Is The World Socialist Movement Marxist?
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The following piece is a transcript of a talk that was given at the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s 1998 Summer School,
Marxism Revisited
, which was held at Fircroft College in Birmingham, England. It is reproduced from the pamphlet of the same name.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed in London on 12th June, 1904. 142 people signed the original document of formation of the party. Of those, not all of them were to remain inside the party. Over the course of more than ninety years, the party has stood for a single object and a set of principles which have made it a unique political organisation. It has been, to answer the question very directly at the outset, guided by a Marxist outlook throughout those nine decades. It is undoubtedly an organisation which, when the history of capitalism comes to be written in those better days when capitalism is a thing of the past, will be seen as the party which has pioneered and stood the ground of Marxist principles throughout its lifetime. But, while we are a Marxist party, we are not bound to Marx as a revolutionary deity, nor to Marxism as a dogmatic, fixed, immutable religion.