Those who founded the Socialist Party of Great Britain in 1904 regarded themselves as the equivalent in Britain of the current, within what was then seen as the international socialist movement represented by the parties of the Second International, that was committed to an intransigent Marxist class-struggle approach and opposed to reformism, revising Marx's ideas and the participation of socialists in a capitalist government.

Between 1904 and 1915 a number of articles and speeches taking this approach were translated, mainly from French, and published in the Socialist Standard. All are reproduced here and give a picture of the views, on such issues of the time as reform or revolution, patriotism or anti-patriotism, direct action or political action, not only of the Socialist Party of Great Britain but of those on the radical wing of pre-WWI Social-Democracy generally.