[The general line of this report was adopted by the December 30-31, 1995 DSP National Committee plenum.]

What is our balance sheet of the year, internationally, and in Australia, from a party-building perspective?

Our fundamental assessment of the period, that we’ve analysed and discussed at recent party conferences and National Committee meetings, hasn’t basically changed.

International situation

Imperialism is still on the offensive, and continues to act confidently following the collapse of the workers’ states in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The fundamental contradictions of capitalism are still there, and the more astute observers can sometimes show their nervousness, but on the whole imperialism is strong, feels strong, and acts that way.

The international workers’ movement is still weak, on the retreat, following the years of difficulties during the Cold War and periods of capitalist boom, and years of misleadership by Stalinism and social democracy, and retreats under the neoliberal offensive of recent decades.

But as we’ve noted, Stalinism has basically been removed as an obstacle, it’s far less able to dominate and derail the movements, and as time goes on is less able to be used by the ruling class as a negative example of the socialist alternative.

And Social Democracy also is increasingly discredited and exposed – in Europe, from Spain, to France, to Britain; in New Zealand it’s exposed and declining; in Australia it’s exposed but hanging on as the preferred party of sections of capital.

And although the working class is still weak organisationally and politically, subject to the powerful methods and sources of ideological manipulation and control that the ruling class has at its disposal, nevertheless there have been a number of encouraging straws in the wind this year:

• In France, the magnificent massive strike wave in December. It was a huge social explosion, not expected by the ruling class, nor their hangers on. It was a response to a wage freeze in public sector, and then drastic social security cuts, to implement austerity to prepare for Maastricht. The initial strikes were joined by mass student protests over government overcrowding and underfunding of universities. There were 2 million demonstrators in the streets of France. The struggle is not over yet, and will resume in the new year. The strikes spread to Belgium too. The action of the French workers will provide an inspiration to workers in Europe and around the world. They’ll provide hope, a model, for months, even years.
• In the USA, there was the Million Man March on Washington, despite its tameness and political defects, was a massive outpouring in response to deepening national oppression.
• Elections in recent months in Russia and Eastern Europe have demonstrated that liberal free marketeers are on the nose. Workers are voting against capitalist “reforms” that have led to the halving of economic output, electing former communist parties. We don’t have any expectations from these parties – they’re social democratic, not socialist or communist, whatever the name and origin – but it shows the changing mood of workers there.
• And in the Third World, from the Zapatista rebellion in Mexico to the revival of the mass struggles and the socialist movement in Indonesia, inspiring mass struggles continue to break out.

These international developments will be covered in many of the feature talks and workshops at the conference, and the international work report yesterday described the latest developments with our political collaborators on the left around the world. But for the purpose of drawing out some pointers for our party-building work in the coming year, I just want to briefly note again some of these developments.

There’s been a certain polarisation on the left in quite a few countries in the last few years. And even within the mass left reformist parties or electoral alliances that have emerged – the PRC in Italy, PDS in Germany, the United Left in Spain, the PT in Brazil – further discussion and polarisation is often taking place. There have been some splits, especially of the parliamentarians, so the harder political questions are getting posed. There have been splits in the FSLN [in Nicaragua] and the FMLN [in El Salvador]. The NSSP in Sri Lanka had a split over participation in the popular front government.

Following the ANC victory, with the SACP participating in a capitalist government, they’ve had growth, but also debates, over the question of power, about participation in government. There’s a healthy debate in the party, an openness. In the latest African Communist there’s a very interesting article by Dale McKinley on the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The international work report that Dick [Nichols] gave yesterday reported some important steps forward for some of our key collaborators in the process of the international renewal of the socialist movement.

In Indonesia, the Socialist People’s Party was founded, the renewal of a Marxist party there, based on the leadership of growing popular struggles. In the Philippines, the MR forces are in the process of reorganisation; their national linkup with other forces coming out of the Communist Party seems to be going ahead; they’re about to get their publications out; they’re still pulling off large mobilisations; and they’ve grown from 5000 to 7000 members.

We’ve developed many extra links and closer contacts – with the NSSP in Sri Lanka, with Militant Labour in Britain, as well others in Europe, Latin America, and Asia.

The LCR [Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire – Revolutionary Communist League] seems to be doing very well from the strike wave in France, in leadership positions in the railways and teachers unions, and already having recruited 200 new members during the upsurge.

But there have also been setbacks, clarification and polarisation.

Comrades are aware of Peter Camejo’s attack on our party, with a document circulated to former members and international collaborators, explicitly rejecting our cadre party perspective, counterposing to it the idea of a broad, all-inclusive left formation.

We’re also aware of the difficulties that the Alliance faces in New Zealand, the acute leadership problems they have in spite of such broad public support. Part of the problem is the failure to take up any initiatives to develop revolutionary Marxist cadres.

You can see the contradictory pulls with Arthur Scargill’s initiative for a Socialist Labour Party. It met with fairly predictable opposition from Tony Benn, and the British adherents of the Fourth International. They can’t break from their illusions and faith in the British Labour Party. The British SWP also opposed it, arguing that it would be just another parliamentarist party. But the call was taken up by Militant Labour, and some other groups. However, the broad initiative has been practically closed down even before it’s off the ground, by Scargill bringing down in advance a complete rule book for 1996, complete with exclusion clauses, a repeat of the Labour Party almost!

The back-to-Stalin international has no chance of any real revival, but they’ll certainly try and organise, and coordinate their international efforts. There was the 1993 gathering in Calcutta. The CPUSA is bragging that it’s recruiting. The SPA here’s on a “Stalin’s been slandered” tack, justifying the Great Purges of the 1930s.

The Greens internationally and in Australia are moving in an increasingly rightward direction, more and more just focussing on parliament, and a very minor role in parliament at that.

All these developments are pointers to the need for Marxist political clarity, for sharpness, rather than tolerating “broader” wishy-washy politics, obscuring the fundamental class questions and playing down differences. This is a guide to the debates we need in Links, and with the broader left milieu internationally, now and in the future.

There’s still the need look for openings, alliances, new developments. In Europe, the growth and development of the PRC, PDS, United Left etc., have been important steps forward in regroupment, and have generated healthy and necessary debates. In India, parties from a Maoist background are becoming more open to genuine discussion, and we and others should pursue this. But perhaps they point to a trend, that the period is changing a little. Perhaps it’s an indicator for our debates internationally, and how we present ourselves in Australia also.

We’re not proposing that we relinquish our open, flexible approach, able to take up any opening, any possibility of regroupment, but that we should emphasise the fundamental political questions more, drawing the lessons from the past, educating in those lessons:

• We need to talk and write about our socialist ideas and politics more.
• We need to raise the DSP profile higher.
• And we need to step up the education and theoretical development of our comrades.

A year of mobilisations

In Australia, our year has been a year of mobilisations, a year of pretty hectic activity. It wasn’t exactly what we expected, as comrades observed yesterday. We were looking to a quieter period, balanced more towards education and integration.

But from the beginning of 1995, just to list some of them again, we’ve had:

• Numerous and quite large demonstrations in the first months of the year against the woodchipping of old growth forests. We were heavily involved.
• The IWD marches, most of which we were centrally involved in organising, and the Reclaim the Night rallies, many of which we also helped organise.
• The tremendous demonstrations against the French nuclear tests, some of which were as large as the large anti-Vietnam War demos. The anti-nuclear movement died down quickly, except for high school students, where we kept the campaign going and built some wonderful high school mobilisations.
• Local environmental protests, to save Albert Park in Melbourne, against the third runway in Sydney. There have also been some student actions over fees and education issues
• There’s also been the possibility of some solidarity actions with workers’ struggles, such as with the CRA/Weipa strike.

And there have been many actions in solidarity with East Timor, most of which we’ve been responsible for or heavily involved in, and you can see how we’re able to have a modest impact.

Some of the mobilisations this year have been very large. But they’ve quickly risen, and quickly fallen. None of these mobilisations continued, and built strong ongoing campaigns. The resulting effects on those involved was thus a shallow radicalisation.

We can draw a very positive balance sheet for our interventions. We responded quickly. We showed leadership politically and organisationally. Our comrades gained experience. On the whole we integrated our party-building tasks with our interventions – sales, fundraising, recruiting.

If you compare our interventions with that of others on the left, especially our main competitor, the ISO, with their split, and their sectarian politics hampering their interventions, we can be quite pleased. The discussion yesterday on the Australian political situation was quite encouraging, especially the indications of workers’ willingness to act, and the openness to our inititatives. Again it points to a need for us to be more explicit in our political demands, to be clearer in explaining our socialist ideas.

Other 1995 successes

1995 was also a successful year for many of our party-building tasks.

We seemed to have slowed down our financial crisis – it was a year with a balance sheet of income versus expenditure not in the red for the first time in many years. We’ve reached our fund drive target of $115,000. We significantly raised our pledge base nationally, by just over 18%, and we were able to cut expenditure in some areas.

We didn’t succeed in making our Green Left sales targets, but our subscription base remained steady. And despite a declining sales rate, the number of hours comrades put in selling held up. With fewer unemployed comrades, whom branches sometimes relied on for sales, we have to diversify the sales locations, find different ways for working comrades to sell.

Green Left extended its dominance as the paper on the left, the paper used by the left, read by the left, being seen as the left paper in all cities.

We had some spectacular successes during the year.

The John Pilger meeting in Melbourne was outstanding, with 600 people crammed in, and 150 turned away. We made $3300 profit on the door, sold 50 GLW subs, $1100 worth of books, got Resistance members and party contacts.

Our badge sales during the anti-nuclear demos were incredible. As well as getting our slogans across, and stamping our mark on the actions, we raised thousands of dollars.

The Easter educational conferences went well, with good attendances, good talks and discussions, an impact on the left, and making money, even after paying for Boris Kagarlitsky’s airfare.

Branches report many very successful forums during the year. Towards the end of the year Sydney’s public meetings on the Tamil question and on East Timor at Glebe Town Hall showed the value of being ambitious. We can claim even more of the left space, and raise $500, even $1000, at such meetings.

Although many comrades were looking forward to a bit of a break at the end of a very hectic year, morale in the party is high, spirits are high. The average size of branch meetings has often been larger this year, although there’s unevenness between branches.

This was perhaps a feature of the year – it showed the potential, but the unevenness around the country. Some branches did well in one area, while another branch did well in a different area. That is, if all branches performed as well as the best on all campaigns, all the time, we’d be doing fantastically. For example:

• Sydney’s financial performance on their fund drive;
• Brisbane’s high school mobilisations and Resistance recruitment;
• Perth’s recruitment and training of campus students;
• Canberra’s building of a union fraction, and recruitment of workers;
• Adelaide’s sales, still the highest per comrade.

It shows what can be done.

It was a year of mobilisations. We took advantage of them, intervened quickly, built them, actively participated, sold Green Left, and successfully recruited to Resistance in large numbers.

But we fell down on the consolidation of those recruits and contacts. I think we’d all have to agree that this was our biggest failure for the year. It’s the main problem we have to address here.

Recruitment and consolidation

The potential for recruitment exists. In fact in some respects it seems to be better than at any time in our history. This was demonstrated very clearly through the more than 2000 young people who paid the joining fee to Resistance this year. This is a larger number than ever before in Resistance’s history, as far as I recall. 2000 potential new members who paid money, not merely signed a card!

But the consolidation was not followed through. Now partly that’s probably the nature of these potential recruits, their political weakness, having radicalised on issues that don’t necessarily pose the fundamental questions, or in movements that rise and fall quickly.

But it’s also very much our fault still. We don’t give them enough attention to following up, to the consolidation of new recruits as cadres. We don’t get Marxist politics into their heads straight away. We don’t give them responsibilities straight away.

For 1996, the party’s key task is improve our work in recruiting and consolidating new members as part of our cadre force.

We’ll continue to do all our other political work, of course – the involvement in campaigns, selling Green Left Weekly, helping build Resistance, the initial recruitment of new members to the tendency. But we’ll reap the rewards too, by following through, and integrating the consolidation work into all our other political activity.

Membership

We’ve suffered an 8% decline in the number of members and provisional members over the course of the year. This decline was most marked in the first quarter of the year, with a 9% decline in the number of members.

This reflects the impact of several things. Firstly, immediately after the party conference in January some comrades dropped out in Perth. Secondly, the implementation of the constitutional requirement to pay dues or be automatically lapsed from membership led to the dropping from the lists of membership of some inactive at-large members.

Since March we’ve been recovering in terms of the number of members. Since March, the number of party members has grown by 7%, taking us almost back to the number of members we had in December 1994.

However, since March we’ve had a big contraction in the number of provisional members – down by just over 50%. Some of that is due to many of those provisional members being admitted to full membership of the party. But we have not being joining up people as provisional members in the same numbers as we were earlier in the year.

However, indications from branches are that there are a considerable number of potential provisional members around at the moment who could be joined up by the end of January, so the total number of members and provisional members could be back up around the peak reached in December 1994.

We’ve recruited, made some advance, but the attrition more than balances out the growth. Individuals are still dropping out, a few of the longer term comrades, and some of the more recent recruits too.

We’re losing too many of the younger layer, who are active for a few years, while at university or unemployed. There’s not the level of class struggle to ensure automatic education and integration of new student comrades into the party. Often when they graduate, enter the workforce, or get into other milieus, there’s pressure against maintaining their level of activism and commitment to the party.

Participation

What’s the key to the consolidation and integration of new comrades? Of course there are many things involved. Getting a thorough grounding in Marxism, developing a comprehensive socialist understanding, would be at the top of the list. We’ll continue to stress this, and more on education later in the report.

But a key aspect that determines whether a new recruit goes beyond the initial act of joining up, and stays in Resistance and the party for the long haul, is perhaps something we haven’t concentrated on enough in the past, and that’s the question of participation, and taking on responsibility.

New people come around us wanting to do something, to be active. They join because they think their membership in the party can help make a difference, they can be useful in the struggle to fight against the injustice of this society, their activity can help bring socialism just a little bit closer.

I fear that all too frequently we assume that new people know how to get active, that they’ll take the initiative, and we shouldn’t bother them too much. Or we’re a bit embarrassed to ask them to do some things, like sell Green Left, or give money, or intervene at a meeting.

But it’s sometimes not all that easy to get involved, especially in a big branch, and especially when the experienced branch activists are flat out with other tasks, and it seems like extra work, or that it will slow things down, to have a new person learn the ropes or take on a responsibility.

How can we apply this principle of trying to get new comrades to participate and take on responsibility as quickly as possible? In which areas of our work can it be implemented?

1. During the election campaign, the work in the electorate needs to be carried out by smaller groups anyway. Let’s experiment with constituting smaller teams of comrades. These suburban teams can have the responsibility for our election campaign work in a section of the electorate, combined with our Green Left sales and subscription work in that area as well. The smaller team idea can be tested and extended beyond the election period also.
2. In regard to recruiting, and generally talking socialism to our contacts, all too often this is left up to just a few comrades. All members should be recruiters, and have a range of contacts that they’re trying to draw around the party or Resistance.
3. Using Resistance as the training tool it should be. One of the main rationales for an independent youth organisation is for training the younger generation of revolutionaries, allowing them to take responsibility for their own political activities, learning in practice, even making their own mistakes, getting confidence this way. Let’s encourage more initiative, taking of responsibility, on the part of Resistance and Resistance members.
4. In our education activity, let’s encourage a more active educational experience, rather than a passive listener role. Have newer comrades get their grounding in Marxist theory by becoming educators, by doing it – reading, teaching, talking to others. Test their ideas, express them, think, and correct, rather than merely parrot. It’s more effective, it sticks, it’s much more efficient.

Now there’ll always be a balance between coaching, closely training and helping new comrades learn to swim, versus throwing them in at the deep end. But we think the balance today can be shifted a little towards the “deep end” method.

Our tendency is politically homogeneous. We have structures in place for helping new comrades and helping Resistance. We’ve got the books and documents and bulletins where our experience is set down. With all this to fall back on, we can be confident that more gains than problems will flow from encouraging all comrades, especially new comrades, to take on a wider range of tasks and responsibilities earlier.

Of course, this in no way implies that the existing comrades, the more experienced comrades, can now settle back and relax and do less, take less responsibility. This perspective is designed to ensure we achieve more, through new comrades taking on extra responsibilities.

Election campaign teams

I want to expand on the idea of election campaign “teams”, for want of a better word. It’s a response to several needs.

Firstly, the integration and consolidation through participation and taking responsibility.

Secondly, the need to get our tasks done most efficiently. We regret that there are not any extra hours in the day for a totally new, extra dimension to our work. Therefore the tasks must be integrated, combined.

We can see the effects of such a process in action within our own organisation at present by comparing our larger, established branches with our pioneering small branches. When we set up a new branch, comrades quickly learn to take on new responsibilities, they develop more quickly, through necessity. There are more tasks to go round than comrades. In larger branches it’s easier for comrades to slip through the net, to sit passively down the back at branch meetings, not to volunteer for tasks, not to speak up.

And though not wanting to copy the organisational examples of the ISO or SLL, which are not only undemocratic but also stifle the all-round educational development of their members, we can see some of the positive results they can get by dividing their membership up into smaller units. Their members in locality branches are forced to take on responsibilities, even if only for the limited tasks those outfits set for their members. Their new members can develop confidence – confidence in their simplistic politics – a little more quickly.

We think we can get some of the gains of smaller units, e.g., our new or smaller branches, and retain the advantages we get from the democracy and education from our current structures – city-wide meetings, executives, committees and fractions. We have to make the committees and fractions function better, and play that training role, encouraging comrades to take on responsibilities.

And elected bodies such as the National Committee and branch executives also play an important educational and training role, in addition to the decision-making and organising function. But we’ve noted in the past the limitations of relying on executives to train new comrades, especially in Resistance, where sometimes we find all the active comrades being elected or coopted to execs in order to be integrated and trained!

Election campaign

Most likely the federal election will be held before Easter, so in addition to all the other tasks in the first quarter of the year – O-week; IWD; building for the April Socialist Activists conferences etc. – we’ll be flat out with an election campaign as well.

Essential for our success in carrying it all off will be our ability to combine our tasks. We’ll have to organise to do our election work and carry out our organisational tasks and movement campaigns in the same activity. This is forced on us at this time, but it’s something we should have been doing more in the past, and hopefully we’ll learn some good habits to be continued after the election.

When we do paste-ups for the DSEL campaign, we should combine this with putting up posters for the April conference, for the IWD march, for our forums, etc.

On Saturday morning suburban [GLW sales] stumps we’ll have to combine:

• Our election work of distributing leaflets and election broadsheets, getting volunteer helpers for the campaign, and signing people up for Democratic Socialist Electoral League [DSEL];
• Selling Green Left and selling Green Left subscriptions;
• Joining people up to Resistance;
• Distributing publicity for our forums and ITS [Introduction to Socialism] classes.
• Advertising for the campaigns we’re building, in particular, publicising the IWD actions in early March.

We’re going to need more of these stumps, and more comrades involved in them.

Similarly, with distributing our election material in the electorate. Rather than just letterboxing, we should be visiting, doorknocking in the electorate. This way we can combine the election work with all our other propaganda work.

We can doorknock for support in the election, which people expect anyway in an election, and at the same time canvas for Green Left subscriptions. If people don’t want a sub, they’ll often be willing to buy the current issue. If we can’t sell them that, we can leave behind a sample back issue. And we’ll give them all a DSEL election broadsheet.

We know the sort of experience Greenpeace had with doorknocking. It was very lucrative for them, and they did huge chunks of the metropolitan area. Now that they’ve discontinued doorknocking, we can pick it up.

Our own experience in the past when we’ve doorknocked during subscription drives for Direct Action was very positive, getting a large number of subs and a rate for single copies at least comparable to street sales. How much better it’s likely to be with Green Left Weekly and the DSEL election work achieved during the canvas as well.

We also know that the SLL and SPA have doorknocked in the past and still do. It’s probably the largest component of their sales and subs. It was also the main sales method of the old CPA.

So let’s see how such local groups/teams work during the elections, and whether they can be used generally to better organise our political work in different areas of the city, and spread responsibility among all comrades.

These local teams could meet and plan their activity before or after the sales stumps or suburban stalls, at a coffee shop or pub nearby or a comrade’s house if one’s in the area. We should avoid special meetings, requiring extra time slots. The goal is to improve the carrying out of our tasks, not to bog us down with extra meetings.

If the teams seem to be working, and a team starts to build up a regular periphery of subscribers or contacts in a particular area, and we have comrades living in the area, we can even progress to organising social events or talks or classes at comrades’ houses in the area.

Branches should make sure they send regular reports to the National Office on the progress and their experiences in using such local teams to implement our election work, as they should be doing with all areas of work.

Recruiting

The next area of our work where we can improve the level of our participation and taking of responsibility is in regard to recruiting.

Everyone should be a recruiter. Like sales and financial commitment, it’s something that’s part of party membership.

Any comrade is able to do it successfully. In fact, new comrades might sometimes be able to talk to potential members more successfully, being able to relate to people at a political level they were at only recently, and with concerns and questions they themselves have recently answered. The new comrades sometimes do the recruiting well, but longer term comrades can be a bit psyched out.

Every comrade should have a group of contacts that they’re working on – a mix of new ones that are prospects for joining, through to the political contacts that are part of our periphery – former party or Resistance members, movement activists, former members of other tendencies, subscribers, people who’ll come to a function, a forum, a dinner, a demo.

The recruiting director and the recruiting and contacting committee are in charge of the technical aspects of organising the recruiting – the lists, the databases, allocating the contacts to all comrades, and making sure they’re getting followed up. Preparing and distributing the contacting sheets and lists.

Sometimes the recruiting committees feel a bit overwhelmed by the size of our contacting lists, and start to see the goal of the committee as one of purging, cutting down the lists. Certainly they have to test and sort and prioritise, but the major aim should be to involve all members in contacting. We can send out newsletters and mailing, do marathon telephone contacting stints, but the most important, effective method is the one-to-one contacting, followed up by the same person regularly.

Branches need to create a political culture to encourage recruiting. This culture should be tied in with campaign actions or educational activities, but can be diverse, interesting – films, cultural events, plays, music. We need a suitable social milieu in the branch, that’s supportive of political activity, not in conflict with it, and which is fun, satisfying, and inclusive.

In fact, the initial recruiting part is the easiest part, certainly as we’ve seen for Resistance this past year. And it could probably be similar for the DSP if we wanted to adopt a nominal approach to joining such as the ISO has where you just sign the form, agree you’re a socialist, pay no money now.

But the real recruiting, for both Resistance and the party, takes place after joining, through consolidation, integration, education as cadres.

Consolidation and integration

The central body for the consolidation and integration of our members is the branch general meeting, and if that’s not working, whatever else we do will have limited effectiveness. Branch meetings have to be interesting, useful events, that all comrades want to come along to, feel they need to come along to.

Especially in the larger branches we have to re-emphasise the activist nature of branch meetings. We have to find a way for all comrades to participate during the night, to have some task, whether speaking with a report or in discussion, organising for some party, Resistance or campaign activity, or helping with some responsibility in the branch or headquarters – collecting the finances, organising the sales, preparing the meal or cleaning and organising the office. Comrades shouldn’t have a passive role, just sitting down the back.

We should make sure the branch meetings are the decision-making bodies they should be, where the organisation of our work and prioritisation and allocation of tasks takes place, plus a collective thinking process based on the dissemination of information through reports. All comrades should go away with tasks for the week allocated to them.

Committees and fractions are the basic aids to directing our work, and the existing smaller units that help train new comrades, allow more comrades to take responsibility, and learn and develop in action. These of course won’t be supplanted by any smaller units, such as teams in localities. We’ll still need these; they’re essential.

Party ‘supporters’

Over the last six months we’ve been considering whether we should introduce a formal supporters’ category into our party structure, with supporters paying a fixed yearly sum, say $100, that would include a Green Left subscription.

At this stage the National Executive recommends that we should hold off. We sounded out the branches, and the response was 50-50, or no great enthusiasm, but no vehement opposition. Perhaps it’s something to consider in the future, but not for the moment.

If it is introduced, we have to be careful that it’s not to be used to push out the long-term less active members, that it doesn’t encourage less active comrades to drop from membership. It should be used as a way to pull people closer to the party, or to retain within our framework those who do drop out. Also, care should be taken that it’s not used as an excuse not to recruit to the party. It wouldn’t be a substitute for party membership.

However, if we resolve our main problem/task of the next six months – to get our recruiting procedures well-oiled – then perhaps we can consider introducing it.

After the very busy first part of the year – O-week; IWD; the elections; the April conferences – we can reassess this question, perhaps at the June NC plenum. During the election campaign we can see how many supporters are attracted to the party who might be best as an actual supporters’ category. Then, after the elections, if all our other priorities seem to be getting under control – recruiting, consolidating, educating cadres – then possibly we can consider launching a supporters’ category.

It could be a way to tie de facto supporters more formally to the party. This way we could recognise that status formally, we could measure it, we would be more conscious of it in the branches. It could be a means to formalise talking to our actual supporters, to maintain more regular contact with them, certainly to make sure that they all have a Green Left subscription.

It could be used as a sorting out process to assess people for membership, a bit like Resistance, and could be a way to hold people who might otherwise drift off.

The situation varies from branch to branch. Some might find it useful, and want to introduce it fairly quickly. This would be OK. There’s no major problem if the process is not uniform, synchronised on a national scale, since no actual rights are entailed in becoming a party supporter as we envisage it.

Resistance

The third area where we need to be more conscious about participation and taking on responsibility is in Resistance.

It’s one of the main organisational structures we already have for implementing our central task – training and consolidating young recruits as party cadres.

Resistance has a special role, a special relationship to the party, as the socialist youth organisation that is in political solidarity with the party, but organisationally independent of it.

Resistance’s role is to support and build party, but to learn in action, with the possibility of making its own mistakes. Resistance members learn in action, learn to think politically, and learn to organise. This is why we have an independent organisation for young socialists. Party members in Resistance carry out the political line of the party in Resistance, as in all their areas of work, but do not normally operate as a fraction in Resistance unless special circumstances develop.

So how can we ensure we get the best results from this special organisation, this special relationship between Resistance and the party? How can we ensure Resistance members quickly participate in activity, take on responsibility, learn Marxism, learn to lead, become Marxist cadres?

Again, it’s always an art to learn how to balance training and independence. But in Resistance at the moment we need to encourage – allow – Resistance members to lead wherever they can, to run as fast as they can.

Certainly we need to encourage autonomy for our high school and campus comrades, so that they participate and learn through thinking out their activities, and carrying them out. We should push as much responsibility in carrying out this work as we can onto Resistance, onto Resistance comrades.

Comrades on campus will learn quickly through their fights with the ISO, and other tendencies. They have to be urged to show the lead in committees, to do it themselves, not to hold back in debates, not to shy away from individual discussions, aggression even, in polemics, to be upfront about our politics and building Resistance and the DSP. They’ll advance each time they do it. It will encourage political confidence.

One problem that we haven’t completely resolved is the situation where some comrades don’t settle down as party cadre when they are assigned out of Resistance. Sometimes they might even have been a leader of Resistance, then don’t feel comfortable continuing their activity in the party.

One thing we do have to do better is in training Resistance comrades about graduating from campus activists to union/worker activists. The discussion yesterday under the movement work report showed us some good examples where this is happening. But it’s not yet general. This coming year we should prepare and educate comrades more thoroughly.

The pattern for party growth in this period is through recruiting on campus, then turning the recruits into cadres – worker-Bolshevik cadres, not merely student activists.

A party of worker-Bolsheviks

Our goal is to build a party of worker-Bolsheviks, that is, a party that is made up predominately of revolutionary workers.

We need to give this perspective to comrades so that they understand our project, and don’t get demoralised by a lack of immediate success. So that they understand we’re in it for the long haul, with our class, and sticking with our socialist goal.

How to retain that political interest, that commitment?

What career do we have? A professional revolutionary, a worker-Bolshevik, who will mostly be working on the job, in the unions, and politically active across our whole spectrum of political tasks and areas of work, and sometimes on full-time staff for the party as well.

The atmosphere in branches needs to be that we’re a party of workers, even if our recruits at the moment are mainly coming from campus and high school.

Party profile

In recent years we’ve been conscious of the need to raise our party profile, and have made some progress. But at the same time as we’re trying to project a more serious, socialist image for ourselves to the outside world, we should also be conscious of raising our own internal image, taking ourselves seriously too.

This will be primarily achieved by raising the level of Marxist theoretical understanding among all comrades. But it’s also a question of confidence, of will.

Comrades need to be encouraged to counter, to resist head-on, the dominant bourgeois ideology in the movements. All the anti-party prejudice, all the lies and distortions about Leninism leading to Stalinism, the cynical sneers that “all paper sellers are sectarians,” the acceptance of bourgeois propaganda that socialism is discredited, finished; that the issues, campaigns, are pure, parties are dirty, so let’s just retreat to the spontaneous movements, the issues.

We’ll answer the myths and lies with pamphlets, forums, and in Green Left. We’re considering getting out a pamphlet answering the Stalinist/liberal slanders about our role in the Nuclear Disarmament Party, in the New Left Party, and in the early formations of the Greens, for example.

But all comrades should be encouraged to find ways to raise our flag proudly, not apologetically. To be open about our DSP membership, and our socialist program, not to keep our socialist ideas hidden.

We want to introduce more aids to DSP identification. Membership cards would have no real function, at this stage they’re not required for entry to meetings, or voting. But perhaps we can produce a membership badge, that’s received on becoming a full member – an attractive, small metal badge with our logo.

We want continue to flood demos with our placards. Our banners can be bolder, banners produced for the event with the right slogans and our name on them, but also a large, professional looking banner with just our name on it that we bring to protests. (The Greens and Democrats only have such banners it seems.)

We’ll continue to produce our own badges on a range of issues, more Dare to Struggle leaflets, more press releases in the name of the Democratic Socialist spokepersons.

Green Left Weekly

Max [Lane] will report on Green Left this afternoon, but I just want to foreshadow two of the main projections that the NE will be putting forward.

Firstly, next year we want to raise the party profile in Green Left, to have more arguments for socialism, to use the “Viewpoint” column for comments on events and issues by DSEL or party spokespeople, and to provide more extensive Marxist analysis of events and issues.

Secondly, we want to project a concentration on subscriptions, with a sub drive after Easter, and perhaps a further one later in the year. We want to significantly expand our sub base, and make sure our supporters and periphery – existing and potential – all have subs, and mobilise this regular readership for our events, and to support us financially.

And I won’t repeat in this report something that we’ve stressed time and again is essential for the integration of new comrades is having them participate in the sales of Green Left Weekly.

Education

However, the fourth area I mentioned earlier where the increased participation and taking of more responsibility could assist the integration of new comrades was education, and here we can make some improvements in several aspects of our educational activities.

We can make our educational activities, the training of new comrades, more active, less passive. Active participation and involvement is the key to understanding and retention of ideas and facts.

Firstly, study, reading, education with a goal, a purpose that you’re intensely interested in, is fundamental. Secondly, study, learning, in order to teach others, or in order to argue, polemicise with others, or in order to write an article, is much more productive than passive reading, listening. Reading without formulating what you’ve read in words again with a purpose is much less effective.

So theoretical learning will be limited if comrades only have limited opportunities to express their ideas, to debate, to polemicise with others, to write down their views.

There are a number of problems for comrades in this period in getting a thorough, well-rounded, education in Marxist theory and political ideas. One problem is the sheer amount of material, of history, of texts to absorb. Certainly 50, 100 years ago there were far fewer useful books available and far fewer working-class experiences of struggle to absorb. Sometimes it seems that we have to be both a 100% activist and a 100% academic at the same time.

A second problem is also the period itself. Compare today with the ‘60s, for example, where the deep, active radicalisation over questions such as the Vietnam War gave a new comrade’s education a sharp, revolutionary edge. Even compare it with the ‘70s, where the debates and faction fight in the Fourth International had a positive by-product, the education of cadres in history and political theory. In the ‘80s, the revolutionary developments in Nicaragua and El Salvador gave a revolutionary framework for the education of comrades, and also the attempted fusions and regroupments gave possibilities for debate. In the ‘90s, it’s a bit harder.

The discussion we’ve had at this plenum so far has illustrated the need and the possibility for having a clearer, more socialist expression in our work today. A further argument for taking an open, specifically socialist line, is for the training and education of comrades. If we succumb to the pressure to put our socialist theory and politics in the background, or just take it out on Sundays, comrades will be miseducated.

It’s also an argument for using specifically socialist language, precise Marxist terms. Education of new comrades will be so much harder if we’re forced to always use a very “transitional”, Aesopian language. We can learn two languages, but not just one. If not, after a while we can start suffering from the side-effects of comrades’ only using “popular” terms, which are loaded with bourgeois ideological conceptions.

We actually have very good existing system of educational tools and activities – our class series; our forums and seminars; our schools, camps and educational conferences; our bookshops; our books, documents and pamphlets; Green Left, Links, The Activist. But we can get more results from them, they can be more effective, if we bear in mind these considerations about participation, and learning actively.

We also have to give our educational activities the priority they deserve. Unless comrades are throroughly educated in our theory, in our ideas, they will become disoriented by the constant ideological barrage from the capitalist mass media, capitalist cultural products, the capitalist education system, and the dominance of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas and concepts in the spontaneous movements.

We have a good series of class guides prepared – the Introduction to Socialism [ITS], Introduction to Marxism [ITM], Introduction to the Marxist Classics series. But often they’re not getting done on a regular and systematic basis. They get pushed aside for other “more urgent” party tasks.

We must find ways to remedy this. Advertise them more visibly around the branch, so they are seen on a par with other events. Experiment with the size – smaller groups might get less disrupted; larger groups could go ahead even if some comrades have to miss them.

Seminars are especially important for comrades who can’t get to the full series of regular classes. We can cram a lot of talks, discussions into a weekend. They can be large public seminars, with fairly experienced comrades giving the talks. Or smaller, internal seminars, where all participants have to prepare a talk. Camps are extremely useful, since comrades are together in one place without other distractions, and provide many opportunities for informal discussions, one-to-one discussions, which are essential.

No full-time school has been scheduled for this January. Partly it was a question of personnel not being available, partly a question of venue. A possible venue is Brisbane, which has a very suitable setup, and we’ll consider the possibility of future schools once the year gets under way. But we were also conscious of the way our schools have tended to substitute a bit for our branch educational work. Comrades rely on going to the school to get a firm grounding in Marxist theory. But they need to be able to get that in the branches, through participation in regular class series, discussion groups, weekend seminars, etc.

However, we do propose to organise a specific training school attached to the Resistance Conference. And we’re conscious of the need to be much more scientific in training our new party branch secretaries and Resistance organisers. Too often we’ve just left comrades to fend for themselves. As a first step we want to produce a handbook for organisers, initially based on a compilation of past reports and guides, and we can update it with sections we specially commission. There are other handbooks we need to reprint or produce also.

Finally, just to stress once again the vital importance of one-to-one discussions, adding in the need to be more active, more polemical with other political tendencies. And comrades have to be encouraged to take more seriously the acquisition of books and pamphlets (particularly those produced by the National Office), developing their library, getting subs to magazines, so they have the tools to research, to follow up threads of interest, and make reading and study a permanent part of their life.

The Activist

An absolutely essential resource for comrades is The Activist, and new comrades should be urged to get back copies if they’re available. Together with our party program and conference resolutions published as books and pamphlets, these are our basic educational tools. The Activist is our pre-conference discussion bulletin, and a continuing information resource throughout the year.

The National Executive proposes that we expand the scope and use of The Activist, to not only carry more reprints that aren’t able to go in Links or Green Left, but to open up the pages of The Activist for comrades to contribute articles and discussion on theoretical and historical issues all the year round. We don’t want to open it up to permanent debates on the party’s line and policy – that’s still the purpose of pre-conference discussion, where we discuss out our line and perspectives, and then elect delegates to vote on them at party conferences.

Although our constitution only mentions a specific time for internal discussion, the reality is that discussion occurs at branch meetings, conferences, forums and seminars, and in Green Left letters pages too.

We actually need to encourage more constructive discussion and debate, to hone comrades’ political skills, to deepen our understanding on theoretical questions, and to be more creative in thinking about ways to carry out our perspectives.

We know that there are educational gains from internal debates. There are benefits from debating different perspectives for the party. In the absence of that, polemics with other tendencies can help.

We can use our forums more to have real discussions, and to train new comrades. They should be encouraged to jump in and have a go, not to hold back for party leaders. And we should make sure we cover enough of the hard topics, issues illustrating fundamental questions of Marxist theory.

Bookshops

We took the decision this year to give more weight to our bookshops and national literature distribution. With the demise of all the other left bookshops there was a vacuum which we wanted to fill. The rest of the left is despairing and chucking in the towel, and this was another measure of our political confidence. We know there still exists a market for left literature, quite apart from the primary, essential needs of the education of our own membership. To this end, Jonathan S has come on full-time to manage the Sydney bookshop and our national book distribution.

We hope to be able to expand the range of stock in the Sydney shop, keep it open regular hours, and steadily raise the turnover so that its expansion can be self-financing. We also want to give assistance to all other branch bookshops and bookstalls, so they have a bigger range of basic left literature. And we want to expand the possibilities for advertising and mail order business. So far we’ve produced two issues of the Book News newsletters, and there’s been an encouraging response through the mail.

We began with a good windfall of a large quantity of Pathfinder Press stock that we obtained very cheaply. And we’ve invested a large sum in a big stock of the Marxist classics, also obtained very cheaply, which is now starting to arrive. We’re also now following up remainder books, and so far have been lucky to get quantities of some important left books at liquidation prices. We are also encouraging Sydney and other bookshops to build up their second-hand sections of political books. We’ll continue to solicit donations of books from retired activists, former CPA members etc., through Green Left.

We’re already seeing good progress in Sydney. The Sydney bookshop weekly turnover is still small but we’ve seen an encouraging climb, with the last few months averaging more than $500 sales each week. A Sydney University two-day stall sold $1200 worth of books, and there’s no reason such a result couldn’t be repeated on most campuses a couple of times a year.

The CPA’s Left Book Club is going out of business, and has disposed of its stock to us, although they’ve still got one more title in the works, a book by Wendy Lowenstein, in addition to Bob Leach’s Alliance book and the Asbestos Time Bomb just out. From 1989 when they started up until October this year they’d managed to rack up an accumulated loss of $145,000. By the time they completely wind up it will be even greater.

All the past Left Book Club stock has been obtained at a very large discount. Some are politically useful, good titles, some are rubbishy, some are OK. There are about a dozen titles, which can be combined with the surplus stocks of our own New Course books – The Picket, Three Mile Island, Ireland Unfree, Women and Socialism – to promote special offers, such as three books for $10, or seven for $20 and so on. We’ll make these available to comrades at the conference first. Then we’ll advertise them in Green Left, as a special offer for existing subscribers and new subscribers. Then we can make the same offers at O-week stalls, at the April Socialist Activists’ conferences, at other conferences and large forums.

We should be able to recoup the costs over the time we’ve got to pay them off, leaving us with lots of stock for the future, and other possible deals – exchanges for other stock with other bookshops, for example.

The next step for us would be to get hold of their membership list or mailing list, and use it to restart some sort of book club, to do our own promotions at least. We’d like to try to break into the ex-CPA milieu further through our book promotions, book shops, and Green Left subscriptions.

Publications program

In 1996 we want to have a steady publications program, and certainly complete the projects we’d scheduled for 1995. What Is the DSP is out at last, an excellent addition to our arsenal. Next year we’ll definitely have the revised edition of Socialism and Human Survival, and our lesbian and gay rights resolution printed in book form. These projects were held up by our financial squeeze, and the resources available for editing. We’ll produce them as soon as we can this year, and are budgeting for another book as well.

There’s also a need for many smaller pamphlets for our bookshops and stalls. Compare our situation with the ISO: They benefit from a large range of publications they can import from the British SWP. We need to produce many more of our own. The raw material is generally there.

We can reprint as pamphlets major articles carried in Green Left Weekly, for example:

• Peter Boyle’s “Why be a Leninist?” carried in Green Left in February;
• My series on the CPA, and other articles on CPA history or Australian labour history;
• The documents adopted by the Indonesian comrades;
• A pamphlet on the Philippines, documenting the break with Stalinism by the MR comrades.

We can edit up and print talks from our educational conferences. Comrades have given many excellent talks that would make very useful pamphlets.

April conferences

Following the successful Easter Marxist educational conferences held in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth in 1995, we want to hold similar conferences on or around the Easter weekend in April next year, but in eight cities this time. They’ll be held in all branches except Newcastle and Wollongong, who’ll come to Sydney, and Canberra will hold theirs a few weeks after Easter since there’s a major folk festival in Canberra at Easter that a lot of the left goes to.

We want to build these conferences with a socialist, activist image, as DSP and Resistance sponsored socialist activists’ conferences. We want to make them attractive to new Resistance members and activists on campuses, high schools, and in the different campaigns and movements. We’ll also use them to organise and meet our supporters and Green Left subscribers, and people we attract to us during the election campaign.

Branches should organise them as a conference, a seminar, or even perhaps a camp, depending on the possibilities and needs in each city.

We aren’t planning to pay for a big name international guest speaker to come out this time, but we will have an Indonesian comrade here at least, and there might be other international comrades travelling around. We’ll make full use of international comrades resident here at the moment, such as Comrade Buster in Canberra, and East Timorese and Latin American comrades.

We will have some NO [National Office] comrades travelling to other cities, to spread experienced speakers around a bit.

Easter this year falls on April 5-8, quite early, so we’ll have to start building these conferences as soon as we get back to the branches next month, so we can promote them properly on campuses from O-week on.

Future events and projects

Just to recap the other events we’ve already got scheduled for 1996.

For our East Timor solidarity work:

• An Indonesian comrade here for the first four months of the year, doing a tour for SMID;
• The John Pilger meeting in Sydney in May (hopefully we can convince him to do other cities too.);
• The international East Timor conference in Sydney, June 21-24;
• The August 18 “Withdraw Recognition” day actions.
• The November 12 actions.

For our women’s liberation work – building IWD in early March, and intervening in the Reclaim the Night marches in October.

For our Cuba solidarity – the “End the Blockade” actions on July 26 or July 27.

Then we have the Resistance National Conference in Melbourne in early July, and our 17th DSP National Conference in January 1997.

What’s likely to be our next big project? At this stage we’re not sure, but there are a range of possibilities:

• An Asia-pacific solidarity conference?
• A radical unionists fightback conference?

A big, public conference? 1998 will commemorate 150 years of the Communist Manifesto, so we should probably put a booking on that date early on.

Dick’s report yesterday outlined the importance of the special relationship we have with our Indonesian and Philippines comrades, how important it is for socialist renewal. Several of the talks at next week’s educational conference will develop this further. We should encourage more comrades to visit these countries, to learn from and to help our collaborators there. Make this your overseas trip, it’s the most useful. Over the next few years we’ll be looking for ways – a major regional conference perhaps – to develop this relationship further.

Perhaps we’ll also be looking for a way to make use of Links in the future to organise a conference also.

We plan to have the draft political resolution for our 17th National Conference prepared for our June National Committee plenum (especially if there’s been a change of federal government before then). The NE has decided that this will not be drafted with an eye to public consumption – we have enough materials of this nature in our arsenal already. We intend that it will be a document that is both conjunctural, and very clear and forthright on our political line, perspectives and tasks. We want it to sharpen the party politically, and raise our theoretical level. At this stage we plan to propose to the NC that written pre-conference discussion would be opened by the submission of this document for general discussion in the party by the next meeting of the National Committee, in June next year.

Leadership

Over the coming year leading up to the party conference there will really be another leadership transition occurring. Actually it’s a transition in process effectively now.

The party will be providing opportunities for everyone to develop, to learn, to take responsibilities as far as they want to go. For example, leading the local teams during the election campaign; leading in Resistance; leading in our campaigns; leading politically in educating and training others. We have to provide the time and the opportunities for new comrades to develop the political skills, the theoretical understanding, the confidence to lead.

There are responsibilities of leadership, in leading our class, as a member of the party, and leading within the party. Party leaders have to lead on sales, on finances, on activity. We have to set the example, set the pace. That’s the way to get greater participation nationally too, on sales for example. We have to set the example in other areas too. Those taking the load, leading in practice, will be recognised as leaders.

There’s pressure on us to lead, everywhere. So we need planned, conscious interventions, nationally and in the branch. Or else we’ll be swamped, overwhelmed, demoralised. We have to clearly prioritise our work.

The report we adopted yesterday on “The DSP’s Movement Work Perspectives and Tasks” [See The Activist, Vol. 6, No. 1, January 1996] set clear priorities for the campaigns that we think we’ll be able to take responsibility for, and which are the most important politically and the most useful for us in building the party and recruiting and training cadres: East Timor solidarity; the IWD rallies; and solidarity with the Cuban Revolution.

The report repeated the framework and goal of our activities – propagandistic. The stage we’re at in building the party is that of a propaganda nucleus. Our key task is recruiting and training Marxist cadres.

But that doesn’t imply a one-sided retreat to the texts, circling the wagons. It doesn’t imply just defending the Marxist perspective, preserving the lessons of the past, and presenting the socialist ideals and goals. That’s certainly one aspect of the role of the party. Although we don’t have the weight to make a fundamental change in the course of the class struggle at this stage, our task is still to provide leadership to the ongoing struggles where we can, defending the working class and the oppressed to the best of our ability, to the best of the movement’s resources and our resources.

But we don’t downplay the crucial task of building the party, and just concentrate on the movements, the issues, as so many other leftists have despairingly done. We’ll link these struggles of the day, the sharpest political issues, and the issues that will mobilise the greatest numbers in action against the established order, with the revolutionary socialist perspective. The Leninist party unites the two, through building the party, through developing Marxist cadres.

We’ll show by our activity that we’re the best leadership in action of the key struggles – in the unions, on the campuses, the high schools, in the campaigns, through Green Left.

Through this activity, we’ll recruit, and train and educate our recruits.

Renewal and party building

A lot depends on us for the renewal of the socialist movement. We’re still tiny in absolute terms, and tiny compared to the tasks we’d like to tackle. But with the demise of the CPA we’re the strongest group on the left, with the strongest group of cadres, serious resources and apparatus, the best, most widely circulated publications, and the widest range of interventions in campaigns and struggles.

But we still need to relate more to, and contend with, the actual working-class political life in each city – the campaigns, the unions, the movements and committees. We need to make our presence felt more.

Often we’re still too removed from the general political scene in the big cities. Certainly that’s the case in Sydney and Melbourne. At the other extreme, Darwin comrades seem well-integrated in the political life of the town.

Our party, our branches, our comrades have to be thoroughly political, outward looking. Where we can’t assign comrades permanently, we’ll have a Green Left propaganda intervention, carrying reports of the struggles and getting the activists to read, depend on Green Left. We’ll be ready to respond with major political interventions if necessary in healthy campaigns that develop.

Remember “The DSP Is Everywhere” slogan and badge – make it real!

Are we shorthanded? Absolutely! But here’s our chance – give a new comrade, or Resistance members, the responsibility. Throw them headlong into different campaigns and committees.

We’re favouring the “deep-end” approach, for comrades to learn in practice, to get confidence through their own achievements.

But we’re not throwing them in completely on their own. We have all our resources – resources to be used before the jump; resources to be used after coming out of the water spluttering a bit:

• The consultation and advice of party bodies, other comrades, more experienced comrades;
• The education arsenal we have – books and pamphlets and documents, The Activist files, educationals, classes, forums, seminars;
• The collective discussions at conferences, branch meetings, committees, fractions, on branch executives.

What this represents is a confident approach to the year ahead, an aggressive outlook, a deep-end approach for all comrades in the party.

To recapitulate the two main themes of this report:

1. It’s time for a bolder policy in all our work, confidently intervening, putting forward a more explicitly socialist perspective. This responds to the objective need, internationally and in Australia – to promote Marxist, “red” politics.
2. We need to encourage full participation for all members of the party, but especially new comrades, to have them take greater responsibility for our work. This is needed to meet all the challenges, in order for us to to carry out all our tasks in the coming year.

Both these projections are aimed to address what we see as the biggest failure of our party-building work in this past year, our failure to consolidate into Marxist cadres enough of the thousands of contacts and Resistance recruits that have come around us.

Let’s succeed in these two areas in 1996, so that by our next party conference we’ve recruited and trained and educated many more cadres, and built a stronger party of worker-Bolsheviks.

Summary

Comrades, the discussion today has been extremely useful. It’s clarified our perspectives. We’ve got more branch experience to go by, and have got a much better picture of the national situation, and it’s confirmed the perspectives that were put forward.

This happened with the reports and discussion yesterday too. We got the feedback from the branches. It’s not until we get a National Committee gathering like this, with the leading comrades in all the branches here, and sharing all those experiences, that you get a proper picture of what’s happening in the country, what’s happening in the party and Resistance. Yesterday we obtained a good feel for our still very modest experiences in the trade unions and the indications of initial responses in the labour movement.

Today we’ve received interesting feedback on the value of raising our party profile and having a visible socialist presence, and being confident about it, the Darwin forum for example. Darwin is a small town, with a small team of comrades there, but we know that if we extended the experiences there onto a city like Sydney, we’d fill the Town Hall with that sort of crowd. It was an excellent response. There’s other examples that came through in the discussion of what’s possible if we clearly raise our socialist flag.

I think the election campaign has got to be used very much for this, and to make the link between Resistance and the DSP too that some comrades mentioned sometimes isn’t clear to our periphery. It’s a vital opportunity to make the connection to the party.

Comrades raised questions about the role of The Activist, how it will function now that we want to make better use of it. What’s going to go in it?

Firstly, it will contain reports from the National Office, and reports from different branches. It’s always been open for those sort of reports, for branches to send in reports of what they’re doing. Small or large, whether it’s a formal report to the branch, or else the branch decides that something is particularly interesting, we’ve got to share this with other comrades. The Activist has always been open for this sort of report, we’ve just got to reiterate, make use of it for this sort of thing.

Secondly, we want to use it now for more of the existing debates that are happening. We’ll still have comrades exchanging views in the letters page of Green Left Weekly, but you can’t fit much in the letters page of Green Left – it’s always edited for length, and you wonder, “what else was said?” There are also a lot of letters and exchanges of views that take place between comrades. A comrade writes a letter to the National Office, the National Office writes back. Some of these letters are very interesting and need to be shared with all comrades. Some don’t need to be shared, some do. There are letters that just don’t fit in the Green Left letters page – for example, Doug Lorimer’s 15-page letter to a comrade explaining some theoretical point. We need to find some place to share the ideas there that would be very educational for the whole of the party.

Thirdly, on top of that we really do want to encourage more discussions – on historical questions, on theoretical questions – to encourage comrades to put pen to paper, to put their views down. The Activist will be open for that sort of discussion all the year round.

During the pre-conference discussion period it’s different of course, then anything’s up for grabs, our line, our tactical perspectives. Comrades can form a faction to fight for a different line and course of action. The key thing in that period of course is that comrades have a right to have their views put in, no matter what they are. What we’re proposing now is to open up discussions, and the National Office will still have editorial control over what gets printed. We’re not going to automatically print everything that comes in, but what the NE agrees will be helpful in raising comrades’ theoretical clarity.

Fourthly, there’s a whole lot of articles and documents that would be extremely invaluable for the education of comrades, for stimulating their thinking, to keep them in touch with discussions that are going on all around the world. Now we can put some articles in Links, a small number of them. We can put some material in Green Left Weekly, and quite a lot goes in there, as you’ll realise if you go back and read your file for the year. But there’s much more that comes in. We’re going to have to use The Activist increasingly for this. Comrades can subscribe to overseas magazines, and they should, but we need more and more reprints.

On the question of the nature of the party of worker-Bolsheviks we’re talking about, the model that we’ve put forward in the past and that we’re stressing even more at the moment. We’ve got to have certain models. Without wanting to embarrass him, I always see Jim McIlroy as the model of a worker-Bolshevik. He does set the model for what comrades should be doing when they’re workers, leading the way on sales and other political tasks. When you have a full-time job, you don’t stop selling; when you have a full-time job, you don’t stop recruiting, you don’t stop writing for Green Left, you don’t stop having a totally full political life and activity, as well as the family responsibilities and everything else that Jim has.

Now at the moment we’ve got models, and we’ve got some comrades who are learning how to do this. And there are some comrades who get a bit of a shock when they start work – after the first few weeks on the job they’re exhausted, and think, “Oh my god, am I going to be able to handle this, work and politics at the same time?” It is possible. Comrades do it. Workers are going to have to do it. And in the future the ratio of worker-Bolsheviks, comrades who are working and really playing the role of professional revolutionaries, are going to be a bigger proportion of our party. It’s going to be the norm in the future, and we should be looking towards that norm now.

Tash [S] explained about the training school: It’s not a general educational school, it’s a specific, limited (probably one-day) school for party branch full-timers and Resistance organisers, since we have so many comrades new to those assignments. A lot of this stuff we’re going to have to get published in bulletins and handbooks, so that it’s a little easier for us to pass on the knowledge in the future, but we do need such a school now.

On the question of the similarities and differences between the party and Resistance, what do we mean by cadres and cadre organisations? Yes, it’s not simply two totally different meanings, it’s one word embracing a complex, multi-sided concept. And although perhaps we might have had an unclear formulation in the youth work report at the last party conference, that conference report was addressing a specific situation. So addressing another situation, we will have a different use of the word.

The key thing about cadres is that they are leaders. It’s not just the same as activists. Sometimes we’re sloppy in our formulations and in order not to be too repetitive, sometimes we use cadres, sometimes we use activists, and so on, and flip backwards and forwards. But cadres are comrades who are able to lead workers and students in the struggle for socialism, to lead in the movements, and certainly in Resistance we’re obviously training Resistance members, even the ones who aren’t in the party, to lead in the movements.

Resistance is an organisation whose purpose is to train cadres, but it’s not the cadre party – it’s a socialist youth organisation. There are a lot of differences between Resistance and the party obviously, but one way to conceptualise one of the differences is that Resistance is not as homogeneous as the party. There’s a sort of gradient. You can come in at a very low level of theoretical understanding and leadership experience, just sign a joiner’s card. Then if your pay your first month’s dues and your application for membership is ratified by the Resistance branch, you’re a member. It’s very easy to join Resistance. It’s quite different from joining the party, where people must serve at least three months and usually longer as an apprentice, as a provisional member.

We will be joining up people to Resistance on stalls and at demonstrations; as many as we can (the ISO’s concept of joining is similar to Resistance’s). It’s a gradient from the very basic level at which most Resistance members join, up to the level of political understanding and commitment that’s required to join the party. It’s a sort of progressive ramp to get to the party. There’s not the same gradient in the party itself, it’s flatter in a sense, although comrades develop after they join the party. They learn, they get more committed the longer they’re members. In Resistance there’s a bigger range, it’s less homogeneous in terms of political understanding.

In any case, I think one development of this discussion which is good – even if there might be confusion and we might have been unclear in some things. At least comrades are thinking it out, and have got to think it out and discuss it out, as on all other questions. It’s something we have to encourage.

On the question of local teams, suburban teams, I suppose I would have liked more discussion on this, more feedback from comrades on the idea, and I guess this will have to wait a bit more until it starts getting put into practice, until branch executives start discussing how to implement it. But on the question of size, branches should be flexible here. Teams don’t have to be very large. If we think they have to be large we might be veering off into a different sort of concept. But anyway, branches can experiment. We can test it out in the election campaign, and hopefully extend it afterwards.

One thing that using small teams during the election campaign might help with, could be the mixing of DSP and non-party Resistance comrades, the forced mixing through a little group. Comrades do report that lack of mixing, party members often don’t go and do the one-to-one talking with new Resistance comrades, or mix socially. Well here’s an opportunity where they will be forced to mix, they’re both in the same DSEL team carrying out all those basic party-building tasks – Green Left sales and subs, distributing the Democratic Socialist election broadsheet, etc., in their team’s assigned local area.

Even the little things we’ve done already give you an idea of the potential, for example, that Springwood meeting. If you think about it that’s not really an exceptional situation. I think there’s probably potential for that sort of experience in many suburbs in most branches, and towns outside the main cities too.

We know the vacuum is there, we know we’ve got lots of contacts there. If we send a comrade in and raise the red flag and say, “gather round”, they would gather round. Any comrade in this room should be able to go out to a new suburb and build a little unit, whether we call it a branch or a local team. We’ve got the subscribers and the contacts and the former Resistance members, former party members, former CPA members that haven’t got any framework.

That’s a bit of a pointer to the future. We can’t do all the things we’d like to do right now. We can’t go to Springwood and Liverpool and Campbelltown and all the rest. But it shows one way we will be able to break out in the future, to break through what we’ve often thought is a bit of an artificial ceiling on our growth – the way we’re organised in branches in the large cities. We’ve tried that breaking out several times in the past, and haven’t succeeded, the division into smaller branches didn’t succeed in the past. But in the future we will have to make the organisational and structural changes to break through this ceiling. These teams and this locality organising could be a way to make a bit of a transition to that breakthrough.

They shouldn’t be seen as merely an extra structure. We definitely don’t want an extra meeting foisted on branches. And also it shouldn’t just be seen as a reshuffling of the existing comrades. Key to the success of this is using the newer, the less active comrades, even contacts, to slot them into these teams, and to devolve the responsibility onto the newer comrades in all these activities.

This concept of devolving is what we have to think about at all levels. Some comrades would be aware of the tightness of full-time staff in this period. Partly it was forced on us by financial pressures, but partly it was a problem of devolving responsibility in more ways to solve those sorts of problems.

Anyway it’s up to branches to experiment more with the local teams concept, and it will vary from branch to branch.

But taking responsibility is key – the “deep-end approach,” to use a shorthand term, and comrades understand exactly what we mean there, getting more people to participate and more people to take responsibility for our tasks. It’s something we just have to implement in this coming year. It’s essential for the successful integration and consolidation of all those potential recruits. It’s essential for the successful functioning of Resistance as an engine to train new cadres, new Resistance cadres and new party cadres. But it’s also essential if we’re going to get our work done.

We’ve had some attrition, but as Jim [McIlroy] said, we seem stronger. You do get that feeling, yes. We’ve achieved such a lot. Partly it could be that the training of comrades, the experience of comrades, is now showing through – a little attrition but the quality is there, we’re a higher quality party, with a more solid membership. But I think that the lesson we can leave with from this plenum is that we have a very strong cadre force on which to build, and a really good chance for growth in the year ahead.