BY DICK NICHOLS 
It was good to see two letters in last week's Green Left Weekly
question whether the Socialist Alliance has a future. Paul Petit's and
Lev Lafayette's doubts about the project invite us all to think about the
conditions for its growth and survival as a new force in Australian politics.
Lafayette's letter represents a sharp change in tone from his original
Left Links and Workers Online piece (“Another Generation Lost? Doubts
About Socialist Alliance”), to which I replied in GLW #449. Superior
cynicism towards socialist left organisations has been replaced by protestations
that he wants the Socialist Alliance to succeed. However, says Lafayette,
such hope must be tempered by “genuine doubts, backed with historical experience
and theoretical grounding”.
So let's take Lafayette at his word and continue the discussion. What
features, what genetic code, so to speak, will Socialist Alliance need
to develop if it is to survive?
Obviously, if the Socialist Alliance never amounts to more than the
sum of its eight component organisations, it can't be much more than a
rather fancy non-aggression pact. But the Socialist Alliance is already
more than that. With most state launches completed and local group meetings
taking place across the country, it is already attracting many socialists
and working class and movement activists who would never have joined the
individual founding organisations. They value the alliance as a precious
opportunity to build a more powerful voice for socialism and working people's
rights.
Beyond this milieu lies a bigger “broad left”, including many ex-ALP
members, who are looking on with interest, but also with scepticism. And,
of course, to stimulate their doubts, they are being told by the ALP and
its friends that Socialist Alliance is just “the Trots” (Trotskyists).
They worry they've seen this sort of offering before, and they want more
evidence that Socialist Alliance is not just another political billboard,
piece of window-dressing or playing field dominated by the historical passions
of the founding organisations.
This state of affairs means that the first critical condition for expanding
the influence of the Socialist Alliance is that it should really belong
to all its members. Democracy is the bottom line of its survival: any feeling
that decisions are being railroaded through or “deferred to superior bodies”
will be the kiss of death.
This goes well beyond the need to have a formally democratic constitution
and meeting procedures. The culture and spirit of the Socialist Alliance
has to entrench gut aversion to the staples of mainstream parliamentary
politics — manipulation, demagogy and wheeling out the paper membership
on election day for vital votes.
As the alliance grows in a democratic spirit, existing differences will
be set in a new context of cooperation. Discussion will take place before
a bigger audience and against a background of new, shared experiences —
of joint work in movements and of building the alliance itself. That will
be an important process for all of us, from whatever background, to undergo
and reflect upon.
Orientation to parliament
The next most important aspect of the Socialist Alliance's “genetic code”
will be its orientation to political action — to helping build all the
movements of resistance to the crimes of Coalition neo-liberalism and Labor
“social liberalism”. This is the point that Lafayette and Petit, each in
their own way, seem least to understand.
Petit, recoiling from a contrast between “their parliament” and “the
parliament of the streets” made in a recent article by Alison Dellit (GLW
#449), states that this “sort of anti-parliamentary cretinism, that has
come to the fore in the Democratic Socialist Party's discussion of the
Socialist Alliance, shows that the alliance is a continuation of the deep
sectarianism of most left parties, not an end to it. The electoral strategy
of the alliance is just not serious.”
Petit then reminds us of the “long and relatively stable history of
parliamentarism in this country” but is deeply silent about what sort of
electoral strategy he thinks would be serious in this context. Does he
think parliamentary elections should be the priority area of operations
of the socialist movement?
Within the Socialist Alliance it has been clearly understood from day
one that what most counts for the defence and extension of our social,
environmental and democratic rights is changing the balance of forces in
society at large — work in parliament must be subordinate to that goal.
In other words, the Socialist Alliance must continue the age-old battle
of the Australian socialist and communist movements — persistently and
patiently explaining that parliamentary saviours will not, on the questions
that count, deliver. This is why, although the Socialist Alliance is beginning
life as an electoral alliance, its main political work will be in building
the extra-parliamentary movements of resistance.
That stance will mark the Socialist Alliance out from those parties,
like the Greens, which frequently turn up to demonstrations that others
build to seduce the voters and get their photos taken by the corporate
media. By contrast, in voting for a Socialist Alliance candidate supporters
will not just be voting for a more honest and dedicated sort of parliamentarian,
but for a qualitatively different kind of politics.
First and foremost, Socialist Alliance candidates (who are pledged,
by the way, to receive no more dollars than the average worker) would utilise
parliament as a platform from which to champion the need for and viability
of the socialist alternative to capitalist politics. It isn't too difficult
to imagine what a competent and fiery Socialist Alliance MP could do with
the HIH and One-Tel collapses. Nor what the political and social impact
would be of having Socialist Alliance MPs touring far and wide in support
of a popular campaign to abolish the GST and replace it with increased
taxation of the rich.
Another point of difference from the existing parties will be that the
parliamentarians won't be running the show, as is the case of all those
parties for which parliament is the main game. It will take a lot of explaining
to the obtuse Australian media, but the real leaders of the Socialist Alliance
will be those elected by its democratic conferences.
Alliance program
All these points are related to the issue of the Socialist Alliance program,
whose purpose Lafayette has difficulty in understanding. He claims that
the Socialist Alliance draft program “lacks even the basic criteria of
being socialist”, but doesn't bother to explain why. Yet for any organisation
committed to the struggle for socialism the only program that counts is
the one for which you agitate, fight and mobilise. The value of that program
is measured by the real social and political dynamic that collective effort
creates.
That's why the Socialist Alliance program is rightly pitched at providing
a direct, principled, working-class answer to the felt issues of the day
in Australian politics — unjust taxation, privatisation of public assets
and services, destruction of union rights, rising sexism and racism, discrimination
against indigenous Australians, greenhouse gas emissions and the appalling
cruelty of this country's refugee policy.
Instead of lofty comment about the inadequately socialist nature of
this stance, wouldn't it be more useful if Lafayette explained how this
draft program could concretely be improved?
Some may think that the main condition for the success and survival
of the Socialist Alliance is a decent vote in the forthcoming federal elections,
maybe a figure like 4-5%. However, political realism counsels caution.
We know that the previously fragmented socialist left was in no condition
to test out the real depth of support for the socialist cause at the ballot
box, but it would be highly unwise, on analogy with very different countries
like Scotland, Portugal, or France, to set specific thresholds of success
and failure. While socialist candidates have scored up to 12% in recent
by-elections, we simply can't yet say what the extent of the “market” for
socialism is in Australia at the present time nor what result should please
or disappoint.
In reality, irrespective of the result the Socialist Alliance achieves
at its first electoral outing, the most important step has already been
taken — its founding. Now the task for all of us who call ourselves socialists
is to build it — to make it a reality in the suburbs, in the workplaces,
on the campuses and in the high schools.
The Socialist Alliance welcomes all those who are in broad agreement
with its aims and objectives. Its chances of success will be improved if
those like Petit and Lafayette, professed socialists if I am not mistaken,
join and participate.
No doubt they would continue to have their criticisms — like many others.
But like everyone else in the alliance, they would have their chance to
have their say and to propose improvements. Most of all, they could be
certain of being part of the only serious force in this country that is
going to speak out boldly for socialism and struggle at the coming elections
and beyond.
[Dick Nichols is an acting national convenor of the
Socialist Alliance.]
