From the Workers Power newswire -



Workers Power Australia Newswire
16 APRIL 2006

ISSUE #9
In this edition:
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1) WPA RESIGNATION FROM SOCIALIST ALLIANCE
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1) The Socialist Alliance - a failed experiement

The Socialist Alliance formed in the summer of 2001, it was
unprecedented, particularly in its early stages because it brought
together most of the major left organisations in Australia under a
single banner. It was certainly prompted by some of the early
successes of the UK Socialist Alliance and by a general feeling among
many on the left in Australia that the events of S11 were the
beginning of a new period of opening opportunities for class struggle
and organisation.

Workers Power were involved from the earliest meetings and could see
the potential for the organisation to tap into what was at the time a
growing anti-capitalist and workers movement increasingly frustrated
with an ALP that was hard to distinguish from the Coalition.

During its first months and at its founding conference, Workers Power
argued that the Socialist Alliance should found itself on a
revolutionary programme – after all, we almost all claimed to be
revolutionaries. We made the argument that the last thing the
Australian working class needs is another reformist party and that a
clear and honest argument for why revolution was what was needed.

We also wanted the debate to be about the kind of politics any new
formation in Australia would need rather than about organisational
structures. Most importantly, from the beginning we saw the need to be
building a new party, hopefully one that could draw to it a mass base.

For that reason we argued for the need from the very beginning to
actively seek support from and if possible affiliate unions to the
Socialist Alliance. We were told this was impossible and the reasons
for this express much about the various views of the potential for a
new organisation. We were told that unions couldn't affiliate because
Socialist Alliance could offer them nothing, no political voice. And
more worryingly, that union affiliation would see us all as
revolutionaries outnumbered by union members!

Both arguments show considerable fear of the organised working class.
As revolutionaries seeking to build a new organisation of our class,
Workers Power could think of nothing better than having a new
organisation, filled with the most militant and class-conscious
workers; where the real debates about how to move forward in building
a real new workers party could have been had. And besides, we could
see no way that any new political organisation could grow to have the
numbers and strength to politically and industrially support its trade
union members, unless it grew by recruiting them en mass!

As the project of building the Socialist Alliance continued, Workers
Power adjusted our own way of viewing it. We learned from the
experience and came to the next conference with a more solid proposal
for the Socialist Alliance, which was clearly not a new party itself,
to play a leading role in initiating and building a new workers party.

We were told that this was pre-emptive and even sectarian! We were
accused of trying to force a particular model and set of politics on
such a party. Whereas our actual resolution we put to the conference
was clear – nothing should be decided beforehand; to be successful, a
campaign to build a new workers party (which was what we suggested
Socialist Alliance initiate) would have to call meetings, and
conferences where as much of our class as possible could debate out
the various possibilities and draw its own conclusions about what was
necessary.

This in reality is a much more democratic proposal than what the
Socialist Alliance was by then coalescing into.

Having lost the argument for a revolutionary transitional programme at
the first conference, we had watched instead the Socialist Alliance
build itself around a programme that was a series of left social
democratic demands. None of the demands were bad in themselves and
much of the propaganda the Socialist Alliance produced had reasonable
content. But the programme of the SA was always a compromise – it
could go no further than the positions that all the affiliates could
agree on and could have no position at all on a series of issues where
the political differences were too great.

On top of this, here was an Alliance of revolutionary organisations
building a group on a left reformist programme. There were few, if
any, actual reformists on the floor of the conferences in those early
days to disagree with more radical demands. Instead some of the
revolutionaries themselves argued the toss for the reformists. The ISO
was to the fore in this respect, arguing that there should be nothing
in the programme that would put off the "man or woman in the street".

Of course our proposal for building a new workers party was massively
defeated.

Outside of the internal debates going on in the Socialist Alliance, it
was definitely true that it was having some modest success. There were
a layer of new activists joining it and a number of branches were
building and lively. There were some small electoral gains where local
candidates were able to tap into existing networks and though there
was never much chance of even gaining council seats, it was clear that
in some areas people were beginning to associate the name of the
Socialist Alliance with people who had a better vision than the ALP or
the Greens for what was possible.

It was also clear that the newfound ability of the far left to
actually cooperate in campaigning, outside of election work, was a
real positive step forward. And this perception of a new degree of
left unity was drawing older disillusioned activists back into
struggle as well as encouraging a few newer, younger people.

But there were mistakes as well. The Socialist Alliance while
attracting small handfuls of activists was not able to make the
breakthrough into the organised working class. This in part was
because of the aforementioned policy of not allowing affiliations but
it was also because it has not had a clear policy towards either the
Greens or the ALP.

In fact the two largest affiliates – the ISO and the DSP have very
different approaches to these parties. The ISO see the ALP as still a
bourgeois workers party – a party with roots in the organisations of
the working class but which carries out the demands of the bosses once
in power. Because they recognise that the ALP still has its base in
the working class they have tried to have had an orientation towards
those who see themselves on the left of the party. The DSP on the
other hand think there is no difference between the ALP and the
Coalition and that therefore there is little point in aiming at
discussion with the left of the party.

Both the DSP and the ISO though have had a similar attitude to the
Greens, even if it comes from a slightly different analysis of what
the Greens are as a political formulation. They see many of its
policies and members as being well to the left of the ALP and thus
have made many proposals for joint work and have also swapped
preferences in electoral situations. Workers Power have maintained
that while it might be fine to work with the Greens, particularly with
individual activists, in campaigns, any kind of electoral block with a
party which has no connection to the working class, is not principled.

This lack of understanding of the true nature of the Greens as a
political formation really disoriented the Socialist Alliance. By
seeing the Greens as the SA's closest allies, made it much harder for
there to be a real critique of their policies and explanation of why,
despite left-sounding positions on some questions, they are no real
choice for the working class.

This disorientation was because rather than look at where the Greens
have come from; most affiliates in the SA looked only at a few of
their policies and the radical rhetoric of some of their members. They
forgot that the reason that revolutionaries have oriented to the ALP
over the years has been because we recognise that its base is in the
organised working class and that there remain direct links between the
party and our class.

No such links have ever existed with the Greens and in fact the Greens
have actively discouraged them.

This lack of ability to understand the nature of these other important
parties was not the only mistake the SA made. In its orientation to
the anti-war movement, first with Afghanistan and then with Iraq, the
compromise and essentially reformist programme of the SA prevented it
from taking the most consistent anti-imperialist line. Though the SA
has been solid in opposing invasion and occupation, it was never able
to make a clear statement that it was for the defeat of the
US/UK/Australian forces. Instead it was often left with the
inoffensive but bland "Bring the Troops Home" slogan – a political
message which can just as easily express a nationalist sentiment such
as the one Latham used before the election that we need to the troops
in our own region.

This was combined with the fact that it was unable to make a clear
statement in support of the resistance inside Iraq. Instead it has
made generalised calls for the re-building of the Iraqi workers
movement. While this is not a bad thing in itself, it is not the clear
anti-imperialist line necessary to separate pacifists and nationalists
concerned only with saving "our" troops from those who actually
support the right of the Iraqi people to defend themselves against
imperialist attack.

But it is in the area of the attacks on trade union rights via the
work choices legislation where the SA has been the least able to give
a lead, the most strangled by its compromise politics and by a passive
following of the "militant current" in the Victorian unions in
particular. The Socialist Alliance has been timid in its criticisms of
the ACTU, tailing the more progressive officials and arguing for
nothing that would not be accepted by this layer. While Socialist
Alliance has played a positive role in encouraging the days of action
that have occurred, they have held back from arguing for anything more
than this.

The SA leaflet for the first day of action in July 2005 was grossly
inadequate. Though it called for further action it was hazy about what
this should be and refused outright to call for the only action that
will be able to stop these laws – an indefinite general strike across
the country. This is in large part because the DSP in particular have
a history of tailing the left of the trade union officials and hoping
they might take some action. They put their focus on trying to
pressure these officials into taking a lead rather than trying to
build the rank and file strength that could really make this happen.

This is not to disparage the hard work that many people in SA and
elsewhere did to push for the days of action that have occurred or
even the work that has been done since to collect thousands of
signatures on a petition to the ACTU calling for a one day stoppage.
The problem is that all this hard work has called for only the most
minimal action. It has been a case of calling for what might be
winnable in the short term rather than what is actually necessary to
actually win against Howard.

The Socialist Alliance organised Trade Union conference of July 2005
was a perfect example of this. While the conference was positive in
itself, its politics did not reflect the fact that it was lead and
organised by supposed revolutionaries. The statement that came out of
it on fighting the IR laws argued for a series of disparate actions
rather than making a clear statement for the only action that could
actually win – a general strike. Workers Power made an amendment at
the time, to argue for a general strike in a way that was not counter
posed to other actions that had been planned but which would show a
way forward. This was overwhelmingly defeated because the DSP in
particular tried to paint it as ultra-left or unrealistic.
Unfortunately if it is unrealistic to think that our class can
organise a general strike against this massive class-wide attack –
then it is unrealistic to think it can be defeated at all.

Of course all of these political errors in the external life of the SA
have come as part of the internal struggle around the nature of the SA
as such.

It had become very clear by 2003 when the DSP changed from being the
Democratic Socialist Party to the Democratic Socialist Perspective and
effectively dissolved their public face into the SA that they had one
vision for the future of the organisation. By this point they were
clear that they wanted to build the SA as a new party, along the lines
of the Scottish Socialist Party. This would mean other left
organisations also dissolving their public faces and doing all their
political work as internal tendencies of the SA. But the rest of the
left refused to play ball.

And for good reason. The lash-up would have been a purely
organisational one, not one of increased political agreement. The
compromised reformist programme of the SA had changed little since its
founding conference and no progress at all had been made on the
differences that still divided the various groups. With it's vastly
greater numerical size the DSP had clear political control of where
the SA was going and what it was saying publicly. The rest of the
affiliates quite reasonably felt they needed to retain their own open
political independence.

But there were other reasons for rejecting the DSP model. The ISO for
example had from the beginning developed their theory of a united
front of a special kind – in this case an electoral united front.

They saw the SA as a united front of left groups and some individuals
for the main purpose of standing in elections and having a broad
political platform for socialist ideas. They agreed that it should
campaign outside of electoral periods too, but the focus of this
campaigning would be to build local support so that when the elections
came round next the candidates would be recognised as community activists.

The problem again though was that the SA's programme did not allow for
any real testing of socialist ideas among the class – it remained
little better than left reformism – a kind of old ALP programme with a
few socialist trimmings.

Throughout these discussions Workers Power remained clear. We agreed
that electoral work was useful – it tested out the idea of an
alternative to the ALP among the most militant layers of the class. It
also could have been put to much greater use in showing the Greens up
for the middle class and politically inconsistent organisation they are.

But we knew that the working class in Australia needed more than a
long term united front – it needed a new organisation – though not the
kind that the DSP were trying to turn the SA into.

That was why we continued to raise resolutions for building a new
workers party, for the SA to use its resources, the good name it was
getting among some militants and the modest successes it had already
had to call meetings and conferences where a much broader range of our
class could debate the possibilities for a way forward.

Such conferences may have come to little more than the recent RMT
called conference in the UK. It may have only stimulated discussion,
set in place a series of further meetings, raised some questions.
Though it might also have tapped into a real current of
dissatisfaction with the ALP and recognition that the Greens are no
alternative. It might have seen the first steps in the building of a
new and much broader political formation, possibly even one that could
have seen a real break of the ALP left and the unions still tied into
the ALP.

Certainly such a new party may well have build itself on a left
reformist programme, at least initially but at least it would have
given revolutionaries a chance to argue for a genuinely revolutionary
programme in a mass arena and to then be able to continue that
struggle as such a new party faced the challenges of building and
broadening further through the tests of the actual class struggle.

It is opportunities like this – to really forward the class struggle
in Australia – that we feel Socialist Alliance has squandered.

Workers Power won't be engaging in a series of recriminations about
who did what and when. We do think that the latest DSP national
congress has shown clearly that there are many people within that
organisation who have severe doubts about how the Socialist Alliance
was built and what it was, and is, able to achieve. It's equally clear
from the outside that the experience of the Socialist Alliance and its
failure has created something of a crisis for the ISO.

We take no pleasure in either of these events and in fact are saddened
that a project that had so much potential for both uniting the left
and for strengthening working class struggle in Australia, has been
allowed to fail.

Nevertheless we see little point in remaining part of an organisation
which is now, even by the admission of at least the minority of the
DSP (and probably much of the majority too!) merely a front for their
organisation.

We certainly wish to continue to work closely with all the individuals
and groups that the experience of the SA has given us closer relations
with and we do not preclude the possibility of joining a similar
attempt to build a new organisation in the future. But right now we
think that the interests of the working class here are best served by
calling a dead duck just that and making an honest balance sheet of
why it failed and what lessons need to be drawn from that.

The regroupment project of the DSP or the united front of a special
kind that the ISO and others favoured has not succeeded in drawing in
new forces. It is these methods of building that have failed, not the
necessity of building a new party of the working class in Australia -
this party is needed now more than ever. That's the challenge we set
down for all of those who have been involved in the SA with us for the
last five years and for those who honestly believe that the working
class in Australia needs its own, revolutionary, political organisation.

Carlene Wilson for Workers Power Australia
April 2006


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- Regards,
Michelle.