[The flowing talk was presented at the International Socialist Organisation’s (ISO) Marxism Conference in September 2003.]
I won’t spend time detailing the actual all-too heinous crimes, betrayals and pro-capitalist actions of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). For a start, I’ve only got 15 minutes, not the 15 hours you’d need to begin. I’m sure Judy and all ISO comrades here would agree in condemning their racist, pro-imperialist, pro-war, pro-boss record, in government and out – although when they’re out they sometimes have to put on a bit of an act. And I’m sure we’d all agree with Humphrey’s [McQueen] important work in “A New Britannia” bringing together all that material on the racist, nationalist heritage of the ALP.
Our discussion today should concentrate on how we define the Labor Party, in Marxist, class terms, and thus how we act, and what’s the interrelationship between our theory and practice on this.
There’ve been three positions argued on the left:
1. It’s a bourgeois party, a liberal-capitalist party, which through its structural links with the trade union bureaucracy has been especially effective in duping the working class. This is the only correct position from a Marxist point of view.
2. It’s a working-class party. Not too many actually try to argue outright that it’s a workers’ party, although some have carried their adaptation that far.
3. It’s a two-class party, a “bourgeois-workers’ party”.
Unfortunately for many decades, left groups in Australia (and in Britain in relation to the Labour Party there) have adapted their theory and tried to argue it’s a bourgeois-workers’ party, a workers’ party with a bourgeois leadership and policies, or some such formulation. This has been widespread among the Trotskyist groups, and for the first 15 years of its existence our party made this error too. It was something we inherited from the old Trotskyist movement here.
Lenin on Australia and Britain
We don’t take the word of the founders of our movement as holy writ – sometimes they were wrong. But it is important to take the writings of someone like Lenin into account – he got so much right.
On the Australian Labor Party, Lenin was clearest when he commented on Australia in a brief article in 1913 following a general election where the ALP was defeated. (“In Australia.” Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 216.)
“What sort of peculiar capitalist country is this, in which the workers’ representatives predominate in the Upper House and, till recently, did so in the Lower House as well, and yet the capitalist system is in no danger?…
“The Australian Labour Party does not even call itself a socialist party. Actually it is a liberal-bourgeois party, while the so-called Liberals in Australia are really Conservatives….
“In Australia the Labour Party has done what in other countries was done by the Liberals, namely, introduced a uniform tariff for the whole country, a uniform educational law, a uniform land tax and uniform factory legislation….”
Lenin was also very clear in relation to the British Labour Party. In 1920, at the Second Congress of the Communist International, Lenin contributed to the debate on the question of affiliation to the British Labour Party:
“First of all, I should like to mention a slight inaccuracy on the part of Comrade McLaine, which cannot be agreed to. He called the Labour Party the political organisation of the trade union movement, and later repeated the statement when he said that the Labour Party is ‘the political expression of the workers organised in trade unions.’ I have met the same view several times in the paper of the British Socialist Party. It is erroneous, and is partly the cause of the opposition, fully justified in some measure, coming from the British revolutionary workers. Indeed, the concepts ‘political department of the trade unions’ or ‘political expression’ of the trade union movement, are erroneous. Of course, most of the Labour Party’s members are workingmen. However, whether or not a party is really a political party of the workers does not depend solely upon a membership of workers but also upon the men that lead it, and the content of its actions and its political tactics. Only this latter determines whether we really have before us a political party of the proletariat. Regarded from this, the only correct point of view, the Labour Party is a thoroughly bourgeois party, because, although made up of workers, it is led by reactionaries, and the worst kind of reactionaries at that, who act in the spirit of the bourgeoisie. It is an organisation of the bourgeoisie, which exists to systematically dupe the workers with the aid of the British Noskes and Scheidemanns.” [Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 257. Also in Lenin on Britain (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973), pp. 460-461]
So it’s very clear what the view of Lenin and the Bolsheviks was.
The distorted view from the Trotskyist tradition
Both our parties – the DSP and the ISO – come from the Trotskyist tradition, and we’re dragged down by some unfortunate consequences of this. There are many proud and commendable aspects of course, but also some false inherited traditions, which have been hard to shake off.
None is more critical – and causes more disasters – than the “traditional” inherited Trotskyist “wisdom” on the Labor Parties that these parties are somehow workers’ parties, bourgeois-workers’ parties, have a “dual nature,” or are the “political expression of the trade unions” or some such formula.
Generally our revolutionary theory and analysis determines our general strategy, and within that framework we work out appropriate tactics, test them, adjust, try other tactics where appropriate. We can be flexible in our tactics.
With a wrong analysis you can still sometimes produce the appropriate tactics for the time. The theory can be put on the shelf while the activists practically respond to the actual situation. It’s not a stable course – with your theory out of kilter, it can’t last.
But bigger problems can result for the party when wrong tactics get persisted in, not assessed and tested against experience. Or when tactics that might be OK for a particular situation or time get persisted in beyond their usefulness, and when the tactic gets converted into a permanent strategy, and the theory is adjusted, and facts covered up, to defend the elevation of the tactic to a strategy.
This has been all too frequent in the Trotskyist tradition.
In the FI [Fourth International], for example, in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the tactic of guerrilla warfare was elevated to a strategy, with disastrous consequences.
In the Australian Trotskyist movement in the early days this is also what happened, the tactic of entry into the ALP was converted into a permanent strategy, and the theory was changed to fit – the ALP was now characterised as a “bourgeois-workers’ party” rather than a bourgeois party.
Early Australian Trotskyist movement
How and why did this distortion happen? I think it was partly the result of the terrible isolation of the early Trotskyist movement from the working class.
Trotsky advocated the “French Turn” in 1934-35 to try and remedy this – the small Trotskyist groups should join – enter – the social-democratic parties. In some places it was effectively implemented. The US Trotskyists went into the US Socialist Party for one year, and came out twice the size.
In the British Trotskyist movement there were fierce debates and splits over the issue in WWII and after.
In Australia, the small Trotskyist forces around Nick Origlass didn’t decide to enter the ALP until 1942, and this was only after they were banned, and didn’t have much in the way of other choices!
The Balmain Trotskyists lost many of their group after the war – people like Short, McLelland had found a home in the ALP.
But their false orientation to the ALP was hardened further in the early 1950s with the adoption of FI leader Michel Pablo’s strategy of entrism sui generis, effectively burying yourself in the ALP for years to come.
However, with the radicalisation in the 1960s, the campaign against the Vietnam War, young activists in Sydney were recruited to Trotskyism outside the ALP, by Trotskyists who had set up the Vietnam Action Campaign. There was no actual party group to join (it had split in 1964-65), but we built Resistance, then the International Marxist League, and finally had to split with those who’d recruited us in order to get a serious Marxist party established, the Socialist Workers League (SWL), precursor of the DSP.
And throughout we inherited the accepted Trotskyist line on the ALP – it’s a workers’ party, the MASS party, (“the big outfit”, as Nick Origlass referred to it in his coded correspondence.) [We had dutifully joined – I became secretary of my ALP branch, but it was lifeless and irrelevant, when the struggle against the Vietnam War was on, and the real struggle was outside (they pestered me for the return of their minutes book for several years….)]
In 1972 after uniting with the Brisbane Labour Action Group there was a split in the SWL, and one of the central issues in the split was the attitude to the ALP. The assessment from our later maturity and greater experience was that there was right and wrong on both sides – the majority called for a vote for Labor, Fight for socialist policies; the minority, that formed the Communist League, had an analysis that it was a bourgeois party, but deduced some very sectarian tactical approaches. (they were influenced by the IMG in Britain, “piss in the polling booths…”). A stronger party, able to prevent the split, might have reached greater clarity on this issue earlier.
The CL split statement charged that “the SWL defines the ALP as a ‘working-class party’ on the basis of the ideological hold of social democracy over the working class. In understanding a political party one must consider many things besides its membership and following. In its program (which is an alternative administration of the capitalist system) and its role (which is to contain the working class within the capitalist system) it is a thoroughly bourgeois party. Support for the ALP is never a question of principle, but solely of tactics.”
On this they were right, and the reunited party in the 1980s came back to this Leninist approach to the ALP. On the actual tactical question of what to do in 1972, in the lead-up to the December election, they were wrong. The leadership of the CL came to this conclusion themselves a few years later.
The criteria
The CL were right in the criteria they cited for determining what’s the class nature of a party. They weren’t original, just basing themselves on Lenin, such as the paragraph quoted earlier.
It’s not a question of whether its membership are workers in their majority, or whether the party has majority support among workers, but the political character of its leadership, and what class it serves.
Most importantly, parties are organised to win and exercise state power. If that’s not the goal, they’re in the wrong game, and should call themselves a debating club or something else. Thus the key question is, which class does that party serve when it is in government?
The DSP came to change its analysis of the ALP in the first half of the 1980s, under two sorts of influences:
- Firstly, after going through some extra experiences inside the ALP – Labor Militant – and outside – the Nuclear Disarmament Party, and witnessing the whole experience of the Accord.
- Secondly, after studying more thoroughly the views of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. We set up our own party school throughout the 1980s, where groups of eight to 10 comrades would study full-time for four months, and a lot of the reading was Lenin.
We formulated our views in a document on the ALP, printed in this pamphlet: Labor and the Fight for Socialism.
And it’s been elaborated clearly and concisely in the DSP’s program (also on the web). [esp. pp 57-59, 81-83]
Tactics
Some people argue that Labor parties are different from other social democratic parties, they’re working-class parties because of the organisational link with the trade unions, the trade union bloc vote.
Yes, they’re different, and require different tactical approaches sometimes. But they’re capitalist parties still, and capitalist governments when in power, and often even more craven than social democratic parties without that structural link.
And although in special circumstances and for the short term you can still hit on the right tactics with the wrong theory, in general having the wrong class analysis of the Labor Party can distort your tactics and lead to serious political mistakes.
Wrong side on union disaffiliation
Those from the old Trotskyist tradition make a big deal of whether there is a formal trade union link, whether there is 60%, or 50%, or 40% trade union votes at conferences. They’ll fight fiercely to defend that link, inside the ALP often fighting against naive well-meaning ALP members in the locality branches who want to shift the balance in the vain hope of getting some better policies from the branches passed against the conservative bloc vote of the union bureaucrats.
In the unions, they’ll fight fiercely as a matter of principle to oppose any attempt in the union to disaffiliate from the ALP.
Key to winning workers away from their illusions in the ALP and its misleaders is building a mass revolutionary base in the trade unions. When a group of militant workers wants to make that break, they deserve all the support they can get. For “socialists” to preach “Go back” is a crime.
Political dangers from entry tactic
Another important lesson from Lenin and the Bolsheviks was the need for flexible tactics. But some tactics carry risks, and useful tactics can be converted into a disaster if they’re elevated to a principle.
Entry as a tactic should not ruled out – in Labor parties, social democratic parties, Communist parties. But it must be specific, depending on the conditions, depending on the possibilities for building the Marxist party. In Britain, several Trotskyist currents carried out successful entry work in the Labour Party, at different times – the SLL, the IS (SWP), the Militant tendency.
But the key to successful entry is clarity on what you’re doing. If you think the ALP is a workers’ party of some sort, you’re doomed to frustration, and more likely political burial there. You’re captured and tamed, a tolerated clown, or a loyal servant of an alien class party.
Distorts united front tactic
A false analysis of the Labor Party can also lead to a distorted understanding of the united front tactic. The united front tactic is a means of winning the masses away from their illusions in the Labor Party. It’s NOT a principle that we’re both workers’ parties, therefore we have to unite, or in the old CP version, the “coalition of the left” – them and the ALP.
To the fake calls of the ALP and trade union bureaucrats for working-class unity – i.e., just back them and their passivity – socialists counterpose the need for a united front of anti-capitalist struggle.
One application of our united front tactic can be calling for critical support for Labor against the conservative parties in elections, helping to gain a hearing from workers so as to explain the need to break with Labor’s rotten policies. Where we’re strong enough to pose our own working-class alternative, even better.
And we shouldn’t conclude that because we favour the united front tactic towards the ALP, that means the ALP must be a workers’ party, more than a workers party in name. We shouldn’t let our present particular tactical needs distort our theoretical analysis of what the Labor Party is.
A very similar situation exists with the British Labour Party. Some socialists still maintain that it’s somehow still a workers’ party. Some argue that it used to be a workers’ party, but changed its character after some particularly terrible and extended betrayal of workers. We think it’s more theoretically consistent to bite the bullet, and admit that we made a mistake, and the ALP and British Labour Party have always been liberal-bourgeois parties.
Who said this about the British Labour Party? And when?
As a final little quiz for comrades here. Who said this about the British Labour Party? And when? Hands up if you know, and don’t yell it out for others.
* * *
“The Labour Party of today is very different to what it was a generation or two ago. It has suffered a prolonged, irreversible decline in membership, and is now badly depopulated….
“The party is dying, leaving unfettered power in the hands of its professional organisers and the tiny groups of middle-class people --…
“The changes in the social composition of the Labour Party have been reflected in the parliamentary group:… today not as many as 10 per cent [come from working-class backgrounds]…
“The Labour Party was not always so rotten. It was at one time deeply rooted in the working class…
“Although it was better at one time than it is now, the Labour Party was never a real socialist party. Nor was it ever thought to be by the militants of the day at any stage in its history….
“In office, the Labour Party has always ensured the continuity of the capitalist state and guarded its harshest, most anti-working-class plans:
“The Labour Party can no longer be thought of as a party of reforms. It is a party of management of capitalism….
“Both the Tories and Labour are committed to managing capitalism. They share a consensus about politics that has become more and more pronounced over the last 20 years and more appalling as its centre of gravity shifts to the right….
“The Tory-Labour consensus covers most things. In the field of labour relations it is almost uncanny…
“No wonder fewer people see much difference between Labour and the Tories….
“There is growing awareness among militants that politics is not something that can be left to the ballot box and the Tweedledum-Tweedledee Tory and Labour Parties.”
[Tony Cliff – The Crisis: Social Contract or Socialism. Chapter 9 (1975)]