BY PETER BOYLE
Just seven months after S11, the radical left has once again tapped the powerful anti-corporate globalisation sentiment in the community. The 20,000 or more activists mobilised on May 1 across eight cities in Australia were cheered on by many thousands more.
The neo-liberal politicians, Coalition and Labor, are out of touch with a growing section of the public; their justifications for two decades of capitalist offensive have lost their punch.
While PM John Howard lamely accused M1 activists of using children as cannon fodder and his minister for workplace relations Tony Abbott lectured us that "capitalism is just a fancy word for freedom", Labor (not-too-much-)opposition leader Kim Beazley said he supported our right to protest but not in a way that interfered with other people or failed to keep the peace.
What lessons should the radical left draw from this important and inspiring experience?
Lesson 1: build the movement
First, we have to recognise the importance of building the new movement against corporate tyranny. This is a movement that has rattled the global corporate rulers at Seattle, Washington DC, Melbourne, Prague, Seoul, Nice and Quebec City. And this movement will not just fade away.
The neo-liberal ideologues have fallen victims to their own success. The global corporate rulers' attempts to force the working classes of the world to compete against each other have been countered with a new movement for global solidarity and global resistance.
This new movement has the potential to reverse the working class retreat of the last decade and a half. But that's still a potential and one that is not going to be realised spontaneously.
The radical left can make false steps in two directions here: it can adapt to spontaneity or adapt to the conservative labour bureaucracies.
M1 would not have happened without months of serious organising and the movement would not have had this much-needed injection of confidence and energy if we were content with small, semi-spontaneous actions. That's why we pushed for the ambitious M1 stock exchange blockades.
M1 would also not have happened if the initiative was left to the trade union, student movement or NGO bureaucracies. These forces do not want to build radical mass action. Indeed they fear it.
If S11 signaled that Labor had problems on its left flank, the M1 mobilisations confirmed that this problem is growing. As at S11, the mobilisations were organised by the radical left against the abstention, if not active sabotage, by conservative Labor and most of its trade union and student movement apparatchiks.
Only in Melbourne was there any official mobilisation by trade unions and thousands of workers came out. But the Victorian Trades Hall Council had to be pressured by the most militant sections of the union movement to meet up with the stock exchange blockaders in a lunchtime unity march.
Lesson 2: accept responsibility
So the second lesson is that the radical left has to accept the responsibility to seriously and consistently lead and organise the new movement. There is no "free ride" to be had here and this movement will not be built by some other force.
Today there is no serious prospect for building a mass movement against corporate globalisation as a classic united front between the radical left and the ALP.
The ALP left, which at one time could mobilise large numbers of people if it wanted to, has been in steep decline since it failed to put up a fight against the economic rationalist policies of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating in the 1980s and 1990s.
Now there is no chance that Labor will in any way lead a social movement for change. As David Hale, a pro-corporate economist with the Zurich Group, told the ABC's Lateline program on May 1: "I don't think that Australia, under this government or a Beazley government next year, will in any fundamental way oppose foreign investment or foreign trade. On the contrary, I think a Labor government would be a champion of globalisation just as the current government."
While it is possible that at some stage the ALP or Labor-dominated trade unions may try to enter the new anti-corporate movement to moderate it (as the main union federation the AFL-CIO is doing in the US), this has yet to happen. And in the meantime the responsibility of the radical left is to make it as hard as possible for the movement to be hijacked by the conservatives.
Does this mean we are arguing for a sectarian orientation to the mostly ALP-controlled trade unions? No. We have pushed for the maximum involvement of the trade unions in M1 and we should do the same for future mobilisations â such as the Brisbane CHOGM convergence in October. But we are not prepared to trade off the new movement's political independence or radical orientation for such involvement.
Crawling to the conservative union officials will not work. We will only get most of the trade unions around the country to begin mobilising against corporate globalisation when they feel mass pressure to make a political break from the pro-corporate politics of the ALP.
Trades and Labor Councils in the ACT, NT, Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia all passed motions of conditional support for M1; only the NSW Labor Council refused. That was just paper support, but it was also a measure of the pressure these organisations felt from S11. Next time this movement mobilises, the union officials will feel even more pressure from the rank and file.
Lesson 3: Left unity
But how can the radical left take on the Labor bureaucracy, given its relatively small numbers and very modest weight in the trade unions?
The short answer is that we can if we are more united and grow in size and political influence. Most of the organisations in the radical left have grown after S11, but if we work better together our gains will be far greater. This is the third lesson from M1.
A comparison of the radical left's intervention in S11 and M1 shows that we have taken big steps forward in working together. Sydney Morning Herald journalist Margo Kingston marvelled at the "organised anarchy" she witnessed on the M1 blockades in Sydney. She didn't know it but that was an expression of the radical left working better together.
The successful Melbourne and Sydney public launches of the Socialist Alliance â formed little more than a month ago â and the significant support and endorsement it has won from outside the ranks of the nine participating left organisations is also proof of the importance of left unity.
Support for it has come from some of the few left intellectuals, militant unionists and mass movement leaders who have defied the conservative ideological tide over the last two decades. They've stood up to those who have sneered that the socialist project is finished.
The Socialist Alliance's inclusive stance is a shining example of unity in action. All you have to do to join is agree with an action platform against the neo-liberal attacks and be prepared to work democratically with other alliance members.
This is why it will help build a stronger radical left. And the effect of a dramatic growth of the radical left in this country â a real prospect today â should not be underestimated. Every new activist won to our politics is worth 100 cynical bureaucrats in the ALP-dominated institutions.
Over the next few weeks, the members of the Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance will be putting a major effort into building the Socialist Alliance. The resources we have accumulated through years of hard struggle will be increasingly shared with others in the alliance.
The Socialist Alliance is presently an electoral alliance, but we hope that it will give us a collective experience that can lay the foundations for a deeper left regroupment in the not too distant future.
We are not just chasing seats in a capitalist parliament. Our objective is not to follow the path of the Greens politicians, who say to the mass movement: "Let us represent you in parliament".
Our commitment is to building new institutions of popular democracy to displace the corrupt parliamentary system â institutions that are independent of the corporate chiefs who really rule under capitalist democracy. These institutions will be built "in the streets" â through the organisation of mass struggles against capitalism.
[Peter Boyle is a member of the national executive of the Democratic Socialist Party and coordinated the DSPs national involvement in M1 and S11. He is also a national co-convenor of the Socialist Alliance.]