It Stands (1937)

From the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our Declaration of Principles appears in every issue of the Socialist Standard. Agreement with these principles is an essential condition for membership of the Party. Obviously, the Party attaches high importance to this document. New readers are urged to carefully ponder its Eight Points—sympathisers who agree should seriously ask themselves whether they are not shirking a duty in failing to join up. Even if comparative isolation were a bar to active work (it by no means follows—our Secretary could always suggest fruitful ideas for quiet propaganda) increase of membership is itself heartening to the Party as a whole.

The Declaration of Principles is at once a statement of FACTS, and a GUIDE to political action—the two aspects are inseparably connected —Article 8 is a Challenge and a Call.

In 1904, a small body of working men and women struggled out of the mire into which the leaders of the Social Democratic Party, allying themselves with Reformist fakes and freaks, had bogged the more or less class-conscious worker. We may add that the Communist Party is practically the old S.D.P. gazing reverently eastwards.

Basing itself firmly upon the Marxian analysis of capitalist society, with all its implications, social and political, the Socialist Party of Great Britain formulated its Declaration of Principles. For the first time in the history of the working class, a Party was formed which staked everything on the UNDERSTANDING of its class. Like the Roll given to Bunyan’s famous Pilgrim, the Declaration of Principles is a sure and certain guide to the Promised Land; the S.P.G.B. avoids high falutin’; sober statements characterise its spoken and written word. But it confidently claims that the future historian will rank The Declaration of Principles as a historic document.

The Declaration of Principles is ALIVE. Don't be deceived by its sober form. Tommy Jones, whose teacher has no difficulty in getting him to watch frog’s-spawn day by day, is convinced, in his little head, that the “ pence table," staring at him in a strait-jacket of ugly symbols, is a dead (and damned) nuisance—a simple errand for mum involving change for a bob may (painfully, perchance) bring home to him that a live reality lurks behind the table. Correct political action along main lines is indicated by the Declaration, and the possibility of serious error eliminated.

Thirty-three years has called for no change in substance or in form. While no claim is made for verbal inspiration, we assert that addition or diminution, whether of fact or of policy, will continue to be unnecessary or irrelevant. . . THE DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES STANDS.

Comparatively minor changes in the complexion of capitalist society—lipstick and greasepaint changes, Hitler for Frederick, St. Stalin for St. Nicholas, smart Social Efficiency “experts" for brutal factory overseers—all leave capitalist society at bottom what it was when Marx and Engels were writing, notwithstanding Communist blether about “phases" of (industrial) capitalism and the “building up" of “Socialism” in Russia (next firing squad, 'shun!).

Article 7 (our famous “ Hostility "clause") is a rock of offence to spurious “Socialists " . . . an acid test for Socialist understanding, this is not surprising. It is difficult for the sentimentalist to grasp the fact that sympathy with fellow-workers throughout the world, indignation against brutal suppression of free speech, whether in Germany, Spain or Russia, is consistent with that complete and unequivocal independence on the political field which is at once a safeguard against compromise of the “Popular Front” order and against war-weariness within the ranks.

Ever renewing its strength by reference to its Declaration of Principles, the S.P.G.B. has begun the inhumanly hard work of laying a path with solid four-square blocks of proletarian UNDERSTANDING across the Bog of Reformist slime. The tireless efforts of the pioneers will be crowned with success when the path is completed, and the Declaration of Principles, its work completed, stands as one of the major historical monuments of the human race.

Augustus Snellgrove