On Sat, 2009-07-11 at 00:12 +0000, raging_rapid wrote:
< snip>
> So despite your picking at minor details, the overall concept still
> stands. Socialist Organisations are tiny compared to their Capitalist
> counterparts and shouldn't waste time, like you're doing, firing
> broadsides at each other.
>
"raging rapid" exaggerates considerably when he suggests that Australian
socialist groups waste considerable amounts of time "firing broadsides"
at each other.

Most socialist groups (probably all, but I don't follow all of them)
spend the great bulk of their time and energy doing what you would
expect socialist organisations to do: writing and circulating their
propaganda, intervening in the campaigns or struggles that they think
are important for them to intervene in, trying to recruit new members.
The notion that socialist groups spend 98% of their time squabbling with
each other about things that don't matter is a bourgeois burlesque
designed to discredit opposition to the capitalist system. The
implication is: you're against capitalism, not because there's anything
wrong with it, but because you're against everything except yourself.

If you want to see parties wasting great amounts of time in meaningless
squabbles, look no further than your nearest parliament. With the only
partial exception of the Greens, the parliamentary parties spend 80-90%
of their time "firing broadsides" at each other, the remainder of their
time being spent on figuring out ways to feed at the public trough. But
when was the last time you read a newspaper article calling on all the
pro-capitalist parties to stop their quarreling and unite?

I presume that this paragraph doesn't apply to "raging rapid", but it
certainly does apply to many leftists who are always shouting for
"unity". Where unity of the socialist forces really exists, as in Cuba
for example, they are generally critical of it. I am in favour of the
socialist unity being attempted by the PSUV in Venezuela, and if I were
a Venezuelan, I would certainly join it. How many of the Australian
unity-mongers support the PSUV?

If you look only at this or similar internet lists, you gain a very
distorted idea of what the left is about. This list, as far as I can
judge, is read almost exclusively by socialists. It is intended for the
sharing of information and discussion of ideas among a left audience.
This is why a significant proportion of the discussion on it would
appear "in house" or esoteric to the general public: it's not intended
for the general public.

Is there something wrong with socialists using a list such as this to
discuss and debate questions on which they disagree? Isn't that what
"raging rapid" himself is doing? Why, then, is it wrong for other people
to do it? Too often, "be united" really means, "Stop disagreeing with me
and join my project".

It also doesn't aid clarity when "raging rapid", echoing Dave Riley,
counterposes today's left to the CPA in the 1940s. For a start, if you
want to compare and contrast big groups with small groups, you ought to
do so in the same time frame, particularly when it's not at all
difficult to do that. When the CPA had tens of thousands of members, the
Australian Trotskyists were even smaller than today's socialist groups.
Do Riley and "rapid" think the Trotskyists were being "ineffectual" and
should have joined the CPA instead?

Or, if the point is to compare today's small socialist groups with
something bigger and much more effectual, why don't you compare them
with the ALP? In fact, it is surprising that Bob Gould hasn't already
intervened with that recommendation. He could point out that the
Socialist Alliance doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of
displacing the ALP in electoral politics and that it is therefore doomed
to be "ineffectual".

In short, there is not much point arguing about who is more "effectual"
until you agree on what it is you are trying to effect. "raging rapid"
apparently believes that everyone outside the DSPSA is trying to "move
the whole of the working class to revolution" with a cadre party of "20
to 30 members". Comrade, I think you misunderstand. If that is what they
are telling you in the DSPSA, then it has degenerated even more rapidly
than I believed.

Nearly all of the socialist groups in Australia are setting out from
wherever they find themselves in an attempt to build a much larger cadre
party, one that will eventually be large enough to lead the working
class in a socialist revolution. There are many different ideas about
how to build such a party, and the class struggle in Australia is still
a long way from the intensity in which experience would make it obvious
to most socialists which ideas about building such a party were better
than other ideas. While this remains the case, those who aim to build
such a party necessarily have to debate their ideas in terms of
historical examples and theoretical principles, while looking forward to
situations that encourage unity based on a shared understanding.

The DSP's proposal to dissolve into the SA seems to me an attempt to
bypass the hard work of assembling cadres in an environment in which the
great majority of working people still regard capitalism as either
preferable or inevitable. The DSP appears to have decided that a cadre
party is no longer necessary, and that it is possible to jump, in the
fairly short term, to a "mass" socialist party, even if the "mass" is a
very small one as masses go. I am not at all trying to caricature the
DSP position, but I cannot imagine any other basis on which rational
people would argue for dissolving a cadre organisation into a non-cadre
organisation like SA.

Are Dave Riley and "raging rapid" trying to tell us that SA, in three or
four years, can become an organisation like the CPA of the 1940s? It is
not excluded that an amorphous socialist group might assemble a
membership of 20,000 or 25,000 in conditions of international economic
crisis, but such a group would not be at all like the CPA of the earlier
period. That party was a cadre organisation; in so far as it was
effectual at what it was trying to effect, that was the reason.

"raging rapid" writes: "Basically, we need to develop a large supporter
base and very few of this supporter base will have even read the
Communist Manifesto, let alone understand who the hell Lenin or Trotsky
or Gramsci is". He is correct about that. But it is precisely for that
reason that the organisation being supported by the "large supporter
base" needs to be an organisation of cadre steeped in the Communist
Manifesto and knowledgeable about the ideas of past Marxists. SA ain't
it.
>