The ALP's continued rightward shift opens up spaces for left alternatives. Labor's refusal to act as a real alternative to the Coalition during the last federal election contributed to their electoral routing and deepened the disillusionment of a significant minority of the population with the two-party system.
As the most established parliamentary alternative to Labor, the Greens have been the main benefactors of this opening. Insofar as the Greens have contested recent elections on an increasingly left platform, their rise is welcome, reflecting a strengthening of the left pole of politics in Australia.
In the face of a new offensive against working people's rights and standard of living by the fourth-term Coalition government, supported by a largely compliant opposition and pressured by the emergence of Christian-right organisations like Family First, the Socialist Alliance will strive to build the broadest possible alliances with all those who want an end to neoliberalism in order to strengthen the mass resistance to federal and state governments' attacks on the working class and oppressed. In particular, we will strive to achieve the maximum possible unity in action with the Greens, with those breaking from Labor, and with everyone organising in the trade union and social movements against these attacks.
The Socialist Alliance has a strategic orientation to left-wing sections of the working class, particularly those organised in trade unions. Currently, this means the alliance must prioritise our intervention into the campaign against the Coalition government's industrial relations laws, with the aims of building a mass movement that can defend and extend union and workers' rights.
At the same time, the Socialist Alliance reaffirms our long-term commitment to building the anti-war movement, and will continue to build to the best of our ability all campaigns for social and economic justice, such as for justice for Indigenous people, to free the refugees, for women's rights, for civil rights and against homophobia, and oppose the privatisation of and cutbacks to essential public services such as health, energy, water and social services.
The deepening crisis of social democracy, the Greens' tendency to focus on the parliamentary arena, and the political leadership vacuum left in the trade unions and other movements, creates a large space and potential for socialists to play an important leadership role in all major progressive campaigns and movements over the next period. To realise that potential, we must build the most united and therefore effective socialist interventions possible in all spheres of resistance to neoliberalism.
By working alongside all those who want an end to neoliberalism while putting forward our own positive, socialist alternative, we will win more people to socialist solutions and the alliance.
The Socialist Alliance rejects any idea that it is ultra-left or sectarian to criticise the ALP. Given that the principal aim of the Socialist Alliance project is to build an alternative to the left of Labor, the alliance must, if it is to win over those who are starting to break to the left from the ALP, confidently and consistently present an honest and accurate analysis of Labor Party policies and practices from a socialist perspective, even if at times this requires a blunt statement of facts. To not do this would mean conceding crucial political space for building the left in general and the Socialist Alliance in particular.
We recognise that, in order to build a left alternative to the ALP, it is not enough to restrict ourselves to simply denouncing Labor. The alliance will always look for ways to draw ALP members and bodies into any struggle in defence of working-class and democratic rights and against war, but we do this in the knowledge that it will not be possible to build a left alternative without publicly criticising Labor's anti-working-class positions.
As the progressive extra-parliamentary movements grow and deepen, and as socialists prove their leadership ability in those movements, the electoral resonance of socialism will also grow. The Socialist Alliance needs to be constantly testing that resonance by standing candidates in federal, state and local government elections whenever and wherever possible. We do this not as an alternative to consistent extra-parliamentary campaigning, but in order to build the extra-parliamentary movements and campaigns, and win more people to socialist ideas.
[This is an abridged version of a resolution adopted by the fourth national conference of the Socialist Alliance held in June].
From Green Left Weekly, July 6, 2005.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.