By Pip Hinman
SYDNEY - A range of exciting projects to develop links between socialists and progressive movements in Australia and around the world was discussed at the Democratic Socialist Party's 15th national conference, held January 3-8. Coming after months of written and oral pre-conference discussion, the conference adopted a new political resolution and new party program.
"Our conferences are living proof that Marxism is not a stale dogma, but rather a dynamic, creative tool for the movement for socialism", DSP national secretary John Percy told Green Left. The collapse of Stalinism around the world has opened up a new era for socialists, he added.
"We see the mid-1990s as the beginning of a new period in politics, both internationally and in Australia. It's a period in which the international movement for socialism has its best chance in many years to regroup, renew its politics and move forward with new confidence." Two projects designed to work out how to do this were discussed at the conference.
The first is the International Green Left Conference to be held in Sydney April 1-4. Already there has been much positive feedback. Confirmed international guests include: Lidy Alejandro, director of the Philippine progressive research organisation, the Lean Alejandro Foundation; Tony Cabardo, vice-president of San Lakas, a new federation of progressive mass organisations in the Philippines; Luciana Castelina, a member of the European Parliament and leader of the Party of Communist Refoundation in Italy; Peti Lafanama, national general secretary of the Melanesian Solidarity Group in PNG; Susan George, famous for her work on Third World development issues; and Dulce Maria Pereira, feminist and black activist and member of the International Relations Department of the Brazilian Workers Party.
The second major project, in which the DSP has played an initiating and central role, is Links, a new international magazine for socialist renewal. An impressive range of socialist activists have already indicated their willingness to serve on the editorial board or as contributing editors for Links. These include Boris Kagarlitsky from Russia, Marxist economist Ernest Mandel, US socialist Peter Camejo, Matt McCarten from the New Zealand Alliance, Jeremy Cronin from the South African Communist Party, Sonny Melencio from Makabayan, the new Filipino mass socialist organisation, and Baddegama Samitha from the Sri Lankan New Socialist Party (NSSP).
The first issue of Links, due out in April, will include an exclusive interview with Daniel Ortega on where the FSLN moves next, and articles on the debate within the Philippines Communist Party, the New Zealand Alliance's future plans, the record of the ALP-ACTU Accord, the union movement in Russia today and reconstruction in post-apartheid South Africa.
McCarten, Baddegama and Melencio attended the DSP conference and presented feature talks on the political situation in their respective countries. The recent successes of the NZ Alliance have made it, with its 99 branches, a permanent fixture in NZ politics, McCarten reported. NewLabour now boasts a party membership of 25,000, compared to Labour's 8000. In three years' time, McCarten expects that the Alliance may well become government, and preparations are now under way to make that a reality.
Baddegama reported that as the struggle for an independent Tamil state in the northern and eastern provinces of Sri Lanka has grown in intensity, the government is no closer to finding a solution beyond stepping up its brutal repression of the Tamil minority.
Melencio gave some background to the debate over tactics and strategy within the Philippines Communist Party which has intensified more recently with the expulsions of a number of leading anti-Stalinist opposition figures. While the anti-Stalinist, or rejectionist, wing of the CPP has been pushing to have the debate taken up within the party, chairman Joma Sison has refused, calling the rejectionists, among other things, "revisionists", "womanisers", "liquidators" and "gamblers". The CPP has not had a party congress since its founding in 1968.
The conference decided to step up the DSP's solidarity work in the Asia-Pacific region, in particular with the anti-Stalinist wing of the CPP, the largest mass democratic socialist formation to conduct a public discussion on Stalinism, and with the Indonesian left which is rebuilding despite years of harsh political repression.
Other international guests, Alex Chis and Claudette Begin from the US Activists for Independent Socialist Politics and Committees of Correspondence, reported on the difficulties facing the left in Russia, from where Chis had just returned, and the movement for abortion rights in the US.
Diplomatic representatives including Cuban Consul General Marcelino Fajardo, Savath Pou, the Australian representative of the Cambodian People's Party, and Ambassador Vang Rattanavong from the Embassy of the Lao People's Democratic Republic, gave greetings to the conference. The National Bureau of the Union of Young Cuban Communists, with whom two DSP activists had recently spent four weeks, also sent greetings to the conference.
The conference heard and discussed major reports on the Australian political situation and the current state of the trade union movement, the state of the DSP as well as its campaigns and international work. A new branch is to be set up in Darwin soon, and decisions were made on campaign priorities to help strengthen both the progressive movements and the DSP. The DSP also pledged to help increase the circulation and distribution of Green Left in 1994.