By Peter Green
The Democratic Socialist Party has a new web page. It can be accessed at http://www.peg.apc.org/~dsp. It aims to be not only an accessible introduction to the views and activities of the DSP, but also an extensive resource of DSP publications, documents, books, pamphlets, press releases, leaflets and study guides.
We aim to have most of the major documents of the DSP available on line. So far there's Feminism & Socialism — Putting the Pieces Together, the DSP's resolution on women (normally available as a 92-page book). Also available is The Election of the Howard Government & the Perspectives of the DSP, the perspectives resolution adopted by the DSP's 17th National Conference in January.
Some of the pamphlets that have been loaded on already include:
- What Is the DSP? An Introduction to the Politics of the Democratic Socialist Party;
- What Socialists Stand For — An Introduction to Resistance and the DSP;
- The Origins of Racism: A Marxist Perspective by Iggy Kim;
- 13 Years of Hard Labor — Lessons of the Accord experience by Pat Brewer and Peter Boyle;
- Abortion: A Woman's Right to Choose. The case for law repeal by Claudine Holt;
- Pornography and Censorship: Silence or choice? By Emma Webb;
- A History of the Democratic Socialist Party: The First Two Decades by John Percy;
- Socialism — The Way Forward by John Percy; and
- Green Politics at an Impasse by Lisa Macdonald.
Also available is the first article in the recently published book Building the Revolutionary Party: An Introduction to James P. Cannon by Dave Holmes et al. The site also lists all the other pamphlets and books published by the DSP, as well as the Marxist classics available from Resistance Bookshops.
Other items will be loaded on from The Activist, the internal information and discussion bulletin of the DSP, which contains reports and documents from conferences and national committee meetings, discussion contributions by members, progress reports on DSP political and organisational campaigns and reprints from Australia and around the world that would be of interest to members.
So far there's the report to the June DSP national committee meeting, The Howard Offensive, the Racist Right and Our Perspectives by Peter Boyle, together with an appendix, Free Speech and the Fight Against the Ultraright, a 1973 article by Malik Miah.
The site also has the two most recent issues of Resist!, the broadsheet produced by the DSP and Resistance, and also included as an insert in Green Left Weekly. Selected items from the Party Campaigner, the weekly national organising newsletter for the DSP and Resistance, will also be posted here.
The site has an extensive number of links to campaigns that the DSP is involved in, Marxist education resources and other political organisations around the world.
There are numerous links of course to the Green Left Weekly site, including the calendar listings, and the DSP site mirrors the Arguments for Socialism column. The Resistance site and Resistance Bookshops site are also accessible from every page of the DSP site.
There are also connections to the Links magazine site, which is now being updated. One article from the latest issue, number 8, by Chow Wei Cheng on Lessons of the East Asian NICs is already loaded on.
There are links also to the Democratic Socialist Electoral League site, which has up-to-date material on the DSEL campaign of Tim Stewart in the Northern Territory election, which won 5.2% of the vote. There are many links to the sites of ASIET (Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor), CISLAC (Committees in Solidarity with Central America and the Caribbean) and other international solidarity campaigns.
The site has links also to the web pages of individual DSP branches, so far set up by Brisbane, Newcastle and Wollongong, and to the sites of individual DSP members and Green Left Weekly supporters. (If you've got a good site that you think should be included, send it in.)
A comprehensive list of other progressive sites in Australia and around the world will be up and running in a week or so, directly linked to the DSP, Green Left Weekly, Links and Resistance pages.
The DSP site will be updated and added to regularly. We'd like to hear feedback from browsers, and your suggestions and wish lists — what would you like to see loaded on next?