Weekly Worker 604 Thursday December 8 2005

Financial appeal

Back your weekly!

If the Weekly Worker is to continue playing its vital role, we urgently need to increase our regular income, says Mark Fischer

Comrades reported some interesting exchanges on the December 3 ‘Stop climate change’ demo in London. As well as some useful discussions with younger greens, we were approached and offered donations by comrades who read us regularly online and who appreciate the openness and democracy associated with our project. This is something that has happened with increasing frequency over the last few years. “The Weekly Worker’s better than the shite the rest of the left puts out”, as one of these comrades eloquently put it.

True, in general, but not the whole story. Clearly, the political programme that our paper explicitly champions does not command the same level of identification. Indeed, our organisation actually suffers a degree of isolation - there are a variety of deeply uninspiring alternatives currently competing with our fight for a revolutionary Communist Party. With such large sections of the left in programmatic meltdown of one sort or another, the political method of the CPGB does not win us easy friends.

So our paper is currently more popular than the politics it espouses. A majority of the readers probably pick it up mostly in order to better understand what is actually going on in our movement - or “for the gossip”, as some comrades foolishly put it. On the other hand, our communist political programme still has quite a way to go before it is as popular …

Clearly, the Weekly Worker - as a democratic, open publishing project of the revolutionary left - has untapped reservoirs of potential support out there. So, given our growing financial difficulties, starting to ‘tap’ people is long overdue, frankly.

With this article, we are launching a special campaign to expand the number of comrades who financially support the Weekly Worker. Many of our readers will be directly approach by CPGBers - but don’t wait to be asked. Bankers order forms are available from our office or downloadable from the Party’s website. The same goes for our own comrades, of course.

A certain reticence has been on show amongst CPGBers for some time. Comrades appear a little shy about approaching sympathisers on our periphery for commitment of one sort or another, whether in the form of financial support or activity. Of course, there is a natural reserve to break down in new comrades - we understand that the prospect of approaching a long list of strangers or distant political acquaintances to demand their money and time can exacerbate the shyness in some less experienced comrades.

However, the key problem is the odd nature of this political period and the brand of politics that surrounds us on the left. The hard answers - the need for commitment and serious study of Marxism; the call for a revolutionary Communist Party, not a halfway house based on social democracy or left populism; the need for a rigorous and consistent transparency on the left - these ideas are falling on ‘soft’ ears at present. While elements in our periphery are attracted to some aspects of our political work, they tend to find our angularity, our sharpness and refusal to compromise on principle too much.

We are isolated to a certain extent - and our comrades should understand that, given the political context in which we work, that is not necessarily a bad thing. Post the defeats of 1848, Marx and Engels reorganised themselves to undertake - alongside their party comrades - scientific and theoretical work, the key preparatory task they identified for the next revolutionary upsurge. This was disparaged by political opponents, leading Marx to comment in a letter to Engels: “I am greatly pleased by the public, authentic isolation which we two, you and I, now find ourselves. It is wholly in accord with our attitude and our principles” (quoted in A Nimtz Marx and Engels: their contribution to the democratic breakthrough p151).

Our isolation differs in one respect in that we are not claiming parity of status with Marx and Engels: nevertheless by standing on their shoulders the Weekly Worker has become a powerful and influential weapon and instrumental in a process of re-education not simply of our own members, but also wider layers in the workers’ movement.

Appeal

This initiative is being launched both to bring a degree of stability to the finances of our paper and to cover our increased production costs. Of course, all left papers run at a loss - but climbing postage rates, costs associated with printing and other technical aspects of the paper’s production have reached the point where it is becoming a real strain for us to cover the shortfall.

Translating sympathy into active financial support is, of course, extremely difficult for us. Our national infrastructure remains painfully weak, making it too easy for our readers - whatever their level of political identification - to maintain their relationship with the paper on a passive level. The Weekly Worker appears every week; many thousands read the print and online versions and enjoy it; they may associate to a greater or lesser degree with the ideas it fights for in the workers’ movement and may even deploy some of them in their own political work. But for the vast majority, the idea that they might take the next step and actually begin to actively support the paper, crucially provide some of the extra cash to ensure that it is able to appear every week, does not seem to register.

Our campaign is intended to shove the rather brutal facts of the paper’s precarious financial position under the noses of these comrades. We are confident of a positive response. Quite clearly, the extremely confused political backdrop against which the Weekly Worker publishes and fights for clarity underlines the urgent need for a paper like ours.

On the one hand, a protest movement in some form is certainly re-emerging, although its dominant ideas are extremely muddled and backward. On the other, the organisational/programmatic decline of the left continues - it is speeding up, if anything - and revolutionaries have proved incapable of engaging as Marxists in mass politics. The largest component of the ostensibly Marxist left, the Socialist Workers Party, is now constituted as an important conduit of petty bourgeois ideas into the workers’ movement.

As Peter Manson’s article in this issue of the Weekly Worker makes clear, the strains caused by this seem to be revealing themselves in the (already degraded) political culture of this sect. Our paper intends to do more than simply chronicle the SWP’s decline. Through polemical intervention and an open fight in these pages, we intend to save comrades as Marxists. If the contemporary revolutionary left simply dissolves and is defeated, if there is no positive resolution of its crisis, this will mark an important setback for the whole workers’ movement. The Weekly Worker is currently the most important agent in the battle for a positive resolution and this is why comrades should make a commitment today to give regular financial support in aid of its vital work.

We are asking:

l Comrades who already have standing order subscriptions to the paper to increase them. Remember, while your donation stays static, our costs go up. Even small amounts matter - if enough comrades bump up their commitment a little, a big hole in finances can be plugged.

l Regular online readers to seriously consider donating. Waiting to come across a Weekly Worker seller on a demonstration is all very well, but a ‘hit and miss’ approach like this is one of the causes of instability of the paper’s income. If the paper is good enough to provoke a spasm of conscience when you spot one of our sellers once in a blue moon, it is good enough to support on a firmer basis. Again, as Robbie Rix never tires of pointing out, if even one percent of our web readership made some sort of commitment, it would make a huge difference.

l Our organised comrades - members and supporters - to approach this work systematically. Our annual two-month fund drive, the Summer Offensive, has taught us many lessons over the years, but we need to supplement the ‘heroic push’ once a year with far more detailed attention to financial matters. Questions associated with this new financial initiative will be discussed in detail at the Party aggregate on December 11, but comrades must give this important new campaign some thought before they arrive at the meeting.

We will be reporting the progress of this campaign in the these columns in the coming weeks and months, discussing arguments and addressing problems that comrades will encounter. But we are confident. As always with us, raising the financial wherewithal to ensure the work of our paper continues to grow is inseparably linked with the programme of Marxism.

We look forward to hearing from comrades.