Socialist Alliance counter-report
By Jon Lamb, on behalf of the LPF
[The general line of the following report and summary was rejected by the national committee. The vote for adopting the report was 6 full NC members in favour, 22 against, with 0 abstentions, and 3 candidate members in favour, 11 against, with 0 abstentions.]
Comrades, this counter report is framed in the context of the other counter reports presented at this plenum and in the context of the Congress decisions concerning Socialist Alliance set from 2003. It cannot, by virtue of the time constraints, deal in detail with all the key perspectives and projections set at the 2006 Congress, but it re-asserts the Leninist Party Faction’s contention that SA as a new, broad, multi-tendency socialist party has failed and that as a regroupment tactic and focus of left unity SA is dead.
Dick in his report today, in the balance sheet presentation on the state of SA, partially concedes the major problems of the alliance – the lack of involvement of a membership beyond the DSP, the failing of branch structures, the failing of the development of a broader leadership, the lack of a campaigning culture – but provides no solution to this but further substitution by the cadre, leadership and resources of the DSP in order to breathe superficial life into the moribund SA. To continue to refer to it as a megaphone for socialism is an exaggeration of SA’s appeal and impact. A well planned and organised election campaign will not overcome the single biggest objective block that we are faced with: There is not the objective political conditions at present, no significant forces of militants, activists and radicalised layers, moving in a sustained leftward trajectory with which we can unite and build a broad mass workers party, in the here and now. In the absence of this development, we have presented all that we the DSP do, through a front organisation that we proclaim has far greater political weight, influence and impact than it actually has.
So enamored with this perception of SA, it has resulted in a skewed and sectarian outlook towards other forces on the left. We are kidding ourselves and deceiving the non-DSP SA membership. The recent exchange on the GLW discussion list and the ultra-defensive and holier-than-thou and rambling responses to Peter Murray and Bill Weller’s comments concerning SA, is in part reflective of this. Curiously there were no non-DSP defenders.
Two years ago, at the May 2005 NC meeting (prior to the development of the split within the central leadership of the DSP that coalesced at the )ctober 2005 NC), we had a unified assessment of where we were at with the SA tactic and the new mass workers party project. We were faced with a major organisational crisis precipitated by the fact that SA had effectively ground to a halt – in part due to the internal machinations of SA – but more significantly, due to the overarching objective political constraints.
In the report, “DSP and Socialist Alliance – An urgent reality check on our party building perspectives” (The Activist Volume 15, Number 2 – May 2005), Comrade Peter Boyle presented a sober assessment of the serious situation the DSP was faced with: a major financial crisis (the third within a two year period), falling GLW sales and a declining party membership. Peter in the introduction of the report highlighted that the DSP could not continue to integrate resources into SA because SA had stalled without new political developments, that the level of DSP substitution in SA was unsustainable and that we needed to re-imagine our perspectives on the SA and DSP. The need for new political developments was stressed a number of times in the report, and the following quote makes this pretty clear:
“This integration cannot resume without new political developments – developments that unleash new forces and greater political confidence in SA. Not with just an isolated victory here or there but at least a new step forward of a significant enough militant minority in the working class that can re-invigorate broader sections of the movement with a stronger will to struggle.
“The class struggle as a whole need not shift onto the offensive but there has to be enough militant minority action to inject significant new forces into any broad left regroupment project”.
This is still essentially the critical requirement needed today and we are faced with the harsh reality that there does not exist “enough militant minority action to inject significant new forces into any broad left regroupment project”. The NE/NC majority hoped and gambled upon a prediction that there would be a significant enough fightback campaign and industrial protest action against Howard’s Work Choices and that this upsurge would develop a layer of militant class-struggle trade unionists and activists to provide new forces for the stalled SA. This has not happened, nor are there any indications that this will take place in the immediacy or for some time to come. No amount of grandstanding or proclamations about the small layer of active non-DSP SA members or exaggerated influence of SA, or acrimonious scapegoating and blaming of the LPF and the internal situation of the DSP changes this fact.
Yet the NE/NC majority persist in the hope that SA, this alleged “transitional” party building vehicle has momentum and enough of an attraction to leapfrog this objective reality. But to build it as what? We’ve got lost and confused in the twists and turns, the changing justifications to pursuing this tactic, in order to hang onto SA at all costs.
What has changed from our assessment of May 05?: we’ve partially stabilised our finances, though its still patchy and susceptible to another crisis; our GLW sales remain shaky and GLW web hits are declining and though our membership growth hovers between static and a slight increase, this membership is developed and trained within the framework of substitutionism and propping up of a front organsiation, the mangy SA tail wagging the DSP dog. A peculiar and particular front orgnisation, where the DSP itself has become subsumed in it, where its revolutionary politics has been hidden or watered down. Where every public act and political intervention by a DSP cadre, under the SA cloak, is presented as proof of the life of SA.
On the state of SA
The report presented by Dick today claims SA is growing numerically and in political influence – pointing to various recent state election campaigns and results as evidence of this. I’ll make further comments concerning SA and elections later in this report, so first an assessment on the state of SA and its membership.
We have before us a table with a breakdown on the SA membership and alleged numbers of supporters and activists – compared to a similar chart presented to the May NC last year (State of Socialist Alliance, May 2006. The Activist, Volume 16, Number 5 May 2006), there is only a marginal increase in the actual membership and supporters – even using this data it is difficult to tell, as they use differing criteria. Even so, the character of the SA membership outside the DSP remains the same: largely passive and inactive, a heterogeneous collection of left sympathisers, GLW supporters/subscribers and DSP friends and family members roped in for electoral registration purposes. The small layer of non-DSP members who are active to some extent conduct much of their activity outside of or disconnected from SA.
The actual branch life and activity of SA, particularly the activity of non-DSP SA members demonstrates how false the claim that SA is growing in influence is. How can it be gaining in influence and impact when it’s membership is overwhelmingly passive and disconnected from decision making processes and structures, such as basic organising through branch meetings and caucuses? Few if any branches meet more regularly than every two to three months. There have been no SA branch meetings in Perth or Fremantle so far this year, for example. Where branch meetings have taken place they are small and politically stale. Typically DSP execs/branch meetings discuss SA “plans” and present these as “proposals” to be rubber-stamped by SA execs or branch meetings, which are in turn dominated by DSP members. Using Dick’s figures, only 22-28% of the financial membership attend the occasional branch meeting, with the bulk of this being members of the DSP. And you are lucky if you find much youth presence at an SA branch meeting, including from the ranks of the DSP or Resistance comrades.
SA branch meetings are uninspiring. They are so uninspiring that even the majority of DSP members, including those that voted for and supported the line at the last Congress, don’t turn up to SA branch meetings. Look at the DSP membership attendance figures; the facts speak for themselves.
Dick has also in his handout provided a category (0-4 hours) for activism where apparently zero hours of activity is a category that accounts for something! Dick made a verbal qualification just now, mentioning one hour, but really, this information is questionable. In their joint contribution “Some notes in response to LPF October NC position paper on Socialist Alliance” (The Activist Volume 16, Number 7, October 2006), Paul B and Peter B claimed “In Brisbane alone, we have over 40 non-DSP SA members, most of whom are activists in one way or another…” and list these areas. According to the figures presented today, however, a little over 6 months later, this has dropped to 25. The truth is that this figure is a fudge and an exaggeration. Of those non-DSP members of SA that are activists, the vast majority of them are not active in, or integrated into an SA framework – we rarely see them, certainly not at branch meetings or the few SA caucuses that have been held in the last year.
The development of SA structures, of branch meetings and caucuses, as the necessary organising bodies that engages with and involves the membership, that encourage an active involvement in the political direction and life of SA has not substantially improved since 2004-2005. This was recognized within SA itself, in the exchanges between the NAC comrades prior to the SA national conference in 2005. After the DSP NC meeting in May of that year, when the DSP more consciously withdrew from substituting for a large non-active membership in SA outside the DSP, these structures effectively went on hold. The double burden of propping up SA and maintaining our organisation was bringing the DSP to the verge of a serious organisational collapse.
In the lead up to and at the January 2006 Congress, the NE/NC majority proclaimed that the emergency measures had achieved their goals and that the DSP was sufficiently strengthened to return to rebuilding SA. We had the likes of Brisbane’s Red Letter Day, as described by Paul B, where we joined around 5 or 6 to the DSP in Brisbane in a short space of time, mostly recruits from SA (though only one of these is still a member of the DSP). The SA report at the 2006 Congress highlighted the weak SA branch structures and lack of involvement of the broader membership, points stressed again at the May NC last year. But what has eventuated since then and the proposals for organisational flexibility to turn this situation around? Not much. Even the proposal made at that NC of trying to keep the largely passive and uninvolved SA membership informed of SA’s activity through a regular monthly newsletter sent to all members has failed to happen. And what of Alliance Voices? – Light on for content and nothing since August of last year, which from the hype about the centrality of SA in this or that campaign, surely there should have been a number of issues, brimming with reports and records of action. No, nothing. The SA email groups: mostly inactive discussion groups or only a tiny number of SA members involved.
Doesn’t the fact that the ongoing lack of activity by the vast bulk of the non-DSP SA membership tell us something about the stagnation of SA? What’s Dick’s proposal to remedy this? Ignore reality, continue the substitution by the DSP and inspire the membership and supporters with a “Time’s Up Howard” election campaign. This “Time’s Up Howard” slogan is not much more than a clone of the Laborite “It’s Time Howard” catch-cry. Some differences over this slogan appear to have been discussed at the SA NE on April 23, with the view to discuss it further at the next NE.
Activists in SA
There are some partial exceptions within the membership of SA, such as Chris Cain or Sam Watson. But these comrades are class leaders in their own right, through their own struggles over time and through to the present. Their relationship with SA is with and through the cadre of the DSP – a relationship that pre-dated the SA exercise. They remain much more engaged with their immediate struggles than in the decision making processes and activity of SA. It’s also important to distinguish between the two, because Sam has interacted more closely with the SA branch in recent months than Chris – but this is not because of any major campaign initiatives or growth in the influence of SA, but because of Sam’s central role as a Murri leader trying to build as much support for the Mulrunji campaign and people of Palm Island, in a volatile and racist climate, against a highly organised and vocal police lobby and reactionary support network.
Yes Sam is a SA patriot and we share his desire for a third force in Aus politics, an activist socialist party, a mass workers party, but this is not what SA is or is capable of becoming. We have to be open and honest with Sam and others about the real state of SA, the mistakes and over-projections of the DSP, the substitutionism of the DSP. The success of the Mulrunji campaign and just for the Palm Islanders is not hinged upon the continued existence of the SA phony party. The success of this campaign depends on the success of a broad united front campaign, in support and solidarity with the activity and leadership of the Murri and Palm Islander community. SA is not “inseparable” from the Mulrunji campaign as has been claimed.
I want to stress here that LPF fully supports Sam’s senate candidature for the SA federal election campaign and the opportunity this provides as a means to help lift Sam’s profile and the Mulrunji /black deaths in custody campaign and the sorry plight of aboriginal communities in Queensland and nationally. Comrades, cut the unsubstantiated bullshit and innuendo that the LPF is out to sabotage or undermine Sam, as has been inferred in Brisbane branch and in Paul B/Peter B’s contribution to The Activist last year. This campaign is not a factional issue so stop trying to turn it into one. I agree with Dick’s comments about the overall importance of the indigenous struggle.
On election work and SA
Now Dick at the start of his report and in his analysis of the SA NSW election campaign states that it’s important not to data pick. He asks the question: “Is the decline in the number of SAers involved in the 2007 NSW election campaign a more important factor compared to the more than near tripling of the votes achieved in the Legislative Council? Well, he doesn’t answer the question … though he did make some reference to the importance of “where you are coming from and where you are going”. No Dick it isn’t more important … and lest I get accused of data-nit picking, it’s not a near tripling … but a slightly more than a 2.5 times increase on the 2003 result though less than double the 1999 DSEL result (where there was around 80 groups to select from) when we received 7,638 votes representing .2%.
How we activate our members and supporters, and through that get a broader hearing and engagement – how well we get our propaganda material and GLW distributed, how many new contacts and recruits for the tendency – has always been a much more important measure of the success of an election campaign for us. SA mobilized 280 or so members and supporters on polling day in 2003; it was considerably less this time around, by at least 100. It’s a significant decline and the opposite of what should be happening. In 2003 SA stood in seven lower house seats, this time around, only two. The supposed increase in the electoral resonance of SA in the Legislative Council was contradicted by the result in the lower house seat of Marrickville, where there was no significant change in the vote, where SA is known and where we have stood twice before at the state level and twice federally.
The vote for the SA in the Legislative Council is a too insignificant a total for us to make a claim that this represents an increased resonance or influence for SA. It was a socialist vote, it represents some identification with socialism, but beyond that we can’t make solid assertions, certainly not that each and every one was a conscious vote for SA.
Comrades I want to make some comments on the LPF’s thinking on how a resurfaced DSP should seek to utilise the SA as a vehicle for socialist propaganda in the coming federal election.
In the report presented by Marce yesterday, he stated:
“What we’d do with what’s left of SA, which is basically its electoral registration, some hundreds of paper members and a part of the DSP’s more or less active periphery and some of our close collaborators, is that we’d retain SA’s electoral registration and use SA as an electoral vehicle to campaign on a popularly-pitched revolutionary socialist platform.
“We could see who else is interested in standing as SA candidates in this kind of campaign, and we might be able to revive it as a revolutionary socialist electoral alliance.”
Well, how should we do this? We propose that the SA’s electoral propaganda have as its key theme the need for a radically different sort of government to effectively tackle the big issues facing working people in this country – the growing climate change catastrophe, defence of civil liberties (particularly defence of the right of workers to strike), end Australian support for and participation in the US-led wars on the Third World (Iraq and Afghanistan). The campaign should explain that what is needed is a working people’s government, a government that puts working people’s needs ahead of business profits; that both the Liberal and Labor parties serve the interests of big business; and that a “people-before-profits” government cannot be achieved through the ballot box, but only though a powerful grassroots political movement that can radically change the current political system; that SA candidates are pledged to use their positions to help build grassroots political campaigns that defend and advance working people’s needs.
The campaign could use the example of the Chavez government and developments and what a government for the workers, poor and oppressed seeks to implement. Cuba’s ecologically sustainable development example is something else we could highlight.
A good example of such propaganda was the Democratic Socialists election platform for the 1998 ACT elections. It read as follows:
“The ‘two-party system’ is really a one-party system with both teams equally committed to slashing welfare, selling off public assets and giving the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer the freest possible hand to get even richer.
“The main disagreement between Labor and the Coalition is simply over how and at what pace to boost corporate profits at the expense of the majority of people. At every election we are faced with a pathetic ‘choice’ between governments which will cause more or slightly less pain.
“More and more people are wary about allowing either Liberal or Labor parties unchecked power in government. Democratic Socialist MPs will do everything in their power to stop or hold back the profits-first drive of whichever major party becomes the next ACT government. They will make sure it’s harder – much harder – for the Liberal and Labor parties to get their way.
“Democratic Socialists recognise that the Liberals are worse than Labor and that it is preferable to return a Labor government. But this is not enough. To take on the rich and the powerful, we first have to build a real opposition to the Labor-Liberal profits-first consensus. Your support for a Democratic Socialist candidate will help build this real oppostion…
“Democratic Socialists will not support the reactionary measures of either a Liberal or a Labor government…
“Most people are rightly disgusted with the current political system. Election results are ‘bought’ by big business through media control and large donations to the Labor and Liberal parties…
“Politicians who promise to represent our interests are quickly seduced by the perks and rorts of parliamentary life and become primarily interested in keeping their seats by doing the bidding of the media barons and other corporate bosses.
“Democratic Socialists are committed activists, not ‘career politicians’. Democratic Socialist MPs will:
“1. Fight for the Democratic Socialist election platform, as publicised in the election campaign. We have no “core” and “non-core policies”; no policies that are adopted only to be abandoned by a parliamentary caucus (as is typical in the ALP).
“2. Prioritise active community campaigning for social justice and the environment, using the parliament as a vehicle to amplify the demands and to increase the effectiveness of these campaigns.
“3. Donate all of their parliamentary salaries over $450 per week to the party to organise these campaigns.”
Obviously, today any such commitment needs to be adjusted for inflation.
[NB the full text of the election platform is available at http://www.dsp.org.au/ds/actelect.htm ]
These key propaganda themes should be highlighted with an overarching slogan such as “People before profits: For a workers’ alternative to Liberal-Labor! Vote Socialist Alliance!”
Finally, where DSP members are running as SA candidates they should not publicly conceal the fact that they are members of the DSP, a revolutionary socialist party that is affiliated to the Socialist Alliance and not a “Marxist tendency in the Socialist Alliance”.
Conclusion
SA shouldn’t be the key and overarching focus of our party building efforts – that can only take place, at the moment, through the re-cadreisation of the DSP and a solid push for the same in Resistance. Dick claims that without SA there is no other instrument that puts out a more broadly heard socialist message than would otherwise be the case. This assertion completely downplays the single most significant party building tool we have – Green Left Weekly. Publicly building the DSP, without the constraint of upholding a make believe party or party in formation, will allow us greater tactical flexibility, will allow us greater focused interventions in united front work and enhance the important tasks of rebuilding Resistance, lifting the profile of Green Left Weekly and building more effectively the solidarity campaign with the Venezuelan revolution.
Summary
Comrades, the NE/NC majority states it is flexible on all manner of measures (and justifications) to build and maintain SA. Despite the clear differences within the NE and NC and the broader leadership of the DSP, the majority refuse to discuss or present its position on the conditions necessary to drop or reconsider this line, or the objective conditions necessary for SA to be or become a new broad, left mass workers party. The NE/NC majority is completely inflexible on the resurfacing of the DSP.
Prior to the SA project, in the early years of the formation of SA, we said we wouldn’t give up our assets or allow them to be threatened, that we would protect our cadre resources, that we would not permit this project to constrain our party building projections and the size of our apparatus. We used to have exciting and ambitious projections about new branches, about putting on more full-timers to help build these branches, to help recruit and build new leadership teams and to develop cadre. We don’t do that any more.
We’ve settled for the SA. We no longer have DSP branches in Darwin, Lismore, Fremantle and so-on, but we promote fictional branches of SA that only exist on a website. Look at Newcastle branch today compared to 2003. When I was there then we had a solid DSP branch … an active Resistance branch, sure with some difficulties, but a branch and a reasonably functioning SA, with no or only one affiliate. Look at the spectacular decline since then.
We present the SA as the best party building vehicle or tool we’ve ever had and we can’t contemplate withdrawing from it – regardless of the fact that we have tried and tested it for nearly 7 years, with a myriad of justifications for it in a myriad of forms, from an initial maneuver in 2001-02 to squeeze and pressure and jump-the-gun on our key rival on the left, the ISO. Then through all the other variations of SA, the multi-tendency socialist party and left unity project, to the front organisation that it is today.
Graham M says SA could be this, or it could be that, depending how you define or assess certain things. Dave H says “it’s a broad church socialist party”. Dick says it’s a step along the road. Comrades, we’ve come to a dead end in the road, we have gone off track and we are going bush. We need to re-navigate and re-orientate ourselves … we need to have clarity of direction for the membership on where we are taking the party, on exactly what we are supposedly building SA as.
The “catchment area” that Dick said SA represents. We’ve always had a catchment area, in the form of our periphery, our allies. It has grown and contracted in accordance with the state of struggle, in accordance with our involvement and our leadership in various campaigns. And Graham’s sweeping reference that we only had a “casual collaboration” with the likes of Craig Johnston and Chris Cain prior to the existence of SA. Were the many tactical discussions and interactions with Chris about the MUA or Craig concerning the AMWU and Workers First just a form of “casual collaboration? No. This is a re-write of party history. On Paul’s claims about the extent of SA’s role in the Mulrunji campaign and the success at getting Hurley to trial. As I recall it, Sam Watson’s description was that this success was as a result of the Murri community in alliance with the activist left.
To some of the comments on elections and proposals in the counter-report. Firstly, I stress again that the NSW election result, as stated in the report is too insignificant a vote to be a meaningful measure of support for SA. It reflects some sympathy and an identification with socialism. Graham asks in discussion, in the instance of a DSP member standing as a candidate for SA: “Why on earth raise identification as a member of the DSP?” – retorting negatively that “this is a barrier”. A barrier? Why on earth not raise it! A barrier to what?! To people voting for us? So don’t resurface the DSP, because people won’t vote for revolutionaries.
Lisa Mac says that the LPF proposal is a mere reduction of SA to crude electoralism and a mis-training of our members on how we view elections and campaigning. But the bulk of the activity and campaigning of SA is done by the DSP – the DSP masquerading as SA. The LPF isn’t proposing to junk our programmatic approach to elections. We would include activists involved in ongoing campaigns, from inside and outside the DSP, such as Sam W.
On Margie’s “serious arrogance” claim, and Paul B’s demagogic rhetorical flourish and false characterization of the LPF attitude towards SA members – where’s the proof? At least we don’t refer to “stomping upon” our own members.
In discussion Chris talked of the appeal of left unity and the attraction of SA as a focus for this. But SA doesn’t embody left unity. Yes, “unity” has appeal, but in the absence of unity in practice, in activity, it is a hollow slogan.
For all the talk of us needing to have a unified approach to our party building tasks, of how to resolve the differences on SA, we continue to have a dodge and fudge presented about the actual state of SA. If the NE/NC majority could also stop blaming and scapegoating the LPF for a moment, we could focus on resurfacing the DSP and getting ourselves out of the predicament we are in.