Weekly Worker 567 Thursday March 10 2005

Aussie SA in trouble

It seems the Socialist Alliance in Australia may be headed the same way as the dodo - and that of the SA in England and Wales. After the alliance’s poor showing in the federal election last year, it seems to have run out of both momentum and ideas, and most affiliates are considering altering their relationship to it - it is increasingly dominated by the Democratic Socialist Perspective (formerly Democratic Socialist Party, now an SA platform). Some affiliates are considering quitting the SA altogether and many non-aligned members are drifting away.

In a private letter from the International Socialist Organisation to the editor of Green Left Weekly, ISO national convenor David Glanz complains that the editorial line of GLW runs roughshod over voluntary protocols agreed between the DSP and the SA. In those protocols, the DSP accepted that its paper should increasingly reflect the views of the Socialist Alliance.

However, the paper continues to mirror the narrow line peddled by the DSP - even in agreed editorial space for the SA, as the Glanz letter shows. In particular, the ISO and others complain that the paper promotes a sectarian, ‘third period’-type position towards the Australian Labor Party. The DSP adopts the language of the Taaffeite Socialist Party and the nationalist Scottish Socialist Party, portraying the ALP as a purely capitalist party.

Of course such controversy is not new in relation to the DSP. GLW was originally launched with the fiction of it being the broad paper of the green left. This was never the case. Unfortunately, that group seems to have learnt nothing of the content of socialist unity, merely wishing to parade its form for the DSP’s own ends.

The DSP recognises the trouble itself. In a document from last year, DSP national organiser Peter Boyle pointed to problems in the relationship to the SA in an internal document. In the lead-up to the federal election, the DSP was $60,000 (£25,000) in debt and there was a crisis of cadre focus. The DSP is now stretched. Here are the words of comrade Boyle: “We have been made sharply aware that the DSP is straining under the pressure of building two parties.” Further, “The two financial crises [of the DSP and SA] confirm other evidence that our current operation is unsustainable politically, financially and in terms of the available cadre. If we carry on like this, we will be forced to lurch back and forth between prioritising building SA and the DSP and we will risk burning out our limited cadre while not developing new cadre.” And finally he says: “The SA branches are still generally poorly and unevenly developed. Indeed many are straining simply to cope with the weight of communications from the Socialist Alliance national office, let alone organise an effective intervention in the movements.”

Meanwhile the ISO, linked to the Socialist Workers Party’s International Socialist Tendency, bleats support for Labor come election time - without actually engaging with the ALP in any real sense. In typical economistic vein, it remains happy to ‘get on with the real work’ of strikes, political demonstrations, sectional campaigning and recruitment, while it acts as a ginger group for the liberal Laborites on larger political issues. The IS tendency in Australia is shattered into at least three groupings, all swearing allegiance to Tony Cliff, while pathetically reflecting this or that one-sided aspect of his politics (anarchism, economism, movementism, sectism or bureaucratism in varying degrees).

The Socialist Alliance seems a spent force. While it never had any weight electorally, its dismal returns are dulling its attraction as a point of unity too. In recent state elections in Western Australia it managed to hit the heights of 0.29% in one ballot for the upper house (698 out of 242,748 votes cast), while in the two others it contested it polled 146 (0.06%) and 78 (0.04%). The SA does not seem to have put these results on its website.

The socialist left in Australia needs a thorough rethink of its direction. Rather than uniting on the basis of warmed-over reformism or simply behind the latest campaign, serious Marxists must consider how best to form a united revolutionary pole in the labour movement. By definition, that must include abandoning the utterly sectarian approach to Labor left activists - without, on the other hand, fostering illusions in the politics, intent or direction of ALP leaders.

While the bourgeois pole is overwhelmingly dominant in the ALP, it nonetheless remains a bourgeois party based on the organised working class. That contradiction, and the space it creates among union activists and Labor voters, is one to which Marxists must apply creative energy. (The ALP leadership has shown its true colours in New South Wales of late. The Labor premier and his ministers favour Aboriginal ethnic cleansing from inner-city suburbs and blame the marginalised working class victims for riots in the south-west of Sydney.)

With pathetic electoral results, no perspective for Marxist unity, a majority that is hopelessly sectarian towards Labor activists and a minority mired in economism, student recruitment and tailing spontaneity in the movement, the Socialist Alliance seems to have run its course in Australia.
Marcus Larsen

Letter to 'Green Left Weekly' from ISO

February 20 2005

Dear comrade

I am writing to express concern about what appears to be a trend within Green Left Weekly away from adherence to the spirit of the protocols agreed between the paper and the Socialist Alliance.

I accept, of course, that the Democratic Socialist Perspective, as effective owner and operator of the paper, has the right to publish whatever it sees fit and that it has entered into the protocols voluntarily. But, given that some people both inside and outside the Socialist Alliance have been led to believe that GLW is the alliance paper, the flavour of its coverage impacts on the credibility of the Socialist Alliance as a whole.
There are two recent articles which have raised my concern.

• ‘Revive the ALP? Put it out of its misery!’ by Dick Nichols (http://www.gree-nleft.org.au/back/2005/612/612p6.htm). This article, written by a comrade who is a leading member of the DSP, an alliance national executive member and the managing editor of Seeing Red, cannot be dismissed as a space filler.
  
  The tenor of the article, from the headline onwards, is in clear breach of Socialist alliance 2004 national conference policy, which stated: “The task for the alliance is to work alongside all those who want an end to Howard while putting forward our own positive, socialist alternative on the questions of the day.”
  
  Further on, the resolution noted the need to take part in joint platforms with the Greens and Labor, building on the 2002 national conference decision, which recognised that building the beginnings of an alternative to the ALP “cannot be done simply by denouncing Labor”.
  
  Given the prominence given to comrade Nichols’ article (it was promoted on the front page), the average reader could be excused if she believed that GLW was supporting an ultra-left position on Labor and if she mistakenly attributed that to the politics of the alliance.
  
  
  ‘Che’s face still stirs rage on injustice’ by James Vassilopoulos (http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/612/612p7b.htm). In December, the alliance national executive approved new protocols for the ‘Our common cause’ column. In part they read: “The column is a vehicle for building and displaying broad left unity, the same focus as SA, thus representing what SA stands for as a multi-tendency party within a socialist framework. Overall, the column is meant to be an illustration of what we commonly agree on, who we are. The column is also intended as a ‘soapbox’ for SA, advancing SA, acting as an ‘advertorial’ for SA.”
  It is difficult to see how a column which consists of unalloyed praise for Che Guevara, a revolutionary whose heritage is controversial within the alliance, meets such protocols. It was neither signalled as the viewpoint of a particular tendency within the alliance, nor did it serve any purpose in advancing the alliance project.
  I argued at the December SA NE meeting that the alliance-GLW trial had failed by any objective measure. One piece of evidence for that was the extreme difficulty the dwindling number of active SA editorial members have had in sourcing ‘Common cause’ columns (let alone much else).
  

So either this column was published out of desperation, proving my first point, or out of blatant regard of the new protocols. I leave it to you to indicate which is correct.
I look forward to your reply.

In unity,
David Glanz
Socialist Alliance national co-convenor

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