Navigating the class struggle means being able to measure the winds
By Max Lane, Sydney branch
Comrade Peter Boyle, in his summary to his draft NC party-building report presented to the September 26 NE meeting (The Activist Vol. 15, No. 8) stated: “The comrades who support the perspective presented by Comrade John Percy today have presented more pessimistic assessments of the Australian political situation. Comrades referred to the sporadic and unsustained nature of political campaigns and Max used the metaphor of sailing when there was no prevailing wind – with just a puff arising here and there and we have to rapidly change tack. We had to keep our tactics flexible and so we should not make the commitment to building the Socialist Alliance as a new party project that this report argued for. But I would say that we are trying to ‘catch a prevailing wind’, that of the rise of the militant tendency in the trade union movement which was revealed in the 1998 Patrick’s dispute.”
It indeed would be a pessimistic picture that was painted if somebody were to depict the current political situation we face as being characterised merely by “a puff here and there”. Metaphors are of course not as precise as scientific political formulations, but sometimes they are very effective in describing a situation – if they are used accurately.
I did not use the word “puff” at all, nor did I use the phrase “a puff here or there”. I did, however, use the sailing metaphor to underline that there was no sustained, prevailing wind that could fill the sails of the Socialist Alliance.
This is also a conclusion essential to the political line of the NE draft resolution on DSP-SA relations: “The long 15-year capitalist expansion cycle (with all its contradictions) continues to dampen resistance to capitalist neoliberal reforms)” so that “Socialist Alliance will have to go through a more extended period of united campaigning and regroupment with broader left forces that are generated by a new upturn of resistance to the capitalist neoliberal ‘reforms’ before it can harness the leadership resources and political confidence to take a significant step in creating a new socialist party” (emphasis added).
If there were some sustained, prevailing wind that could fill the SA’s sails then we would feel it, we would see the sails billowing out, full of wind – the new leaders and forces in motion would be there and visible. The reality, as described in Comrade Lisa Macdonald’s notes to the August 15 NE meeting on the state of the SA branches, is that there is no such prevailing wind.
This is confirmed by Comrade Macdonald’s PCD article in The Activist No. 8, in which she reports that recruiting to the SA is still in the one’s and two’s. Over a three month period, from right around Australia, 14 people joined via the SA website and two from reading Seeing Red. But how many of them have become active members? How many people are SA branches organising in the framework of building the SA into any kind of party?
In Sydney during 2005, the SA branches have organised less than a handful. I am not aware of any independents having attended a Marrickville SA branch meeting this year, certainly not the branch meeting to decide on whether to stand in the September 17 by-election or the branch meeting that elected delegates to the June SA national conference. Sydney Central branch is the same (see Comrade Eva Cheng’s PCD article in The Activist No. 8). It has not met since the national conference and there have been no angry queries from independents: “Where are our meetings?” There is no demand for the SA to be built as a party at the moment, except by us.
This is, without doubt, the general picture around the country, with only one or two SA branches being slight exceptions.
Comrade Boyle argues that there is a prevailing wind, i.e., “that of the rise of the militant tendency in the trade union movement which was revealed in the 1998 Patrick’s dispute”. But where is the evidence that this militant tendency is providing any wind for the SA as a party project? Where is there any evidence of any significant demand or pressure, the force of any wind, for the SA to build itself into a party at this time? Are trade union militants who are not DSP members attending SA branch meetings in any significant numbers? No. Indeed, are any attending at all? Are they coming in to volunteer to help with recruiting and contacting? No. Are they ringing up and asking when is the next SA branch meeting? No. There is no such demand. In Sydney, mail-outs to trade union members have not attracted any new people to trade union caucuses.
But there is, of course, some demand, importantly, to collaborate on campaigns – even if on and off, as with some of the caucuses, or just through e-lists. What real political life exists around the SA relates to specific campaigning and not developing the SA into a party.
Caucusing and collaborating as allies on campaigns, and sometimes running an election campaign, is what the SA can feasibly do now. With no new forces, i.e., significant numbers of people, coming into sustained motion, bringing forth with them new leaders, this is all that the SA can do concretely while, in its propaganda, continuing to advocate the need for a mass workers’ party.
Puffs, squalls, gales, breezes, gusts of wind and the like: there is a lot we can do
Comrade Boyle’s party-building report is imbued with a perspective that is implicitly pessimistic, that is narrow in its approach. My use of the sailing analogy in the NE discussion was to make the point that if the DSP adopts the line of his report, we will be throwing out one of the most important understandings of tactics that we have learned over the last two decades. In the political conditions prevailing in Australia, of low levels of working-class political struggle and a working class that is still generally in retreat, the nature of the flexible tactics we need are ones that enable us to be able to respond to political motion that is sporadic, of different levels and which comes from different directions at different times and which usually does not last long.
Yes, perhaps, some of this motion that can be described as a mere puff – such as the tiny motion around the Timor Sea Justice campaign this year. Other outbursts of political motion have been stronger – gale force like the S11 anti-globalisation protest five years ago. Perhaps the Patrick’s dispute could be described as quite a big squall. The campaign in defence of the BLF in the mid-1980s, however, was a more longer-lasting gale. East Timor solidarity in 1999 was a very sudden mini-hurricane, preceded by several years of puffs, breezes, and brief gusts of wind. The metaphors could go on in relation to the anti-Hanson campaigns, refugees and others. All rose and died away in a short period of time. There is no comparison between any of them, for example, and the prolonged, six-year-long, mass movement from 1965 to 1971 against the Vietnam War, and the accompanying mass youth radicalisation.
In the trade union sphere, the pattern is unlikely to change from that which has prevailed since the BLF was smashed. In a general framework of retreat, a prolonged capitalist business-cycle expansion (built in part on 13 years of Laborite economic restructuring) and ACTU Laborite class collaboration, the best of the trade union leaders will lead struggles to defend their unions from degeneration and demoralisation. Craig Johnston’s well-deserved authority as a leader stems from him leading a struggle to revive the Victorian branch of the AMWU. Chris Cain’s authority is based on his leadership of the struggle to make the MUA in WA a real union for its members. Neither struggle is yet over, but in the AMWU it suffered a major setback with the Laborite bureaucracy’s ousting of Johnston. Now, in Victoria, some of the momentum to defend the unions has shifted to Geelong, reflected in the unopposed election of DSP member Tim Gooden as TLC secretary.
In the wake of the passing of the laws aimed at the construction division of the CFMEU and the near inevitable passing of Howard’s new IR laws in November or early December, the defensive struggle to protect genuinely militant unions will be the focus of left-wing trade-union activity. Any such struggles will require alliances much broader than the SA and will have a political focus much more specific (narrower) than the SA. The most likely role, possibly, that the SA will play is a place where some non-DSP militants can caucus with DSP members in their interventions in broader Defend the Unions-type committees, i.e. in relation to campaigning activities. That is where the demand for meetings will be.
In Comrade Sue Bolton’s PCD article in The Activist, Vol 15 No. 8, she writes: “Given the dominance of the ALP in the trade union movement, and the vicious attempts to isolate socialists by the ALP, it is highly significant the number of militant unionists who have joined or who identify with the Socialist Alliance. While they haven’t taken the next step to become revolutionaries, it helps create a bridge away from the ALP and away from an abstentionist approach to politics, and away from a focus on purely trade union issues.”
But becoming revolutionaries is not the next step after joining or coming to identify with the SA. If there was real motion, a real demand for independent working-class political action by broader forces, the next step by leftward moving unionists would be to become active in a regular way in helping build the SA as a fighting, a class-struggle, party. This is exactly what is not happening. There may be collaboration through an SA caucus or email list in furthering a campaign but there is no real push for building the SA into a party by any significant number of workers.
At the same time, international events – the revolution in Venezuela, the new Venezuela-Cuba alliance, revival of anti-war protest actions in the US, more exposure of the corruption and moral bankruptcy of US imperialism at home and abroad, worsening economic conditions in Asia, Africa and Latin America, more terrorist acts – mean that we should expect more puffs, breezes, winds, gales and squalls to periodically hit us from time to time from all sorts of different directions. While this will continue to be unsustained motion, it sporadically and periodically expresses the rise of a certain level of political thinking critical of the imperialist system and continue to generate many streams (though no mighty or even medium sized river) of radicalising people, particularly young people, who can be potentially recruited, educated and trained to become revolutionary activists. It would be throwing away everything we have learned about tactical flexibility to assume that these streams of radicalising people will somehow orient to the SA, or that it will definitely be the militant current in the unions that will provide the next burst of sustained anti-capitalist political motion.
In the NE discussion, I argued that we needed many different foils to relate to all these potentials. The SA, as a campaigning alliance, can be one of them, but only one, and not the main one. We need projects that can bring the different streams of radicalising people (those who recognise, however vaguely, the need to replace the present social order with a new one) together at key moments and where they will interact with the DSP. In the NE discussion, some comrades argued that we already have those foils, we have the mechanisms to relate to the different “catchment areas”.
Yes, we do – but their effectiveness has been failing. GLW sales, which can relate to any and all catchment areas, are back to where they were shortly before the change from Direct Action to GLW. The collapse in sales has been dramatic since 2002 when the turn to “building two parties started” (see the graph in Comrade Pip Hinman’s PCD article in The Activist, Vol 15 No. 8) Resistance has just held its smallest national conference since its founding conference in 1970. The DSP organised a very successful APISC conference earlier this year, with over 600 registrations, but had no vehicles or tactics to relate afterwards to those who attended.
A single-minded focus on a “particular wind”, which is not blowing any actual wind into the SA’s sails, will block us from seeing the initiatives we need to take and the need to prioritise with enthusiasm to continue to relate to all the varieties of radicalising people out there with the flexibility and creativity that we need.
Tasks and perspectives for the next two years
The party-building report to be voted on by the October NC meeting must outline the tasks and perspectives for the party for the next year or two which the NC will present to the DSP Congress in January 2006. The draft party-building report presented to the NE by Comrade Percy does this well. On the other hand, Comrade Boyle’s draft party-building report, apart from immediate organisational tasks for the DSP, outlines only one task and perspective for the coming period into 2006. He asks whether we (the DSP) can get more people active in the SA and then answers “yes” (exactly how we are to do this, he doesn’t say). There is no other outline or perspective for the DSP’s work for the next extended period beyond the congress.
It is not enough, in a party building report, to simply refer to there being separate Venezuela and youth work reports. A party-building report needs to present a political perspective that allows comrades to position all their work in a specific understanding as to what is happening and what we have to do. The only hint of that in Comrade Boyle’s report is his unelaborated assertion that, yes, we can get more people active in the SA. The conclusion that must be drawn is that building the SA will be the perspective after the congress if Comrade Boyle’s party-building report is adopted.
In the absence of the political forces in motion to be the partner(s) we need to build a new mass workers’ party, how will we get more people active in the SA, and build it towards a mass workers’ party? If there is no motion, no sustained winds blowing, then we are left with turning our formerly flexible ship, capable of tacking quickly and effectively, into a clumsy galley ship, with our cadre used as rowers under deck, rowing to a drumbeat coming from the ship’s steering committee or captain. Faster, then slower, faster then slower.
As there is no demand for the regular monthly branch meetings that Comrade Sue Bolton argues for, as there are no independents coming to the meetings, we will have to talk them into coming to these meetings. We will have to drive this process harder, i.e., once again we will have to substitute for the lack of independent motion.
The proposals in Comrade Percy’s report for the SA are proposals based on a realistic assessment of what is possible.
Branch meetings? Yes, if they are actually organising other people. And they should be organising quite a few other people. In most cases at the moment, it may be between four and 15 DSP members attending meetings with just one or two non-DSP sometimes coming, or none.
Caucuses and work groups? The same principle – if they organise other people effectively in building the SA as a campaigning alliance. The report also raised the idea of less frequent – perhaps quarterly or less often – city-wide gatherings of SA members.
None of these proposals require the DSP to drive a process of getting people to come to meetings, or of a forced march in which we substitute ourselves for the lack of real motion of broader political forces.
In addition, Comrade Percy’s draft party-building report contains perspectives and tasks which link all our work together without just relying on the hope that a “particular wind” will soon start to blow. I hope comrades read carefully through both reports, asking themselves what will this concretely mean for their activity as DSP members in the year ahead.
Reality and our friends
While the word “puff” crept into Comrade Boyle’s description of my comments, he left out from his written summary the words with which he ended his verbal summary. He stated that if the perspective for the SA in Comrade Percy’s report was adopted: “It will die, comrades, it will die.”
This is a claim echoed in a number of other written PCD articles and which I have also heard verbally from comrades. It is also reflected in the claim that changing our name back to Democratic Socialist Party will “blow up” the SA.
This fear that the SA will collapse or blow up is driving people to deny the reality that there are no forces in motion that can be the partners necessary to turn the SA into a broadly based new socialist party, let alone a mass workers’ party. To turn the SA into a mass workers’ party you need mass forces, large enough numbers of people that can be legitimately called a “mass” – not recruits in one’s or two’s or 14 off the website who aren’t active (“paper” members) and who will require our small cadre force to devote large amounts of time trying talk some of them into coming to an SA branch meeting. That is not a mass party nor is it even “a broad socialist party”. To say it is, is to “puff” the SA up into something bigger than it really is. It’s bluster on our part.
If we are going to have good, long-term relations with our political friends – whether it’s Craig Johnston or Chris Cain or activists in the hills outside Perth – we must be able to speak this truth to them: Yes, we can advocate the need for a mass workers’ party, but until there are new forces in motion, producing the leaders and activists who themselves are prioritising the formation of a new mass workers’ party, there are no feasible steps we can take to turn the SA into an instrument to actually organise a mass workers’ party. What is feasible is to use the SA, and even more so GLW, Resistance, Venezuela solidarity committees, a revived ASAP, our direct intervention into broader campaign committees and another APISC conference (in 2007) as tactics to build more joint campaigning on the left; to lay more groundwork for the eventual formation of a new mass workers’ party. This must be the DSP’s project for the next period.
We need to be able to say this openly and explicate to all our allies and friends. It is not a matter of “sending signals far and wide” through a change in the DSP’s name. It is question of openly and explicitly explaining what we think is reality and is realistically possible to advance the socialist cause in Australia. Changing our name back to “Party” is simply bringing our name in line with reality. The SA is not a party and the DSP is the only party we have, and can build in the here and now, in reality and not just in our imaginations.
The SA as an alliance of activists with the DSP can advocate a new workers’ party, but there are not yet the real forces that we can take any feasible steps together with to actually move it in practice in that direction.
This ability to speak the truth must also be there when talking about the details. Do comrades who work directly with our allies among the trade union militants tell them that SA branch meetings are hardly attracting any people? Are we telling them that, in most cases around the country, the SA has a “paper” membership? Are we reporting to them that the website is only recruiting three or four members nationally per month? That Seeing Red is not getting its money back? Are we telling them the truth of what is possible?
Are we also being honest and telling people that there are no longer any genuine efforts towards unity toward a single party between the DSP, ISO and the other affiliates?
If telling the truth will “kill the SA”, what is it worth anyway? If there are those among our allies and friends who do not see reality this way, does that mean we should stop explaining what we see to them?
I am not, of course, proposing any kind of campaign to go out and expose the negative aspects of the SA reality – but we do need to be able to speak the truth when we are discussing among ourselves and with our friends and allies about these limitations. SA is an asset, but it is a specific asset useful for specific things – it is a vehicle, or a hat, or a megaphone that can resonate more our agitation in some specific arenas; it is a vehicle which some people, a few, find it easier to relate to than the DSP. But it is not “the party we are building” and it is not the vehicle through which we organise our most important interventions in the movements.
I don’t believe that those in the militant trade union current who have been collaborating with us long before the SA was formed, let alone our “turn” to “make it into the party we build”, will stop doing so. Nor do I believe that all of a sudden SA website or stall joiners will disappear because it may say on the website or brochure that the Socialist Alliance is a campaigning alliance of parties, groups and individuals that advocates the need for a mass workers’ party, and will work to organise such a party as soon as conditions allow it to do so, and that in the meantime it will, where useful, stand leaders and activists from the various campaigns in local, state and federal elections.
In any case, do we want to get SA joiners on the basis of a deception? Calling the Socialist Alliance a party at the moment will simply be the DSP flying the SA flag over the galley ship as the DSP cadre below row and row and row and row – until they drop from exhaustion. We have tried this forced march for two years now, and what has been the result? The DSP boat has drifted backwards. Isn’t it time we recognised the reality of our situation and changed course – to catch the actual breezes that are there or gusts that blow up for a short time and that can propel us forward, rather than continue try to catch a prevailing wind that exists only in some comrades’ hopes and imagination?