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We have today a double task of spreading socialist ideas and developing a Marxist cadre. In a sense we have to go back a hundred years to the period of the First or Second International, to the time of the establishment of the first mass workers' parties. But we have to do so bearing in mind that the 20th century happened.

That means first of all that in building new workers' parties, mass socialist traditions have to be revived, not invented from scratch, and that we can base ourselves on the best traditions of the workers' movement in each country. Secondly, we have to take into the new parties the programmatic lessons of the last hundred years: that is the specific role of Marxism.

What we are faced with is a double task, not two separate tasks. Theoretically the two aspects can be separated. But in practice there is no Chinese wall between them. As we work to build new parties on a socialist basis we seek simultaneously to spread the influence of Marxism within these parties and not simply to build a Marxist faction. Rather than starting from a battle over definitions (party / organisation / tendency / current / platform), we have to start by posing the question: what is the role of the International Socialist Movement within the Scottish Socialist Party?

We are not building an organisation to intervene independently in the class struggle; our role is to intervene in the "class struggle based broad socialist party with a strong revolutionary core in its leadership" that is the Scottish Socialist Party. Of course we recruit to the International Socialist Movement, but recruitment is not and never has been an end in itself. We aim to recruit and train the best activists of the Scottish Socialist Party in order to assist the Scottish Socialist Party itself to evolve in a Marxist direction.

We do not content ourselves with building a broad party in which we are the revolutionary wing. We are not trying to resurrect the Labour Party pre-Kinnock and Blair. We should not, by the way, underestimate the challenge that faces us. Unlike most of the other major European countries, Marxism has never been a mass force in Britain, even if in certain areas of Scotland it had stronger roots than elsewhere.

We want the ideas of Marxism to become the ideas of the Scottish Socialist Party, but that is a process not an act. It is a question of helping the present and future members of the Scottish Socialist Party to arrive at Marxist conclusions through their own experience and through discussion. A mass party even a small mass party, based on Marxism would bear very little resemblance to the relatively small revolutionary groups who have represented Marxism over the last several decades.

In the first place it would be pluralist. One of the most telling passages in the material produced by the comrades of the faction is: "The Scottish Socialist Party is not a revolutionary party. The interviews in the SSV with some of the international visitors brought out their impressions that this was a party that involved people from different traditions." (Review of the Scottish Socialist Party conference).

Yes, we agree the Scottish Socialist Party is not a revolutionary party. But that's not because it involves people from different traditions. Indeed, it is unlikely that we will ever build revolutionary parties anywhere on any serious scale which do NOT involve people from different traditions.

Moreover, even a party dominated by the ideas of Marxism will at any point in time contain many people who are not Marxists. That should not pose us a serious problem. We have demonstrated in the past an ability to recruit, especially to Scottish Militant Labour, on the basis of campaigns and activity and to educate comrades in Marxism afterwards.

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