Introduction to "The Left" - Solidarity (Scotland)

PDF courtesy of Splits and Fusions Archive.

Introduction

Over the past three Years the Scottish 'Solidarity' group has extended its circle of sympathisers, pushed up the circulation of its magazine, and from being solely a Clydeside organisation now has active groups of sympathisers in other centres such as Aberdeen. This support has been mainly confined to two groupings: members of the remnants of the Scottish peace movement among whom Solidarity have been active, and industrial workers such as some of the Glasgow busmen who have been aided in their struggles with the management and reactionary union officials by Solidarity. Lesser support has also been obtained from those disenchanted with other left-wing group, from students and from tenants in struggle.

We are living at a time when ideological clarification is more necessary than ever before, for all official ideologies of East and West (and of the rulers of the under-developed countries) are being revealed as totally bankrupt, destined to lead men into greater forms of domination and ultimately to catastrophe. There is a compelling need for knowledge about our society - what it is and how it has evolved - what are the basis and functions of its dominant ideas etc. - in order that we find areas in which meaningful activity is possible and methods to which those who control our lives are sensitive.

In trying to show up the real nature of these ideologies, 'Solidarity' found itself hamstrung before it began, in that those who were sympathetic to the organisation in various degrees had a woeful ignorance of basic political knowledge and apart fron sporadic attempts by the Aberdeen group to outline the theories of socialist thinkers and socialist methods of tackling problems from Vietnam to Greece, no attempt has been made to remedy this.

This pamphlet, then, tries in an elementary and sketchy way, to outline the ideas of the various socialist groups, their main thinkers and historical fates. To do this without criticising them, in the hope that their usefulness will be evaluated by the readers themselves. A limited edition of the pamphlet will be distributed to those who have sympathies with us in the hope that they will better understand the total criticisms of our society put forward not only by ourselves, but also by other groups of socialists -who are trying to replace our society, based on unjust distribution of wealth and the robbing of ordinary people of control over their lives, by one in which these evils and the related ones of war and militarism will no longer exist.