2017 motion

We urge delegates to vote against the following motion at 2017 Conference from 10:30 on 29-30 April (item scheduled for Sunday 30 April) and for members and supporters to attend 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UN and/or express their opposition by e-mail to spgb@worldsocialism.org for the attention of the chair calling for ‘every new issue of the Socialist Standard to continue to be printed and distributed each month as usual’.

“That the print Standard be discontinued from January 2018 and the online Standard become the Party’s official journal.”

“We are aware that this is likely to be an unpopular motion in some quarters, however socialists are nothing if not realists, and will recognise the grim inevitability of a resolution like this. Print sales are in terminal decline right across the news media, and we have been carrying the print Standard for years at a subsidy of around £1,000 per issue. Whether we can afford it now or in the future is beside the point. It makes no sense to throw good money after bad when a cheap and effective alternative exists online. Many if not most members don’t buy the print magazine, and the general public never see it because it has no commercial outlets whatsoever, nor are most members willing to go out and actively sell it in the streets. This is to say nothing of the time spent by dedicated members at Head Office who have to parcel up the Standards for postage every month, or the growing stacks of unused Standards that are packing out Head Office and doing nothing but adding to the fire risk.  Further, the recent concern about the availability of new layout volunteers and the  intensive training the job requires raises the larger question of whether such work is really the best use of members’ limited time and resources, and whether such a heavy work investment is justifiable or sustainable in the long term. Magazine layout is a tricky job of neatly fitting together a large jigsaw puzzle of elements into a finite space, the exact arrangement of which depends on the variable size of the elements. Modern web layouts don’t have this problem because websites are in effect an infinite space, so that an article will easily fit regardless of length, vastly reducing the work for those involved.

It is understandable that members feel attached to the print edition, which has appeared without fail since 1904, however we think the Party has to recognise that times have changed, and that this particular form of publicising our ideas can be done better, faster and above all cheaper online.”