The Socialist Party has to update our IT and data storage system, and is therefore launching a special appeal to raise £15,000 from members and supporters. This is necessary now because our current system, now over ten years old, is no longer supported and will shortly cease to function.
We will be moving to a cloud-based server, and need to update the PCs and software at our national headquarters to complete this move.
The link between our ‘IT and data storage system’ and the struggle for the working class to take power from the capitalist elite who offer nothing but crisis and misery isn’t necessarily immediately obvious.
But without these necessary tools, our party cannot play its vital role in helping to cohere the working class around a programme for socialism.
Today, with new forces currently joining the trade unions, our tasks include helping them to become consistent fighters to transform their unions and build a new workers’ party, as well as winning them to the struggle for a new society.
Anyone who has spent time on the websites of the Socialist Party and Socialism Today, and on socialistworld.net, will know that vast archives of Marxist analysis can be found there, going back over decades and drawing on the accumulated experience of working-class struggle. It is not for nothing that the revolutionary party is called the ‘memory bank’ of the working class. While history never repeats itself exactly, the collective experience of the working class in struggle casts light on today’s and tomorrow’s challenges. To produce, publish and protect for posterity those articles requires the efficient storage and management of data – and we strive to do this to the best of our ability within the limits of capitalism.
Keeping the wheels of our party’s internal functions turning is also important. This includes backing up and supporting our members on the ground, in the unions, workplaces, campuses, colleges and communities. Our ability to produce a weekly paper, a monthly journal, up-to-date leaflets and posters, and maintain a printshop is dependent on having functioning IT systems.
What will we get for the money? The £15,000 comprises a necessary upgrade of IT hardware at the national headquarters, the design and creation of the new system, and the migration of our data from the old system to the new.
The Socialist Party is also running a campaign to raise the regular income we generate from membership subscription payments by asking every member if they can up the amount they pay. There are many reasons why this is needed: funding the running costs of the new IT system; the need to take on new party organisers in our national centre and on a regional basis; inflation! And more. These regular payments are in many ways even more important. Get in touch if you can raise your subs – or want to join and start paying one!
