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DSP strengthens global solidarity

BY ALISON DELLIT

"In these times, which side you stand on becomes a crucial test. There is no halfway house, no sitting on the fence. That is the challenge that Resistance and the Democratic Socialist Party must face in this year", outgoing Resistance national co-ordinator Nikki Ulasowski told the 2002 Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance educational conference.

Held from January 3-7, near Sydney, the conference provided a public launching pad for the 2002 perspectives of the largest revolutionary socialist tendency in Australia.

The last few years have been hectic ones for the DSP and the socialist youth group Resistance. Taking a key leadership role in the September 11, 2000 protests outside the World Economic Forum in Melbourne, the DSP and Resistance went on to put their resources into the highly successful May 1 blockades of Australia's stock exchange buildings. Since S11 2000, the DSP has grown by nearly 30%, and chartered a number of new branches, including one in Rockhampton.

This strength was reflected in a conference attendance of nearly 300, and the diversity of topics discussed in 13 feature presentations and nearly 70 workshops.

The conference was dominated by three themes: the need to fight against the new imperialist "war on terrorism" and the importance of international solidarity among working people; the strengthening of the Socialist Alliance and the importance of left unity; and the crucial struggle against racism and xenophobia in Australia.

The linkage between these themes was explained by DSP national executive member Peter Boyle in the first feature talk. Pointing out that more people have been killed in Afghanistan by the US-led military assault than died in the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, Boyle argued that Afghanistan was just the first target of the imperialists.

"Political globalisation is a fancy word for imperialism", Boyle said, "for imposing your values and institutions on others ... The idea of Western civilisation under siege has obvious war propaganda value after September 11. The pseudo-scientific theories of racial superiority once relied on by the Western colonialists have been widely discredited. So new theories to explain the superiority of the imperialist nations have to be invented."

This imperialist war will only succeed, Boyle maintained, if racism and xenophobia were allowed to triumph in the First World. "The 'xeno-racists' have some wind in their sails. That cannot be denied. Witness the shameful statistics on attitudes to immigration and asylum seekers in every imperialist country. It is driven by fear and by self-interest, the miserable self-interest of the most privileged of the world's exploited hoping to keep their privileges at the expense of their fellow exploited in the Third World.

"So the clear duty of the left is to subvert this process through strengthening the global solidarity of the oppressed. We in the DSP and Resistance are very proud of our record on international solidarity."

In this tradition, the conference heard greetings from the Power of the Working Class in South Korea, the Worker Communist Party of Iraq and Graeme Kunjil, a Papua New Guinean student activist campaigning against corporate globalisation. New Zealand Alliance president Matt McCarten presented a feature talk to the conference on the debates in that organisation on the war in Afghanistan.

One of the most important projections in the conference was the DSP's support for the second Asia Pacific International Solidarity conference, to be held in Sydney at Easter. With attendance of radical activists from 29 different countries confirmed, this is set to be the biggest gathering of left forces in the region for many years.

Another projection was the embryonic plan for large May Day protests on May 1, continuing the spirit of 2001. Pointing out the "war on terrorism" had been a "test" for the anti-corporate movement, DSP national executive member Pip Hinman argued that "the movement has not been cowed".

M1 2002, Hinman argued, would probably need to "focus on the war against the Third World, the war against refugees and very likely a new war on the unions. What tactics we use should depend on how best to mobilise a mass opposition to imperialist attacks."

Activists at the conference were also provided with many of the tools needed to fight imperialism through a staggering array of workshops, including series on the Arab and Muslim world, imperialist war, the left in Asia and Latin America, and the development of global capitalism. Some of the most popular included: a Marxist analysis of political Islam, imperialism explained, the scope and nature of the current recession, and communism, Islam and women. Many of these presentations are likely to be published in pamphlet or book form and/or reprinted in an abridged form in Green Left Weekly.

Another aspect of the "war on terrorism" has been the attacks on civil liberties in the First World, a topic tackled by Hobart DSP secretary Alex Bainbridge in a feature talk entitled "Green Left Weekly and the struggle for free speech". Bainbridge elaborated the stepping up of such attacks under the pretext of "fighting terrorism".

According to Bainbridge, the DSP can help to fight these attacks by continuing financial and practical commitment to GLW. "We have every reason to be proud of Green Left Weekly", he told the conference. " Every time you go out selling Green Left, you are helping to shift the balance of forces. You are helping to build the consciousness and organisation of those on our side of the class struggle. You are defending free speech. If they try to take away our right to distribute the paper, we will stand up and defend our rights to free speech and we will win."

The results of the Australian elections, the performance of the Socialist Alliance and the likely direction of Australian politics was the topic addressed by DSP national executive member Dick Nichols. Arguing that the elections saw the ALP "permanently exposed on its left flank", Nichols pointed out that providing an anti-racist alternative was largely left to the Socialist Alliance and the Greens. "We now have a classic struggle for 'hearts and minds' ", he told the conference. "And it's a battle that can only be won in the workplace and in the community".

The Socialist Alliance could contribute to this process, Nichols said, by continuing to support refugee and anti-war demonstrations, touring a leader of the Labour Party Pakistan in April, and having trade unions seminars and regular public meetings. Workshops and a feature talk on Australian labour struggles provided much more discussion on Australian politics.

The main perspectives of Resistance were elaborated by Ulasowski on the final day of the conference. Urging the students attending the conference to make the campuses "bases of anti-imperialist organising", she projected increased anti-war, international solidarity and pro-refugee organising on campuses and high schools.

In closing the conference, Canberra DSP branch secretary Kerryn Williams summed up the revolutionary optimism that had suffused the event: "This brings us to the end of the conference", she said, "but the beginning of a new, and no doubt significant year in the struggle for a world without war and racism, for a socialist world. We've got many challenges before us and many exciting projects to tackle, and the last five days have made us better equipped to take these on." .

From Green Left Weekly, January 16, 2002.
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