Changing the D of P

For the interest of those here, from 1963, the EC response to WSPUS proposing changes to their Declaration of Principles (D of P)

EC Letter to World Socialist Party of the United States re proposed amendments to their Declaration of Principles (1963)

Dear Comrades,

We have considered your amendments to the Declaration of Principles, agreed at your last Conference, and have the following comments to make. Before doing so, however, there are some aspects we would draw to your attention.

In the past you have already made some alterations in the wording of the D. of P. At the time we let them pass because although not necessarily agreeing with them, it was thought that they were not serious enough to make comment necessary. Your latest re-wording, however, are serious innovations and therefore we cannot let them pass without criticism. There is also the fact that these further alterations raise the question of where this tinkering with the wording is going to end.

The present wording of our D. of P. is a fundamental statement of our outlook, the foundation on which our Party is based. It is as accurate and up-to-date now as when our Party was founded, and has been the basis and guide to our attitude to all questions ever since. Implied in these Principles is the criticism of all the manifestations of Capitalism, which has shown no fundamental change since 1904, and the language is just as fresh, vigorous and applicable as it was originally. On the basis of these Principles members have joined the Party; leaflets, pamphlets, and articles in our journal are published to give more detailed and extensive applications of their implications. Whilst it is not your intention to make any fundamental alterations, your previous re-wording was the thin end of a wedge; your latest is a thicker end.

Now to come to your latest re-wording:

In Principle 4, you have deleted "without distinction of race or sex". Had this phrase never been included it might not have mattered. By taking it out now, in spite of what goes before, you imply to readers that you have had second thoughts on the subject of race and sex equality. Further, it is still necessary to stress our attitude because of the persisting ideas about the inferiority of races and women. The use of the expression "race" is still scientifically accurate as modern anthropologists recognise that there are racial differences of various kinds between sections of mankind; e.g. mongoloid, negroid, caucasoid.

In Principle 7 you have replaced "hostile" by "opposed", and in Principle 8, "wage war against", by "expose". As the objections you have to both these phrases are based on the view that they imply violence, we are taking them together.

As all other political parties are opposed to each other – Liberal, Labour, Conservative, Republican, Democrat, etc. – and oppose the doings of each other, this places you in the position of just another opposition party. We are not just opposed to all other political parties, nor do we just expose them; we are bitterly opposed, hostile to them; out to fight them on all fronts. To say that this implies violence to anyone is quite mistaken. What about "War on Hunger", "War on Disease", etc. etc. and the phrase "Conservative candidates will be fighting on a fresh battleground in the next election"? Nobody dreams of suggesting that these phrases imply violent action. Are we to assume that henceforth such phrases as "class war", "class struggle", "field of battle", "fight for the capture of political machinery", and similar phrases, will be banished from your literature, on the ground that these phrases imply violence? We would call your attention, for instance, to the editorial reply to a question on page 21 of the No.1/1965 "WS". The opening sentence is "This critic enters the field of battle ill-equipped"!

The substitution of "expose" for "wage war against" is also very feeble, and takes the punch completely out of the paragraph. All parties, institutions and individuals go in for exposing each other. The courts are full of libel cases arising out of rivals of one kind and another "exposing" each other. We are out to wage war against all other political parties, to defeat them and abolish the basis on which they rest.

In submitting the above criticisms to you we are giving the views of the present Executive Committee. We shall, of course, put before the next Conference your proposals and a copy of our letter to you.