BY
ALISON THORNE
The Socialist Alliance sought to identify areas of broad agreement
in order to unite socialists from eight diverse socialist organisations,
as well as many individual activists, around limited but shared goals.
The Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) presented its proposal — to cease
building itself in favour of operating as a tendency within Socialist Alliance
— as “a big step forward toward left regroupment in Australia”.
The Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) disagrees. Regroupment is something
that may be achieved after a thorough process of discussion around program.
Rather than being an effective vehicle for regroupment, the Socialist Alliance
is the opposite. The goodwill on everyone's part, concentrating on areas
of agreement in order to keep the alliance on track, mitigates against
exploring programmatic differences.
The last 70 years are littered with examples of unprincipled combinations,
splits and purges. Devoid of an open, principled discussion of both differences
and agreement, the DSP's proposal risks throwing the historic Socialist
Alliance project onto the same scrapheap.
The centrality of feminism
The FSP is a Trotskyist feminist party — both our Trotskyism and our feminism
are non-negotiable. It's a key difference between ourselves and all other
SA affiliates.
While it's true that the DSP also calls itself feminist, its conception
of feminism is very different from our own revolutionary feminism. The
DSP focuses narrowly on women's rights, rather than on how feminism is
integral to revolutionary struggle. The DSP does not allow women within
its own organisation to form a caucus, presumably because this is “divisive”.
However, organisations have disintegrated under the weight of internal
sexism. The Black Panther Party in the USA was destroyed by rampant sexism.
The Workers Revolutionary Party in Britain imploded as a result of a culture
which tolerated women comrades being sexually abused. The right of oppressed
groups to form caucuses is key to combating sexism, racism and homophobia
which, because of the pressures of capitalist ideology, can manifest themselves
in even the most revolutionary of organisations.
We consider that the struggle for women's complete equality lies at
the heart of the class struggle — and at the same time reaches out to women
of all classes and races, attracting them to the banner of working class
revolution. We also recognise that feminism has a dual nature. Like the
struggle against racism, it is dialectically independent of and yet interwoven
into the class struggle.
FSP leaders Clara Fraser and Susan Williams explained this in their
essay “Socialist Feminism: Where the Battle of the Sexes Resolves Itself”.
They say: “The woman question has historically been indissolubly linked
to the class struggle ... All women, regardless of class, are subjected
to political, legal, cultural and economic discrimination, and this subjugation
as an entire sex confers an independent character on woman's struggle.
“The patriarchal capitalist class relies on women for the extraction
of unpaid domestic labour — and simultaneously exploits women as a vast
pool of cheap labour ... the bourgeoisie can no more eradicate sexism than
it can eliminate racism ... all wage exploitation would have to go in the
bargain.
“The terrible survival problems of women, therefore, can be solved only
by fundamental change, and feminist demands lead logically and irresistibly
toward the clear necessity for socialist revolution.”
Our revolutionary feminism challenges the view that the “real working
class” is the straight, white, male, blue-collar workers. There is a sociologically
entrenched layer of highly paid, straight, white, male workers, who may
fire up industrially to defend their own privileges, but whose political
backwardness and lack of solidarity makes them an enormous social support
to the capitalist class.
Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin described the conservative
role of this layer in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.
He said: “it is quite possible to bribe the labour leaders and the upper
stratum ... of bourgeoisified workers, or the `labour aristocracy', who
are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings
and in their outlook ... are the agents of the bourgeoisie in the labour
movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, real channels
of reformism and chauvinism.”
Clara Fraser concurs: “white skin privilege, male chauvinism, and heterosexism
have turned millions of workers into lackeys of the boss, shorn of class
consciousness and permeated with elitism. This is the social base of the
labour bureaucracy.” Feminism is not some optional add-on. Women's leadership
is key to the emancipation of humanity.
The role of the working class in global revolution
The theory of permanent revolution is another crucial political question
distinguishing different tendencies within Socialist Alliance. In a 1982
article in the
Freedom Socialist newspaper, Murry Weiss and Robert
Crisman succinctly defined the idea: “Permanent revolution is the process
of worldwide, uninterrupted, and uninterruptible struggle of all oppressed
people, led by the proletariat, for economic, social and political liberation.”
Permanent revolution describes how, inevitably, all of the tasks of
revolution — both democratic and socialist, fall to the working class.
Why? Because in the era of imperialism, the capitalist class is neither
willing nor able to fulfil basic democratic demands. This is in contrast
to the formalistic position, best exemplified by Stalinism, that first
it is necessary to have a democratic, capitalist revolution and then, at
some unspecified time in the future, the working class will be in a position
to make a socialist revolution. Because the DSP uses a version of this
scheme, we consider it to have some of the features of Stalinism in its
program.
Revolutions do not unfold according to a pre-ordained plan. Just weeks
after the “democratic” revolution of February, 1917, Lenin repudiated such
a scheme, calling on the workers to challenge the provisional government
and raising the demand, “All power to the soviets!” Six months later, backward
Russia made a socialist revolution!
Of course, the Russian Revolution was defeated, although it took 74
years for capitalism to do it. Yet, this, too, validates permanent revolution.
The flip side of a Stalinist “staged theory” of revolution is that there
can be socialism in one country. The fact that the Soviet workers state
is no longer there gives the lie to that dead-end ideology.
The question of permanent revolution is just as relevant today. The
example of Indonesia shows why. Tossed together by imperialism from the
remnants of various colonial empires, the oppressed nationalities of Indonesia
were subjugated by brutal military rule from Jakarta. When the people finally
overthrew the dictator Suharto, the country started to fall apart.
Indonesian capitalist rule has manifestly failed to fulfil most of the
democratic tasks, such as national unity, emancipation of the peasants
and universal suffrage. Now only a socialist revolution, led by the united
working class of all the nations of the archipelago, can fulfil these tasks,
and solve the national liberation struggles without starving the Javanese
of food and resources. A revolution aided and supported by the working
class of the region's core capitalist country — Australia.
Capitalism and its failures are global. The working class — in all its
diversity — is the revolutionary class and only it has the political experience
and the social weight to end misery for once and for all. Without stopping
to comply with some artificial plan about how it's done.
Dissolve? No thanks!
The FSP believes that these revolutionary feminist ideas represent the
program required to emancipate humanity. Do the other affiliates in Socialist
Alliance agree? No.
So, should the FSP ditch revolutionary feminism and join those who are
satisfied with the demands of women and queers being viewed as optional
extras — defined merely as questions of democratic rights? Again, no!
But does this mean that we can't work with other socialists with whom
we have disagreements on these fundamental questions? Of course we can
work together!
We have been working and will continue to work together around the very
important agreed goals and objectives of the Socialist Alliance. But let
us not mistake what we have achieved — impressive as it is — as the precursor
for revolutionary regroupment.
The FSP will proudly continue building our international tendency with
no apologies. We invite Socialist Alliance members — and everybody else
— interested to talk more about revolutionary feminism to check us out.
If you agree with us — join! And then work with us inside the Socialist
Alliance to continue forging an active, democratic and diverse united front
which is the much-needed bold and vibrant socialist voice for working people.
[Alison Thorne is a member of the Socialist Alliance national executive
and the Melbourne organiser of the Freedom Socialist Party, one of five
parties affiliated to the Socialist Alliance. This is an abridged version
of an article published in the Summer/Autumn edition of Freedom Socialist
Bulletin. A reply by the Democratic Socialist Party will appear in
the next issue of Green Left Weekly. More discussion about the future
of the Socialist Alliance is available at <http://www.socialist-alliance.org/debate.shtml>.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 19, 2003.
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