Letter to Readers

From International Socialism (1st series), No.4, Spring 1961, p.10.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

International Socialism has the difficult task of trying to exist before international socialism exists. If too often what we produce is fragmentary and partial it is because we are faithful to the actual position of present day socialism. The task of constructing new analyses which will unite thought and action in the contemporary situation is not just difficult; it is one that, by its very nature, we of the editorial board and the contributors cannot hope to carry through by ourselves. For any socialist journal its readers are not merely so many pockets from which half-crowns come. Socialist theory is a matter of dialogue, not of monologues. We cannot write to you or for you unless you write to us and for us. And we cannot build up such a dialogue unless we survive financially.

We think that we are a worthwhile journal for three reasons. First because we seek to present the day to day struggle in concrete terms which are not the victims of abstract patterns imposed by the defeats of the past. Secondly because we seek to carry socialist theory forward. This is not the journal of a sect: it aspires to be a journal which can serve the mass movement at those points where the mass movement may become the revolutionary movement. Lastly, because we know that these are tasks which can only be carried through on a world scale. The links that we are beginning to forge with co-thinkers in Latin America. Germany, Belgium, France, India, the United States and elsewhere, are especially precious to us. But we can only print what these comrades send us and relate it to our own socialist existence if we can continue to pay the printer.

So we ask our readers confidently to themselves become responsible for International Socialism. You can do three things. You can send us a donation or better still a banker’s order; you can take responsibility for selling so many copies an issue and for paving for them in advance; you can get any group to which you belong to donate or subscribe regularly. There are no bans or proscriptions on potential givers. Any sum, large or small, will be welcome. The need is as desperate as the political task is urgent.

Yours fraternally,
The Editors

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