[This article is an edited version of a talk presented to the DSP-Resistance educational conference on the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, held in Sydney, January 1998.]
As we know, the essential instrument of socialist politics is the socialist workers party. And the most essential weapon or tool of such a party is its newspaper. A history of left political parties — in the West at least — is also inescapably a history of the party press.