[The general line of this report and summary was adopted by the 16th National Conference of the DSP on January 6, 1995.]

Comrades, we’ve just come through a challenge to the party, a discussion, and a conference that make me even more confident about the party we have, the party we’re building towards, and the fundamental party-building perspectives we defend.

In my opinion it’s been one of the best discussions in our history, not only on the fundamentals of our perspectives that have been challenged by the events and discussion in Perth, but also on a wide range of other issues. The discussion has ranged over important questions of strategy being debated by the left internationally, in the FMLN [in El Salvador], the FSLN [in Nicaragua], in South Africa, Cuba, Chile; the nature of the period; our interventions in our areas of work; our union work; our youth work; our election work; our tasks with Green Left Weekly; our other basic party-building tasks; our solidarity work, especially with East Timor, Indonesia; the rural crisis; racism; psychology; relativity and dialectical materialism; the struggle for lesbian and gay rights; the environmental crisis and movement.

We’ve printed 16 Activists containing: two draft resolutions; 15 NC reports or other party information; 70 pre-conference discussion items, from more than 50 comrades; and 25 informational reprints.

But even at the same time as we’ve been having this very extensive and intensive discussion, our level of activity hasn’t dropped off, and we’ve had a series of successes that are encouraging signs of the healthy state of the party:

• We organised two nationally co-ordinated actions on East Timor;
• We led the anti-fees struggle and occupation at ANU and had an important victory at the anti-fees conference in Melbourne, a great morale booster for our student comrades;
• Sydney branch organised the very successful John Pilger public meeting, with over 400 attending; and we had the tour of Comrade Dita Sari [from Indonesia];
• Brisbane finished the year with a dinner that packed out their headquarters with 180 people, raising $1500 on the night and $7000 in pledges to start this year’s fund drive with. And last week Brisbane comrades at the Meleni Folk Festival sold 137 subscriptions to Green Left Weekly!

So we’ve come to the end of a good year for us, and come to the end of the discussion – three months of oral discussion and nearly five months of written discussion, a discussion that was quite fundamental, and at times very heated in Perth branch.

Fundamental issues involved

Fundamental issues were involved, involving two different perspectives for our party. However, getting the underlying political differences out into the open proved hard. Often the challenge to the party’s position was indirect, or on the organisational questions, or endless questions, or smokescreens. But by the end of the discussion it was quite clear.

It’s been an important discussion. It’s not as though the issues were new. They’re mostly the same issues raised by comrades who lost faith in our project and the need for commitment in the ‘80s and ‘90s; they also mirror the self doubts and pessimism about their party that engulfed the CPA during its last few decades; and they’re similar to issues raised in the socialist movement around the world in recent years also.

It’s important for the party to be clear. The discussion has helped in the education of newer comrades, certainly of comrades in Perth branch. It’s been one of the best discussions in the party’s history, and will be valuable for the future education of cadres.

We’ve come out of it stronger. We’ve lost some comrades, and will lose some others who are demoralised, but that’s not a result of the discussion, but a result of the miseducation and mistraining that had already taken place.

However there were a number of limitations to the discussion:

• Alternative positions were not always put down on paper, but just stated in branch meetings, or stated to comrades in informal discussion;
• The nature of much of the challenge to the party’s perspectives was in the form of questions without answers, sometimes even questions for which no answer is possible;
• And it’s unfortunate that Comrade Steve R has declined to put forward a counter-report here, or on other reports, even though he’s a delegate elected on the alternative platform. It’s also unfortunate that Comrade Michael Bo, who initially put forward the alternative platform, declined to come to the conference.

So in the end this alternative perspective proposed for the party has only amounted to a very tiny minority in the party, two votes in Perth branch, although there would have been other supporters of this view who didn’t turn up to vote.

The overwhelming majority of the party has reaffirmed its confidence in our party-building perspectives. The party as a whole has become clearer, comrades old and new themselves have developed a deeper and clearer understanding of our perspectives. And some comrades might be inclined to think, “why are we paying so much attention to such a small current in the party?”

But the importance of this alternative current goes beyond its numerical size at this point in the history of the party. This debate is important, and clarity on the issues is vital for us, because:

1. This alternative perspective does reflect trends outside the party, the viewpoints of individual activists, some not-so-activist, permanent non-party types, “independents” (independent of left parties, but not independent of the ruling class influences.)
2. The issues raised repeat some of the refrains of opposition viewpoints in discussions in the party in the ‘90s, (and the ‘80s). Even some of the specific proposals have been resurrected from earlier discussions.
3. The complaints and charges against the party, or against the party leadership or “regime,” are common to a number of comrades who’ve drifted out of the party in recent years. Most often these differences were only raised after they’d dropped out of activity or left the party. There are even social networks of some of our former members, mostly who are not very political or not very active, but who raise some of these complaints, and Comrade [Steve] R even referred to this in the discussion.
4. And finally, there’s quite a lot of confusion on many of these same questions internationally. Many misconceptions and wrong conclusions have been drawn from the experience of Stalinism by the socialist movement around the world, and following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there’s been further pressure to equate Leninism with Stalinism, and to reject the whole Bolshevik experience.

Different perspectives

So in spite of the limitations of the discussion, and although the alternative current ended up being quite small, more than enough was stated and written for us to be clear about the alternative perspectives involved. And Comrade [Steve] R has conceded that two very different perspectives have developed, two different political lines are involved.

The analysis made in the report I presented on behalf of the National Executive to the National Committee plenum last October, and adopted by the NC, made a number of characterisations of the position he put forward, and where they headed. How has this analysis stood up during the last three months’ oral and written discussion? It’s certainly been confirmed. Three months ago we summarised Comrade [Steve] R’s alternative perspective in the following seven points:

1. He was against our concept of team leadership, downgrading the role of executive bodies;
2. He was for a party with lower membership norms and levels of activity;
3. He was for reduced emphasis on Green Left Weekly;
4. He was against our concept of norms as “moralism”;
5. He was against the idea that we have organisational principles, and rejected our traditions on this;
6. He had a different reading of our experiences in the ‘80s and a different analysis of the period;
7. In the end it amounted to a different concept of cadre and a cadre party.

In the course of the written and oral discussion these positions have been repeated and reaffirmed, but some new differences have also been added. Specifically:

1. Comrade [Steve] R has indicated different perspectives on Australian politics.
2. He advocates opening up the party to the “campaign activists.”
3. He advocates making it possible for people with different political perspectives to join.
4. He thinks we have “an apparatus too large for the size of the party today.”
5. He argues that the “party is in a crisis”, that it’s “stagnating”. Reduced sales of Green Left Weekly, problems with recruiting and consolidation, and problems with finances are cited by Comrade [Steve] R as supposed evidenced of this “crisis”. But these are the very basic party-building tasks that he wants us to ease up on! It’s one of the many contradictions of his position.
6. A number of further claims have been made about the tone of the discussion, and the democratic functioning of the party.

It’s clear from the discussion that he envisages a very different type of party.

We should also put into the picture the positions of Comrade Michael Bo, who proposed the alternative platform, made a contribution to the pre-conference discussion, but didn’t turn up at the Perth branch meeting for the election of delegates, and hasn’t come to the conference. Some of his views in motivating this alternative platform were:

• “Allusions to history like that of the Russian Social Democratic Party… serve no useful function.”
• “We have no party tradition”, and anyway it should be ignored because it “alienates novices from full participation in the party”.
• “It seems that the only purpose of membership is to support a party bureaucracy overstretching its human and financial resources.”
• The financial contributions that the majority of comrades make is more onerous than the church taxes of the Middle Ages.
• He argues against the 100 percenters; he even argues against people being 1 percenters.
• We “need to develop a need for a loyal opposition in the party”.
• There’s “a subconscious fear of open debate in the party about the party”. There’s only “a small window of time” for debate “held at best every two years”.
• He approvingly quotes the ex-Stalinist Katherine Susannah Prichard, “Don’t sacrifice your life to work and ideals.”

And as Comrade Michael Bo says, “In part, Comrade [Steve] R’s written thoughts come from people like myself who raised objections to the norms and resourcing of the party.” (And we might also add that more of the same would be a consequence of Comrade [Steve] R’s open-door policy. The purpose of provisional membership is to find out if prospective members agree with our positions, so that we don’t find out that they’re Accord supporters, and have the politics of the CPA, after they’ve admitted as members.)

This report rejects the line of Comrade Steve R’s October NC report, his pre-conference discussion contributions, his actions and proposals. It also rejects the line and the specific charges of Comrade Michael Bo’s contribution.

The alternative platform is clearly a tactical manoeuvre, designed to gather in the widest number of opposition doubters and questioners, without presenting a clear alternative perspective. It’s designed to gather in those objecting to the tone and style, or who might be persuaded to feel sympathetic to complaints against the National Office “intervention in Perth branch”.

Our party-building strategy

But besides rejecting that alternative line, the report intends to clearly reaffirm our Leninist strategy of party building, the fundamental political perspective we’ve had throughout our history.

I’d like to quote the key passages from the party program that deal with this. Comrades should bear with me, since this is at the centre of our political perspectives, and really the centre of the discussion here, and also a central issue in dispute among socialists internationally. Comrades who object to things we say in this discussion, or to the October NC party-building report, perhaps skipped over this part of our program, or haven’t read it at all, or haven’t read it recently.

A mass revolutionary socialist party is the highest expression and the irreplaceable instrument of working-class political consciousness. The revolutionary party provides leadership to the struggles of the working class, not only for better terms for the sale of labour power, but for the abolition of the social system that gives the rich control over the entire well-being of working people…

In the absence of such a party, the valuable experiences of groups of militant and politically conscious workers and other fighters tend to be isolated and lost. The organisation of these most conscious activists into a revolutionary party permits the centralisation and preservation of these experiences and their dissemination to broader layers.

In times of social and political passivity it is often difficult to build a mass revolutionary party, but during mass revolutionary upsurges, a small revolutionary party can grow rapidly in size and influence. By applying correct tactics in such a political crisis, the party can win mass influence and guide the workers’ struggle for power to a successful conclusion…

A party capable of undertaking such colossal tasks cannot arise spontaneously or haphazardly. It must be built continuously, consistently, and consciously. This requires the utmost consciousness in all aspects of party building, from questions of theory and policy to details of daily work. It requires determined, systematic work aimed at winning influence in all sectors of the mass movement, and persistent attention to recruiting new members, training them to become professional revolutionary activists.

The revolutionary party must always maintain principled opposition to the rule of the capitalist class. It must wage a consistent struggle against all forms of capitalist ideology, immunising itself against the pressure of capitalist public opinion and other alien class influences. Above all, it must constantly seek opportunities to organise the broadest masses for effective anti-capitalist political action.

This overriding aim determines the organisational character of the revolutionary party. It must function as a politically homogeneous campaign party capable of setting realistic objectives and concentrating its resources with maximum effectiveness. The purpose of its deliberations and internal discussions is to arrive at decisions for collective action and systematic work.

To achieve this homogeneity and unity in action, the party must above all be democratic. It must guarantee the right to hold and argue for different policies and proposals for action within the party, the right to recall elected leaders, and the right to vote on admission of members…

The organisational structure of the revolutionary party should combine democratic decision-making and centralised administration of the party’s work, with lower units subordinate to higher units, beginning with its highest decision-making body – the national conference of elected local delegates. In public and in action, all members should abide by the decisions of the party.

If the party is to avoid the dangers of sectarian isolation, it is necessary to maintain the closest contact with the broad masses of the working people and all the progressive social struggles of the day. Through this daily involvement with the realities of the struggle the party’s ideas are constantly modified and tested, and in this process the party makes judgements about appropriate organisational forms and its role in the existing political situation.

This is a vital process since all of the conditions for the creation of a mass revolutionary socialist party do not emerge at once. Yet, even in times of relatively low levels of political struggle, a start must be made in the political and organisational process of party building. Relatively quiet periods can actually lay the basis for rapid growth in times of mass revolutionary struggle.

On the other hand, it is also important to avoid empty proclamations and exaggerations about the stage the party has reached. Such delusions can lead to organisational disasters and absurdities and a sectarian political and organisational outlook.

Ultimately, only a revolutionary socialist party that has deep roots in the working class, that is composed primarily of workers, and that enjoys the respect and confidence of the workers, can lead the oppressed and exploited masses in overthrowing the political and economic power of capital. The central aim of the Democratic Socialist Party is to build such a revolutionary socialist party in Australia.

We adopted this version of our program at our national conference 12 months ago, but the fundamental content of it is not new, so comrades shouldn’t think it’s just been adopted recently as part of a “tightening up” or a “return to Leninism”. In fact our program in this form actually comes out of a draft we did for our unity process with the Socialist Party of Australia in 1988-89. When that came to naught after their support for the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, we thought, no need to let the good work go to waste, so we edited it up and adopted it as our program at our 13th National Conference in January 1990.

The sub-section on “The role and character of the revolutionary party” that I’ve quoted from extensively is almost the same as the version we adopted five years ago. And most of it is there in the original version for the discussion with the SPA too.

The ‘turn’ in the ‘90s

This is the most precise formulation of our party-building perspective that we’ve come up with yet. We’ve learned from our experiences over the years, and understood the nuances better each year. But it’s the basic perspective we’ve adhered to since the founding of our party 23 years ago.

So when we talk about “our turn to basic party-building tasks” in the 1990s, we always have to bear this in mind, and not let any misconceptions creep in. It wasn’t a turn to party building in the ‘90s, but a “recadre-isation,” or in Comrade Jim Percy’s words, “getting back to the sort of cadre party we were in the ‘70s.” And we also need to clear up some myths about the ‘80s.

We made a turn in 1982 to open up the party, putting a lot of hopes in the possibilities of a working-class upsurge, and experimented with some of our organisational forms.

A few years later we ended that period of experimentation, reassessed things, realised we’d overestimated the possibility of an upurage of labour radicalism, underestimated the hold of the trade union bureaucracy and the ALP parliamentary careerists over the labour movement. We reinstituted weekly branch meetings, a fixed dues system, and a bigger emphasis on building Resistance.

In 1986, however, we were into a different period again, and turned our attention away from directly building our own party towards the regrouping with other organised left forces – the possibility of forming a New Left Party with the Communist Party of Australia had opened up.

But in fact, both in 1985 and 1986 we were talking about “a turn to basic party-building norms.” The organisational report to the September 1986 National Committee meeting presented by Tony F stated the need to return “to basic party-building norms. Of rebuilding party finances… of addressing the need to sell more DAs… this means a sharp turn towards party-building work and away from unnecessary mass work”.

The tactics we were contemplating in 1986-87 – preparing for an entry into the CPA, really, like the US Trotskyists’ entry into the Socialist Party in the ‘30s – have been blurred, extended, mythologised, and some comrades today try to draw totally false lessons from that experience.

Jim Percy’s report on “What Politics for a New Party?” given on behalf of the National Executive to our January 1987 educational conference, still available as a pamphlet, and especially Margo C’s party-building tasks report to the conference, make it very clear, it was a manoeuvre on our part. We weren’t giving up our perspective of building a revolutionary party, but contemplating a possible detour that would get us there quicker. This was made abundantly clear in Jim’s report on “Building the Revolutionary Party” adopted by the October 1987 NC meeting.

Jim warned even then about some of the problems the party was experiencing through lack of clarity about the process. He pointed out that this particular party-building tactic was not a break with our past strategy, but a way of doing it, and indicated we were still in the framework of a propaganda group. The problem was that the word “New Party” seemed to imply something drastically new, and this infected our comrades as well as the petty-bourgeois leftist milieu – ecumenicalism was OK, but it weakened our resolve. The biggest political error we could make, he said, was not understanding that without the old party there won’t be a new party. We weren’t dissolving our tendency, and could be in a minority in the new party.

Jim asked, what if the CPA doesn’t follow through with the new party project with us? Rather prophetically, he stated they couldn’t survive.

The party-building tasks outlined in ‘87 were delayed in their implementation by some events of the late ‘80s, such as the attempt to unite with the SPA, and exploring the Green party possibility. And they were overshadowed by the big international political events of 1989-90, the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The party had to adjust to that politically. But we were still stressing those basic party-building tasks at each national gathering.

For example, in his report to the October 1989 NC meeting Jim stressed that we’d had a successful year because we asserted the fundamentals, we “continued to build a vanguard party”. He pointed out we’d experimented with loosening up, and rapidly ran into a crisis. If we hadn’t had the party we wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of the different openings, he said. How to do party building today is through firstly, continuing the organisational form, concentrating on the basic party-building tasks, and secondly, the regroupment process.

But at our June 1990 NC plenum (where we adopted the perspective for Green Left Weekly), and even more so at our April 1991 NC meeting, we stated that what was required was a reorientation, what amounted to a “turn”. The fact that we’d started Green Left Weekly in February 1991 meant that we actually had the means to implement such a perspective, at the same time as continuing to reach out, build a bigger periphery, do any regroupment that was possible, through the paper. The April ‘91 NC party-building report began:

With this report we’re proposing a reorientation for the party, a change in our direction that should be dramatised by seeing it as a turn. We want to propose that the party returns to a major focus on cadre building, on recruiting, on party building.

We never actually abandoned this orientation of course, but at times have let these things be neglected far too much, certainly in recent years.

Well, it was hard enough defending our revolutionary perspective in the ‘80s, without any breakthroughs, with the dead hand of Laborism doing its work for the ruling class. We, as well as the rest of the left, suffered attrition, comrades dropping away, finding the going too tough. The effects of the collapse of Stalinism and the Soviet Union would have naturally exacerbated that process in the ‘90s. That’s certainly been the impact on most of the rest of the left here and around the world. It dealt the final blow to the CPA. And the effects have been felt in our party, on the morale of the party, and more comrades dropping away. But just think what we have been able to achieve in that period – difficult as it was – and look at where the rest of the left is at, internationally, and in Australia.

We’ve been able to continue to win new youth to our revolutionary perspective, replenish our ranks, even grow a little. We’ve built Green Left Weekly, Links, Solidarity; organised the Socialist Scholars and International Green Left conferences; developed new programmatic documents for the party; led and intervened in campaigns on a broad range of issues; and continued to reach out, continued our openness, and not withdrawn, sect-like, in difficult times.

But it’s all been dependent on our fundamental strategy: building a revolutionary party, and beginning to build it now, along Leninist lines. And that turn we made in the early ‘90s was absolutely essential, vital to our own survival and the survival of all our projects.

A continuity of perspective

Nevertheless, we should be careful we understand just what sort of turn it was. Certainly we stressed it as a turn then for motivational purposes, and perhaps should continue to do so now, since we haven’t got where we want to be yet. But we shouldn’t let it politically distort our memories of the ‘80s. We continued to have the perspective of building a vanguard party, understanding that at this stage we were still essentially a propaganda group with the need to concentrate on our basic party-building tasks.

We made an adjustment for our false expectation of a big working-class upsurge in 1983-84, and we made an adjustment for our manoeuvre with the CPA during the New Left Party process.

And there was a slippage on our norms and functioning partly due to those adjustments, but also from the pressure as we continued to swim against the stream throughout the ‘80s and into the ‘90s.

So there’s a fundamental continuity between the ‘80s and ‘90s too. We’re sticking to our political positions, our party-building perspectives; it’s Comrade Steve R who wants to change. And these perspectives are vitally important to defend as they come under increasing attack in Australia and internationally.

Origins of dispute

The first signs of a different line from Comrade [Steve] R were the questioning of the concept of norms, which he raised at the NC meeting last July. In his contribution to the discussion on our party-building tasks at that NC meeting a number of the other differences appeared in outline form too, but it was his different understanding on norms that stood out the most. Then in Perth branch his different conceptions were concretised in the form of some actions he took as branch secretary. There was a further elaboration and clarification of his positions before the October NC plenum, in his counter-report at the NC meeting itself, and in the written and oral pre-conference discussion since.

The two positions in the party are quite clearly counterposed now, with Comrade [Steve] R presenting a different concept of the party.

Comrade [Steve] R claims he is only arguing for a change in some of our organisational practices. But to be consistent he should be calling for an overhaul of our whole system of organisation, and arguing that our methods of organisation were always wrong (unless he can point to some fundamental change in the international and Australian situation – perhaps the collapse of the USSR warrants such a change? Perhaps the nature of the epoch has changed?). He really has to argue that our party-building strategy and perspectives were always wrong, in Australia, in the US SWP, in Lenin’s party.

‘Opening up the party’

Comrade [Steve] R’s oral and written discussion contributions involved many questionings, niggles, attacks on our organisational principles, traditions, tone, “hardness”, language, etc. But the major change proposed, the real issue in the debate, is what sort of party we are building. He made his perspective more explicit toward the end of the discussion. He wants to:

• Open the party to the mass movement activists, and;
• Open the party to people with differing political perspectives.

Well, we also want to “Open up the party to movement activists”, but on our program, our politics, our norms. We don’t want to adapt the party to the politics of independent activists, who are most susceptible to the pressures of ruling-class ideology, or to the politics of other left tendencies. That would only change our party for the worse, and not endear us to those around us.

Any who agree with us and want to be active are welcomed into our ranks. That’s the actual experience. We take the question of membership very seriously, and would welcome them as members. Nevertheless, our main area of recruitment in the future will be among youth, as it is at the present and has been in the past.

There is a milieu of people who are hostile to the party – the minority of ex-members who have a grudge, the hardened anti-party independents – but there is little chance this layer could coalesce into an actual party or organisation. They are united by both their non-partyism and their cynicism towards activism and commitment.

And this milieu is increasingly outnumbered today by the real periphery of the party, which we value, not insult, as Comrade [Steve] R implies in his last pre-conference discussion piece. This periphery is the largest we’ve ever had:

• Look at Green Left Weekly readership and influence. Every week the party branches sell it or send our subscriptions to 4000-5000 people at least. If you take into account the casual buyers it’s probably 10,000 people. If you take into account people who read other people’s copies, you’re probably looking at 20,000. Compare this with the ‘80s and Direct Action‘s circulation.
• Look at the attendance at our dinners and similar functions in a 12 months period. The total who come to our dinners in the course of a year would be more than 2000 around the country. If you add in other functions, forums, Green It Up type events, it would be several thousand more.
• Look at the number of young people who joined Resistance campus clubs and branches last year, more than 1500.
• Look at the people who came along to the Socialist Scholars Conferences or the International Green Left Conference, about 1000 each time.

Our periphery is fairly large, bigger than it’s ever been. Compare us with the International Socialist Organisation: Comrades were at a meeting of one of their Melbourne branches in December, and they were bewailing the fact that they had practically no periphery.

We are relating to the former members of the CPA, to the genuine Greens, through Green Left Weekly and our other events and activities. But we’re in a position to politically influence them, not have them influence us with their essentially left-liberal politics.

And we’re not that isolated. Certainly we have only a small influence in the unions and in the working class as a whole. We’ve discussed the political problems there. But we’re not isolated from mass struggles. Compare our situation with those who have left our party – there’s no other way to keep in touch with left politics today than through the party and Green Left Weekly. We have no organised supporters category at the moment. Green Left partly fills that role – supporters can subscribe, come to events, support us in whatever way they can. And there’s no organisational regroupment prospects at the moment, with Green Left again filling that role to the extent it’s there.

But we should not blur the distinction, between members and periphery. We reach out to them, try to draw them into activities, try to influence them, try to make them active. We should relate to them openly, and honestly. We should state clearly our goals and objectives, and not manoeuvre with them. Comrade [Steve] R’s approach would lead to fewer members, and a smaller periphery.

Party and class

But it’s been said, the sort of Leninist party we’re trying to build now is not really appropriate at this stage of the struggle, when the working class is not revolutionary and we don’t have a mass base; a democratic-centralist vanguard party was appropriate for the Bolsheviks because they had a mass base in the working class.

At what stage of the struggle, or at what size of organisation, does such a party become justified? There’s the quote from Lenin’s “Left Wing” Communism that we’re very familiar with, where he explains that “One of the fundamental conditions for the Bolshevik’s success” was the maintenance of the strictest, truly iron discipline.

Only the history of Bolshevism during the entire period of its existence can satisfactorily explain why it has been able to build up and maintain, under most difficult conditions, the iron discipline needed for the victory of the proletariat.

The first questions to arise are: how is the discipline of the proletariat’s revolutionary party maintained? How is it tested? How is it reinforced?

First, by the class consciousness of the proletarian vanguard and by its devotion to the revolution, by its tenacity, self-sacrifice and heroism.

Second, by its ability to link up with, maintain the closest contact, and – if you wish – merge, in certain measure, with the broadest masses of the working people – primarily with the proletariat, but also with the non-proletarian masses of working people.

Third, by the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy and tactics, provided the broad masses have seen, from their own experience, that they are correct.

Without these conditions, discipline in a revolutionary party really capable of being the party of the advanced class, whose mission is to overthrow the bourgeoisie and transform the whole of society, cannot be achieved. Without these conditions, all attempts to establish discipline inevitably fall flat and end up in phrase-mongering and clowning.

On the other hand, these conditions cannot emerge at once. They are created only by prolonged effort and hard-won experience. Their creation is facilitated by a correct revolutionary theory, which, in its turn, is not a dogma, but assumes final shape only in close connection with the practical activity of a truly mass and truly revolutionary movement.

The thrust of this pamphlet by Lenin is directed against ultra-leftism, but he begins with an attack on Kautsky and other renegades who deny the possibility of revolution, the revolutionary lessons of the Bolshevik victory.

We’re very familiar with this passage, having quoted it many times to illustrate the danger of sectarianism endemic in the Trotskyist movement, where each group thinks their success is assured because they alone have the “correct program”, or “revolutionary continuity”, judged quite independently from actual practice.

We’ve pointed out that a program is part of the living struggles, and the Leninist type party is a party that is itself a product of the living class struggle, not of cadres who ideologically defend the “true” program, and “proclaim” themselves the vanguard. Of course, there’s no “Leninist concept of party building” separate from our program, orientation and tactics. Our party program very clearly sets out our understanding of the role of the revolutionary Marxist party and its relationship to the masses.

Note, all the conditions Lenin points to – the class-consciousness and tenacity of the vanguard; the party’s links with the masses of workers; the correctness of the party’s leadership, program, strategy and tactics, which assumes final shape only when it is able to establish links with a “truly mass and truly revolutionary movement”.

But also note that Lenin stresses that these conditions cannot emerge all at once, they are created by prolonged effort. It’s not the case that the party has no role to play until then, and shouldn’t try to win political leadership of the masses, and organise its ranks, select its membership, etc.

Any attempt to start with a politically heterogeneous, loosely organised group, to try to win a mass base, and then try to turn it into a tight Bolshevik-type party, would end in disaster. It wouldn’t have revolutionary politics.

Such an approach would take us back to the pre-1914, pre-1917 Social-Democratic type party, refusing to look at the lessons of the history of all socialist organisations since then. It ignores our criticism of the all-inclusive socialist party of the Debs model. Theoretically it’s a step back to Engels’ false idea that “… the simple feeling of solidarity based on the understanding of the identity of class position suffices to create and to hold together one and the same great party of the proletariat among the workers of all countries and tongues”.

We’re Leninists because of the test of practice. Lenin’s party was successful in making a proletarian revolution and starting the process of constructing a socialist society. Where has the alternative strategy, of building an all-inclusive party, ever been successfully applied? No socialist revolution has ever succeeded without the leadership of a combat party. Some weren’t Leninist, the Chinese CP for example, and thus there was no proletarian democracy. But there’s never been a case of a loose organisation without trained cadres ever being able to lead a socialist revolution.

How to get there?

So understanding the danger of sectarianism, the clowning of self-proclaimed vanguards, is just the beginning of wisdom.

The real task, in today’s political landscape, is how to build a Leninist party, to get a party of the Bolshevik type with a mass base, with deep roots in the working class.

What are some of the alternatives?

1. You could start building a cadre force now, a Leninist-type party, raising a socialist profile, through publications, putting out a paper, educating in Marxism, recruiting and training through participation in struggles.
2. As individual socialists, you could throw yourselves into the nearest thing to a mass organisation of the working class, and mole from within to win the ranks, or at least the leadership, to a revolutionary Marxist perspective. Possible candidates in Australia admittedly aren’t too promising at the moment, but some might make a case for the ALP, others might make a case for the Greens. You might want to dissolve our small forces into this larger body. (Whether we’d end up being swallowed, digested, spat out is another thing.)
3. You could try a combination of the first two strategies. That is, you keep your small socialist group intact (sometimes this might involve subterfuge, keeping a low profile) and operate in a larger formation if such an opportunity arises.

The third approach can be done well, successfully, or as is more often the case, crudely, or elevating the tactic to a permanent strategy. We don’t need to consider all the variants and combinations, and certainly not the fetishisers of entry into the ALP, etc., and many other sectarian deadends. But a serious combination of building a Marxist party or group to link up with and win a base in the working class has been our approach – open to regroupments, merging with real forces if they emerge, but still building our organisation. In this scenario, what sorts of organisational norms are best for the Marxist group? Is the Leninist organisation principle of democratic centralism irrelevant until that link with the masses is forged? Can the very existence of a Marxist-Leninist cadre group be an obstacle to the eventual emergence of a mass formation that could develop later into a Leninist party with a mass base?

We do not think so. A party like ours is needed at all stages of the process. There’s no evidence of the spontaneous emergence of a Leninist vanguard party. Certainly the particular form can vary according to the political circumstances. Certainly a smart, flexible approach – characteristic of Lenin – is needed. But a Leninist-type party is still required.

It’s needed especially at this time, following the collapse of Stalinism. The ideological leadership role of revolutionary Marxists can be crucial in the regroupment of healthy forces, in explaining political developments, the nature of Stalinism, etc., in providing education, educational material, in providing infrastructure. On a small scale, look at what we’ve been able to do with Links. It wouldn’t have happened without us.

And when did the Bolsheviks themselves actually become the vanguard party of the Russian working class? Not really until the middle of 1917, in the full sense of the word. They had a mass base among advanced workers before the revolutionary upsurge of 1917 to an extent, but in periods of reaction and retreat for the working class, they were sometimes isolated, sometimes quite small, and the Mensheviks might be said to have had a bigger base in the working class for much of that time.

In a colonial or semi-colonial country, with a weak bourgeoisie, and favourable conditions for the revolutionary movement, a party with less experience, less political consciousness and understanding and skills than Lenin’s Bolshevik party, can make a successful revolution. Witness China, Cuba, Nicaragua. But some sort of combat party is necessary though.

In an advanced capitalist country like Australia, with an immeasurably more powerful ruling class, with much more sophisticated weapons of coercion and ideological control at their disposal, how much more necessary is a well-organised, politically conscious, revolutionary party.

It’s vital we recognise where we’re at in Australia too. We can’t act as if we already have a mass base, to the neglect of a patient development of Marxist cadres at this stage. Although we always act from the point of view of the interests of the working class, we act to try to win the masses, to have a mass approach. A false understanding of where we’re at can lead to a fake populism, a rejecting of our Leninist position, and a neglect of cadre building and our basic party-building tasks.

Jim Percy put it very clearly in his party-building report to our 11th National Conference in January 1986:

We should understand we’re still a propaganda group. We’ve said that plenty of times, but today it’s modified by our understanding of how we build a vanguard party.

You don’t build a propaganda group by doing propaganda. You build a propaganda group by massive intervention into every struggle that is going on. That’s what we’ve learned.

Maybe it’s wrong to use this phrase, but I use it to emphasise one of the key struggles we still face: to build a vanguard party in this country. That’s the ideological, political struggle…

But we emphasise that we have not yet won that political struggle, the centrepiece of which is Direct Action. That’s where we engage in most of that discussion and struggle, and that’s why we have to say that we’re still a propaganda group.

Nine years on, that’s still a good description of the stage we’re at in building the party. The difference of course is that we have Green Left Weekly rather than Direct Action, a much better propaganda tool.

How to develop cadres?

The development of cadres is a conscious, active process, and there are two sides to it:

• There’s theory – education, reading, understanding capitalism and the history of the workers’ movement.
• And there’s practice – involvement in struggle, activity, learning from struggles of workers and other oppressed.

There’s a “third component,” that binds these two together – the party. The framework of the party enables the theory to be put into practice, it unites that activity and political experience, our program progressively encapsulates that experience. The party framework allows revolutionaries to collectively discuss, collectively decide, collectively act. Unity of theory and practice can be just a mantra without the structure of the party. The party is the instrument for struggle, the collation of the experiences of the working-class movement internationally and locally. The bourgeoisie can be very conscious and organised, so should we.

So can revolutionary cadres be developed if you begin with a rejection of democratic centralism, and a vanguard party? At the very least you’d have to agree it would be a lot harder.

Apart from the overall political weakness of any strategy for revolution that begins with such a flawed perspective, it makes it almost impossible to train and develop revolutionary cadres. You might develop activists on an issue, or smart academics, but not cadres. Even when you look around at non-Leninist left organisations, often you find that many of the leading activists got their skills and training in a cadre formation.

This approach, of making a principle of no democratic centralism, no “vanguardism”, no unity in action, is like spitting in the well from which the socialist movement in the future will have to draw. What might be seen as a necessary tactical position in constructing the party today, or a retreat forced on socialists by the weakness of their forces, gets converted into a permanent roadblock on the road to any further advance towards a stronger party, if the objective situation becomes more favourable. It would lead to the wholesale miseducation of a new generation. In fact it prevents the creation of revolutionary cadres.

What are words worth?

This is similar to the debate we’ve had in the past about language, for example Jim Percy’s comments in his October 1991 NC report about “learning two languages today”.

Firstly, we need our Marxist language to scientifically analyse society, to understand the classics, the experiences of past struggles, and thus to educate a new generation of cadres. We need those concepts that are needed to describe the reality, and the process necessary to change it – revolution, class struggle, dictatorship of the proletariat…

Secondly, we also have to try to express the same ideas in popular language, to reach more workers with our propaganda and agitation. I think we’re learning on this. Our experiences in the ‘80s and Green Left Weekly have helped us a lot.

But we also have to be carefull that we’re not influenced, distorted, cowed, by the very powerful, dominant, bourgeois ideology, in its many forms and many vehicles. The ruling class wants to take the whole space with their definitions, their language – democracy is identical with capitalism; socialism is dead, etc. And reformists, Social Democrats, carry this into the left and labour movements, with their definition of democratic socialism – excluding socialism.

One particular word we have to reclaim and defend is “Leninism”. There’s a very conscious effort by the ruling class to degrade the concept of Leninism, and they’re having a lot of success: “Leninism equals Stalinism” or “Leninism equals sectarianism”. This has become an epithet, hurled by enemies of socialism, anti-communists, Social Democrats, as a way to exclude even contemplation of a whole political perspective – revolutionary socialism, our perspective. “Marxist” can be tolerated a little by them, after all, it can be an academic exercise, a way of looking at the world. There are many tame “Marxists”, posing no threat to the system. But “Leninist”, that’s different, that means action, doing something to change the world. Leninists mean business.

It’s a word that’s important to us because it does accurately describe our political perspective. We began more consistently describing ourselves as Leninists in the early ‘80s. In the early days of our party we would describe ourselves as Trotskyists, or revolutionary Marxists, or Marxists and Leninists. With the rethinking in the party that began at the end of the ‘70s and the early ‘80s, we developed a critique of some of the Trotskyist positions, and gained a deeper understanding of Lenin’s ideas, his revolutionary strategy. With the full-time party school that began in 1980, a big thrust of it was going back and reading Lenin. Part of comrades’ armory was Lenin’s Collected Works. Comrades lugged their 47 volumes with them as they transferred from branch to branch; international comrades who attended our school lugged their sets back to Sri Lanka, to Indonesia (in brown paper parcels), to Hong Kong, to the Philippines.

It was fair to describe us as Leninists, then and now. And in our reports, and talks, and documents in the ‘80s and ‘90s we’ve described ourselves as such.

Now we’re not going to substitute rhetoric and sloganeering for sensible ways of reaching out to workers and others still swayed by ruling class ideas and “popular” wisdom. We’re continually looking for ways to present the essence of our revolutionary socialist ideas in a popular way, in understandable language, without jargon, and avoiding beginning with words that immediately throw up barriers to people’s receptivity. But we’re not going to retreat either. We’re going to challenge anyone on the left who tries to slip in the use of Leninism as an epithet to preclude consideration of revolutionary socialism. If we’re interviewed by the bourgeois press and they ask, “are you Leninists?” we won’t deny it, but point out in the same grab that Leninism doesn’t lead to Stalinism, and what was wrong with the Stalinist perversion of Marxism.

Because it’s not just a word we’re defending, it’s the political principles and revolutionary strategy behind it.

Are we sectarian?

Are we sectarian, as all our political opponents on the right think of course, and as some of our ex-members maintain? Are we a caricature of a Leninist party? Are we “sect-like”, “church-like” as Comrade [Steve] R states in his final pre-conference discussion contribution?

Well, yes and no. There’s partly an element of truth in this characterisation. We are certainly still in a semi-sectarian existence, in difficult conditions for winning the masses of workers in Australia to a revolutionary perspective. Of course the reformists, the careerists, see us as a sect; their perspectives are totally within the institutions of capitalist society, ours are outside them.

Lenin at one stage in the development of the Bolshevik party also characterised their organisation as a “sect”. But whether they were leading the advanced sections of the working class in revolutionary struggle, or just struggling to keep alive the skeleton of their organisation in difficult times, the Bolshevik leaders always maintained the necessity of their revolutionary cadre party.

In the difficult year 1909, Lenin polemicised against those who wanted to abandon the Bolsheviks’ course, liquidating the party outright or more subtle suggestions for doing the same thing. “Whoever finds this work tedious, whoever does not understand the need for preserving and developing the revolutionary principles of Social-Democratic tactics in this phase too, on this bend of the road, is taking the name of Marxist in vain.” The Bolsheviks’ party tasks now, he said, “consist in patiently training up partyist elements and knitting them together, in building up a really united and strong proletarian party”.

The question might be asked, given the unfavourable conditions for winning workers to revolutionary politics, should we dissolve ourselves, should we have dissolved ourselves in the past? Into the Greens say? Would it have led to a healthier, more socialist Green party? Or would our comrades have had to adapt further to the politics of the Greens? We think the latter. Although we don’t rule out the merging of our forces into a larger, leftward moving current, in the expectation of developing a stronger, bigger revolutionary socialist current out of that move, the development of the Green groups in Australia never looked like offering that opportunity.

It’s been raised in the discussion, though not committed to paper yet, that the degeneration of the US SWP under Jack Barnes flows directly from the Cannon tradition, that the Cannonist method of building a party is fatally flawed and sectarian. But we’ve pointed out in the January 1984 NC report, presented by Comrade Doug Lorimer and printed as The Making of a Sect that the organisational abuses of Barnes flow from the politics – the continuation of incorrect expectations of the turn to industry, the workers going to centre stage, the workerism, their refusal to get involved in the social movements, the Central American solidarity work for example. We corrected our line; they didn’t, and thus had to have a bureaucratic regime and organisational abuses to maintain it. We still defend the Cannon tradition, the lessons of building a Leninist party in the conditions of an advanced capitalist country. In fact, it was our assimiliation of those lessons that helped us to avoid following the Barnes leadership’s degeneration into a sterile, abstentionist sect.

National tactics and international tactics

Is there a contradiction between building a politically homogeneous party here in Australia – a Leninist party – and our open, ecumenical, regroupment approach internationally, with Links, for example? The international work report outlined the breadth and the success of this work. We say no, there’s no contradiction.

Firstly, our international approach reflects the reality internationally, attempting to rebuild, regroup all those still genuine about socialism, about revolutionary struggle, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decline of Stalinism.

Secondly, let’s remind ourselves of the understanding we reached of the difference between the functions and structures of national and international organisations. It’s worth re-reading some of our documents from the early ‘80s, when we broke with the US SWP, and left the Fourth International, analysing the problems of “Cominternism”.

Thirdly, comrades should know that we’re not excluding the possibilities of regroupment, of an open approach here in Australia. Let’s remember our efforts in the ‘80s, the quick response we’d have if there was any real possibility again today, and our actual efforts with Green Left Weekly, the most effective regroupment vehicle there’s been.

Our Australian approach reflects the realities and the possibilities here in Australia. Our international approach reflects the realities and the possibilities internationally.

It’s the same approach, taking account of the different roles of local and international organisations. A national revolutionary party has the task of leading the working class in the struggle for power against its own bourgeois state and ruling class. Even with the development of imperialism, the internationalisation of capital, the need for the international workers’ struggle to be coordinated, and the impossibility of creating socialism in one country, this fundamental task is still the same.

Individual socialist activists join a political party at the national level. Parties relate to each other at the international level.

Political activity at the national level requires unity in action, requires democratic centralism. But any concept of democratic centralism at the international level is totally inappropriate. It’s the hallmark of sects today – the ISO/[British]SWP, the Spartacists, the US SWP and its little groups of acolytes.

The Fourth International hasn’t in fact operated like this for some time, although some in the FI did have this concept of international democratic centralism and that was one of the areas where we differed and led to our decision to leave the FI. But the way the Bolsheviks operated in the early years of the Commmunist International is very instructive on this. In spite of their immense authority as the leaders of the first successful workers’ revolution, their practice was not to insist on international democratic centralism, even as they strove to remould the socialist parties attracted to the revolution into communist parties. It was only under the Stalinist degeneration that the system of issuing orders and changing and controlling the leaderships of national parties set in. Comrades would be very familiar with Cannon’s 1953 speech on “Internationalism and the SWP” that sets this out very clearly.

In the last few years there’s been a significant expansion of our international work. The collapse of the Soviet Union has opened up a number of avenues for collaboration that were closed before, and even given a small revolutionary Marxist party like ourselves greater relative weight with the disappearance of the parties with state power in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union that called themselves Marxist-Leninist.

Our stepped up international work has partly been made possible through Green Left Weekly, with the comrades we’ve been able to send overseas to Europe, Moscow, South Africa, and our other comrades, and friends in other parties who have been able to act as international correspondents.

It’s also the result of our consistent international solidarity work, with Central America and the Caribbean and especially recently in the Asia-Pacific region, Indonesia, East Timor and the Philippines.

Our open, non-sectarian approach has enabled us to develop better contacts with other revolutionaries around the world than we’ve ever had before – comradely party-to-party exchanges and collaboration.

This has culminated in the launching of Links, a very impressive initiative for a party our size that has won tremendous respect already and is winning more support with each issue.

So the success of this international work, and the way we carry it out in our relations with a range of parties and individuals from diverse political backgrounds, has perhaps led some comrades to extrapolate from our international relations back to our Australian situation.

Firstly, let’s remind ourselves once again of our efforts in the ‘80s, the absence of any possible partners for regroupment here in the ‘90s, and our need to have a party-building perspective, aiming to build a Leninist-type party, even when exploring regroupments, and the need to turn back to a stress on the basics in the ‘90s with the party having become a little fuzzy on some of those basics.

But more importantly, we can’t organise nationally, needing to weld activists from different social and political backgrounds into a disciplined cadre party, in the same way that we conduct our relations internationally between parties at the moment.

The pluralism, the diversity within certain parameters, is a useful trend in the international discussion, where it’s a process of recomposing, renewing the left, and building links between the genuine socialists who might come from different traditions – former Maoists, those from the CP tradition, those from the Trotskyist tradition, those breaking with Social Democracy.

But pluralism is not a principle as such, and certainly not a principle in building a party here, where we’re striving for clarity, and for unity in action.

‘Culture of debate’

Comrades Steve R and Michael Bo charge that there’s not “a culture of debate” in the party. Comrade [Michael] Bo bemoans that the constitution allows only three months of discussion every two years.

Let’s put aside the facts of our actual practice in recent years, for example a written discussion for 10 of the last 18 months! More importantly, our normal practice of democratic discussion doesn’t exist in any other party here, and not in the CPA when it existed either.

Comrade [Michael] Bo’s criticism is utter hypocrisy: There were all these opportunities for political discussion, and he didn’t contribute at all on issues where he has big differences with the majority of the party, on the Accord for example. So he puts up a contribution, at the end of the discussion, and a counter-platform, without his real views.

Comrade [Steve] R didn’t follow through too much in the pre-conference discussion about his proposal for pre-NC discussions, a proposal that was fairly thoroughly debated three years ago. But that’s possibly because, like Comrade [Michael] Bo, he wants permanent discussions, as in his reference to an ongoing discussion after the conference. But it won’t be ongoing. We’ll vote, and implement our perspective, and test it in practice. We discuss to reach agreement on action. We’re not dabbling with ideas.

Of course there will be ongoing discussions with provisional members and prospective recruits to convince them of our line. But there won’t be a permanent membership discussion. That’s not our tradition, not our norm.

Then there’s the charge that the party lacks experience of discussing differences. This has been raised in the past, by people outside the party, and people who subsequently left. But it’s just not true. We’ve had major debates in the past, and the discussion has been ongoing, with comrades with minority positions still carrying major responsibilities for the party.

• In the 1978 fusion between the SWP [our party here as it was called then] and the Communist League, for example, there were many continuing differences.
• The differences we had in the party in the early ‘80s led to some comrades leaving, but others with differences remained loyal.
• There’s our record in this discussion. It’s been sharp, yes, but it seems it’s more like Comrade [Steve] R who has difficulty in thoroughly discussing differences – he’s hidden them.

And look at the real culture of debate that we’ve fostered, with our periphery, the left milieu, through Green Left Weekly, nationally and internationally too, and with Links as well. Is the objection that the party’s positions are defended and promoted in this left milieu? Perhaps we haven’t done that well enough!

Although our strategy is to build a politically homogeneous party on Leninist lines, we’ve shown time and again that we’re flexible, open to regroupments, and willing to build an inclusive team leadership. That’s the actual experience over the years:

• In the ‘60s and early ‘70s, as we tried to regroup and reactivate the former members of the local Fourth Internationalist group;
• During the CL-SWL split and fusion experiences, building a united team against the trend in the FI;
• Our efforts in the ‘80s to unite with the CPA, the SPA, and to build the Nuclear Disarmament Party and a red-Green party;
• The small fusions with the Rosebery miners, the Revolutionary Path comrades, and Socialist Fight in the mid-’80s;
• Our success in building a leadership team composed of comrades from many backgrounds, even from backgrounds of political experience in other countries, and our recent willingness to include Comrade Phil Hearse;
• And the ease with which we reintegrate comrades who leave the party for a while and then return.

The question of hardness

Another charge that’s been made in this debate is that the NC majority has been “too hard”, and that our tone and style have been too sharp.

It’s the historical experience of Marxist parties that those who raise the question of “tone” or “regime” are the ones trying to obscure the discussion, or sit on the fence. Our tone has been exemplary. We have to be sharp to try to get clarity.

Did we come down too hard? Perhaps you could say that if there are no fundamental differences, but there are! And there would certainly be a different response if the questioning of our norms and our organisational principles had come only from new comrades. Our primary response would have been educational, while still being firm and explaining our position clearly.

But in this case it was an NC member, a branch secretary, with 20 years’ experience in the party. And it wasn’t just a case of tossing up ideas for the party to consider. Comrade [Steve] R was starting to carry out his ideas in practice, and it turns out that he had been implementing different practices for some time in Perth branch. In that situation it’s a challenge to the party, more than just a speculative discussion or academic debate.

The National Executive intervention in Perth branch, limited as it was, was to uphold and implement the decisions of the majority of the party, taken at our last national conference, and at NC meetings. Some Perth comrades were undemocratic in flouting this, and the majority of the branch executive was correct in pushing for the implementation of the party’s position.

The intervention was absolutely correct. Such action is part of the responsibility and accountability of leadership. This was questioned by Comrades [Steve] R and [Michael] Bo and other comrades in Perth, as somehow bureaucratic, or Stalinist. But not to have intervened would have been an abrogation of our responsibility. And Comrade Jonathan S acted in a responsible manner in getting in touch with the National Office when the branch secretary refused to outline the content of his tasks and perspectives report to the branch executive.

The indignation about quoting “private discussions” is also a red herring. These were political discussions, with the Resistance organiser, a member of the party NC, a member of the party branch executive, a discussion between different sides in the heated debate in Perth branch. It would have been politically irresponsible if Comrade Sean H had not reported the content of his discussions with Comrade [Steve] R to the National Executive.

Have we been too hard in the past, using organisational solutions incorrectly? This has been suggested in the discussion also. It’s worth reviewing all our past fights in the light of this challenge to our perspective, but let’s just look at one example from our past.

If we hadn’t been firm with the Barnesite attack on our party in the early ‘80s, we’d be a lot weaker today. The sectarian offshoot of the US SWP here, the Communist League, might be a lot bigger, we would be a lot smaller. That’s certain.

I’m not saying that we made no mistakes in past struggles in the party. But at each major struggle, at each step, we did the right thing. We learn, we avoid some stupid errors and idiocies, we learn how to do things better, and some of this gets codified in our constitution or in our organisational principles and norms.

Norms and rules

We do have organisational principles and we do have norms, and this was taken up quite thoroughly in the October NC party-building report and in the pre-conference discussion. And it’s not the case that the National Executive has somehow tightened them up or slipped in new ones just in recent years. To illustrate our continuity on this, I’d like to quote from the party-building report adopted by our October 1988 NC meeting:

“Which qualities, and which attitudes, will sustain us through the struggle, through the long haul, in the difficult periods as well as the high points?” the report asked.

First of course is our political clarity, our Marxist understanding, including our sense of history, and our feeling for the global nature of our fight. We can draw inspiration from previous struggles and from other revolutions.

Secondly, a good feeling for the class line, “them” and “us”, is vital too. An anger, hatred, contempt, which can be useful if you’ve also got the political clarity. An observation about Lenin comes to mind, how he always talked about their parliament, their institutions. To be conscious about all the myriad of ways that bourgeois ideology beats down on us is to be half-way there to overcoming it.

Thirdly, there are a whole range of traditions and procedures that ensure the healthy functioning of the party. We’ve taken these from Lenin and the Bolsheviks especially, and from the experiences of some of the small groups in the advanced capitalist countries in the non-Stalinist tradition such as some of the writings of James P. Cannon, and from our own history and experiences, and we collectively refer to them as our organisational norms.

At different times we’ve attempted to get some of these ideas together in one spot on paper. In 1981 Comrade Allen Myers drew up a draft organisational principles document, but we never got round to adopting it. OK, it wasn’t perfect and absolutely comprehensive – something like this isn’t going to be, we realised – but I think we are starting to feel the lack of written material on these questions.

The report then pointed to a range of concepts and traditions within our organisational norms that related to the question of sustaining commitment and seriousness for the long haul:

Firstly, there’s the concept that what binds the party together is comradeship, political ties, not friendship or social ties. The history of our movement both here and overseas testifies to the destructiveness of any tendency for permanent social groups to develop in the party. It inevitably leads to the destruction of cadre if persisted in. There’s nothing wrong with friendliness or friends, but we have to be careful our friendship groups don’t develop a political dynamic of developing private views about politics in the party.

Then there’s our concept of involving all members in political activity, recognising that if we don’t, comrades can adapt to the bourgeois milieu they live and work in. Everyone needs a task, an assignment, a political role.

Then there’s also our concept of team leadership with our party bodies functioning as a team of leaders which understands the strength and weaknesses of each component and works together smoothly for the common goal without concern for irrelevancies like the ‘prestige’ or positions of the individuals involved.

And there’s our whole idea of building a party of professional revolutionaries – whether we work for the party or are employed by the capitalists, we see the party and politics as our profession.

One of our most important organisational norms, and one that’s been challenged in this discussion, is that of team leadership and collective decision making by executive bodies. One aspect of this norm is that discussions on proposals for action should be taken collectively and given as a report on behalf of the executive. Another is that deliberations should be kept to members of that body, making it possible for members of the executive committee to feel free to express their views without feeling that they would have to defend or be responsible for whatever they said at them before the entire membership. That’s a norm, not a rule or regulation. It’s a norm that it’s executive discussions are not open to every branch member to participate in or observe, not a rule that members are forbidden to report to others.

Similarly, with reports to branch meetings on NC decisions, it’s the norm for such reports to be given to all the members of the branch, not a select few. But in a situation of serious political differences, it’s obvious that such norms would not be maintained.

As the US SWP degenerated in the early ‘80s, the central leadership around Jack Barnes converted these norms of the Cannon-type party into rules and regulations that brought disciplinary action for every infraction.

Why do comrades leave the party?

Comrade [Steve] R has pointed to the problem of attrition in the party, members leaving, even experienced comrades, NC members. Obviously the party as a whole, and the national leadership too, was not unaware of this, and not happy about it. He shouldn’t think he’s the only one conscious about it.

And we know it’s not just a phenomenon of recent years. Throughout our history we’ve had the problem of a turnover of members and leaders of the party. It’s a feature of revolutionary movements in all countries, and at all times – revolutions, and attempts at them, are devourers of people in this sense. The dropouts in recent years can also in many cases be seen as responses to the particular political conjuncture world-wide, a difficult time for the socialist movement.

But the real question is, how should we react? It’s not a solution to jump overboard after them. Throw them a life raft where possible, perhaps, but we’ve still got a ship to steer, a party to build. We shouldn’t just bemoan the fact, without a solution, or a false solution, or add to the problem.

What are the reasons comrades have left? There are two categories.

Firstly, the younger, newer comrades who leave. In general, that is our failure, our failure to politically integrate and educate these comrades. It’s something we’ve addressed in recent party-building reports, and will be taken up in the party-building tasks report tomorrow.

Our real fault has been in the inadequate use of provisional membership, in not educating provisional members in our politics and organisational principles, in not giving them help and guidance in their political interventions. There’s always likely to be a layer of comrades like that, not very well integrated into the party and its politics. It becomes a real problem if it’s the dominant trend in the party. That’s possibly what happened in Perth branch.

Secondly, there’s the longer term, experienced, comrades, including leaders of the party. Here the reasons for comrades dropping out can be bit more complex.

There would be many different individual components to the reasons, but you can’t leave it just at the level of individual psychology, and certainly at this time you can’t ignore the question of the period, the difficulties socialists face today, the tremendous ruling class ideological pressure that bears down on anyone who dissents, let alone those who make a fundamental challenge to the capitalist system.

That’s the relevance of the graphic metaphor of the “ideological bullets of the bourgeoisie” – it might be less physically dangerous than being a revolutionary in other situations, but it can still be destructive of the revolutionary. That’s why we need a party of a certain type, to help ward off those ideological bullets, to counteract the ideological batterings from ruling class institutions and propaganda, to help explain and collectively resist the carrots and sticks.

Perhaps a better metaphor is the one used by Trotsky in the ‘30s – we’re a small force swimming against the stream. Building a revolutionary party in an imperialist country in a period a general retreat by the workers’ movement is a struggle against enormous pressures, and we should be aware of the ultimate source of those pressures.

The bourgeois ideological offensive against the workers’ movement, against socialism, is very consciously directed. They don’t feel secure, in spite of their public bragging. Clinton has upped the arms spending! So much for a “peace dividend”! They’re much more class-conscious than the overwhelming majority of workers at the moment. They’re using racism, sexism, nationalism, their labour lieutenants, religious bigotry, the perversion of language, the promotion of individualism, the denial of social solutions, sops and bribes to consciously weaken the workers’ movement.

To make advances in building a revolutionary workers’ party in this context requires clarity, organisation, dedication, commitment and perseverance. Some comrades will get worn out by the effort, become unclear about the goals. And over time, the class struggle pushes comrades back, the current gets too strong.

Comrade [Steve] R never relates his concerns about the resignation of longer term comrades at all to the class struggle. For him it’s just a question of individual psychology, which the party is held responsible for failing to deal with.

Comrades can get demoralised when we don’t have victories, or get pushed back, and become more susceptible to the bourgeois pressures. But it doesn’t automatically mean the party was on the wrong course; the objective situation, the odds against us, might just have been too great at the moment.

And it’s also false to argue that people leave because we’re undemocratic. We’re the most democratic party around at the moment. Our pre-conference discussion, our conference, our election of leaderships, are exemplary. Just because the majority of the party isn’t won over by your arguments doesn’t make the party undemocratic.

And it’s also false to argue that people leave because we demand too much of them. Let’s get it in perspective, what are our goals? An extremely ambitious project, to lead the working class and its allies, millions of people, in overthrowing the rule of the capitalist class and replacing it with the rule of the working class. It’s not going to be achieved by half-hearted efforts. If we don’t ask for dedication and commitment, if we don’t expect sacrifices, and yes, heroism too when required, we should give the game away right now. Without that commitment we won’t have cadres; without cadres we won’t have a revoluionary party; and without a revolutionary party we won’t be able to lead a socialist revolution.

It’s no solution at all to comrades’ demoralisation and dropping out to propose that we lower our norms of activity and commitment. That’s just following them into less activity or inactivity.

The way to counter demoralisation is through activity and successes, through education and politics. Revolutionary politics is satisfying, and can continue to be satisfying. What’s the alternative? Make peace with the system?

Having said all that, it’s worth saying again, that we shouldn’t write off former members. It’s only a small minority who go really off, move rapidly to the right, become hostile to the party.

We’ll always be open to comrades who want to resume their political activity after a break – we’re very welcoming of prodigal sons and daughters. And if comrades who leave still want to support the party in some way, or work with us in some area of common struggle, that’s fine, as long as they respect party members’ right to continue to build the party as we see fit, and don’t engage in hostile acts against the party.

Some who leave are just stepping back temporarily, and will be reactivated by new events, by an upsurge of mass struggles. Some will put time into bringing up a family, paying off a house, but after a while will realise the problems of capitalism are still there (or perhaps worse with the extra costs of bringing up kids, rising interest rates, attacks on social security measures). Comrades will be motivated to have a second go. New anger, new events, can lead to them casting aside their demoralisation, and jumping into the stream again.

In a different period, and with a bigger party, I think more of our ex-members will want to get active again. And if they’re not able to become members, we should welcome them as supporters, subscribers to Green Left, attendees of our dinners and forums and other political activities.

Their moralism and ours

Comrade [Steve] R criticised as “moralism” our efforts to encourage activism from comrades and educate about our norms. But it’s a question of their moralism and ours. There are two sources of moral pressure, pushing in two different directions – the pressure from the party to stand up, to fight, to be active, and the pressure from the ruling class through all its institutions and media to be passive, accept, don’t rock the boat.

It’s the “us” and “them” question again. Two totally different concepts are sometimes merged into one here, and it can lead to disorientation and political errors. On the one hand, there’s the commendable counsel to “be with our class”. That is, we have to build links with and identify with our class, especially the class-conscious workers, and learn from that day-to-day struggles.

But this is a totally different question to believing we should think or behave like the majority of society at the moment, act like “normal” people. That’s adapting to “popular” opinion, that is, to bourgeois public opinion, the backward ideas and prejudices in society at large. The pressure from this source is not to deviate, don’t come out, don’t challenge bourgeois norms of behaviour or ideology, don’t rebel, don’t protest – don’t stand on street corners and sell Green Left Weekly. It’s a conservatising pressure, and it comes from their social institutions.

There’s also a conservatising economic pressure, that bears down on you day to day, and intensifies as you get older, with more worries, perhaps more responsibilities – children, a mortgage.

The role of the party is to counter the bourgeois pressure with Marxist, i.e., politically conscious working-class, pressure, on our class, and on the recruits from the class to the party. It’s not our role to adapt, certainly not to political backwardness, but also not to get ground down by the everyday concerns forced on us by bourgeois society.

Are we doing too much?

Even though we have ambitious goals, and we’re trying to build an activist party and train cadres through education and engagement in activities, are we perhaps trying to do too much? Perhaps the stress on comrades is too much, we’re overloaded, and should listen to Comrade [Steve] R and shift the party to a lower gear.

There are several aspects to our problems here. We all recognise that even in this period, at what are supposed to be difficult or impossible times for socialists, we are confronted with many opportunities for building the party, for intervening in the class struggle, for reaching out to new people with our socialist ideas. There are many openings for us, yet far too few resources, far too few comrades, to take advantage of all of them.

And it’s also true that party life is quite hectic, with meetings or activities on most nights at branch offices, packed calendars, comrades running around, sometimes frazzled, trying to get the tasks done. There’s a positive side to this of course: It’s an attractive atmosphere for new potential recruits who come around. It’s much better than the serenity of the SPA offices, often closed after five. The National Office also frequently feels weighed down with the multitude of tasks to be done, projects to complete. And Green Left staff are also stretched very thin, with not enough resources to do all they’d like, although our improved efficiency has meant earlier finishing hours than in the old days with Direct Action.

But even though we’re overloaded in a sense, we don’t think there are any major cutbacks in our activity that we should make, that we want to make. Some tasks we won’t complete. Some things we won’t do as well as we’d like. Some tasks will have to be relegated further down the list. Let’s try to complete as much as we can, as best as we can, and not allow a feeling of panic enter in.

Sometimes we’ve said that we have an apparatus suitable for a party many times our size, and that now we need to put more flesh on our bones. Well, that’s true in a sense, but with more flesh, more cadres, I think we’d quickly want to have even more comrades on full-time assignments, to try to take advantage of further opportunities. We can see the limitations imposed by an inadequate apparatus, even in a case like the South African Communist Party, with a membership on paper of around 70,000 but only able to have a full-time staff similar to the size of ours.

Comrades [Steve] R and [Michael] Bo have accused the party of having an apparatus that’s too big. But there have also been suggestions that we have a party bureaucracy. Comrades should be careful about such charges, given Marxist understand of what a bureaucracy is. What would be the material basis of such a “party bureaucracy”, what materially privileged social stratum does it represent and defend?

The charge of too big an apparatus has sometimes been raised in previous discussions, and by former members. “Bloated apparatus” has sometimes been the phrase used. But with a smaller staff, we’d get less done. We’d have to be content with a smaller, less attractive, perhaps less frequent, Green Left Weekly. We’d publish fewer books and pamphlets. Perhaps we mightn’t manage to produce Links. The pace of party life would certainly be slower, there would be less activity expected of comrades, and less political impact.

We know how much more we could do, with a larger party, with more resources, with more full-time staff, more activists, more 100 percenters.

But for now we’re short, and can sometimes feel overloaded. The national and branch leaderships will have to be very conscious of this in planning our work.

The first thing is to make sure we get our priorities right, and get our basic party-building tasks covered. Our mass work has to be planned within our party-building framework, and our interventions prioritised accordingly. These were discussed in our interventions and trade union reports, and the balance and priorities will be further taken up tomorrow in the tasks report.

Secondly, we can all work at being much more efficient than we presently are. We can be a lot better organised, we can spread the load of work among comrades more efficiently. And we can carry through further the integration of all the different aspects of our party-building work.

The balance sheet of 1994

The balance sheet of our work in 1994 has been positive, if you look at the actual strength and achievements of the party, the education and development of cadre, and the response to the challenge in Perth branch:

• 1994 was the fourth year of Green Left Weekly;
• In 1994 we started Links magazine, have got three issues out, and it’s generated tremendous interest and respect internationally;
• We’ve produced more publications than usual – our program, Jim’s book, many pamphlets;
• Darwin branch was established;
• We held a very successful International Green Left Conference;
• Our Asia-Pacific solidarity, especially with East Timor, took a qualitative leap forward;
• Our CPSU work in Canberra has been the most constructive union work we’ve been able to do for many years;
• We had a very good intervention in the anti-fees campaigns on campus;
• And with a continuing radicalisation among sections of young people, we made many recruits to Resistance campus clubs and branches, well over 1200, though the key need is integration and education, as the tasks report will emphasise once again;

The real failure of the party this year has been our failure to integrate, train, and educate enough of our new youth recruits.

Perspectives for next few years

In the year ahead we have to succeed on this. Our perspectives for the coming years depend on it. Unless we train a larger number of cadre, we won’t be able to recruit, we won’t be able to grow, and we won’t be able to lead the coming struggles to successful outcomes.

We need to present ourselves as a politically “viable” alternative. We’re the only organisation really presenting a different political perspective, a working-class political perspective. We’re small, yes, but we know we can grow.

We need to act more as a party – seriously, responsibly, confidently. We don’t want to engage in bragging, false projections, the ridiculous hype of the left sects. But we do need to raise the party profile higher. Comrades need confidence, even aggression in some circumstances, when they talk to new people, intervene in campaigns, on campus, on the job. We need to inject a tone of anger, outrage, in our agitational leaflets, our talks, our election literature.

The opportunities for the DSP are greater today than ever before. But unless we try to act as a serious socialist organisation, our members and supporters can lose confidence in the party project, they can drift off to their private concerns, can seep back into the ALP, back to “the marsh”, become part of the problem. The defeatism of those who adapt can thus make the tasks for socialists that much harder.

The political perspectives for 1995 discussed earlier in the conference indicated many possibilities for work and a realistic set of priorities, for our trade union work in the CPSU, for our Asia-Pacific solidarity work, for our student campaigns, our women’s liberation work, our election campaigns.

Are there possibilities for alliances and united fronts? We’ll make a united front with all those willing to struggle. At the moment, with so many of the attacks coming from the Labor government, the demands of united fronts will most often be directed against the ALP government.

For election campaigns in coming years we’ll make a positive stance for electoral alliances, but realise that there’s not much likelihood of them, so we’ll concentrate on propaganda and recruitment to our own party. We want to reach people, not just on the issues, but on how to take the next step – beyond parliamentarianism, to building a movement for fundamental social change, a different sort of government, for socialism. We’ll highlight international and national issues, even when the most popular issue might just be a local one, and we’ll be serious campaigners.

We want to develop a closer connection between our party program, our strategic perspectives, and our day-to-day activity. We can’t slip into the old maximum and minimum programs of the reformists, of the Stalinists, where socialism is just brought out for speechifying on Sundays. We shook off some of the sectarianism of Trotskyism, but we have to be careful we don’t adapt to the non-socialist milieu, the non-party feeling. We have to continue to apply the correct method in the Trotsky’s Transitional Program.

The details of our party-building tasks will be covered in the next report, tomorrow, but just to repeat again our main tasks:

• The consolidation, training, and education of cadres, of comrades able to stick it out for the long haul, making the party a labour school of revolutionary Marxism.
• Building Resistance, recruiting young people to socialism, and training the new generation through activity, and developing confidence, maturity, and experience.
• Doing both the basic party-building tasks, and our intervention and reachout work, and integrating it all, especially through Green Left Weekly.

Our future goals and hopes

Our prospects for the future are good, but our options for the coming years are contingent on our ability to carry out our party-building tasks successfully in the year or two ahead.

In his report to the party’s 11th National Conference in January 1986 Jim Percy indicated that we were in a position to reach one of our “intermediate goals” – being the biggest of the left parties in this country. Well, we reached that goal, partly by default through the self-destruction of the CPA, although in the end that was partly due to us. Now we have to make it more of a reality, make it mean more. So our next intermediate goals should be:

• To build a significant if even still small base of support in the working class;
• To have this reflected electorally;
• To be able to lead larger political campaigns, and thus have a greater impact on the class struggle;
• To increase and strengthen our international collaboration with other socialist forces based on this stronger base.
• To consolidate and strengthen our apparatus.

The key to achieving these goals is to continue our commitment to building a Leninist party.

Reaching these next intermediate goals would put the Democratic Socialist Party in a good position to respond to the next major capitalist crisis and workers’ upsurge in the years ahead.

Summary

Comrades, I think most of us have been somewhat overwhelmed by this discussion. It’s really impossible to summarise it – its range, its breadth, in the number of points comrades have taken up in great detail, showing a high level of understanding of this question, showing the depth of understanding of our party-building perspectives, what we’re trying to do in building a Leninist-type party.

This discussion today needs to be generalised throughout the party. All the contributions that comrades have made here, the contributions in The Activist – it’s a tremendous resource and asset for the party as a whole in the coming year, in the coming years. It provides a wealth of insights and understanding, and I hope comrades did take good notes, or have good memories, to be able to take these ideas and these contributions back to the branches and to use them for future reference. It will be a way to bolster the application of our perspectives, applying these insights that we’ve had today.

Really, we have an obligation to Comrade Steve R. He’s really done the party a great service in my opinion. One comrade on the presiding committee suggested we give Comrade R a medal, and there is a good point to that. He has forced the party to think things through at a deeper level and in a better way, a wider way, to generalise the understanding of what we’re on about throughout the party. It’s not completely throughout the party yet, that’s the task of comrades here to convey it to other comrades who weren’t able to get to this conference, although they participated in the pre-conference discussion and got that value from it.

This discussion forced the party to really reaffirm our perspectives, and I think reaffirm the confidence of comrades in the party after Comrade Jim Percy’s death too, the confidence in the leadership of the party, and in the course we’re on.

It also very clearly had a great gain for the party in raising the educational level of comrades, raising that throughout the party, I think most acutely among comrades in Perth branch who learned a tremendous amount from this discussion. They’ll all admit it and I think it’s very obvious to see from their contributions at this conference. It’s been very heartwarming to see that happen.

OK, one point that wasn’t in the report but I was thinking of putting it in, and it’s the province of tomorrrow’s tasks report, and that’s the question of recruitment and consolidation. But just a few points, because it does relate to some of the issues that have come up in the discussion here.

We have had growth this year, although not as much as we would have hoped of course. The party’s full membership has grown by 6.9%, the full and provisional membership has grown by 5.8%. There are some interesting statistics about the social composition of the party, bearing in mind the comments comrades made about the nature of the working class, and the concerns of a working-class party. 61% of the provisional members who joined during the course of the year are workers, employed or unemployed. 37% of those who joined came through Resistance, and a big chunk of the rest came into contact with us first through Green Left Weekly. 38% of the new full members of the party are workers.

In regard to the resignations or lapses from the party, 38% were full members, 62% were provisional. Of those full members, 68% had been full members for more than a year, of whom two were on the NC, and two were former NC members. We should also note that six former members rejoined the party during the year. Even though it’s not the rapid growth of the party that we hoped for at the beginning of last year, I thinks it’s solid growth and a real strengthening of the party, but it’s really been consolidated through this discussion. The process of the discussion during the second half of the year has made this party a lot stronger.

On the question of democracy and discussion that got raised again by Comrade R, and to which many delegates responded. Comrade R made the claim that there was “a brick wall against discussion” and that we have “a lot to learn about democracy”, and that “we can’t keep people in the party if they have differences”. I think that’s totally wrong, and comrades clearly answered that time and again, with their arguments, and with their own personal experiences. Comrades who have raised differences, and many other comrades, pointed to examples where we have shown in practice how democratic we are, how there’s hardly a comparision with some of the other parties on the left here. It’s not merely 10 times more democratic, it’s fundamentally different.

We touched on this at the last conference if comrades recall, where we made the point that we do welcome discussion, we welcome the comrades who raise different points of view, and that we don’t isolate those comrades, we don’t cut them out. Those comrades who raise different views are specifically valued, and I think in my summary last year I pointed to a number of comrades who consistently raise different points of view, and sometimes the points are taken up, sometimes they’re rebutted, sometimes they’re not taken up immediately, sometimes those comrades get proved right, a lot of the time they’re also proved wrong, but we do value the role they play in raising different ideas. I think also the points comrades made about the relationship between democracy and participation are absolutely true.

That leads into the questions about our constitution, the amendments that are proposed and the preamble. There’ll be a report and discussion on this on Sunday, so I don’t want to go into it too much here. But the points Comrade R made are a complete distortion of the actual amendments proposed. We’re not making a level of commitment and a level of activity a rule of membership, that is, we’re not going to go and lay charges against a comrade whose level of activity drops below a certain level. But there are some minimum requirements of membership – comrades do have to pay their dues.

We’re not making expectations about a level of commitment and activity a rule of membership. We do draw the relationship between the level of activity and the question of democracy, and this isn’t a new discussion. If comrades think about it, this is the 1903 discussion once again. And similarly with the question of agreement on perspectives. It’s not just a question of the general agreement on the aims of socialism. Again that’s fairly fundamental, and again, not very new.

Now Comrade R says he’s for “a party of action, not a party that limits members on the basis of theory,” and he wants more of an “adaptation to mass movement activists” and so on. As comrades have pointed out in the discussion, this really is a fundamentally different concept of a socialist party, and that has been clarified through the discussion. And this has strengthened comrades’ understanding of and commitment to our party-building perspectives.

And so with Comrade R’s final contribution to this discussion in which he said he’d be abstaining rather than voting against this report. Once again I find myself nonplussed, because he does have fundamentally different perspectives. I think it’s true, as comrades have suggested, it would be more logical for him to vote against this rather than abstain, because in the course of the discussion, even though of course he says he’s for Leninism and supports revolution, he put forward very different perspectives and different ideas about what to do next. He made a number of proposals in various contributions in the written pre-conference discussion and in the discussion in Perth that would set us on a different course.

On the question of the attrition of longer term comrades, without attempting to in any way to summarise and note all the points that were raised, I just wanted to take up a couple. Firstly, again on the resignation of Comrade Frank N from the National Committee, and perhaps from the party if Comrade John Mc’s information is correct. We did try repeatedly to solicit discussion from Frank, to hear his views, to get him to commit them down on paper. And he admitted in his letter of resignation from the NC that he made several starts to putting his views down on paper, but tore up each attempt he made. In the end he just resigned from the National Committee without putting forward those views. That’s a very sad development of course. Frank, and other comrades who resign, are very valuable members who’ve made tremendous contributions to the party over the years, and we all suffer for each comrade who resigns. But the points made by Comrade Allen Myers about the particular difficulties and pressures bearing down on comrades who have gone and carried out assignments for the party overseas is pertinent I think. There were particular pressures on comrades isolated in Prague, for example, as Stalinism was collapsing. It wasn’t a pretty sight, it wasn’t an encouraging situation when that was happening. And the isolation of the English countryside and the pressure of the sectarian British left, cut off from our party, wasn’t a healthy politically environment either.

But we should also remember that we do have comrades overseas who haven’t succumbed to those pressures. Comrade Renfrey C is in a pretty terrible situation in Moscow, no prettier than Prague. If anything, it’s worse. If you hear some of the stories Renfrey emails back to us as he and his friends desperately try to escape the clutches of the mafia at each turn – it’s a tough time that Renfrey’s going through there. And there’s also Comrade Steve O in Managua, and Comrade James Ch in Indonesia. Comrade Terry T survived Johannesburg. Perhaps the difference with these comrades is that they had something extra to sustain them; they’re in day-to-day contact with other revolutionaries. Even in Renfrey’s situation, with a relatively small Marxist current, the Party of Labour and people around Boris Kagarlitsky that Renfrey works closely with has meant that he’s not been totally isolated, even though it’s a terrible situation. Comrade Steve O in Managua is in a very political situation, working for FACS, building up lots of contacts with the Latin American left, attending the Sao Paulo forums etc. And of course Comrade Terry wasn’t isolated in Johannesburg, and seemed to have a good time some of the time as well, and that was a very encouraging political situation, complex, but not discuoraging and likely to lead to the same sort of demoralisation and isolation that comrades suffered in Europe.

It just reaffirms for us the importance of the team we have, the party we have, to sustain us against all those pressures. And the same pressures do exist here, and they have existed in other times. Those particular times overseas were difficult, were special, but they’re the sort of pressures we come under all the time in our lives as revolutionaries, and the importance of the party in repelling those ideological bullets, in sustaining each other, in supporting each other, can’t be underestimated, and I think it’s been driven home by this discussion to all of us here. (It doesn’t mean either that we’ll back off from future Green Left correspondents in Europe. Given the finances, we’ll do that again.) It does point to the problem that arises, however, when comrades lose confidence in our fundamental socialist project, and I think that can be at the heart of it. Whether it’s hidden, and comrades don’t admit it immediately, or only admit it five years down the track after they leave the party, that yes, they had lost confidence in our fundamental party-building project and our socialist perspectives.

And as I said, it has been a continuing thing, not just a recent thing, and it goes back to the early ‘70s. I think comrades from Melbourne remember one of the early leaders of our party, Peter C. Others had succumbed before, but his departure hit comrades a little harder, because he was on our NC, and very abruptly he just said, I’m going off. He specifically said he was interested in surfing and skiing, and he did a lot of that, although being in the party certainly doesn’t preclude surfing and skiing. The next time I saw him actually was outside a teachers’ mass meeting, where he’d broken his leg skiing, so it’s not all that much fun.

But it is that loss of confidence in socialism, in whether we can do it that is at the root of why longer term comrades have left the party.

Well, nothing in Comrade R’s proposals during the course of this discussion is new, because we’ve been battling, in one way or another, a lot of these proposals, a lot of these questionings, a lot of this pressure, for the past 10 years. So I think that it was correct that our reaction was firm, and we responded in a way that will increase the clarity among comrades, and I think we’ve succeeded in doing that.

If we’d adopted those sorts of perspectives 10 years ago or any time in between, if we’d succumbed to that pressure and adopted his type of remedies, we wouldn’t have something like Green Left Weekly, we wouldn’t have Links. We wouldn’t have been able to do the things we did with the NDP, or attempted to do with the New Left Party, the CPA or the SPA, or the Green movement, if we’d modified our fundamental party-building perspectives.

I’d just like to read a quote comrades who’ve been around four or five years might remember, and comrades who’ve read Jim’s book will recognise. It’s from a report by Jim to the October 1991 National Committee meeting, and it relates to the discussion today:

But the organisational question or the party question is actually one of the key ways that the political slide has been expressed out there on the left for some time. The retreat from socialism has accelerated in the last year or two, but it has been expressed through the party question for many years now. And so that elevates it to being the key political question today.

Well I think that’s still true, here, and around the world. And our understanding on this has risen to a higher level as a result of this dispute, this discussion. It has strengthened our commitment to our fundamental party-building perspectives. And we’ve made gains for the party through this discussion, gains in Perth branch, even though initially it’s declined in membership, and gains for many individual comrades. We can go forward in 1995 with these perspectives and on this line.

We go forward, and we have to implement these perspectives, in a united way, in an inclusive way, including Comrade R, and other comrades with differences. Comrade R’s second contribution today was very similar to the contribution he made at the October NC, and really doesn’t explain why he still doesn’t agree. It’s a diplomatic speech, but the contradictions are still there. We want to continue, at the appropriate time, that discussion with Comrade R. We don’t ask him to renounce his views of course, but carry out the joint work of the party, carry out responsible assignments for the party. And he can reraise those positions, if he still retains them, at the next conference, in the next pre-conference discussion.

And we hope he’ll constructively participate on the National Committee on how to implement our perspectives, even giving his orientation and his perspectives to that discussion will help us decide on what courses of action. This is an opportunity to show in practice how a loyal opposition will operate, to demonstrate this to the party as a whole.

So this discussion’s been more than a reaffirmation of our fundamental party-building perspectives. I think it’s been a deepening, a deepening of our understanding on the party question. And I think it flowed through to a deeper understanding on other questions. The other reports and discussions at this conference were at a higher level of understanding of what our tasks are, and how we carry them through. it’s given us a much clearer direction. It’s strengthened the party, and as a result we’re in a position to make significant advances with our tasks in the year ahead.