REVOLUTIONARY PLATFORM

of the Scottish Socialist Party

Website: www.revolutionaryplatformofthessp.org

Discussion forum: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/revolutionary-platform-of-the-ssp

Initiated by Steve Wallis: www.socialiststeve.me.uk, 07739 904924

In January 2007, I set up the Foundation for PR-based Socialism as a virtual conspiratorial organisation arguing for a form of socialism based on proportional representation (PR) by single transferable vote (STV), as an alternative to a Marxist conception of soicalism involving hierarchies of committees (called ‘soviets’ in the USSR). For more information, visit its website or discussion forum. I want the Revolutionary Platform of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) to unite both kinds of revolutionary socialist in the same platform of the SSP. I am planning to use the Foundation’s first newsletter to advertise a launch meeting of this Revolutionary Platform in Glasgow some time in April, during the 2007 Scottish parliamentary election campaign. I will put details of the meeting on this website when they are finalised.

Revolutionaries should unite within a single platform

The following text is taken from the second edition of Revolutionary Platform News:

I have set up, initially in cyberspace, Revolutionary Platforms of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), Solidarity, Respect and the Democratic Socialist Alliance (a small but important organisation in England I helped form out of the old Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform). In my opinion, these are the nuclei of new organisations capable of uniting genuine revolutionary socialists with different views and from different traditions within broad socialist parties.

The SSP and Solidarity have various platforms, mainly Marxist ones, with small disagreements and based on historically distinct organisations – apart from the SSP United Left which ignores the issue of whether members are revolutionaries. Nick McKerrill proposed a “Marxist platform” in Frontline magazine (www.redflag.org.uk), but with Marxist ideas being re-evaluated, the distinction should be whether you are a revolutionary and therefore advocate sudden change or whether you are a reformist and advocate gradual change through a series of reforms, which is somehow supposed to lead to a socialist society despite the fact that reforms granted during a boom are taken back during a slump.

This platform’s discussion forum

The Revolutionary Platform of the SSP only exists at the moment as this website plus a discussion forum (group). The forum is unmoderated, anyone can join without the need for approval and the archives are publicly viewable. Click here for the forum’s home page. SSP members and supporters are welcome to make suggestions in the forum regarding how the platform is organised in the future.

Publications

I have so far produced three leaflets in the name of the Revolutionary Platform plus two editions of Revolutionary Platform News.

I produced the first before the 2005 general election, calling for a vote for the SSP and putting forward views on unity of revolutionary socialists, torture and protesting against the G8. You can read the contents of that leaflet by clicking here.

I produced the second leaflet, also in the name of the Revolutionary Platform of the Democratic Socialist Alliance (DSA), calling for a worldwide general strike at around the time the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles (Scotland) took place in the first week in July. I had hoped that the DSA would be a similar organisation to the SSP in England, but when it showed itself not to be as serious as it should have done, I wrote a new leaflet for distriubtion at events around the summit also in the name of the Revolutionary Platform of Respect. The contents of those leaflets are on the g8 summit worldwide general strike website, and can be read by clicking here and here.

I produced a new leaflet, in my own name, publicising the Revolutionary Platform of the SSP for the SSP conference on the 4th and 5th of March, 2006. This leaflet, which also contains my opinions at the time (some of which have changed) on how the brain helps or hinders the struggle for socialism, can be read by clicking here.

The first edition of Revolutionary Platform News called for a worldwide general strike at the time of the 2006 G8 summit, in St Petersburg, Russia. I was not able to campaign effectively for a general strike at that time, due to being incarcerated as a political prisoner, so that call was aborted. That edition of the newsletter could still be used to publicise my call for a similar strike at the time of the 2007 summit, because that summit (between the 6th and 8th of June in Germany) is mentioned on the newsletter. You can read its contents, which also advertise a band I intend to set up based in Glasgow called Galaxia and give some views on Respect’s results in the 2006 local elections, by clicking here.

The second edition of Revolutionary Platform News contained some of my views on the split in the SSP and also called for the end of positive discrimination in the SSP. You can read its contents by clicking here.