BY JOHN PERCY
[The following letter was sent on October 22 by Democratic Socialist
Party national secretary John Percy on behalf of the DSP political committee
to the national executive of the International Socialist Organisation.
It was in response to the ISO NE's letter of September 29 to the DSP NE,
reprinted in GLW #513.]
Dear comrades,
thank you for your letter outlining some of your worries and the issues
you think should be flagged following the DSP national executive's letter
announcing the proposals we were presenting to our membership regarding
the Socialist Alliance, namely that next year the DSP cease to build itself
publicly and instead put all its efforts into publicly building and strengthening
the Socialist Alliance.
Our NE proposals were unanimously endorsed at a meeting of the DSP national
committee October 5-7, so the discussion continues amongst our members
in the branches leading up to our congress on December 28-January 1, where
a decision will be made.
Of course, the discussion is continuing in a wider arena too, both in
the Socialist Alliance itself, and in the rest of the left in Australia
and among some of the left internationally, and this is enriching the process.
Thus we welcome your participation in that discussion, and also welcome
the tone and the approach of your comrades, both in the letter from your
national executive and in the contributions of your comrades who have participated
so far in the various public forums discussing the issues.
We also appreciate and accept your suggestion for leadership-to-leadership
meetings between our organisations at the local level.
The ability to discuss in a comradely and constructive way, and the
increasing joint activity we are able to organise, itself reflects the
progress already made through the Socialist Alliance in changing the shape
and the atmosphere of the left in Australia.
As the discussion continues, I think we're finding that there's increasing
clarity and greater agreement on many points, not just between the DSP
and ISO, but also among all the initial affiliates of the Socialist Alliance,
and the activists who've joined but who don't belong to one of the existing
groups.
This letter will try to make an initial response to some of the concerns
raised in your letter, but of course, this discussion is very much an ongoing
process, as is the process of building a stronger socialist alternative
itself.
Nevertheless, the DSP feels that this discussion is becoming increasingly
urgent, even more so in the wake of the Greens victory in the Cunningham
by-election.
We are now at a turning point. Our proposals, which were based on a
realistic assessment of the political situation, become even more relevant,
and it's up to all of us to ask, what next for the Socialist Alliance?
Does the alliance have a future as primarily a narrow electoral project?
Is there actually any relevant alternative to the perspective of strengthening
and building the alliance as a left regroupment process?
Socialist
Firstly, I think there's increasing agreement that any new regroupment,
any new party, should be a socialist party. And, although it shouldn't
need to be said after all that's happened, it needs to be a party outside,
built as an alternative, to the ALP here, and social-democratic formations
around the world.
There are many issues to be discussed and debated about how to do it,
but that will be a debate within a socialist framework, a framework of
building an alternative.
Of course, we will always look to engage in united work with the Greens
and the ALP left on specific issues but the precondition for drawing these
and similar forces into any stable, ongoing alliance favourable to socialism
is a strengthening of the independent socialist pole itself.
Perhaps we'll be able to link up with them at future stages of the struggle,
but comrades who are wedded to a tactic of staying within the ALP, or who
think that we should all join the Greens, have very different projects,
and thus are engaging in very different debates.
New alliances and regroupments around the world are building not only
on positive experiences, and the potential seen in the new movements, but
also on the basis of negative experiences, failures. Here we've seen the
failure of the Progressive Labour Party, and other purely “real Labour”
attempts.
In New Zealand the Alliance included major non-socialist components,
and the issue of socialism wasn't pushed, and they were also weighed down
with a largely electoralist perspective, so although some wanted it to
go further, they never succeeded in developing that and it has now collapsed.
The positive experiences we are all looking to — in Scotland, England,
Italy, France, Denmark, Portugal, for example — have all been clearly socialist
alliances or regroupments.
Revolutionary
Secondly, we're also for a revolutionary organisation. We are still for,
most emphatically, “the building of a mass revolutionary socialist party
in the Bolshevik tradition as a prerequisite for a successful seizure of
power by the working class”, as the ISO letter to the DSP affirms. It's
easy to agree with the ISO on that. Our proposal is not a retreat from
a revolutionary perspective by us in any way.
But how to build that party? What is the best way to get there?
It's not an even, simple, linear process. It requires flexibility, and
we can expect leaps, and have to grasp opportunities when they come — they
don't stay for ever. Alex Callinicos recognises this in his article “Regroupment,
realignment, and the revolutionary left” when he states that “the history
of the workers' movement shows very clearly that mass revolutionary parties
do not develop through a linear process in which a small Marxist group
gradually grows bigger and bigger by recruiting more and more members.
Like history more generally, the development of revolutionary parties involves
qualitative leaps and sharp breaks.”
Your letter insists that the Socialist Alliance “is not, and should
not, be transformed into a revolutionary party”. Certainly, we're not proposing
that, and not proposing that the Socialist Alliance immediately work at
drafting a revolutionary Marxist program or declaration, and certainly
there'll be no attempt to adopt the program of any of the revolutionary
groups that came together initially to form the alliance.
But at the same time, there is sufficient agreement, among the groups,
and most of the members of the Socialist Alliance, for a stronger vision
statement, a step forward from the specific platform of demands and policy
positions we already have. There is widespread agreement that “another
world is possible”, indeed that a fundamental social change is necessary.
So we would be opposed to any affirmation that the SA is just a reformist,
left Labour party. It is socialist, a Socialist Alliance. And we should
not declare it doesn't have a revolutionary outlook.
Certainly there are many members of the alliance who do not see themselves
as revolutionaries and for whom “socialism” expresses an ideal or aspiration
more than a consciously articulated historical project based on a revolutionary
strategy. But over the past 18 months the alliance membership as a whole
has stood, with hardly any exception, on the right side of the class divide
when confronted with the concrete challenges of politics.
That is, there has been nothing “reformist” or “centrist” about the
practice of the alliance and nobody within the alliance membership has
complained that it has been too radical or extreme. Some collapse into
reformism or opportunism is indeed hard to envisage at this stage.
We in the DSP say that it is this fact that makes higher levels of unity
both possible and necessary. A real opportunity to strengthen the socialist
pole exists and must be seized.
Of course, how a qualitatively stronger revolutionary party develops
beyond this promising point of departure will be a process, and none of
us have the road map right now. It will develop through leaps and take
different forms, but we're confident that building a stronger Socialist
Alliance is a step in the right direction.
Moreover, we agree with you that real struggles in future will bring
discussions about reform or revolution to the fore, but it's most beneficial
if they take place within a stronger organisation increasingly united in
real activity against the system.
A key advance, which I think we are moving toward, would be for all
the affiliated groups to recognise openly that we all have a revolutionary
perspective, even though there are political differences. All the groups
that came together in early 2001 to launch the Socialist Alliance state
that they have a revolutionary perspective.
The DSP recognises the revolutionary perspectives of our partner affiliates
in the Socialist Alliance. When all the other affiliates make a similar
recognition it will register the progress we've made in moving away from
the sectarian past when all the Marxist groups asserted that only they
had “the one true revolutionary program”, and everyone else was centrist,
reformist or Stalinist.
Nature of the Socialist Alliance
Thirdly, the Socialist Alliance is not just an “electoral united front”.
We can have a useful discussion about exactly how we should use the concept
of “united front”.
The DSP would not restrict it to the original usage of Lenin and Trotsky,
who advocated it as a tactic for a communist party with a certain mass
base in approaching a reformist party with a larger base among the working
class, with the purpose of winning the working class ranks while engaging
in a common struggle against the class enemy. (For example, as elaborated
at the Fourth Congress of the Communist International.)
The term has developed a more general application, as unity in action
that can unite varied forces, parties, unions, other organisations and
individual activists, in action for a common objective, for example building
an action against war.
Be that as it may, from the start the Socialist Alliance has had more
of the attributes of a party than of a united front. Most people would
regard the act of standing in elections as being a key function and distinguishing
feature of a party. (Some would see it as the only function, and of course
all of us in the Socialist Alliance reject that type of party.)
Our structure reflects both the origins of the Socialist Alliance as
an alliance of the initial affiliates, and its ongoing development as a
membership organisation, where the members democratically discuss and decide
policy and activity, and elect leadership bodies.
Moreover, there was agreement at the initial meetings, from all comrades,
that building and intervening in the campaigns and the struggles was also
part of the alliance's role. We are “not just parliamentarist” was a frequent
affirmation by all of us. There was no dissent from that.
Within this context, the Socialist Alliance platform retains all its
importance, as a summary of shared policy and as a guide to action on the
political issues of the day. It should be strengthened in the light of
the challenges with which these confront the alliance and made as appealing
as possible to all those who come across the alliance. There's no argument
there.
There's also agreement, I'm sure, that the Socialist Alliance should
educate, proselytise for socialism, and recruit people to the Socialist
Alliance on the basis of socialist ideas and our vision for a better future.
From the start ours was not just “a platform that substantially embraced
the best of `old Labor values'”.
Furthermore, we're not just looking to win those disillusioned with
Labor. From the start there was full agreement that a key part of our potential
constituency were the newly radicalising young people active in the movement
against neo-liberal globalisation, and now in the refugee and anti-war
campaigns.
The best of “old Labor” values was not enough to win them, and would
be seen as not enough. We're building a left alternative to Labor, but
a socialist alternative to Labor, and the Greens as well. Isn't this need
effectively acknowledged in your letter when you stress that you are not
rejecting discussions about a broad left party out of hand?
Of course, while insisting on the necessity of a socialist alternative,
we also have to learn a popular, effective way to present our ideas, a
way of convincing people in today's movements, using a language that doesn't
exclude new activists. We think there's been a common appreciation of this
need among all of us in the Socialist Alliance.
We have to learn to use common events and experiences to explain deeper
truths about the running of capitalism, avoiding jargon and rigid sounding
explanations. However, it should not be a “dumbing down” so that we vacate
the space of fundamental social change, feel embarrassed for presenting
a socialist perspective, while reformists and utopians of all stripes aggressively
spout nonsense as though it's something new or sensible.
We need a clear alternative, both in the Socialist Alliance and our
regroupment efforts, as well as when we participate in gatherings such
as the social forums. After all, hundreds of thousands of young activists
around the world have been motivated to act and insist that “another world
is possible”. And we as socialists have some initial understanding of what
that “other world” must consist of, and some lessons and experiences to
apply to the very difficult struggle to reach that goal.
Unilateral?
Your letter characterises our proposal as a “unilateral” act by our party.
However, we should be very clear that there are two separate processes
here, even though the discussion as a whole about strengthening the Socialist
Alliance is very much intertwined.
Firstly, the decision about what the DSP does, whether it functions
publicly as a party or not, is a decision for our members, for the DSP,
for our congress discussion and vote.
Then, anything after that would be within the democratic framework and
structure of the Socialist Alliance. DSP members in the Socialist Alliance
have functioned, and will continue to function, according to the democratic
decisions of the Socialist Alliance. There will not be anything unilateral
about that.
When all options are considered, it couldn't be any other way. Consider,
for example, the democratic rights of DSP members. They are deciding on
the future functioning of the DSP, a party in which they have invested
their lives. Should we be an open party, or just function as a tendency
inside the Socialist Alliance?
We have also been open and frank about our proposal, letting the rest
of the Socialist Alliance know what we were thinking about at the very
earliest stage of our discussion process. How else should it have been
done? Have secret top level discussions with the leadership of one or more
of the affiliated groups? How would the DSP members feel? How would the
rest of the members of the Socialist Alliance feel?
Nor do we in the DSP agree with your characterisation of our proposal
as constituting a “forced march”. That suggests we're going to be compelling
other members and affiliates within the alliance to do our bidding — in
some inexplicable way. However, if adopted, the only compulsion involved
will be the pressure on ourselves as DSP members to carry out the congress
decision — to strengthen the alliance, strictly in line with its platform,
constitution and democratic culture.
Of course, we hope our new initiative will be followed by other groups.
Then it wouldn't be regarded as “unilateral”, but as a pioneering, generous
move by the DSP in the interests of building a stronger socialist movement.
We don't deny that this move, if agreed to by DSP members, will put
pressure on other groups in the Socialist Alliance to follow suit, but
only because it would be seen as a logical step and a useful advance for
building the Socialist Alliance. However, it would only be moral pressure.
The members of other groups will of course have to make those decisions
for themselves.
We would also stress again that the role we envisage for our tendency
within the alliance would be as an alliance-building tool, and certainly
not as a caucus which would meet automatically to discuss each and every
question in the alliance's political life. In this way we will strive to
set an example of how a tendency can be a loyal and committed builder of
the alliance while still promoting debate on specific questions as needed
and generating proposals on any issues that demand them.
Ultimatum?
The answer outlined here also holds against the accusation that we are
presenting an “ultimatum” to the Socialist Alliance, made both in your
letter and in other discussions with your comrades. This word sounds sinister,
given that “ultimatum” is defined in the Oxford dictionary as a “final
proposal or statement of terms, rejection of which by opposite party may
lead to end of harmonious relations, declaration of war” etc. But again,
the proposal is being put before DSP members for decision; it's not something
at this point for the Socialist Alliance to accept or reject, where rejection
would bring some sort of retaliation/action by the DSP.
It would be an ultimatum if the DSP had presented a list of proposals
for policy or action within the Socialist Alliance and threatened some
action — withdrawal from the alliance, for example — if our proposals were
rejected. But there are no demands or ultimatums presented to the Socialist
Alliance at all.
What is the DSP proposal? Simply that we stop functioning publicly as
the DSP and put all our resources into building the Socialist Alliance.
What could be the counter-proposal from our critics? Don't stop building
the DSP publicly, and don't put extra resources into building the Socialist
Alliance?
That would be rather odd, especially given the strident opposition to
our proposal from outside the Socialist Alliance by critics totally wedded,
for example, to the ALP. Their response only gives us encouragement that
the proposal has merit, and that the Socialist Alliance does indeed have
the threatening potential to develop into a strong, socialist alternative
to the ALP.
Rather than the DSP's proposal being in any way an “ultimatum”, the
danger is that opposition to our stepped-up activity in the Socialist Alliance
might be backed with ultimatums — “pull back to a minimalist Socialist
Alliance, or we pull out”.
But we hope to convince all the participants in the Socialist Alliance
that any such course would just play into the hands of our class enemies,
and give the right-wingers in the ALP, consciously anti-socialist currents
within the Greens and those left organisations who persist in viewing the
strengthening of the socialist movement simply as their own self-expansion
just what they want. It would squander the opportunity to make a qualitative
advance for the socialist movement.
Tendencies
We take it for granted of course that any party we are in — certainly a
revolutionary party, an anti-capitalist party, or a party in the process
of moving in that direction — would respect the right of tendency, the
right for different views to organise and argue for their positions. That's
the case now in the Socialist Alliance.
So your worries on that score are really without foundation. The DSP
is the largest tendency in the Socialist Alliance presently, and contributes
the largest number of energetic activists, and I don't think anyone could
argue that any of the affiliating groups have been restricted in their
representation or voice in the structures of the alliance. In fact all
other groups have greater proportional representation on the alliance national
executive than the DSP.
In the alliance next year we would imagine such a situation would continue,
although we are confident of seeing greater activity and participation
from the many independent activists as a result of a stronger Socialist
Alliance.
We also could imagine a blurring of the initial political line-ups,
as comrades debate and discuss and act on the basis of how best to build
the Socialist Alliance today and provide leadership for the social movements,
rather than voting according to their initial factional adherence which
might have been determined by past historical differences, less relevant
to the tasks before us today.
We welcome the positive approach of your letter when you state: “We
look forward to a genuine and open debate about the suggestions raised
in your proposal. We will seek to facilitate that in our publications and
our forums, as well as in the forums of the Socialist Alliance itself.”
We think the ongoing debate has already been constructive and moving
in the right direction. The debate within the framework of the Socialist
Alliance can be both clarifying and educational, as well as being very
attractive to many more activists who will be encouraged to join an organisation
where perspectives are discussed out in a comradely, democratic and serious
manner.
We'd be most happy to provide speakers at any ISO forums or branch meetings
to discuss our proposals and jointly work out the best way to build the
Socialist Alliance and the socialist movement in Australia. We also appreciate
your offer for comradely debate in your publications, and will make use
of this opportunity whenever appropriate.
Of course, as we've stated we have made the pages of Green Left Weekly
available for a broad debate on these issues, and would also encourage
ISO comrades, as well as all members of the Socialist Alliance, to make
use of Green Left Weekly for both reporting on the increasingly
vital campaigns that we're all involved in, and for comradely discussion
on a range of other issues.
We likewise look forward to continuing discussions, and are confident
this process is leading in the direction of a stronger, more unified socialist
movement in Australia.
From Green Left Weekly, November 6, 2002.
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