BY DAVID GLANZ
[The following
is the text of a letter sent on November 3 on behalf of the national executive
of the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) to the national executive
of the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP).]
Thank you for your reply, dated October 22 [see GLW #515], to
our previous letter. I think we can safely say that a number of questions
can now be regarded as settled: that the Socialist Alliance will continue
to offer tendency rights to those groupings who choose to exercise them,
that the DSP shares with us the aim of building a revolutionary party,
and that we all welcome further discussion and debate. These can now be
put to one side.
However, there remain a range of questions which are most decidedly
not settled. Foremost among these is what the Socialist Alliance project
is about. This relates in turn to our organisations' different understandings
of reformism and of the task of building the revolutionary party.
This is how we understand your position, briefly put (we are drawing
here not just on your published documents, but on John Percy and Peter
Boyle's documents in the October edition of your internal bulletin, The
Activist).
The Labor Party is a pro-capitalist party; it cannot be described as
a capitalist workers' party. Furthermore, the ALP is the representation
of reformism in Australia and, consequently, people who break from Labor
are breaking from reformism. That being the case, those turning their backs
on Labor and joining the Socialist Alliance are on a trajectory towards
revolutionary politics. This makes the alliance taking a public position
for or against revolution redundant. All that is needed is for conscious
revolutionaries to provide leadership to ensure that the trajectory is
maintained. On this basis, the alliance can be transformed within a fairly
short period into a party characterised by a “revolutionary activist culture”
(Boyle, p. 16), as a stepping stone to a full-blown revolutionary regroupment
— the growing over of the alliance into a revolutionary party. The proposal
to your conference in January is just a first step: “It opens the real
political struggle for left regroupment in the SA, one that will stretch
over months or perhaps even years.” (Boyle, p. 13.)
Draft platform
In fact, your timetable seems to be even shorter. The draft Socialist Alliance
platform circulated for discussion certainly indicates that. We acknowledge
that it is not a DSP document, but one drawn up in the name of Dick Nichols.
But Dick is a leading member of the DSP national executive and we have
to assume his thinking reflects that of his colleagues. In that draft platform,
the case is clearly put that:
“As popular struggles intensify and socialist ideas become more influential,
the struggle for and against socialism will move to the centre of national
politics. At this point of rising class polarisation the need for a radically
different sort of government — one that puts the needs of working people
first — will become unavoidable.
“This is the sort of government Socialist Alliance is fighting for:
a socialist republic, based on democratic common ownership and control
of the key sectors of the economy and supported by working class organisations
and the mass movements. It will come into being as a result of the rising
struggle and self-organisation of the mass of working people.
“Under such a government working people would rapidly expand their power
to make the big economic and social decisions that are presently the property
of corporations and government bureaucracies. The question would then be
posed: if the present `rights' of capital — to sack, to send money out
of the country, to decide if and what to produce — were seriously challenged,
would corporate Australia resign itself to the loss of its powers?
“The alliance would prefer to achieve its socialist goal by means of
peaceful mass struggle and the use and expansion of democracy. However,
all history suggests that the corporate minority would resist the loss
of its economic and political power with all the resources at its command.
“That would mean that working people too would have to be prepared to
defend their rights and gains and defeat the resistance of the capitalist
elites.”
There is no mention of the R word — but this nonetheless remains a statement
of revolutionary intent. It is one that the ISO shares — but it is one
that we think is totally inappropriate for the Socialist Alliance to adopt.
Your intention is that such a platform should be adopted in May.
Our starting point is quite different. We understand reformism as an
expression of the material reality of working class life under capitalism.
On the one hand, workers know only too well that life is far too often
an unfair grind, that the boss is a bastard and that the rich get away
with murder.
On the other hand, workers feel either powerless or, at best, capable
of winning partial and temporary gains through collective action. The idea
that they could overthrow the system and take power collectively and democratically
into their own hands seems either mad or utopian. Workers look to others
to win gains for them.
This day-to-day experience finds political reflection in trade union
activity and, in some countries, in labour or social-democratic parties.
These parties are pro-capitalist, but carry and need to at least partially
reflect workers' aspirations for a better life: they are capitalist workers'
parties.
Reformism
Understood like this, there are two conclusions to be drawn about reformism.
One is that it exists everywhere the working class exists, regardless of
the political history of that class or its particular circumstances. So
when the Portuguese military dictatorship was overthrown in 1974, and in
the midst of a revolutionary situation thousands of working class people
gravitated to revolutionary organisations, tens if not hundreds of thousands
more supported the newly refounded social democrats. Even with armed workers
on the streets, many workers looked first to their traditional leaders
as they emerged from underground or exile. Similarly in the US, reformist
consciousness exists despite there being no social democratic party.
In other words, the ALP is not the guarantor of reformism, it is the
creation of reformism (albeit one that reinforces reformist consciousness).
People breaking from Labor in disgust, or unions disaffiliating for similar
reasons, are not breaking from reformism. They are rejecting its politically
corrupt form, but not necessarily its content. While this process is undoubtedly
a healthy and positive occurrence (and is set to increase, given the long-term
decline in organised social democracy), it is only a first step.
The second conclusion is that only a minority, at times a tiny minority,
of those disgusted with Labor will draw revolutionary conclusions quickly.
The hold of reformism means that revolutionaries need to see their task,
in Lenin's words, as patiently explaining. Revolutionaries are best placed
to do this while engaging in struggle alongside others. We need to earn
the right to be heard, let alone agreed with.
Our position has implications for the Socialist Alliance project. First,
we see the alliance as an attempt to provide an organised, political home
for those taking the first step away from Labor. It is in this sense that
we have talked of the alliance standing for “old Labor values”, the values
that the ALP is no longer capable of systematically holding. It has never
been our conception that the alliance should be confined to these “old
Labor values” — we need also to relate to the rise of anti-capitalism and
a general radicalisation around questions of refugees and war — but that
these should provide a starting point.
Second, although like you we want to build the forces of the revolutionary
left in Australia, we understand that winning new alliance members to revolutionary
positions is not an easy process. Indeed, many excellent alliance members
and future members will never agree with revolutionary politics despite
working closely with revolutionaries (think of the parallel situation in
workplace or union politics). That means the alliance cannot be force-marched
over a matter of mere months “or even years” into being a “united revolutionary
party”. In that sense, the alliance is a long-term project which can complement
and strengthen the work of revolutionary socialists but not subsume it.
If we understand the alliance this way, it also helps explain why a
very large proportion of non-affiliated members are not regularly active
in it. For most alliance members, politics still remains primarily a matter
for the electoral arena.
We already know that there is a sharp rise in alliance participation
around election times: this is an indication that the alliance has already
gained the support and even the affection of some hundreds of working class
socialists, but it is also an indication that they remain in the orbit
of reformism politically. Clearly, we seek to shift some of those members
into greater activity and responsibility — but this is not a question of
resources, as your members so often put it, but of patient political development.
Left regroupment
Does this mean the ISO is saying that the alliance can never, ever change
its composition? No, that would be foolish and simplistic. The road to
building mass revolutionary organisation can be a twisted and surprising
one. The alliance may provide the basis for revolutionary regroupment,
it may split at some point between revolutionaries and non-revolutionaries,
it may succeed in its own terms and yet do neither — it is pointless to
speculate. Either way, we are talking about a process that will be played
out over a lengthy period, unless a sharp rise in class struggle and consciousness
speeds the process up.
In short then, the ISO has a problem with the DSP's conception of where
the alliance should go. We think that you are confusing two quite different
processes — revolutionary regroupment and the building of a large, multi-tendency
socialist party.
Revolutionary regroupment depends on genuine and deep-seated clarification
of organisations' theory and practice. We are in a period where regroupment
is on the agenda, and that is a good thing.
Discussion and collaboration is taking place between the two major international
tendencies, the Fourth International and the International Socialist Tendency,
of which we are a part. But even here, where the various parties share
much from the Trotskyist tradition (in particular the theory of permanent
revolution, or as Percy labels it, “dogmas and sectarianism”, p. 9), and
much in terms of orientation towards the new anti-capitalist movement,
expectations must be measured and sober.
When it comes to political differences between the DSP and the ISO,
the list becomes very substantial — the nature of reformism, orientation
towards Labor, the role of the union bureaucracy, permanent revolution
and the tasks of the working class in the Third World, free speech for
Nazis, the nature of the anti-capitalist movement, etc. In short, we are
divided by competing visions of socialism from above or below.
This rules out for the foreseeable future regroupment, if regroupment
is understood as a process of fusion, as Boyle would seem to be suggesting.
It does not, of course, rule out comradely collaboration in many struggles
and in alliance building.
We continue to argue that moving the alliance to a multi-tendency socialist
party is out of step with the reality of the alliance — at best an enthusiastic
telescoping of a process, at worst, a forced march into a crisis. We do
not rule out in principle the idea that such a multi-tendency party could
be a healthy and useful development for the Australian working class movement.
But for it to have any chance of functioning, it has to be approached by
revolutionaries in a genuine spirit of long-term work, with an understanding
that a broad multi-tendency party is a project that has to be built in
its own right, not as a “months or even years” stepping stone to a larger
version of one of the affiliates.
We have to say honestly that the more we understand how the DSP is approaching
the Socialist Alliance project, the more our fears grow. We have a conference
in early December and our members will need to make a number of decisions
about our relationship with the alliance.
The most important will be how to respond if the DSP goes ahead with
its proposal to become a tendency within the alliance from January. Many
of us have put a great deal of work into the alliance and can see its potential.
But the ISO national executive feels it has no choice but to recommend
to our conference to terminate our affiliation if the DSP congress votes
to implement the proposal. We will not be used as fodder in a revolutionary
regroupment exercise which has not been publicly articulated nor collectively
decided, but which will be carried by the weight of the DSP's numbers and
is likely to result in no more than a rebadged DSP.
These are blunt words, but we feel it is necessary to say them, given
your insistence on the January deadline and the nature of Dick Nichols'
draft program.
On the other hand, we are pleased with the small steps forward the alliance
has taken. While many members remain passive, it is also clear that many
now see the alliance as their party, to be funded and supported above all
around election time. In the Victorian state elections, for example, we
can expect 20-25 non-affiliated members or more to help with the Brunswick
campaign, with similarly good figures in other seats.
The alliance had an excellent intervention and profile at the 10,000-strong
rally in Melbourne in defence of Martin Kingham, with our leaflet widely
read and our placards making a splash. Workers First booked seats at the
Melbourne fundraiser dinner as a show of support.
Comrades in the NTEU report that the Socialist Alliance caucus at the
union's national conference was a real success, helping pull the agenda
to the left and giving the alliance's profile and credibility as the main
left force in the union a real boost.
The alliance has taken good initiatives around refugees and war, with
its trade union seminars and other union caucuses.
This is the modest but real record that we think we should all be building
on. We call on the DSP to desist from its frantic dash towards organisational
solutions to political problems. Instead, the ISO proposes:
An open-ended discussion about the nature of the alliance, and around
key political questions like the nature of reformism, the nature of the
trade union bureaucracy, etc. This process should lead up to the annual
conference in May, but not end there.
A further strengthening of union collaboration. What has been achieved
to date in the NTEU could be replicated in the CPSU, another union where
the alliance has a relatively large membership. We should investigate in
which other unions, from state to state, caucuses would be useful. We should
also encourage cross-union committees like the alliance solidarity committee
in Melbourne. We should organise another round of union seminars across
the country.
Raising the alliance profile by campaigning under its banner where
we can — for instance, the alliance is an excellent vehicle for initiating
or building protests against the recent ASIO raids on Muslim families.
Raising the alliance profile more regularly and thoroughly on all
rallies and at other public events, using placards, leaflets, etc. The
ISO understands that this would involve us making greater resources available
than at present.
Holding alliance public meetings on key topics as broad platforms
of the left, and organising debate across the left on contentious issues.
We know that our bluntness risks causing offence, and if it has done
so, we apologise. But we also believe that the alliance project is too
important to risk losing. We believe that if the DSP pulls back from its
current course, we can unite to build a stronger, more effective alliance
in 2003.
From Green Left Weekly, November 13, 2002.
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