More Funds Needed (1948)

From the April 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shortage of funds is placing us in a difficulty. We have published two new pamphlets and there are more to come. Our immediate difficulty concerns the "Socialist Standard.” At present Head Office receipts are not sufficient to cover the cost of the "S.S.” We are unable to put this right by printing more copies because the paper allocation limits the number we are allowed to print. We are therefore left with only two courses of action: either to reduce the size of the "S.S.” or increase its price. We do not want to be forced to take either of these steps, but the only way this can be avoided is by an increase in the donations to the publication fund. We are not asking for any favours. The "Socialist Standard” is the only journal that genuinely represents the interests of the working class in this country, and it is therefore the duty of workers, both to themselves and to their class, to see that it is as large as the paper quota will permit and as cheap as possible. When the paper situation is easier we will add—and as widely distribute as possible.

All the money that can be spared could not be-used in a better way than making the Socialist message as adequate and as widely distributed as it can be.

We therefore urge our sympathisers to send us donations periodically and as large as they can make them to enable us to keep the "Socialist Standard” at its present size and price. If they also bring our pamphlets to the notice of their friends it will help us to recoup the cost of production of the pamphlets already printed and enable us to publish fresh ones.

We are a working-class party and therefore shortage of funds is an evil we will always have with us. It is different with our wealthy masters. The Conservative Party recently boasted that they had raised a million pounds in six months: if we could raise a thousand pounds in that time our difficulties, would vanish. They represent the present with its oppression, its laborious days, its pinching and contriving and the shadow of fresh wars; we represent the future with its promise of security, comfort and peace upon earth at last. Our work is worth all the funds the workers can supply us with.

The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself; funds are a part of the means necessary to accomplish this emancipation and they also must be provided by the working class itself.

Send us what you can as soon as you can. We are on the move; help us to keep going at the same pace.

Blogger's Note:

The two new pamphlets mentioned in the appeal were The Racial Problem: A Socialist Analysis and The Communist Manifesto and the Last 100 Years. Later in 1948 the pamphlet, Russia Since 1917, was published.