you have questions or criticisms, write to us or go to a meeting in your area. Our aim is simple: to put the case for Socialism before as large a public as possible, to build support for the Socialist movement.