This text is an excerpt from the publications report given to the party’s eighth congress in September.
Although we are still very small in size, as a party we have set ourselves the only goal we can: that of bringing a Marxist understanding to the widest possible number of people and of thus renewing the popularity of scientific socialism amongst workers, in order to create the leadership and lay the groundwork for a successful socialist revolution in Britain.
To that end, we aim to build first and foremost an efficient and truly nationwide distribution network for the propagation of literature of all kinds, from theoretical analysis to agitational leaflets; from cartoons and posters to videos, tweets and blog posts.
This network, both local and national, on the streets and online, should ultimately be able to respond both to the questions taxing workers in a particular area (lay-offs at a factory or the closure of an essential service, for instance) and to those facing the whole of the British proletariat (Brexit and the economic crisis, austerity and war, privatisation and unemployment, etc).
The next goal that presents itself is the urgent need to improve our ability to respond to the big questions of the day in a timely and coordinated way for maximum impact and reach, taking to the streets when workers go on strike, or when a question on which we have something useful to say is on all the front pages and has become a popular talking-point.
Just as taking a leaflet on privatisation to workers in struggle against outsourcing profiteers gives our members a chance to bring our message to people who are more ready to hear it than usual, so taking a leaflet about Brexit or the drive to WW3 to the streets is more likely to create useful conversations if it happens at a time when some crisis has brought to issue to the front of workers’ minds. Even a royal wedding offers us an opportunity to get out and remind people of the parasitic nature of capitalist society.
Our study classes should be using party materials as the basis for collective discussion and working out the best way to bring the analysis they contain to workers in their areas.
We are struggling against the apathy engendered by overwork, underemployment and the endless distractions created by the bourgeois mass media and an all-encompassing consumer culture. We must take every opportunity to meet workers when they are likely to be most open to our message, and to have materials with us that can maximise that opportunity.
To that end, we must maximise our use of all possible materials, from print to online, from tweets and comics to posters and newspaper articles, and do our best to find advanced and class-conscious workers wherever they may be – both those who live most of their waking hours online and consume their media there and those who have avoided or been left behind by the smartphone revolution.
Armed with a scientific understanding of capitalist imperialism, we know too well that the next downward lurch in the global overproduction crisis may come at any time, and that the moves towards a third world war must undoubtedly come to fruition.
That being the case, it is our duty to do everything we can to build our branch network and urgently to develop our writing, filming, designing, editing and production capabilities in all areas of propaganda work so that we may be able to rise to the challenges that the developing crisis puts before us.
It can seem today as if nothing could ever rouse the British working class from its apathetic and resigned slumber, but the signs of unrest and unease are simmering away beneath the surface and it only needs a severe economic shock or two to jerk significant numbers out of their acquiescence and in search of answers and action.
No-one is going to turn to us at that moment if we haven’t been doing our work already. Even if they seem mostly to ignore us today, we need to be planting the seeds of understanding in workers’ minds now, exposing as many of them as possible first to the fact of our existence, and second to the unvarnished and unashamedly fact-based class analysis that is contained in our propaganda.
On every question of significance we have something to offer to workers that no-one else is giving them: the truth. We should be proud of that fact and clear in our own minds that the work we are doing is not merely to keep ourselves busy, but to bring enlightenment to the working class and thus equip it to move history forward.
It is work of historical significance and, ultimately, it is the most useful work any human being presently alive on the planet can engage in: the task of bringing an end to the historically-outmoded, parasitic and bloodthirsty system of capitalist imperialism.
