The DSP’s perspective of socialist renewal

Revolutionary Marxists are internationalists. Our goal is the unification of the working people and oppressed of the world in the complete overthrow of the capitalist system and the ushering in of a classless, socialist society. But capitalist power is concentrated at the level of state power in national states, so the instruments we need to overthrow that power are nationally based revolutionary working class parties.

Building such parties to defeat our own bourgeoisie is our prime responsibility. But as the talk I gave to the Marxism 2000 conference last January and reprinted in Links Number 15 put it: “Because we’re internationalists, we’re eager to help others to build revolutionary parties, to build better collaboration, to build a real network, to build parties that can make revolutions, in all the countries of the world.”

From the early ‘80s, after breaking out of the narrow framework of the Fourth International, the Democratic Socialist Party has had a perspective of trying to renew and rebuild the communist movement. The collapse of the Soviet Union gave this perspective of renewal added impetus and urgency. Since then we’ve witnessed the enormous expansion of our international work, especially in the last few years.

In the early ‘90s, we broadened out with Green Left Weekly, organised the Socialist Scholars Conferences, and set up European and Moscow Bureaus for the paper.

That laid the basis for a further expansion of our international work, with the International Green Left Conference in 1994, the foundation of Links, enabling us to respond to the political developments in Indonesia, the founding of the PRD, and the split in the Philippines Communist Party.

By 1998 with the Asia Pacific Solidarity Conference we had expanded further our interesting range of contacts with Marxist parties in the Asian region, especially India and Pakistan. A loose network of collaborators was starting to develop with real implantations and each with important contributions. They come from many traditions, and will continue to have a varied assessment of historical experiences.

In 1999 we had a further impact with our exemplary solidarity work with East Timor. The Marxism 2000 conference last January expanded this Asian network further, linking us up to the developing Marxist forces in South Korea.

The past year has added a new dimension to our international work, with the development of the growing movement against neoliberal globalisation.

Social democracy and liberalism

The objective social and political circumstances we face as revolutionary Marxists have certainly changed during the course of the 20^th Century, but the irreconcilable contradictions of capitalism, and the need and possibility of socialist revolution, still remain.

With the end of the long post-war boom, the bourgeoisie’s neoliberal offensive over the last 25 years has beaten back the working class internationally, taking back gains won in previous struggles. The wealth gap continues to widen between rich and poor in the imperialist countries, and is widening even further between the exploited countries and the imperialist countries.

The capitalist class’s neoliberal offensive has often been implemented by social democratic parties as preference. They can more effectively blunt working class resistance.

In recent decades social democracy has increasingly abandoned any charade that it had fundamentally different goals and allegiances than capitalism and its parties. In Australia 13 years of Hawke-Keating government and the disastrous Accord put paid to that. The DSP in the 1980s made a reassessment and analysis of social democratic and labour parties, and concluded we should have always been characterising them as capitalist parties. Other political currents now assess they’ve actually changed in the 1980s and 1990s.

But what is the nature of the setback for the working class? Certainly the attacks on our rights and conditions is a setback, but not the fact that now these parties are increasingly exposed as just another capitalist party.

The real tragedy of the 20^th Century for the working class has been social democracy/liberalism, a current fundamentally committed to the continued existence of capitalism. That’s been the key divide, the main betrayer. The social base of this current is the labour aristocracy, living off crumbs from imperialism’s table.

It might have had different names and guises, as:

• Social democracy, sometimes even making a big thing of socialism, but this current has been tested exhaustively, especially in government and in war.
• Labour, in Australia, New Zealand, Britain, and Canada’s NDP.
• The Greens are a new variant, but in government, as in Germany, they reveal their real politics.
• Sometimes parties that might even still retain the name Communist, but have policies and practices that are classic social democratic, even participating in governments and ensuring the maintenance of capitalism and the implementation of the bourgeoisie’s neoliberal austerity policies.
• Today, we see a new layer developing with a new base, professional NGO careerists.

The Scottish Socialist Party’s Tommy Sheridan and Alan McCombes have just written an excellent popular introduction to the ideas of socialism, called “Imagine” (Copies are available for sale at the Congress.) Among many other good chapters it provides an excellent description of the mid-1970s economic crisis, the neoliberal offensive, frequently led by social democrats, and the fundamental nature of social democracy. They quote one academic who summed it up very pithily: “Social democracy has been removed from the agenda of history.”

Also, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the final fruits of Stalinism, the second 20^th Century betrayer of the workers’ movement announced its departure from the scene. Certainly, the Soviet collapse had terrible consequences for workers there, experiencing drastic falls in their standards of living and life expectancy under Mafia capitalism, and it has heightened the isolation of liberation movements in the Third World. But is it a setback for the working class and the prospects for revolutionary change that Stalinism no longer has the strength and the prospects for misleading the movement?

The Left movement has been reshaped internationally over the last few decades. The main feature has been the further exposure of social democracy, and the decline of Stalinism. And only if your horizon goes no further than reformism, or you think Stalinism was the way to go, would you think the movement has been dealt a fatal blow by the decline of these currents.

Some on the left, reacting to the decline of Stalinism and the absolute exposure of social democracy have reacted with despair. “It’s all changed for the worse,” they wail. They themselves then added to the retreat.

Some left currents, concluding it was bad times for the left, circled the wagons, drew back from any outreach initiatives they had started to dabble with.

Other currents were impelled to divide even further, to return to their “true line orthodoxy,” to set up their own New “International.”

Many of the academic left, and the latest in a long list being the magazine New Left Review, have given up on fundamental social change altogether.

A new movement in the imperialist countries

But for us, the exposure and discrediting of Stalinism and social democracy has a positive side, it opened the way for new parties, a new movement. We expected it. And in recent years it has been emerging, North and South.

New parties are developing with varied origins. New alliances have been built. People have been radicalising around environmental issues, women’s struggles, national questions. Former members of the old parties and trade unions have been joining socialist parties. New links are being developed between parties with very different origins and traditions. There’s a process of recomposition.

And the retreats demonstrated bad timing. The capitalist ideologues gloating about “The End of History” have been shown to be premature and laughingly short-sighted.

When all seemed to be going imperialism’s way in the Middle East, Palestine erupted with the 2^nd Intifada.

And did they really think that the US boom of the 1990s would be everlasting?

Perry Anderson’s editorial for New Left Review‘s new series, declaring its peace with capitalism, would have been written at the same time as Seattle was ushering in a whole series of demonstrations opposing neoliberal globalisation, showing that there’s a growing movement of anti-capitalist activists in the imperialist countries.

Throughout the Third World for decades the workers, peasants, urban poor have been rebelling on a daily basis. They’re directly driven by their poverty and repression, the plunder of the multinational corporations. Mass upsurges in the Third World have been frequent, even if imperialism was coping through their standard repression and corruption.

But with this new movement, the First World is now catching up. And it’s worrying for the capitalists.

Seattle was the most dramatic, but it was building up before that. The wonderful experience with S11 here in Melbourne really brought it home.

More and more people, especially young people, are waking up to capitalism’s neoliberal offensive, against the workers and poor at home, and to their brutal exploitation of the rest of the world.

This new internationalism in the imperialist heartland means they’re in danger of losing the youth once again. Compare with the protests against the War in Vietnam, which was focused against a war, and extended to a radicalisation on racism, sexism, gay rights, environment etc.

This movement encompasses a general rejection of imperialist exploitation of the whole Third World. It’s a reaction to the poverty, the exploitation, the glaring gap. Sometimes it focuses on a specific issue, a particular piece of environmental destruction; a particularly crass multinational corporation. And as yet there’s no universally decided list of demands. But many general propositions would be agreed on, against imperialist institutions, and capitalism itself.

Key Questions in the new movement

The new movement against capitalist globalisation is very diverse.

There’s now enough experience to analyse the different currents and the important political issues that differentiate. Who do we ally with? Who comprises the potential for advance towards revolutionary Marxist solutions, new mass working class parties? Who is going to hold the movement back, and betray?

We’re very familiar with the differences and political fights that were necessary here. Boris Kagarlitsky in his Diary of S26 in Prague that we published in Green Left Weekly called it the division between “Bolsheviks and Mensheviks”, and that’s a useful conception, although we mightn’t necessarily agree with his boundaries.

The latest issue of Links focuses on Melbourne, Seattle and Washington, Prague and Seoul, with articles analysing the new campaign for global justice and the issues confronting the new movement.

We can identify the two key trends, labour bureaucrats and radicals.

Both are still “anti-capitalist” in the sense that the liberals are still in conflict with the bourgeoisie, wanting a return to the period of concessions characteristic of the post-war long expansionary wave, before the turn to neoliberal policies by imperialism. They want a return to Keynesianism – propping capitalism up with more government spending.

In the actions we’ll push for a united front. We need that broad alliance of all the forces encompassing many different political perspectives campaigning against global capitalism through some form of mass action.

But we also need to be clear on the differences, the dividing lines, the challenges, and what pushes are likely to come from the ruling class.

Doug Lorimer outlined in the international political situation report what central political demands we should be pressing in this developing movement against neoliberal globalisation, continuing to stress the importance of mass mobilisations:

• Abolition of these institutions;
• Unconditional cancellation of the Third World debt; and
• Preferential trade treatment for the Third World.

NGOs and liberals have a natural preference for reform and tinkering. Not only don’t they want to do anything to fundamentally threaten the existing system, but the process of discussing reforms, negotiating, dialogue with the global institutions of capital gives them an enhanced role, a raison d’etre.

The position of abolishing has gained momentum in the movement, even among many NGOs, especially given that the line of the institutions themselves has had to switch to one of putting on a human face, reforming themselves, humanising themselves. Unconditional cancellation of the Third World debt is also a demand that’s more accepted.

Exposing the dead-end of chauvinist protectionism has been harder. It’s been the scourge of the Australian trade union movement.

In Seattle and Washington, this was the line of the AFL-CIO – protect American jobs, keep China out of the WTO. Many on the left misunderstand this issue. Some are uninformed, as Cristophe Aguiton (FI), in his ATTAC report on Prague seemed to be, (TA 20) in praising the role of the US trade unions at Seattle and Washington.

Socialism and the party question

But a central principled question for the movement that so far has been mostly ignored is where to go beyond capitalism, what can we replace it with? Socialism.

Sometimes this actually appears as the party question – the right to have the socialist alternative raised in the discussions, the right to have parties as part of the united front. That is, if parties are excluded, then we just get restricted to the language of “civil society”, “communities” etc, you can’t take the discussion or the demands out of the framework of capitalism.

This anti-party anti-socialist theme often gets picked up by naïve but well-meaning anarchists who think they’re extra radical, but they’re actually implementing the agenda of those committed to the preservation of capitalism. Others think that by being above parties they can avoid all the mistakes made by parties in the past. All they do is repeat the mistakes, and leave it to the capitalist parties.

The anti-party theme has also been taken up by the NGO/civil society/community movements milieu.

It looks increasingly like the FI sees these NGO non-party international gatherings as the key regroupment. This alliance becomes key, the party question, socialism, revolution, is relegated. This seems the tenor of discussion at the last few IEC meetings.

Pierre Rousset for example saw the APSC as more impressive than Marxism 2000 because the APSC had more non-party groups, more rightwing forces involved, whereas we were more excited by Marxism 2000 because of the extra serious Marxist forces attending.

But we know parties can’t be by-passed. The movement feels the pressure for a healthy party where none exists. In Toronto recently a successful “Rebuilding the Left Conference” was held October 27, 28. Almost 750 attended.

Sam Gindin, formerly of the Canadian AutoWorkers Union, now teaching at York University, gave the opening address. He noted all the issues people are campaigning on, the range of opposition to the system. But “the opposition that has occurred has surged and ebbed,” he said. “Particular struggles came and receded. We’ve gone from one march and one event to another. After an impressive Day of Action in one community, we went on to another with little or no attention to how to continue to develop the base that had just been left behind.”

He advocated formation of a “structured anti-capitalist movement,” less than a party, more than the coalitions. He outlined the need for a basis of agreement, a communication network, a process for education, a process for developing more specific alternatives and themes, and resources, the eventual need for a dues structure.

All those of course are features of a party, and perhaps he was tactfully trying to ease people into the idea, to overcome the very strong prejudices against parties. But there is no halfway structure, any half-hearted attempt is going to be weaker and reinforce peoples’ prejudices against parties. A wiser tactic is to jump in and try. They’re planning a second conference in May, and an expanded organising committee.

Disaster can occur if you think you can build a half-way house, but not a party (turning your back on the actual lessons of organisation and party building in the socialist movement).

In South Africa, the SACP had the potential to move forward, to mobilise, to build a strong party. It made an initial critique of Stalinism, but lapsed back into its old framework, and chose to tag along behind the ANC government, with its neoliberal austerity, privatisation, anti-worker policies. The expulsion of Dale McKinley several months ago for his principled stand (based on his articles in Links, GLW as well as the local media) was a symbol.

With the SACP increasingly discredited, there are many activists and campaigns and committed socialists outside the SACP. There is also the usual range of little sects, none growing particularly at the moment. It’s clear that the ANC and SACP are not providing the answer, but people are not going to jump into one of the sects. But the left activists there are holding off on any new party project, afraid it would be just another little sect. But if they don’t act, one of the small sects might grow. And activists will get disillusioned. At least they’re starting up the Debate discussion list as a printed magazine again.

In the USA where there’s a broad layer of activists and a multitude of campaigns, the socialist movement has been sorely lacking. Solidarity, the organisation we’ve had closest contact with, unfortunately is founded on an anti-Leninist principle, eschews organisation, and thus squanders opportunities. With no newspaper, they’re invisible at the actions, and rarely coordinate their interventions.

What sort of renewal?

What sort of socialist renewal and regroupment is possible around the world? What sort of party is needed? Can it just be on a broad anti-capitalist basis? Or do we need revolutionary Marxist parties right away?

Perhaps it depends on each country. There are varied social circumstances, and very different political situations. Movements and parties are at different stages of development, and have different political heritages. We can’t be too prescriptive on this.

Some countries will need a broad, anti-capitalist regroupment, with the revolutionary Marxist forces just functioning as a current within the broader movement. Sometimes revolutionary Marxists will be able to lead the regroupment, as in the Scottish Socialist Party. Sometimes the revolutionaries will be in the minority. Sometimes there will be a variety of Marxist currents.

Certainly there’s a need for a conscious anti-sectarian stance in order to succeed.

Also, it’s clear that we don’t need international factions, or the fake internationals with delusions of grandeur. We’ve experienced numerous actual negative effects of such internationals.

But the goal, the task, is to get to a revolutionary Marxist party, a Leninist, Bolshevik party. Without it, a revolution won’t succeed.

So we shouldn’t make a virtue, or necessity, out of a temporary, partial step or stage.

Similarly, we shouldn’t make a principle of a retreat, a lesser form of organisation that has to be accepted because of political and organisational weakness.

For example, the idea of the “pluralist left,” that’s emerged in some places as the description of the virtuous types of parties, the only acceptable parties.

Certainly, we’re all for the right of tendency, the importance of discussion and debate. But unfortunately some have interpreted this to be the most important defining principle of a party, and made a principle of being anti-democratic centralism, anti-Leninist. They rule out a Leninist type party, in reaction to the crimes of Stalinism and to the narrow sectarianism of much of the Trotskyist movement.

This can lead to a slide to the right, a slide to a social democratic political position, and a retreat from the party-building project altogether. (e.g. Liverpool ex-Militant group; the Socialist Democracy Group; Solidarity in the US, the New Socialist Group in Canada.)

Leninism

The FI’s Pierre Rousset has characterised our position as contradictory – between our hard Leninist past which we cling to, and our opening up approach of the present.

But there’s no contradiction at all for us. We’re consciously relating to the state of flux with many parties/currents, not cutting off relations. But at the same time we have a clear line ourselves for party building, which we both push by setting an example, with our actual practice in Australia, and argue for in Links, and GLW, and our other publications, and in discussions when we travel, attend conferences.

It’s our implementation of our understanding of Lenin’s practice in building the Bolshevik party – a communist current. The distortion has been the Stalinist and Trotskyist practice of the last 70+ years.

The task in imperialist countries is to build working class parties able to think for themselves, independent of capitalists and their institutions.

The task in the Third World is also building revolutionary parties, not sects taking direction from some mother party based in the First World. Look at the ISO in South Korea, it vanished without trace, it had no roots in the real movement. They and the CWI and others have been trying in Indonesia. Their influence could only be disastrous.

So we stress: Parties on a national basis; networks or alliances of parties internationally.

While rejecting any idea of a new structured “International” today, the dynamic in practice is towards an international network or alliance of socialist parties. This is based on the reality of the emergence of new parties in a number of countries, and greater contact and collaboration between parties coming from different traditions. We have a de facto alliance with a number of the parties in the Asian region.

Asian Parties

Our international work in recent years has focused primarily on the Asia-Pacific region, and our relations with Marxist parties in this region will continue to be prioritised. This is the most important area of our solidarity work, reflecting our responsibilities in building a Marxist party in an imperialist country in the region. Also, it’s where some of the most exciting political developments have been taking place, with new parties forming, and some parties breaking from past traditions.

Most comrades here would be familiar with the increasing number of parties with varied histories and traditions and circumstances that the DSP has established contact with in the Asia-Pacific region. Many of their leaders and activists have been brought here on speaking tours by us. We’ve tried to give the struggles in our region special attention in Green Left Weekly. And many of these parties have been represented at the extremely successful conferences we’ve organised in recent years.

We’ve organised solidarity where we can with their struggles. Our conferences have been useful meeting places for them. In many cases it’s been through us that other parties have been introduced to each other, even direct neighbours such as India and Pakistan. Green Left and Links and some of our other publications have proved useful for many of these parties.

And of course we’ve benefited tremendously. Our comrades have received inspiration from their struggles. Our links and solidarity have ensured an internationalist outlook for us. And although their societies and social conditions and conditions of struggle are vastly different from ours, we’ve learned a lot from them as well.

Without listing all the parties we have friendly links with, I’ll briefly describe our main collaborators, and the most interesting recent political developments.

Indonesia

Indonesia, with more than 200 million people, is the most important country in South East Asia, the most important country for us politically, and is still in a huge social and political crisis. Since Suharto was overthrown by a mass movement, stability hasn’t returned. There are daily demonstrations and protests and violent clashes.

The People’s Democratic Party is an exciting party which has shown itself capable of analysing their society and acting in response as revolutionary Marxists. They are expanding rapidly, and making important progress with their party-building drive. They’re still lacking a lot of political homogeneity, so education and theory and debates are important.

They’ve produced at least three issues of a new magazine Kiri, with translations of the classics, translations from us, and their own documents. They desperately want to produce a regular newspaper.

In June they’ll be hosting the International Solidarity Conference which many of us will be attending. We have ongoing collaboration on a range of solidarity and party-building projects, and there’s a separate report on Thursday.

East Timor

In East Timor, society is still chaotic following the referendum and militia slaughter. The Socialist Party of Timor (PST) continues to develop, and even though the party is new, and not well developed politically, they’re well organised in East Timor, and are growing. (For the size of the country, they’re massive.) They seem to be acknowledged now as the most active party there.

We have increasingly close collaboration on a range of projects. Jon L attended their first congress. Other comrades are spending time up there collaborating with them. Any solidarity and political assistance we can provide them is important, since they’ll be under many pressures in the months ahead.

Pakistan

In Pakistan the Labour Party Pakistan has carved out a significant political space for itself. It’s building new bases among workers, and recruiting trade union leaders. Just recently they’ve won a number of seats in local elections. It has about 2000 members. The LPP had their congress in Mid-April, and Peter Boyle attended for us.

The key decisions were on their international affiliation. A whole day was devoted to the discussion. They were being wooed by four groups who attended the congress: the LIT (from the Moreno Trotskyist tradition, based in Brazil), 3 from the UIT (another ex-Moreno “International”), Saleh Jaber from the FI, and 3 from an ex-CWI current who are hoping to start their new international(which got launched at a conference in London in October).

But the delegates rejected the overtures from the various Trotskyist internationals. Peter’s contribution got the applause, the cries of “Zindabad” (Long Live).

The LPP is starting to overcome one of their internal contradictions too of course – the large majority of their members, and those they’re continuing to recruit, don’t come from any Trotskyist background, and would find Trotskyist shibboleths bizarre. The LPP regroupment is beginning to attract the natural leaders of the class.

The LPP seems to be developing a healthy positive orientation to the Cuban Revolution in practice. I don’t know if they’ve yet had a formal decision on the theoretical issues relating to Cuba that Doug Lorimer’s reply to Peter Taaffe on Cuba addressed.

The LPP works closely with a large range of left and nationalist parties. Dozens of them attended their Left Unity Conference in 1999. Including the Saraiki National Party, which would have been attending our congress but for the Australian government’s racist refusal of a visa.

Sue Bu and Tim G have just returned from an extensive trip around South Asia, and no doubt will contribute in the discussion. Their press conference at the National Press Club in Lahore was covered in many national papers! (It’s a military dictatorship there, but seems to have a freer press than here. Eva, Peter, also managed front-page stories)

Afghanistan

There are a number of left Afghani organisations in exile, mostly underground in Pakistan. The Afghanistan Labour Revolutionary Organisation, was also planning to attend this congress, but has been excluded by the Australian government.

India

India is a very important country with an extensive and complex left tradition, and our understanding has grown in recent years with the important links we’ve developed with the Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist [Liberation]. Our relations with the CPI ML took a further step forward as a result of the Marxism 2000 conference.

Sue and Tim were given a two-week tour through the CPI ML’s peasant bases in Bihar. (TA 13) They were mightily inspired, as I think anyone would be who spends time working with the CPI ML comrades.

The CPI ML has about 90,000 members, and while that might not be big on an Indian scale, internationally this party can have a useful input into the new network of revolutionary Marxist parties that is developing. They are an excellent example of a party with a Maoist tradition that has been able to think through and transcend many of the strategic and tactical questions from their past, and still maintain their revolutionary zeal and perspective.

Their monthly magazine Liberation is a serious magazine. Most branches get a copy, and comrades should consider subscribing. Their weekly newsheet ML Update, available by email if any comrades want it, gives a weekly snapshot of the huge range of struggles they’re involved in. Sometimes their international positions still reflect their old frameworks. But they’re pro-Cuban. They sent warm greetings to the Havana conference, though were unable to attend.

Their international secretary explained to Peter Boyle during his visit earlier this year: They have discussed and worked out that we are their closest political allies internationally. But they’re cautious about international contacts, because 1. They’ve had bad experiences of terrible (Maoist) internationals, and 2. They need to maximise their gains locally.

So their international work will be on the level of international exchanges. They think it would be a mistake to be too broad in our network. They favour using the internet for discussions, but not in an open way, fearing rubbish would come in. They’re keen to support the Jakarta conference.

They have called a three-day educational conference for March 23-25, and invited us to attend. Dick Nichols will be attending. We’ll try to send other comrades.

Nepal

In Nepal the CPN (UML) is also part of the growing network of contacts in the Asian region, even though the size of the party and their weight in Nepalese society and politics means they’re subject to temptations and pressures smaller Marxist parties aren’t confronted with. They’re the largest party in parliament, in previous years had the numbers to form the government, and have Kathmandu “totally sown up,” according to Sue and Tim who just attended the Socialism 21 International Conference they organised.

The CPN (UML) delegation to our Marxism 2000 conference was a serious move, a member of their political bureau, and Rajan Bhattarai, now head of their international department. But although the CPN (UML) has huge mass support, and 71 MPs, they’re actually extremely unformed, very new, with very unclear political positions. At the regional and district level their cadre and units are more militant and confrontationist.

Their international contacts are actually quite limited, but there’s a wide range, including the Chinese and Vietnamese Communist Parties, and the CPIM and CPI as well as the CPI ML and they’re definitely now in reach-out mode.

Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka, the NSSP seems to be the most serious Marxist party. Many of their central leaders are assigned to leadership of trade unions; they have fortnightly alternating Tamil and Sinhala papers.

They are part of the FI, but that probably won’t inhibit their possibilities of playing a more active role in the developing Asian network. They are regrouping a “New Left Front” directed against both the imperialist economic institutions, and the government’s war against the Tamil people. For a while they were able to build an alliance with the JVP for the elections and specific campaigns, but the JVP still hasn’t been able to overcome its Sinhala chauvinism.

Bangladesh

Bangladesh is a country where the level of struggle is high, and the map of the Bangladeshi left parties is very complex. There’s still a lot for us to learn about the Bangladesh left, although we got some information from the BAFLF comrade Nurul, who was able to come to Marxism 2000, and a BAFLF comrade is with us again at this congress.

Philippines

It’s a complex situation on the left in the Philippines, with an ongoing process of splits from the Communist Party of the Philippines. The SPP, the Socialist Party of Labour, is a result of regroupment from the CPP, the pro-Moscow CP and other forces, and is involved in unity discussions on several fronts.

Earlier last year there seemed prospects for regroupment with the KPD, Movement for Nationalism and Democracy, the latest split from the CPP in the Central Luzon area, led by Francisco Pascual, who visited here in August. Antonio Raymundo was supposed to be representing this current from the KPD at our congress, as well as the Resource Centre for Philippine Development, but again the Australian government refused him a visa.

The Revolutionary Workers Party, built from the former CPP bases in the Visayas and Mindanao areas, is another party we maintain relations with. The attendance of Yusop, a central leader of the RWP, at our Marxism 2000 conference was significant, and we had very useful discussions. There were useful discussions and steps towards collaboration between the RWP and the SPP too, although in the intervening months it looks like the initial steps towards collaboration have disappeared, and the RWP has held back from the united anti-Estrada actions.

Even though we’ve had the longest and closest relations with the SPP, we want to relate to all the healthy developments in the Philippines. If we related to just one, it could hinder the process of regroupment there, as in practice the FI does by pushing the formal affiliation of the RWP.

Mauritius

In Mauritius, Lalit is a party there with many of the same perspectives as us, especially on international relations among parties. They’re revolutionary Marxist, non-sectarian, with leaders having experience in a wide range of different – mainly Trotskyist – parties in other countries. They’re a cadre party of similar size to us, but quite a weight in union and other movements. We’ve been in contact for a while exchanging documents and publications and emails.

Recently Marina C was able to visit there, and further our collaboration on a face-to-face basis. We hope one of their leaders can visit Australia soon. They hope to be able to attend the Jakarta conference.

South Korea

South Korea has a long tradition of militant struggle by students and workers, but until the recent formation of the new Marxist party, Power of Working Class, this had not given rise to a party. The PWC is an integral part of the union struggles in Korea, and represent the Marxist militant pole of a political clarification process that has been underway there for several years. The rightwing forces in the movement recently set up the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) getting political advice from overseas social democrats, including our own ALP fakers.

The PWC is a very dynamic organisation, with a high political level, a very hectic schedule of activities, and constant informal and formal debate on all levels (tactical, programmatic, theoretical, organisational). They are serious and well resourced, with quite a few full timers, as are their associated and sectoral organisations. We were extremely fortunate in having five PWC comrades attend Marxism 2000, and in having three comrades here at this congress.

We’re also been very fortunate in having comrade Iggy K up in Korea to follow up links with the PWC, help report on politics there, and help translate their material into English.

We look forward to future closer relations, including even cadre exchanges over extended periods.

The PWC national leadership is a highly experienced revolutionary cadre with a background of student radicalisation, factory organising, street fighting, and repeated spells in prison. They are also theoretically sophisticated. As Iggy wrote back in one of his reports, “It’s very inspiring to now be in the presence of a Marxist cadre that’s been developing in parallel with us for the past 2 decades without us knowing about it until recently!”

“But most inspiringly, this cadre stands at the head of a broad regroupment of principled opposition to reformist compromises with Kim DJ and his neo-liberalism.”

They’re going through an intense and well-organised process of working things out, taking the steps to establish themselves as a party. They hold all-in congresses every three months. The recent 5th congress adopted a range of documents, some of which Iggy has translated and we’ve reprinted in The Activist. (14 & 15)

The O20 Seoul actions against the Europe-Asia ASEM conference have brought this process of clarification and division in the movement to a head – between reformist liberals on one side, and the militant Marxists increasingly grouped around PWC. Iggy wrote an article for Green Left on the issues, and has written a more comprehensive analysis for the latest issue of Links.

This current can contribute a lot to the process of socialist renewal, especially in Asia, but also internationally.

Other Asian parties

There are important left parties or small Marxist currents in many other Asian countries that we should mention, that we want to develop further contact and collaboration with.

Japan being the dominant imperialist power in the region will be crucial in determining the course of the revolution here. In addition to keeping in touch with the Japanese Communist Party, we have contact with the Communist Association, a modest regroupment that distributes a small bundle of Links, and the FI group, Japanese Revolutionary Communist League.

We relate to the Worker Communist Party of Iraq mainly based on its significant group of members in Australia, and we’ll develop further collaboration with them through joint campaigns and functions this year. But we’ll also relate to them as a growing party in the Asian region.

We hope to be able to attend the Vietnamese Communist Party’s congress in March this year. And we also have contact with groups in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Burma, PNG, and New Zealand.

There’s a possibility that the Cuban CP might hold the 3^rd Asian region solidarity conference in Australia. If that happened we’d have a major responsibility to make it a success. But as well as furthering solidarity in Australia, this would help expand our contacts with left parties in the region.

Our Appeal

At our last party congress two years ago we adopted a proposal to draft a statement on what might be the key political questions around which revolutionary Marxists should come together and what should be the principles of international collaboration. We drafted that Appeal, and circulated it among our initial collaborators in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Pakistan, but the actual Appeal was soon superseded as the real collaboration expanded, widened.

The four points were incorporated in my report to the Marxism 2000 conference, and they remain as a de facto basis for bringing together a loose alliance of revolutionary socialists:

• The revolutionary spirit of Marxism, embodied in the Communist Manifesto;
• A positive assessment of the October Revolution, and Lenin’s party;
• For a socialism that’s democratic, for a healthy, creative non-dogmatic application of Marxism; and
• For genuine internationalism, avoiding fake internationals and factions, but building a collaborative alliance or network between revolutionary Marxist parties.

We don’t want to limit such a network by insistence on specific wording. And a case could be made for adding other central points, for example, a touchstone for revolutionary socialists today would be defence of revolutionary Cuba. But it does describe the process that is happening.

There are remarkably similar discussions and recompositions taking place in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking world.

Cuba and Latin America

Key role of Cuba

For years the revolutionary government of Cuba has provided political inspiration to the best of the movements in the South. At Seattle they helped provide a link, between the governments of the South inside who rejected the WTO round, and the new movements on the streets outside.

For years Cuba has been waging a lonely leadership battle at these international summits, first on the debt question and now on neoliberal globalisation. But the post-Seattle movement signaled that Cuba was no longer fighting alone on this front. At the G77 Summit of the South in Havana last April, Fidel Castro hailed Seattle as “a revolt against neo-liberalism”.

As one of the few fighting revolutionary movements with state power, Cuba will help pave the way for the other revolutionary movements in the South to link up directly with the anti-neoliberal activists in the North.

The Cubans have stepped up their role in the international left in the last few years, and this was seen clearly in their intervention in the Sao Paulo Forum meeting in February last year. Their victory in the Elian case, and the huge increase in popular mobilisations in Cuba, would have given them extra confidence in this course.

At the same time our friendly relations with the Cuban CP have improved tremendously, helped by visits of comrades to Cuba, and given a boost through our intensive discussions with the Cuban political reps who accompanied the Cuban Olympic team to Sydney in September. (Perhaps Comrade Abelardo and others reacted especially warmly to our 100-strong cheer squad at the Cuba-US baseball match. It was a great spontaneous victory celebration outside the stadium…)

Comrades would have heard of the very successful 2^nd International Cuban Solidarity Conference just held in Havana. 4347 delegates from 118 countries gathered to express their condemnation of the US blockade. This tremendous conference would have given a boost to the solidarity campaign with Cuba, but also boosted the struggles against imperialism throughout the world.

As you know our delegation of five comrades was given a tremendous honour. At the concluding demonstration of 12,000 people outside the US Special Interests section, two conference delegates from each of the five regions of the world were invited by the organisers to address the crowd, and Pat Brewer from the DSP was one of them! The 3-hour rally was televised fully throughout Cuba and broadcast internationally. Fidel congratulated Pat on her speech.

We value extremely highly the friendly relations that we are developing with the Cuban comrades. We’ve agreed to translate and publish in English a book by Roberto Regalado, and there’s a long list of other possible articles to be translated for Links.

The Sao Paulo Forum

The Sao Paulo Forum was originally set up by Fidel and Lula of the Brazilian PT, to show socialism was still a force in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. It provided a meeting place once a year for the whole spectrum of the Latin American left. Over the last few years there’s been a consolidation of the right-wing in the Foro.

At last year’s Foro, the left decided to counter attack, and the Cuban CP played the key role. First, they planned an ideological intervention, with their excellent document, “What Alternatives to Neo-Liberalism,” which we translated and carried in the previous issue of Links.

The right wing of the Foro has already established links with Asian and European parties. The left, and the Cubans, want their own closer links with the Asian left.

Movements for renewal in the Latin American left

In Colombia, the focus of US imperialist military intervention is against the extensive guerrilla forces and liberated areas, especially those held by the FARC, but also the ELN. Solidarity with the FARC and the struggle there is a central focus of CISLAC’s work in the coming year. The video we’ve produced will be an important tool here, and should be useful internationally also.

In the cities the Colombian group “Present for Socialism” (led by Fermin Gonzalez) is successfully constructing an urban social and political front. They are also producing some draft documents with proposals for uniting the left, in Colombia and across the continent. Their four main points bear comparison with our Appeal:

• Support for the Cuban Revolution;
• A clear view of the dynamics of revolution in Latin America (not an ultra-left Trotskyist schema);
• Socialism and democracy; and
• Internationalism.

In Argentina the CP is presently led by a left faction, which could contribute significantly to left renewal. We also want to relate to the Union of Militants for Socialism, led by Luis Bilbao, which has sharp politics even if restricted in those they want to relate to. There’s also the Marxist magazine based in Argentina, America Libre, which sponsors meetings of left journals, and wants Links involved.

Manuel Monereo, who’s on the Spanish United Left International Commission, runs a magazine called FIM – Foundation of Marxist Research. He’s on the Links editorial board, and is keen to collaborate with us.

Monereo is working towards a new association of socialist organisations for the Luso-Hispanic world in much the same spirit and with much the same approach as we are doing in our region. The orientation is to spell out 8-10 key points of agreement for practical anti-capitalist collaboration, and to promote the widest possible discussion among the anti-capitalist left. He is keen to get to know the left in our region.

Monereo and the FIM are involved in building a network of Marxist theoretical journals with a practical, non-academic bent, and want to include Links in this network. In particular, the FIM plus America Libre plus some other journals want to organise seminars where Marxist magazines from around the world exchange views.

Porto Alegre

In Brazil, Socialist Democracy, the left current in the PT (in the FI, but not very intensively involved) play a key role in the PT state government of Rio Grande del Sol, and the city government of its capital Porto Alegre. The radical agenda they’re pushing, through such things as the “participatory budget”, has enraged the Brazilian capitalist class, as well as imperialism.

At the end of this month, January 25-30, the government of Porto Alegre and the state together with many community organisations will be hosting the World Social Forum against capitalist globalisation. They’re expecting 3000, largely NGOs, and representatives of civil society and community organisations.

The Cuban CP is treating the conference very seriously, sending a large delegation representing both the party and their women’s, trade union, youth and other organisations.

There seem to be many different agendas for this conference. Certainly there’s a Brazilian and Latin American agenda, which will strengthen the left forces there. They want to make this an annual meeting, an alternative to Davos. Some might want to establish it as a civil society based counter to the Sao Paulo Forum, a parties-based gathering.

There’s also an undoubted dynamic of the NGOs and the more liberal forces in the global movement using such a conference for hegemonising the movement. There’s even talk of the 10-12 leading movements self-selecting themselves as a leadership to lead the radical parties and movements and campaigns. ATTAC has been raising this, others mentioned for the leading body have been Brazil’s MST, the Indian Karnataka Farmers Federation, the Quebec Women’s Federation, which had the most successful action as part of the world march of women. But probably there’s not enough grounds for agreement.

Comrades Dick Nichols and Jonathan S will be attending. Our attitude will be that any international gathering in opposition to neoliberal globalisation is useful. A large impressive gathering, as Porto Alegre is shaping up to be, can have a positive impact, keeping the momentum going against imperialism, building further links between the representatives of people in struggle.

But we have to be open about our hesitations. The conference is being organised as a conference of representatives of “civil society”. (TA 14) It’s giving prominence to and promoting the role of NGOs, the professional meeting followers, able to fund their conference hopping. Parties weren’t represented at all in the original call. Now they’re being introduced as a sub-gathering of parliamentarians! There’ll also be sub-gatherings of trade unions, and “movements”.

We’ll be distributing our call for our Easter 2002 conference, putting our viewpoint on the appropriate demands and tactics for the movement, and raising the question of socialism, of building revolutionary parties.

We’ll be part of any united front, and favour that for actions. But there’s a danger of allowing a gap to develop between the radicalising youth on the streets, who can falsely get identified as anarchist, and the NGO and civil society and community heads who do the meeting hopping. There’s no process for winning the radicalising youth and workers to a revolutionary Marxist perspective, joining a party. We overcame that problem at S11. It certainly existed at Prague. At Nice, the separation wasn’t bridged.

Quebec City

The next global demonstration and confrontation will be in Quebec City during the April 20-22 Summit of the Americas. Having failed to restart the WTO negotiations since Seattle, the US is now stepping up their attempt to broaden NAFTA to establish the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and to expand its mandate to cover many non-trade matters. Representatives of 34 countries (Cuba excluded of course) will be there, meeting in the walled old city protected by thousands of police and military with a four-mile exclusion zone.

Opponents have already divided into two camps. An alternative Peoples’ Summit is being organised, with seminars, demonstrations, and an attempt to shut down the summit.

The more anarchist and confrontationist inclined forces have walked out and set up the Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC), with a platform for a real shutdown. They’re refusing to participate in the Peoples’ Summit, saying it’s taking government money.

European regroupments

In Europe there are also new networks developing of anti-capitalist parties similar to the processes taking place in Latin America and Asia.

Decline of CPs

The Communist parties of Europe were already in decline before the collapse of the Soviet Union. We have analysed such parties as having had two roles, as both instruments of the Stalinist bureaucracy in Moscow; and as social democratic, often based on the trade union bureaucracy, similar to the role of the ALP here. Following the collapse the first role disappeared, and for some the second continued, with some of the larger parties able to maintain themselves in a weakened state. The past decade has been a testing time.

Some of the smaller parties dissolved completely, as in Australia and Britain. Others made the complete transition to social democratic or liberal parties.

Some of the more hard-line Stalinist parties still struggle to maintain the forms and rituals, without the content. They gathered earlier last year in a Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties in Belgrade, and later in Athens in June. The fall of Milosevic removes some of their impetus, which wasn’t very dynamic anyway.

In some cases the crisis of the CPs has pushed sections to the left, or led to parties allowing different currents, or contributed to new alliances or blocs. The process still continues.

In Italy, the Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) comprises the left wing of the old CP, but also drew in other left forces, including Proletarian Democracy and Trotskyists.

In Spain the CP is the key component of the United Left.

In Germany the former East German ruling party transformed into the Party of Democratic Socialism, maintaining a mass base in the East with some gains in the West, with the right of revolutionary tendencies to organise.

There’s been a recomposition of alliances and networks, as well as a greater openness to parties coming from different political traditions. In the European Parliament there’s the New European Left Forum, and the United European Left-Nordic Green Left Group. We shouldn’t cut ourselves off from any of these parties, many of whom are still in flux.

Anti-capitalist parties in Europe

Last year we saw a push to bring together the more anti-capitalist left parties in Europe, partly initiated by the Fourth International. An initial meeting was held of some of these parties in Lisbon earlier last year, and a second gathering took place December 4-5 in Paris. It was hosted by the French LCR. We were invited to observe, and Pat Brewer attended. The parties involved have varied origins and outlooks.

From France, Lutte Ouvrière was invited but didn’t attend. The LCR and LO cooperated successfully for the European Parliament elections, getting two from LCR and three from LO elected, but have not been able to follow it up with deeper collaboration or a united campaign for the municipal elections. But a group of 400 activists that split from LO has now joined the LCR. The CWI group, that previously arose from a split in the LCR’s youth group, has now rejoined the LCR also.

From Portugal the Left Bloc, formed in 1999 from an initiative by three groups, the Trotskyist PSR, the ex-Maoist UDP, and Politica XXI, a group of intellectuals from a mainly CP background. They elected two MPs to the national parliament.

From Britain, there was the Scottish Socialist Party, the London Socialist Alliance, and the Socialist Workers Party.

From Norway the Red Electoral Alliance, which was originally the electoral front of a Maoist party, which became a broader party in the 1990s, opening itself up to other socialist forces.

From Denmark the Red Green Alliance, which was formed in 1989, involving Trotskyists, a section of the Communist Party, a left Socialist group and a Green group. They have five to six MPs.

There was also the Socialist Party from Sweden, the FI group; La Gauche, from Luxembourg; Solidarity, from Switzerland; and Le Manifesto, from Greece.

The United Left from Spain, Zutig, the FI group in the Basque Country, and the Freedom and Solidarity Party (ÖDP) from Turkey helped prepare the meeting but couldn’t attend.

The PRC from Italy was invited, but didn’t attend. Also invited were the Movement of Patriotic Unity from Cyprus, and the Polish Socialist Party.

The meeting had a modest agenda and modest outcome. They took a decision to meet every six months, and agreed on a brief press statement. Even though these gatherings are unlikely to lead to specific action any time soon, the discussion is nevertheless a step forward.

‘Fifth International’

There is also talk of setting up a “fifth international” that has been getting raised in Europe in recent months, and it seems some, including some in the FI, see the possibility of furthering this scheme at the Porto Alegre Forum. This envisages not just parties, but trade unions and NGOs and other organisations participating – harking back to the First International. This type of project is much more problematic, and would by its nature preclude a socialist program.

At the anti-globalisation conference in Paris at the end of November sponsored by ATTAC, Espaces Marx et al. this was getting raised in workshops and corridors. (Arousing some opposition and booing, according to Pat!)

It’s also been noted by bourgeois organisations, and the phrase is being bandied around. The June-July issue of Actualité, a French employers organisation, notes the “plural dissatisfactions” of the trade unions, and were especially worried by “alliances of another kind which are being made in order to form an anti-capitalist front aiming to fight against globalisation”, [involving forces such as] the LCR, SUD [independent unions] ATTAC, the CP, the Greens, the associations of the ‘without’ [movements of those without work, without a home, without a residence permit, etc] In Actualité ‘s opinion, “these organisers… must be taken seriously. What is involved is nothing less than a Fifth International.”

Fourth International

The FI’s 1995 World Congress adopted a document on “Building the International Today” with a perspective of regroupment and “mutation” of its historic basis. The contradictions in that document are now getting exposed by events.

Firstly, there’s the contradiction of the FI’s existence, the narrow program and structure. It’s a relic clung to by both main tendencies, (as a substitute for their weakness and irrelevance by the current of the small, more sectarian parties and factions in it.)

And there’s the contradictory line being carried out in the left regroupment, and in the movement against neoliberal globalisation by the majority comrades, including some such as the LCR who are successfully building their party.

At the Amsterdam demonstration, the Cologne demonstrations, the Euromarches, the precursors to Seattle and Prague, the FI played an important initiating role, (although at the time we noted the lack of their party profile and party-building efforts.)

But at Prague they were not much on the ground, but with the NGO delegations.

After Seoul O20 Eric Toussaint’s report glossed over the differences between the militants and the liberals. (TA 20)

In Nice, however, where there were two gatherings, the LCR and ATTAC were with the militants, while the French trade unions held a separate, non-confrontational march, going home after the first day.

The FI’s Saleh Jaber at their recent IEC [International Executive Committee] stressed the alliance they are trying to develop with neo-Keynesians – i.e., liberals, the left of labourism. But when this is combined with a lack of youth work, and liquidationist policies in various countries, it comes down to a tailing of the neo-Keynesians.

We’ll engage with them, contest, not vacate the arena, have a united front in the movement for global justice where possible, but we’ll bring to the fore the creation of Leninist parties in opposition to the liberals, SDs, neo-Keynesians in the left and labour movement, the need for alliances with developing Marxists.

Pierre Rousset gave a report to the IEC on: “A new mass anti-capitalist international”. But will it be based on the NGOs? Or based on the youth activists, and parties? Efforts towards an alliance of anti-capitalist parties are a step forward, but the “Fifth International” alliance of movements project will likely further weaken the building of Marxist parties.

Some of the FI groups are now openly liquidationist, not just anti-Leninist, but not seeing the need for a party at all, transforming themselves into a left-wing “think-tank” to serve the movements, as in Holland with the SAP.

But we want to continue to develop collaboration with the healthy parties in it. Thus, we’ll attend the IEC this February, and attend their scheduled World Congress later in the year.

Scottish Socialist Party

The Scottish Socialist Party is one of the most exciting developments in the English-speaking left. The SSP strengthened from an alliance of most of the left forces in Scotland (except the SWP, who are now negotiating to join). They elected Tommy Sheridan to the first Scottish parliament for 300 years. New branches are getting formed all over, even the highlands and far-flung islands. They have about 2500 members.

It’s led by capable comrades who as of this week are still formally in Taaffe’s Committee for a Workers International (that expelled the LPP), but undermined by a small Taaffe faction based in Dundee.

Catriona Grant, a Central Committee member who attended the CWI’s IEC meeting last November, has already publicly circulated a call for “an amicable divorce” from the CWI. (See The Activist 20.) The final break is likely to come soon.

They’re pro-Cuban in practice; their conference in February gave a standing ovation to the Cuban ambassador, while the CWI and FI guests sat on their hands.

They’re being courted by quite a few networks and internationals, including the FI, although they favour an international alliance of socialist parties, not a narrow fake “international”. This is an extract from their resolution on International Links that they adopted (published in the latest issue of Links):

“Over and above collaborating around particular initiatives socialists need to find ways to organise permanently on an international basis. We need to work towards an international alliance of socialist parties. It would be premature to attempt to launch such an alliance today. But we are ready to participate in all international conferences and forums which bring together socialist and working-class forces from different countries.

“We actively seek to establish links with those organisations in other countries who share our vision of a democratic socialist society.”

This perspective has been elaborated further by their joint international officer Murray Smith in an article published in the magazine of their leadership’s current, the International Socialist Movement, (which we’ve reprinted in The Activist (20), and could be the basis for a future Links article.)

We obviously want to develop the closest possible relations with these comrades. Perhaps we should propose a tour of Tommy Sheridan or Alan McCombes to promote their book.

A key goal is to convince them to assign a number of comrades to the Links editorial board, and distribute Links in quantity, something they’re seriously considering and have already debated out with the CWI leadership in London. We can learn a lot from them about popular agitation and organising. We can also help them when they cut loose from their old international ties, by providing the extensive international news and discussion we already have access to.

The decision on whether the SWP in Scotland joins the SSP (giving up the public distribution of their paper, but having all the democratic and tendency rights that all political currents in the SSP have) will be taken at the SSP’s conference this February. (We’ll have comrades attending.)

In the rest of Britain, Socialist Alliances are being extended after successfully standing in the London council elections. The Socialist Alliances bring together the SWP, the SP, half a dozen other left groups mainly from the Trotskyist tradition, and independent socialist activists. First steps towards left unity have been taken in Ireland too. The SWP faces a big test in these Socialist Alliances, whether they’re serious about building a real opposition to Labour. But the biggest test will be posed in Scotland, whether they’re just there on a raiding mission. If they’re actually changing their spots in Britain, we’d expect some serious changes among some in the ISO here.

2001 and beyond – tasks

What can we expect in 2001? There’ll be more protests at gatherings of the imperialists’ financial institutions and think-tanks. There’ll be more conferences of the NGOs and campaigns. There’ll be opportunities for Marxist parties to grow and intervene.

We’re now moving into a more active role internationally, from gathering information and contacts, to more often being able to have a political impact, to help with a solidarity campaign, to influence people with our political views, and on Internationalism, Internationals; on building Leninist parties.

Links

Links magazine is our most important international tool. It’s worth doing a balance sheet of the 17 issues since we began in 1994, and we can be very proud of the quality and breadth of it so far, and the political impact it’s had.

Now that the regularity of Links has improved, and it’s getting more established, with better content, more debates, more timely and relevant analyses, we’re confident we can expand support for it further. For this issue the Cuban comrades have nominated additional active contributing editors, and we’ve also added Dale MacKinley. We’ve changed the Board members from the US to reflect the active participants. We will continue to update the Editorial Board and list of Contributing Editors, both to broaden out, and reflect our main collaborators, and new forces in the Asian region. But it should still be broad, politically and geographically.

We have to improve the circulation and distribution, especially among DSP and Resistance members. Links should occupy a much more central role in the political life of comrades, in education, in theoretical discussion.

We’re feeling the pressure for more pages, or more frequent publication, with all the issues we’d like to cover, the discussions that are underway.

We propose to put all articles up on the web. We think this won’t cut into subs. We have an impressive list of contents for the first 17 issues, and there was a good response to emailing our long email address list. We have had to increase the price to $8, and increase the price of overseas subs. What’s holding our sub base back is only our own efforts at promotion. We’ll get out an attractive brochure with the contents of all back issues.

We want to further promote the Special Fund to help finance Links distribution to Third World parties that was an initiative of Malik [Miah], Barry [Sheppard] and Caroline [Lund], and supported by Alternatives in Canada. We think many others around the world and in Australia can be encouraged to contribute to the international work of Links.

At the same time we think it’s also a good opportunity to give more reality to Links as a magazine and a network, to give a more active role to the parties who are involved, as well as to the small groups and individuals who identify.

We’ll be going on a big push to involve other parties and members of the Links board in its promotion. We want to actively involve them in shaping the issues, helping in editing, soliciting articles, promoting it and getting subscriptions. We’ll be setting up a Links Editorial Board information and discussion list. Links can be an important stepping stone towards a more solid network.

Other contacts

On top of the main feature of our international work, the collaboration between real, independent parties from different traditions, in recent years there’s also been a secondary feature developing, the range of comrades trying to establish Leninist groups in difficult circumstances. Some have split, or been expelled, from anti-Leninist or liquidationist organisations. Some groups have contacted us due to their interest in Links, or Green Left Weekly, or our stance on particular political questions.

There’s a growing list of individual collaborators, who have respect for our politics and/or our organisational achievements, and who relate to us directly. They’re either not in a party, or ex-SWP, ex-CWI, ex-FI, or in parties that have many limitations. These comrades often have lots of political experience, and can make a big contribution, to Links, or writing for Green Left. Through this their political activity can be effective, not wasted.

In Holland, there’s the group around Solitin, and Harry Otten is here at our congress.

In Canada, Becky Ellis and Steve Darcy have quit the New Socialist Group, and set up the Resistance Collective, publishing Resist! magazine, with pro-Cannonist politics.

The Revolutionary Communist Group in Britain is another group that seems to have respect for our politics. They publish the magazine Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! Only last year we checked out their website, and found that they only list four links, and two of those are to the DSP and Green Left Weekly! We’ve agreed on an exchange of publications. They’re very pro-Cuba, have our analysis of the Labour Party and labour aristocracy. We ran a review in Links 16 of the Francis Wheen book on Marx by one of their leaders David Yaffe. They had hoped to be able to attend this congress, but have sent a message of greetings.

From Serbia recently we’ve been contacted by the Partida Raja, a group that has responded very enthusiastically to Mike K’s articles on Milosovic and Serbian nationalism. There are various other small groups in the former Soviet Union – from Estonia, Ukraine – that have contacted us.

How do we assist this large range of comrades without jeopardising or distorting our main strategy of relating to larger parties? Links can help, both through articles, and through participation as editors and contributing editors. Yes, it’s a tool to bring together real existing parties. But others can play an important political role, through Links, or articles and columns for Green Left, and giving talks at our conferences.

Internet

The internet web pages and mailing lists are playing an ever increasing role in our international work. So far we’ve been reasonably ahead of other parties in making use of these tools, but we have to expand their use even further, there’s tremendous potential.

There’s been a steadily increasing number of visits to our web pages – GLW, DSP, Resistance, ASIET. We got a big increase in interest around S11. These figures are quite impressive. About half of these accesses would be international.

Daily average Sept-Nov, 2000

Site	Hits	Pages	Visits
DSP	2632	542	208
GLW	8481	1946	445
ASIET	972	456	234
Resistance	460	206	42
Total	12125	3150	929

In the nine months Sept ‘99-June 2000, the combined DSP-GLW hits were just short of a million. In the following five months July-November they were almost 1.5 million.

This year we’ve also considerably stepped up use of the email address lists we’ve collected. Our total number of email addresses is over 6500 and growing. The number of international left and progressive organisations is over 1500.

These lists can be a useful asset if used wisely. Future use is dependent on the value of information we send out, its usefulness, and our image as non-sectarian and constructive – forwarding appeals for action, defence against repression, forwarding useful documents and information not otherwise known.

Coming international conferences

So what are the next conferences and actions in the Asian region that can continue to bolster our solidarity work and build more links and connections between the expanding network of Marxist parties in the region?

I mentioned the CPI ML education conference in March 23-25. There’s also a possible Sind conference of the Labour Party Pakistan in March.

International Student Solidarity Conference

After that there’s the International Student Solidarity Conference initiated by Resistance on April 19-20. We hope to have a number of Marxist student activists from the region attend. It will be an opportunity to better organise our solidarity work on campuses, with Indonesia, East Timor, Cuba, Colombia, and other struggles in the Asian region.

Then we’ll be focusing on the May 1, global blockade of stock exchanges.

Asia Pacific Peoples’ Solidarity Conference

Then there’s the Asia Pacific Peoples’ Solidarity Conference, initiated by the PRD, to be held in Jakarta June 7-10, 2001. Theme: “Fighting Neo-liberalism in the Asia-Pacific”, organised by INCREASE.

There’s a lot of interest from around the world already, a very wide response so far to an extensive mail-out, and there’s much more publicity to be done. We’d like to see the attendance of most of our Asian network if possible. Many have already responded positively. There’s been quite a few indications from European left parties. Several dozen DSP comrades have indicated they’re planning to go. It will be a live-in, fully catered conference, costing A$450 waged, $250 concession, covering accommodation, meals and snacks, documents, and registration.

The PRD has proposed a three to four day leadership meeting of the Asian Marxist parties after the event.

Next Australian event

Our next big international conference in Australia will be at Easter 2002 in Sydney. We’ll bill it as an International Solidarity Conference. But it won’t be just a repeat of APSC in 1998, there’ll be more Marxist discussion leading up to the conference, and in the workshops, and more emphasis on the regroupment of parties, and connecting spheres of struggle in different regions of the world. The visiting parties themselves will be asked to run classes, not just give country reports. There’ll be many more opportunities for discussions, and we hope it will be an opportunity for all the parties in the Asian network able to attend and discuss face to face.

We want to book the date now, book Glebe High School. We’re aiming for 1000 registrations, with 100 international guests. We’d like to get the poster and leaflets out soon.

An International Solidarity Action Centre established?

We also have to look at other possible tools for our international interventions, such as establishing an International Solidarity Action Centre. Part of its function might be as a solidarity-aid organisation that is independent of government, that we can contrast with CAA etc and conservative organisations. It would be a body to campaign and intervene with, a tool, with a party to be built by it, not a substitute or counter.

Such a centre might be located in Parramatta, and would be a base for ASIET, CISLAC, Cuba Solidarity, UACT. It could be linked to a bookshop, and become a meeting place and distribution centre for books, pamphlets and leaflets, and a resource centre for migrant activists, community groups, refugee activists.

This is only a future hope so far. It would depend on a major influx of financing. Any government funding of course is extremely unlikely in Australia, but once up and running it could generate funding of its own.

General objectives of our international work

Can we further clarify some of the general objectives of our international work? We can characterise our approach up to now as having “a foot in many doors.” We still want to keep all these doors open, but with all these opportunities we’re going to have to be selective about what we give priority to.

Publicising and extending solidarity to the example given by the Cubans is important. Developing the collaborative, non-sectarian Asian network, and being able to extend real solidarity to struggles, is our absolute priority.

We should continue to publicise our useful international conferences. We should look for further ways to promote the essence of our appeal, our conceptions on international work, and solicit views from other parties. We should promote visits and exchanges with the parties in the Asian network.

Our political work on the ground here in Australia and our international work are increasingly interconnected. It’s always been the case for us, from Vietnam to Indonesia. But we should understand that in this period, it’s even more likely that it will be international issues that help break the ideological chains in the union movement.

It’s natural enough that there have been and will be increased expectations of us as we stressed increased international collaboration, presented our views, and adopted an optimistic outlook in contrast to some others on the left. With those expectations we do have responsibilities:

1. Political and theoretical. To discuss, debate come up with at least some ideas, articles and documents that engender interest and respect.

2. Some action and results in Australia. That is, we’re not just pontificators, perhaps even with some good ideas, but no relevance on the ground in Australia. In recent years we’re conscious of being more often able to make a difference. The high school anti-racist walkouts in 1998; the Indonesia and East Timor solidarity, especially September 1999; and at S11 in Melbourne 2000. And there are a wide range of other varied interventions and activities; no-one can say we’re not an activist organisation,

3. Some actual impact with our international solidarity work. Helping struggles, providing exposure and international solidarity campaigns. Helping, without interfering, with the development of new parties in the region. That is, we’re adding to the solutions, not contributing to the problems. (Compared to so many others on the left; they don’t give concrete help, and each step they take in a new country leads to a split, a defeat.)

The DSP’s main tasks involve building our own party, strengthening our own leadership, waging our own battles against the capitalist class here and all the injustices we see around us, and doing what we can against worldwide injustice and oppression, the international capitalist system.

But we are not fighting alone. We’re fighting alongside and taking inspiration from and learning from our comrades fighting on other continents against other capitalist states. Where we can we make use of their acquisitions, their experience, their resources.

• We take inspiration from the workers in the factories of Jakarta, the peasants in the fields of Bihar.
• We learn from the PRD comrades, in a much more explosive revolutionary political situation than we face here.
• We learn from those on the streets in Seattle, Prague, Seoul, Nice…
• We make use of Tommy Sheridan and Alan McCombes’ new book.
• We take advantage of the theoretical contributions published in Monthly Review, or Liberation, or Socialist Register, or Debate, or Against the Current.
• We use the books published by the comrades in Pakistan.

And we make full use of the resources of the Cuban Communist Party, the tremendous inspiration and the rich political and theoretical resources of the Cuban Revolution.

And in the same way, we hope other parties can learn a few things from us, make use of some of the tools we’ve developed.

• Take heart from our success at S11;
• Make use of Green Left Weekly, the news, the analysis, as we know is widely done already;
• Make use of Links magazine, for debates, for ideas;
• Use our websites, benefit from the information from our email lists;
• Send comrades to our educational schools;
• Make use of our publications, books, pamphlets, the Marxist classics we’re reprinting; and
• Use the opportunities provided by conferences we’ve initiated to exchange experiences, debate perspectives, meet revolutionaries from other parties, to better coordinate our solidarity and collaboration, to build the international communist movement we need to overthrow this corrupt and outmoded capitalist system.

Crises are escalating as a result of the growing imperialist stranglehold on the world and the onslaughts of neo-liberalism. The growing crises in the Asia-Pacific region brings home to us the urgency of our international tasks – helping rebuild the left around the world, building Marxist parties in all countries that can give direction, anti-capitalist leadership to the frustration of the masses.

We can tend to get a bit complacent with our international work, we can hold successful conferences, make contact with new developing Marxist parties, observe the further failures of sectarian projects. But big political events are happening, and can surprise us at every turn, and we and the left internationally are woefully ill-equipped to respond adequately.

The masses will be expecting more of the revolutionary Marxist parties, not in decades, but in the coming years, and months. Big crises are looming, and changes in the objective situation can occur very quickly. We have to rise to the occasion. Our international work takes on extra relevance, and extra urgency. What we do with this work matters, and can make a difference, sooner than we think.

– The Activist was as the internal discussion bulletin of the Democratic Socialist Party