Meetings
All Socialist Party meetings/talks/discussions are currently online on Discord, including the Autumn Delegate Meeting on Saturday 21 November. Please contact the Forum Administrator on spgb@worldsocialism.org for how to join.
NOVEMBER 2020
DISCORD EVENTS
Wednesday 4 November, 19.30 GMT
General current affairs discussion
“Did you see the news
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Friday 6 November, 19.30 GMT
FRIDAY NIGHT TALK
Covid and Civil Liberties
Speaker: Dave Coggan
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Wednesday 11 November, 19.30 GMT
FAQ Workshop
Bread and Circuses
Do films and TV have anything useful to tell us about capitalism or are they just part of the capitalist bread and circus act?
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Friday 13 November, 19.30 GMT
Friday night talk
Attachment Theory
Speaker: Tim Kilgallon.
An environmental explanation of the development of human personality.
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Wednesday 18 November, 19.30 GMT
General current affairs discussion
“Did you see the news?”
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Friday 20 November 19.30 GMT
Friday night talk
The new atheism
What was it, where did it go, and what did we learn?
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AUTUMN DELEGATE MEETING
Saturday 21 November
10.00 GMT (for 10.30) to 17.30 GMT
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Wednesday 25 November 19.30 GMT
Open Mic Night
We offer a guest slot to a Discord Friend to riff on their perspective, with audience discussion.
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Friday 27 November 19.30 GMT
Friday night talk
Bitcoin and the Dark Web.
Speaker: Paul Edwards.
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OTHER ONLINE TALK
Thursday 12 November 19.30 GMT
Oxford Communist Corresponding Society is hosting a series of weekly online talks. They will be posted at 7:30pm each Thursday and will remain up for 24 hours. To listen to them go to: http://communistcorrespondingsociety.org/audio.html
Socialist Party member Bill Martin is doing the 12 November one on:
Belling the cat: Marx and Engels on the practical organization of socialism .
Declaration of Principles
This declaration is the basis of our organisation and, because it is also an important historical document dating from the formation of the party in 1904, its original language has been retained. A more detailed version including explanations of what the Object and each Principle mean to us is on the website here.
Object
The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.
Declaration of Principles
The Socialist Party of Great Britain holds:
1: That society as at present constituted is based upon the ownership of the means of living (i.e., land, factories, railways, etc.) by the capitalist or master class, and the consequent enslavement of the working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced.
2: That in society, therefore, there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a class struggle between those who possess but do not produce and those who produce but do not possess.
3: That this antagonism can be abolished only by the emancipation of the working class from the domination of the master class, by the conversion into the common property of society of the means of production and distribution, and their democratic control by the whole people.
4: That as in the order of social evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex.
5: That this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.
6: That as the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the 
nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class must organize consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.
7: That as all political parties are but the expression of class interests, and as the interest of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the master class, the party seeking working class emancipation must be hostile to every other party.
8: The Socialist Party of Great Britain, therefore, enters the field of political action determined to wage war against all other political parties, whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist, and calls upon the members of the working class of this country to muster under its banner to the end that a speedy termination may be wrought to the system which deprives them of the fruits of their labour, and that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom.
Socialist Standard November 2020