In their contribution to the pre-congress discussion printed in The Activist Vol. 15, No. 5, comrades Karl M and Margarita W begin by agreeing with John Percy that we should eliminate “the hype, over-exaggerations, and substitution of hopes for a sober recognition of realities.”
But they then proceed to engage in the same old hype and exaggerations about the Socialist Alliance. They exaggerate the authority that the SA has established in the Australian political scene, above what the DSP had already established; they exaggerate the electoral impact it has achieved, above what we were able to achieve standing as the DSP or Democratic Socialist Electoral League; and they exaggerate the real strength and impact of the Socialist Alliance.
The image and political weight of the Socialist Alliance
Firstly, in order to boost the record of the SA, there can be a tendency to write off the achievements of the DSP before we established the SA. For example, with our trade union work, before the setting up of the SA, we’d done a good range of trade union work as the DSP. We’d worked with Workers First in the Victorian AMWU, had some comrades assigned to that. We’d worked with Chris Cain in WA. We’d had some successes winning leadership positions in unions, for example in the CPSU in the ACT.
Secondly, many of the “breakthroughs” or steps forward or publicity gains of the SA are actually actions or interventions carried out by DSP members, often DSP members alone. For example, you often read a headline of a report in GLW about an SA intervention or an SA action, and when you read the article you realise it’s all about a DSP member or members speaking, about an action that was carried out in the SA’s name.
Certainly the Socialist Alliance has won support and respect, has gained recognition of its name, and we keep those gains, and hang on to the contacts, with the SA functioning as a campaigning alliance, without pretending that we’ve been able to build a new party.
So, Martin Ferguson is suspicious about a local Union Solidarity group being a Socialist Alliance front? He and his ilk are also ready to jump in and brand many campaigning organisations a DSP front, and the Laborites have been doing so for years.
So, there are two SA NTEU branch presidents in Victoria who collaborate with our DSP comrade Jeremy S, also an NTEU branch president? One of these is Jamie D, a long-time former leader of the DSP, one of the founders of our party, and someone who has never stopped being a supporter of the DSP after his membership lapsed. Of course he’d be part of our joint trade union work, even if he hadn’t joined the SA. It’s possibly also the case with the other SA branch president, but this big example is an example of hype.
Have the number of DSP members speaking for the Socialist Alliance on movement mobilisations and public platforms significantly increased over the number of DSP members who spoke at such events before we initiated the SA? We don’t think so. To believe the hype on this you have to exaggerate our SA work, and draw a curtain over the DSP work we did before the SA.
And the 1000 SA “stable membership”? Nearly all of them are very much paper members, not at all willing to come to SA branch meetings. Do we need the “basic local structures” – presumably this means SA branch meetings – to maintain our electoral registration? This just isn’t the case, as has been shown in the recent re-registration process in NSW. It certainly requires one or two full-timers (DSP) working pretty hard, but it doesn’t require branch meetings, because nearly all of the “independents” in that “stable membership” of 1000 do not come to SA branch meetings.
The worst result of all this exaggeration and hype is that it leads comrades Karl and Margarita to still believe that we can continue to see the Socialist Alliance as a party, and that we can still continue to build it as a party. “The potential for SA as a left party project has not come to a close”, they write, and proceed to propose amendments to the draft resolution that would be in contradiction to the main thrust of the resolution, and assert that we are still on the previous line of trying to build the Socialist Alliance as a new multi-tendency socialist party.
The comrades argue that making the SA a campaign alliance would be a “retreat from its current political role”. In reality, its current political role in most cases is simply a campaigning front for the DSP. Making it an actual campaigning alliance would be a big step forward for the SA – it would mean activating many more people beyond the ranks of the DSP!
It’s clear this line still relies on hype and hopes. The actual situation of the Socialist Alliance around the country, and our actual experience with the Socialist Alliance in the last two years, unfortunately does not bear out these hopes. Especially when we look at each branch in detail, and also in relation to the actual situation with our DSP branches, with our loss of cadres, and weakening of our forces, we should cast off the hype and assess the situation objectively, and make the absolutely essential change in our line towards the Socialist Alliance.
OK, as revolutionaries it’s good to be optimistic, we are optimists. And it’s OK to engage in a little exaggeration to outsiders sometimes, to encourage the involvement of new people, and to beef up our image to political opponents.
But when we’re trying to assess the real situation, and on the basis of that make decisions about what perspective we have, what line to pursue, as in a pre-congress discussion, we have to be stone-cold sober, and eliminate any element of hype and wishful thinking from our discussions. We have to be 100% honest and accurate to ourselves.
The real state of Socialist Alliance branches
For the August 15 national executive meeting at which we adopted the “DSP and the Socialist Alliance” draft resolution, comrade Lisa Macdonald (SA national coordinator) had prepared a written report cataloguing the state of the Socialist Alliance branches. Hopefully Lisa might be able to prepare an update on this and put it in a future edition of The Activist. But in order for all comrades to have access to the information in the report, we’ve appended it to this article. We’ll pick out some of the stark facts, but comrades should read the report for themselves.
Melbourne: “All SA branches now on monthly meeting schedule (DSP meeting fortnightly). Not many non-DSP members attend branch business meetings (even when we do contacting for them well).”
[NB. There was no information in the report on Wills branch – what the Scottish comrades would call a “Star Trek” branch (a federation of affiliates).]
“State Committee meets monthly, but could go to two-monthly. Useful for information exchange, especially with Geelong and Ballarat reps (Karl Cossar), but not a real decision-making body (DSP leadership).”
Hobart: “Hobart branch meetings now monthly, almost all DSP members. No solid activist base beyond DSP – membership comes out for bigger events and election campaigns mainly.”
Adelaide: “Monthly branch meetings, usually attended by same “usual suspects” (some members dysfunctional so disincentive to invite new people to meetings).
“Lot of potential for and need to get an SA trade union caucus going, but resistance to this from non-DSP SA exec members.”
Perth: “Perth Hills branch meeting monthly, and organising bi-monthly public meetings. Attendance varies. Big network of supporters but all activity is dependent on DSP members.
“Fremantle not functioning as a branch now.
[The information on Perth branch is outdated; since the NE, this branch is the subject of a vicious disruption and wrecking operation by the ISO.]
“State committee meets monthly, but want to move to two-monthly if possible. It is largely a “going through the motions” show for other affiliates; DSP is real statewide leadership.”
Darwin: “Decline in non-DSP members’ activity since NT election campaign debate. Still a solid layer of paper members but very hard to get anyone actively involved (except 1 member who is about to go away for 6 months at least).
“Branch meetings often don’t get a quorum and discussions can be agonising and apolitical. Not inclined to invite new people to them.”
Brisbane: “Brisbane Central branch meeting monthly – 8-10 members attend. Other two branches on hold until comrades back from Venezuela.”
Illawarra: “Held 1 SA branch meeting since national conference, but only a couple of DSP attended. Only 2 non-DSP SA members come to any branch meetings.”
Lisa’s roundup presented a pretty bleak picture of the state of the Socialist Alliance branches, although understandably the DSP branch secretaries or comrades who reported would have been keen to include any positive bit of information about a branch. In the five weeks or more since that report was prepared, I think the picture of the SA branches would have become even bleaker.
For example, last week (mid-September) a Melbourne Central Socialist Alliance meeting was called. Five people turned up, all of them DSP. It was very unclear what to do, what could be achieved from the meeting. Afterwards a leading comrade told Margarita that it was “the most disappointing meeting” she’d ever attended.
Demoralisation from SA branch meetings
But unfortunately, that meeting was not the exception. All around the country, SA branch meetings not only don’t achieve much, but are often counter-productive. Comrades have had to go through the formality of DSP members having to meet together as the “SA branch”. Our DSP comrades are increasingly demoralised from them. Some comrades get used to it by accepting lower standards. Many comrades have voted with their feet. Some comrades have stated to me that they’re never going to attend another Socialist Alliance branch meeting.
Socialist Alliance branches can be roughly divided into several categories, depending on their composition, and we face different problems with each category, but none of the categories seems to be conducive to doing useful political work at the moment.
a. Branches with ISO members in them. These include Perth, Sydney Central, Marrickville. The functioning of these as healthy branches has been deliberately disrupted by the ISO, especially by a decision they appear to have taken about a year ago to stop doing any movement work within the framework of the SA, not to carry SA placards or be part of SA contingents on demonstrations. Instead, they seem to be staying in the SA purely to sabotage it, and prevent any of the DSP perspectives being realised. Perth is the prime example of this type of branch at the moment, where the disruption tactic seems to be permanent and aggressive. Wills branch is probably a category unto itself, and not mentioned in Lisa’s report, the gathering of the sects and not a model we’d wish on anyone.
b. Branches without ISO members (or any other small affiliates, although they are totally inactive, not contributing to the Socialist Alliance in any way) where the DSP comrades are the overwhelming component of the leadership and membership. These include Geelong, Darwin, Hobart, Lismore, Newcastle, and Wollongong. These are branches which to an extent had “made the transition”, and the DSP was doing most of its work through the SA structure. But this was mostly achieved through the mothballing of the DSP branch and meetings, and operating in the SA meetings at a lower political level. With the exception of Geelong, which had a significant number of non-DSP members attending the SA meetings, most of this category of branch had few or no independent SA members active and attending meetings. Often branches in this category have suffered from the elimination of a Resistance branch, and they haven’t had much success in recruiting new members to the DSP, and training cadres. In some cases, the decline and problems might pre-date the turn we made to become an internal tendency in the SA and to try to push SA to become the party that we build, but I think our turn would have contributed to the problems.
c. Branches where independents play a significant role in the leadership. This probably only covers Adelaide, where ex-members Melanie S and Daniel J are more hostile than collaborative, and the other two independents who attend meetings behave very dysfunctionally. It’s not useful at all for bringing new people along; not much fun for DSP members either.
Unfortunately, all of us tried to put a good spin on the state of the process and the state of SA branches in the last two years, to encourage new comrades, to buoy up our own comrades, and to counter our political opponents, especially the ISO. But the fact is, it hasn’t been good. Even in Sydney Central, which was once touted as the biggest, healthiest SA branch in the country, most of the independents have dropped away, sometimes no independents attend meetings, some of the active independents ended up being hostile and bitter towards us (and the ISO recruited a couple of them), and many of the shrinking number of DSP comrades who persisted in attending are demoralised about it.
(Comrades from branches around the country should update on these assessments in the pre-congress discussion, and clarify if they think the description of their branch is inaccurate.)
None of the main trade union militants such as Craig Johnston or Chris Cain attend SA branch meetings. Apart from Geelong, I don’t think any of the trade unionists identified as “the militant current” in the SA attend branch meetings. That contact is maintained through our leading DSP trade union comrades, in Melbourne and Perth, or through comrade Sue Bolton, our national trade union director.
Unfortunately, at the August 15 NE meeting where Lisa’s SA report was circulated, and where the draft resolution was adopted unanimously, some comrades still argued that we continue “trying to build the Socialist Alliance as a party”. But the draft resolution clearly states, “the conditions to build the Socialist Alliance into a new party did not exist”. (Paragraph 20.)
The Socialist Alliance as electoral vehicle
The Socialist Alliance campaign for the Marrickville by-election needs to be assessed soberly also. Although it was probably the right decision to run, none of the experiences of the campaign or the actual results support any assessment that the SA has somehow lifted us out of the isolation we suffered as the DSP. We should have no illusions that the Socialist Alliance is on the road to becoming a party, or that the results are significantly better than when we stood as the Democratic Socialist Electoral League, the DSP, or the Socialist Alliance in the late ‘80s.
Although it was a fairly short campaign, it was just one seat, so we should have been able to draw on all the resources of the Socialist Alliance from across Sydney. (And we should remember that our votes always tend to be higher when the Liberals decline to stand, as in this case.)
For the campaign BBQ, a total of four non-DSP people attended. For the election night party, it was about the same. Whatever we’d stood as, these supporters would have attended, and we would have hoped for and expected many more.
For helping out on polling booths, we did get promises from three ISO members to do a slot, but only John Morris turned up to hand out, and he spent most of his time chatting with the Greens (apparently going into the Greens is an action being considered by one section of the ISO.) There were commitments from nine others to do slots, some of them former DSP members, but we’re not sure how many finally turned up.
When we ran as DSP or DSEL, we used to get a lot more non-members than that turning up to our events and helping out. (Perhaps we also need some reassessment of the efficiency of how-to-votes and staffing booths – the booth at which we got the best result, both in absolute terms and by percentage, was Macdonaldtown, which we had decided not to cover!)
In some respects it is even being dishonest to depict the Marrickville campaign to people as an SA campaign. The only reason that there was able to be a Marrickville campaign was that the DSP took a decision that there should be and then pushed it through the Marrickville SA branch in the face of opposition from everyone else there – namely the ISO and Greg Adler.We “won the vote” basically as a result of the DSP having more members in Marrickville than the ISO. There were no independents at this meeting. The campaign was decided upon, led and run by DSP members with no support or participation from any of the other affiliate organisations. There was no “alliance” aspect of the campaign at all. To the extent that there were independents involved, they were essentially working with the DSP who were running a DSP campaign and candidate using the SA name. It was probably the right thing to run this campaign, but we should be clear about the role that SA played – it was the banner under which the candidate ran.
No false accusations
And let’s have no more of the false accusations, spread around verbally, that those of us who favour returning to the name Democratic Socialist Party are in favour of closing down the Socialist Alliance, or that this is the logical consequence of our proposals, just because we’re arguing we should be realistic about what the Socialist Alliance has been able to achieve, and what it can do, and can’t do, can be, and can’t be, at this time, and in the foreseeable future.
We’ve never argued for shutting down the SA completely in a DSP meeting, or argued that way in a PCD article. We’ve always argued, keep it, retain what we’ve invested in it, the name, the contacts, the authority, but recognise what it can be, a campaigning alliance (we’re still to achieve even this really, it’s still more of a DSP front) and secondarily a supporters’ organisation, and an electoral vehicle.
And let’s not have the argument that we’re not in favour of building a broader, mass, workers’ party. That has been our position in the DSP for more than 20 years, and we’ve made numerous efforts to test different openings for that possibility.
But we have to recognise the reality, that the Socialist Alliance is not that party, and can’t be transformed into it in this period. To persist with the hope and hype that it is, or is becoming, “the new party”, will only make our task of reaching that goal harder, if not impossible. To persist in that failed course that we adopted at our Congress two years ago, or a slightly altered version of it, will not allow the Socialist Alliance to do the more modest things that it is actually capab le of doing. It’s not “the party we are building”; it’s not a party.
Moreover, to persist in that wrong course will further handicap and cripple the DSP, harm the process of building the actual party that does exist, and hinder the process of recruiting, educating and integrating the new cadres we so desperately need, as well as re-cadreising and re-inspiring our existing members.
The DSP is the guarantor of any future new party, either through the SA, or through any future openings and alliances that might emerge.
– The Activist was as the internal discussion bulletin of the Democratic Socialist Party