BY DICK NICHOLS
[The
following is an abridged version of a talk presented to the International
Socialist Organisation's Marxism 2002 conference held in Melbourne, September
6-8. Dick Nichols is a member of the national executive of the Democratic
Socialist Party and a national co-convenor of the Socialist Alliance.]
Each and every time a revolutionary socialist organisation like the
DSP or the ISO meets, a question always hangs over the gathering, a question
so obvious that there's hardly ever any need to pronounce it — how best
can we strengthen the socialist, the Marxist, cause in the coming period?
Ninety-nine times out of 100 the answer to that question is simple —
by strengthening ourselves. Discussion then passes on to improving revolutionary
work in the movements, the unions and the communities, to sales of the
press and to the distribution of literature, and to educating ourselves
better for revolutionary work.
But there are rare times when that natural-enough answer is not the
right answer to the question, or when we have to ask what “strengthening
ourselves” really means, when unearthing the right answer requires more
thought, more investigation. Who is “ourselves”, after all?
This is especially the case when there is a rise in interest in socialism,
or a vaguer search by sections of workers and students and other parts
of society in general for an alternative to standard capitalist politics.
Then it's our responsibility to ask what impact the answer we give will
have on them — those curious but still sceptical human beings with which
our socialist cause will be built or it won't be built at all.
More specifically, what impact will that answer have on our ability
as socialists and Marxists to link up with the natural leaders of working
class, community and movement struggles, to convince them that the Marxist
viewpoint is necessary and valid and, by strengthening this connection
— this vital link — help us build a broader social and political base for
socialism?
This is the case in Australia today. There are scores, if not hundreds,
of working-class militants who are disgusted with the ALP, and we have
to be sure that we have lost no opportunity to help them pass permanently
out of the camp of Laborist politics and into that of socialism.
There are hundreds if not thousands of opponents of capitalism, who
appreciate left unity and who would think more about joining if the socialist
pole could be strengthened. Many of these are already members, if largely
still passive members, of the Socialist Alliance.
DSP NE proposal
The national executive of the DSP, basing itself on an analysis of the
present political conjuncture in Australia and on the experience of participating
in the building of the Socialist Alliance — and after quite a deal of agonising
— is convinced that we cannot, if we are to serve the socialist cause as
well as we possibly can, just give the same old answer to the question:
how to strengthen the socialist cause today?
If we are to “capture” as many of the potential recruits to socialism
that are out there as we possibly can, we can only do it by strengthening
our best recruiting instrument — and that's the Socialist Alliance.
So for us the answer to the question “what is to be done?” certainly
cannot be: “Just build the DSP!”, dropping the Socialist Alliance. That
is discounted from the outset and would be a criminally sectarian error
which would toss away many of the invaluable gains that have been achieved.
But nor can it be: “Carry on building the DSP together with the Socialist
Alliance”, because our experience of the last 18 months is that neither
job can be done properly.
We are convinced that our answer has to be: “Use the accumulated resources
and strength of the DSP to help strengthen the Socialist Alliance as the
primary organisation for socialism in this country.”
That's the essential political meaning of the letter sent to the Socialist
Alliance national executive by the DSP NE on September 3 (available at
<http://www.dsp.org.au>). The DSP
national executive is convinced — and we hope to convince DSP members who
will vote on this proposal at our 20th party congress at the end of this
year — that through ceasing to build the DSP as a public organisation we
can help construct the Socialist Alliance as a bigger, more powerful alternative
for socialism in this country.
Now that it's out in the light of day, it's clear — and confirmed by
the overwhelmingly positive reaction it has received — that this is a step
that has been crying out to be taken. And we hope our example will lead
other affiliates to review their own relation to the Socialist Alliance
project.
What will happen if the DSP NE proposal is accepted at our party congress?
I quote from the letter: “If a majority of our members accept our proposal
the DSP will cease to operate as a public organisation and begin to operate
as an internal tendency in the Socialist Alliance from January 2003. Our
members will, from that point, be building and recruiting to the Socialist
Alliance rather than the DSP.
“We will then commence negotiations with the Socialist Alliance about
taking as much of the political and organisational assets we have built
up through the DSP into the Socialist Alliance as is possible. We undertake
to pursue this process within the democratic framework of the Socialist
Alliance and in a thoroughly open, consultative and inclusive manner.
“The objective of our tendency will be to pursue the transition while
ensuring that the gains of our three decades of work as a party will not
be lost to the left as a whole.
“We are confident that this will be a big step forward for left regroupment
in Australia and that we will be able to agree, in stages, on concrete
steps forward for the Socialist Alliance. This is based on the substantial
political consensus and comradely collaboration achieved since the founding
of the alliance.”
What would be the purpose of the Democratic Socialist tendency? We do
not envisage it as a permanent faction, to which we would be seeking to
recruit people from within the Socialist Alliance. Rather: “Our proposal
would make the Socialist Alliance and its bodies the political framework
governing the work of former DSP members and the organisation that they
would work to build. Within this framework the goal of the Democratic Socialist
tendency would be to make itself redundant in step with the further development
of the alliance.”
In short, the tendency would be a construction tool for the Socialist
Alliance and not a permanent repository of historical DSP positions.
Revolutionary organisation
Now I would like to explain why the DSP NE thinks this “shock move” of
ours is practicable, why we have made this proposal now and how we think
the process of strengthening the alliance can best proceed.
The first question that must occur to anyone who is acquainted with
the DSP and the Socialist Alliance is: “The DSP aspires to be a revolutionary
socialist organisation. Yet how can you possibly dream that this alliance,
whose platform is just a series of immediate demands, can be transformed
into a revolutionary organisation, supplanting the DSP?”
Let me begin my answer to this question with a question. How will the
socialist cause in this country achieve most rapid increase in relevance
and political profile?
It certainly won't be by building the left of the ALP, or of the Greens
(although socialists will always seek to collaborate as closely as possible
with good people in those organisations).
And it won't be by the growth of any one of the affiliates within the
alliance at the expense of any other affiliate. Already the alliance enjoys
greater visibility and presence than any of the affiliates. It is the face
of socialist unity that has given it this status.
This is the first part of the answer: the natural growth path for the
socialist cause in this country is to strengthen what we've already got,
to build on what we've already built.
But what about its political basis? Here we have to grasp the real,
operational foundation of the alliance, as opposed to its formal basis
as adopted at its founding conference.
I can do no better than quoting the DSP NE letter on this point: “Our
collective experience in building the Socialist Alliance has revealed its
actual political basis. There is a significant amount of shared socialist
program among the Socialist Alliance affiliates. While this is not formally
outlined as a program of the Socialist Alliance, the founding documents
refer to the fact that there is more common ground than that sketched out
in the initial Socialist Alliance platform.
“This has been confirmed in practice by the actual experience of having
to take a stand on such testing issues as the `war on terrorism', Palestine
and the current attacks on the most militant union leaderships in Australia.”
This last, particularly the offensive by AMWU national secretary Doug
Cameron against the elected Victorian AMWU leadership, was a particularly
important test for the alliance. We could easily have taken refuge in that
old coward's formula that parties don't interfere in “internal union business”,
but that would have destroyed our credibility with some of the best working
class fighters in this country at a stroke.
Our experience has also shown that, while the alliance doesn't have
an in-principle position in favour or against the disaffiliation of unions
from the ALP, we have been able to relate concretely to union politics
and can be confident of finding a correct case-by-case orientation, based
on the most important principle of all, union democracy and the reclaiming
of the unions by the membership.
The level of collaboration achieved has only been possible because of
implicitly shared program. Had the Progressive Labour Party, for example,
joined the alliance that would have become even clearer, because it is
highly likely that the PLP would have been on the other side of the fence
on many of the issues we have had to face.
As soon as we can manage, the DSP will draft a popularly written socialist
perspectives document, which we believe would make explicit the real, operating
basis of the Socialist Alliance. We will submit it for discussion and adoption
by the May 2003 second alliance national conference.
This document will make clear that we are looking to build the alliance
as a revolutionary socialist and not a left-social democratic organisation.
But it will be written in the language of ordinary life and struggle and
not in “Cominternese”.
Nor will it be a complete revolutionary program. As the DSP NE letter
says: “Our experience in working together surely confirms that left regroupment
and unity will come about, and can only come about, on the basis of our
rising to the objective challenges that are being posed by an intensifying
class struggle and movement of anti-capitalist resistance. It will be our
success in meeting these challenges — including the challenge of giving
concrete and credible form to the socialist alternative at every turn —
that will provide and strengthen the programmatic basis of the alliance.”
This process will also set existing differences in the right framework.
“In this context, existing differences among affiliates will have increasingly
less weight and the grounds for the maintenance of the existing minimalist
organisational form of the Socialist Alliance increasingly less operative.
How important our existing differences really are and what organisational
form they really justify should be tested out by serious debate in the
context of ongoing joint work within the framework of the alliance.”
Behind this analysis lies our conviction that at the political centre
of the alliance is a revolutionary core, a working-class core, an internationalist
core. The affiliates certainly don't agree on everything, we certainly
need to discuss thoroughly and in an informed way — and not as an exercise
in set-piece battles — many of our differences, but these discussions will
be set in the existing context of rising class confrontation and greater
opportunities for our side, opportunities which we must gear ourselves
up to meet.
Why now?
Why do we propose to take this step now? The answer to this question comes
in three parts.
Firstly, because the alliance is falling increasingly short of its potential.
There is, for example, a weird contradiction between how well known the
Socialist Alliance is and the joke of a “national apparatus” with which
we have to do its work. Examples of untapped potential abound, especially
in rural and regional Australia. We have 200 members “at large” in NSW
alone. Some 10 days ago I received a call from a comrade in Castlemaine
who wants to help organise for the alliance in the Castlemaine-Bendigo
region.
We don't have basic literature on a whole range of issues. Our policy
development process is slow, at the same time as interested people are
not getting organised to participate. What things are done well usually
have to be done as emergency operations (witness the Victorian electoral
registration campaign).
The longer this goes on, the worse it will get. Then we will not be
even be able to make use of our electoral potential, because that is increasingly
linked to the work Socialist Alliance does in the sphere of campaigns and
protests, the sphere where we are most failing.
Secondly, because there has to be a thorough discussion and debate on
the DSP NE proposal within the DSP itself. Contrary to the view of an autocratic,
top-down DSP peddled by some, the DSP NE proposal has to be thoroughly
discussed by our party's members and a lot of DSP comrades will have questions,
doubts and even counter-positions. They will, for example, ask: “Are we,
the DSP, about to throw 30 years of accumulated effort away on a piece
of wishful thinking? What's the guarantee that the strengthening of left
unity we're envisaging won't fail like the attempts at left regroupment
we were involved with in the 1980s?”
Thirdly, because what we propose cannot possibly work without a thorough,
clarifying debate involving all Socialist Alliance members. We will need
until the May 2003 conference (and beyond) for relevant documents, amendments
to constitutions and practical questions around asset transfer to be worked
out.
Moreover, this time is also necessary because everyone has to be convinced
from their own reflection that what is envisaged is a real turn to strengthen
the socialist cause and neither a “DSP takeover”, as some bizarrely refer
to it (when the DSP has a maximum of six people on a Socialist Alliance
national executive of 17), nor an attempt to capitalise on real or imaginary
divisions in other organisations (when we want every last socialist and
left-winger to participate in the Socialist Alliance).
In short, for the restructuring of a bigger common home to take place,
as many as possible will have to feel secure that they have a space.
Next steps
Where should we go from here? Firstly, let's construct a real, serious
debate on the entire left, and not just among Socialist Alliance affiliate
organisations and members.
Green Left Weekly will open its pages
to this debate. We will propose to carry it on the Socialist Alliance web
site. We would also hope that Socialist Alternative, the Socialist Party
and the Communist Party engage in the debate.
Secondly, let's all put much more effort into giving the Socialist Alliance
profile, including covering its (often under-reported) success stories,
such as the Western Australian trade union forum and the public meeting
done jointly with the Skilled Six Committee last week.
Thirdly, we need boosted effort in forthcoming election campaigns, even
in the knowledge that the first port of call for most disaffected voters
will remain the Greens in the short term. However, the Tasmanian election
campaign showed us how election campaigns are invaluable to opening the
road to the expansion of the alliance as a truly national organisation,
with a presence beyond the capital cities to which the left has traditionally
been confined.
Lastly, let's see more joint work by Socialist Alliance affiliates and
members. The DSP will argue for greater use of Socialist Alliance caucuses
in the unions and in the movements. These, of course, can't be imposed
on anyone and their decisions can't be binding. Nor, in many cases, should
they replace broader left caucuses. The important point is for us all to
strive to carry out joint work and to achieve a united approach.
The DSP NE is convinced that with this approach most of the existing
differences will disappear. Where they don't we'll just have to agree to
disagree and await the test of experience.
Comrades, Australian left politics isn't like European left politics,
marked by general strikes and millions in the streets. But our discussion
here is common to all the revolutionary left in the advanced capitalist
world. Everyone is discussing forms of regroupment. That opening exists
here too, not in the form of a collapse of mass working-class support for
the ALP but in that of a break of important and precious sections of the
working class vanguard from the ALP, combined with the growth of an important
layer of anti-capitalist activists who like and appreciate left unity.
In this context we should be wary of the argument that left regroupment
requires a certain predetermined level of mass movement activity and break
from social-democracy. While this is true in the sense that a rise in revolt
and political disaffection is a precondition for reviewing old positions
and tactics, it's not true to say that we can only seriously talk about
left regroupment once the class struggle has reached some preconceived
level of intensity.
More likely, indeed, the truth is the other way around. The missing
link in driving the class struggle and the mass movement forward in this
country is the existence of a sufficiently strong, sufficiently unified
revolutionary socialist organisation with real — if still minority — implantation
in the unions, the movements and the communities and with the capacity
and authority to provide leadership and support to those in struggle.
The DSP NE believes we have a chance, through channelling our resources
into radically strengthening the Socialist Alliance as the site of left
unity, to help build just such an organisation. We fervently hope that
we can persuade as many as possible to join us in that effort.
From Green Left Weekly, September 18, 2002.
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