Ernest Belfort Bax & James Leigh Joynes, To Our Readers, To-day, Vol.I No.1 (New Series), January 1884, pp.1-2. [1]
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
With the commencement of the new series of TO-DAY, it is important that we, as editors, should explain our position to the public, and state the grounds on which we appeal for their support. For we are embarked on no ordinary enterprise, nor have we any intention of merely following in the track of the thousand and one magazines that have preceded us. TO-DAY will be the exponent of scientific Socialism, and the unsparing assailant of all our modern forms of competitive anarchy. It will point to organisation as the only beacon light that steadily shines before us. For we are not blind to the fact that stagnation is impossible, that events are moving fast, that society is drifting dangerously, and that the rotting anarchy of our present civilisation will be speedily succeeded by the effervescent and explosive anarchy of the future, from which grim consummation nothing but a scientific system of collective and constructive Socialism can by any possibility save us. We do not rest our hopes on a baseless dream of an unattainable Utopia. We maintain that Socialism is the inevitable out-growth of the ages, that it is the necessary result of the historical development which is producing it. Socialism will, therefore, supply the key-note of our magazine. We shall not, however, attempt to stretch all our writers on one Procrustean bed, and our pages will be open to all expression of advanced opinion on social, religious, and political questions of the day, those out of harmony with the purpose of the magazine receiving less prominent positions. Reactionary articles alone will, as a rule, be excluded; but even to these space will be allowed for a definite attack upon a previous article. News, to which the public has at present no access in the press, concerning the thought and movement of Continental Socialism, will be a special monthly feature of our magazine. Literature, science, and art will receive their share of attention; but will not be treated from the point of view which the “cribbed, cabined and confined” mental vision of the ordinary type of contented bourgeois necessitates. On these grounds we confidently commend to an enlightened public our magazine
Vol. I – No.1. New Series.
1. This is the introduction to the New Series of the magazine Today by the new editors Bax and Joynes. Previous issues such as 1883 had no authors names for the articles.
Last updated on 18.5.2005