The Democratic Socialist Perspective and the Socialist Alliance
The following resolution was adopted by the DSP's 22nd Congress in Sydney, January 5-8, 2006, following extensive internal discussion about the experience as a leading force within the Socialist Alliance since its formation in 2001.
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Introduction
1. In the wake
of the decision of the May 2003 Second National Conference of the
Socialist Alliance to adopt the perspective of transforming itself into
a single, multi-tendency socialist party and to “accept and welcome a
strong revolutionary socialist stream as an integral part of our vision
of a broad socialist party'', the Democratic Socialist Party declared
itself an internal tendency in the Socialist Alliance and renamed
itself the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) at its 21st Congress
in Sydney, December 27-30, 2003.
2. The resolution “The Democratic
Socialist Perspective and the Socialist Alliance'' set the DSP on a
course of building the Socialist Alliance, progressing its
transformation into a united, multi-tendency socialist party and
integrating as much of the resources of the Democratic Socialist Party
into the Socialist Alliance as possible. However, despite our best
efforts, over the past two years we have not been able to build the
Socialist Alliance into an effective new party and our attempt to
integrate as much of the resources of the dsp into the Socialist
Alliance as possible has stalled. While the smaller affiliates have
remained opposed to, obstructed or abstained from most collective
political activity in the Socialist Alliance, too few leaders and
activists have so far emerged from the majority of Socialist Alliance
members who are not in any affiliate group. Whilst acknowledging the
early stage of development of the Socialist Alliance, this resolution
reaffirms the DSP's commitment to building the Socialist Alliance as a
new party project.
3. This resolution supersedes the 21st dsp
Congress resolution “The Democratic Socialist Perspective and the
Socialist Alliance'' and resets our perspectives and objectives for work
in the Socialist Alliance.
Political space for the Socialist Alliance remains
4.
The opening for the Socialist Alliance was very concrete, we noted in
our 21st Congress resolution. We saw it as a response to the beginning
of a new cycle of working-class and anti-capitalist struggle signalled
by:
the mass high school walkouts against the racist One Nation Party of Pauline Hanson;
the mass opposition to the 1998 attack on the Maritime Union of Australia;
the mass solidarity with the East Timor national liberation struggle, which forced both Coalition and Labor parties to reverse their longstanding policy in support of the Indonesian occupation;
the 20,000-strong, three-day S11-2000 blockade of the Melbourne World Economic Forum; and
the huge anti-war movement that erupted before the invasion of Iraq. Some sort of left unity project, like the Socialist Alliance, was essential if socialists were to get a broader hearing from the working class in these new circumstances.
5. However, since then, there have
been some significant retreats in the social movements. The massive
movement against the invasion of Iraq melted away quickly in the wake
of the invasion and occupation by the us and its allied imperialist
aggressors. Though opinion polls in Australia and other imperialist
countries show majority opposition to that occupation, the anti-war
movement remains weak and in some cities divided, and there have been
no large anti-globalisation mobilisations over the last couple of years.
6.
The re-election of the Howard Liberal-National Coalition government – and
this time with a narrow majority in the Senate – deepened the mood of
demoralisation and demobilisation in the broader social movements.
7.
While the Socialist Alliance has fielded candidates in state, local and
federal elections, the votes obtained have generally been lower than
those previously obtained by Democratic Socialist Electoral League and
other socialist candidates. This generally poor result, combined with
Howard's re-election, has resulted in a drop in participation and
activity in most Socialist Alliance branches since late 2004.
8. The
main reason for the Socialist Alliance's poor votes is the electoral
rise of the Greens, who now capture most of the broad left vote,
including that of many progressive people who respect the work of the
Socialist Alliance. However, as elected Greens candidates at various
levels of government are politically tested, the space for candidates
to the left of the Greens will open up – as was demonstrated by the
election of Socialist Party member Steve Jolly to the Yarra Council.
The Green Party is unclear about whether its aims can be achieved under
capitalism or not. This leads the Greens to underestimate the
importance of independent working-class mobilisation and organisation
in favour of parliamentary activities. While there are some socialists
and other grass-roots activists within the Greens, there is a rightward
pressure exerted on the party by its wealthier supporters and by its
parliamentary focus. Moreover, the Greens generally remain weak in many
working class communities and electorates where anger and
disillusionment with the ALP [Australian Labor Party] potentially
provides the support base for a new workers' party. As the Greens'
political limitations become clearer, the Socialist Alliance can
convince left-wing Greens activists to join a working-class party with
an effective strategy for social change and ecological sustainability.
In this framework, the dsp remains committed to close collaboration
between the Socialist Alliance and the Greens in community, social,
environment and electoral campaigns.
9. While over the past two
years there have been some setbacks for the militant trade union
current (e.g. the deposing and jailing of militant former amwu
[Australian Manufacturing Workers Union] Victorian secretary Craig
Johnston, a prominent Socialist Alliance member), that militant
minority continues to exercise considerable influence in Victoria and
has made gains in other states. The Socialist Alliance has gradually
advanced the organisation of its members and supporters in the trade
unions and has built campaigns around the demands of its action
platform. Its united campaigning, while limited (notably the other
affiliate groups are not very active in the trade union or other
caucuses), continues to be more effective than the individual efforts
of any single socialist group. In several cities, Socialist Alliance
members are respected leaders of the militant trade union minority,
enjoying the support of thousands of militant workers. The election of
Socialist Alliance members Chris Cain as wa [Western Australia]
secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia, Tim Gooden as secretary
of the Geelong Trades Hall Council, Chris Spindler as president of the
Victorian Branch of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the
successful June 2005 National Trade Union Fightback Conference are a
few examples of these gains.
10. The 2005 Fightback Conference
brought together a broad range of militant trade unionists and was the
initiative of militant trade unionists in and around the Socialist
Alliance. Our initiative and campaign for mass delegates meetings and
mass industrial and political action on June 30 [2005], first in
Victoria and then in WA – which clearly sparked the broader and growing
round of mass actions around June 30/July 1 – made this conference
possible. The new national Fightback network launched at this
conference has increased the potential to organise unionists for the
fight against the federal government's industrial relations legislation
on a broader scale.
11. The Socialist Alliance is more widely
identified by workers as the political pole of recent militant
initiatives on the trade union movement, and more militant workers are
now joining the Socialist Alliance, though still at a modest rate. On
the back of Fightback's success, the fourth Socialist Alliance national
conference elected a more democratic national executive that includes
prominent trade union and social movement leaders such as Craig
Johnston, Sam Watson and Tim Gooden. The challenge is to try to develop
this into an effective leadership.
12. These two conferences set a
challenge for the Socialist Alliance to play a serious role in helping
lead the mass working-class resistance to the Howard government's new
anti-union laws. The 350,000 workers who mobilised on June 30/July 1
put the Howard government on the defensive. The June 30-July 1 trade
union demonstrations were the largest mass mobilisations seen since
February 2003. In the intervening two and half years, the biggest
demonstration (apart from the 10-15,000 strong forest rally in Hobart
in March 2004 and the 10,000-strong Save the Tasmanian Forests march in
Melbourne in June 2004) in any single city was about 5000-strong. The
June 30-July 1 demonstrations were preceded by delegates meetings in
some states which indicated a new willingness to fight in the trade
union movement's ranks. Activists in other social movements began to
understand the strategic need to defend the trade union movement – the
last remaining social movement in this country with any ongoing mass
organisation.
13. The second round of mass protests (on November
15), in which more than 600,000 workers participated, took the struggle
to a new stage. The current trade union leadership had to be pushed to
organise the first protest against the ir laws. The Labor Party and the
actu have also tried to funnel the mass opposition to the laws into a
campaign to re-elect Labor at the next election, even though Labor has
refused to commit to renouncing individual contracts or to repealing
all the anti-union laws other than Howard's WorkChoices legislation.
But there has been mass working class support for a serious industrial
and political campaign to resist these laws, which is producing
contradictions within the alp as governing party in all states and
territories and as federal parliamentary opposition as well as within
unions dominated by the alp. Even after these laws are adopted, we can
anticipate a series of struggles around their enforcement. Some unions
are determined that they will continue to take industrial action, even
though it will be illegal and their members and officials risk jail for
doing so. Socialists have the duty to fight side-by-side with the
militant trade unionists in these struggles to help the militant
minority current to grow and increase its preparedness to take
independent initiatives in the face of these attacks, drawing in all
those who want to act against these laws.
14. While the Australian
working class is being forced into political action, it is too early to
proclaim this as the end of the last two and a half decades of class
retreat in the face of the capitalist neo-liberal offensive. Our
characterisation, at our last Congress, of the post-1998 political
developments as the beginning of a turn in the working class struggle
was over-optimistic. Certainly those developments marked a broadening
legitimacy crisis of neo-liberal politicians and the rise of some new
political vanguards and the partial revival of advanced political
elements that had previously retreated into relative inactivity.
However, the working class as a whole remained generally on the
retreat. The long 15-year capitalist expansion cycle (with all its
contradictions) continued to dampen resistance to capitalist
neo-liberal reforms. While understanding that the post-1998 political
developments did not mark the end of two and a half decades of class
retreat, the scale of the 2005 ruling class offensive and the initial
mass response against it means that there is the potential for a shift
in the working class struggle which we need to be ready to respond to.
15.
Having led the working class into retreat and having championed the
neo-liberal offensive against the social gains of previous working
class struggles, the alp has been facing a serious political crisis.
Labor's ever more explicit shift to the right – whether in government or
in opposition – has opened up a space to its left that all serious
socialists know we have to contend for. The replacement of Mark Latham
by Kim Beazley destroyed the brief illusions sparked by Latham's
populist rhetoric and call for the withdrawal of Australian troops from
Iraq by Christmas 2004. Over time Labor's shift to the right has
created a deep structural crisis for the ALP – its activist base has been
shrinking, ageing and becoming more inactive, as dramatically exposed
in former leader Latham's memoirs. A growing section of the working
class and other oppressed and victimised sections of society has
continued to look for a political alternative to the major parties. At
the same time, the viciousness of the Howard government's attack is
leading some unionists who don't trust the Labor Party and oppose the
Labor Party's reactionary support for mandatory detention of refugees
and the “anti-terrorism'' legislation to join the ALP despite these
bipartisan positions. Labor's focus on opposition to the Howard
WorkChoices legislation – even as it supports the Howard government's “anti-terrorism'' – ”is aimed at reconsolidating its support base.
16.
As the ALP stands increasingly exposed, the Greens have filled most of
the opening electoral space. However, the Greens have not filled the
space opened up by the crisis of leadership in the trade unions and the
broader labour movement, especially given the vital challenges of the
struggle against Howard's anti-union laws.
17. At the same time,
winning the working class away from its traditional Labor misleadership
requires a lot more than exposing the ALP's betrayals. Indeed, today
socialists are hard pressed to keep up with the ALP politicians'
relentless self-exposure! However, if disillusioned-in-Labor workers
are to rise above despair, cynicism and apathy, they have to see a
viable alternative political vehicle (or at least one in construction),
an organisation which shows practical leadership on the issues that
matter for them.
Changes to DSP perspectives in Socialist Alliance
18.
To create this alternative it is simply not enough for revolutionary
socialists to hold up their political program and call for support from
these workers breaking from the alp. Rather, our challenge is to unite
with the actual leaders of the working-class resistance, fighting
alongside them in a common effort to reverse the cycle of defeat and
reinvigorate the movement. Through the Socialist Alliance, socialist
politics occupies a greater portion of its potential political space
than would otherwise be the case and has won a stronger hearing in the
working class than it has enjoyed for decades. It remains the best
available political vehicle to win over more militant trade union
leaders and work more closely with a wider layer of working-class
militants in the current political conditions. Socialists will continue
to win more of the respect and confidence of these working class
leaders and militants if we continue to struggle for a united socialist
party.
19. However, our experience over the last two years forces us
to recognise that the pace at which these two intertwined processes
develop is slower than we anticipated and furthermore is dictated
largely by the objective conditions beyond our control.
20. This
reality has posed a change for the DSP's perspectives for the Socialist
Alliance. Our December 2003 resolution to integrate as much of the
resources of the Democratic Socialist Party into the Socialist Alliance
as possible was based on an over-estimation of the political
conditions. This attempt at integration failed because the conditions
to build the Socialist Alliance into a new party did not exist. To
persist with such an integration plan would have jeopardised real gains
of the socialist movement in this country, including its modest pool of
revolutionary activists and Green Left Weekly, which in our estimate is
an invaluable and indispensable political institution on the Australian
left.
21. The 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 neo-liberal “reforms'' before it can harness the leadership
resources and political confidence to take a significant step to
creating a new socialist party. Nevertheless, for the first time in
many years many unionists look towards a left party project. By
championing the need for a broadly based anti-capitalist party or a “new mass workers' party'' (as Craig Johnston put it at the Melbourne
2005 National Trade Union Fightback Conference) and by organising the
most united left intervention in the social movements, the Socialist
Alliance can continue to win the respect of and recruit broader layers
of militant workers to its ranks and in this way take practical steps
along the road to such a party.
22. Green Left Weekly plays a
critical role in this ongoing process of broader regroupment. For
example, as a national newspaper, Green Left Weekly helps network and
unite the militant trade unionists who are scattered across states and
different unions and industries. Because there isn't yet any party
which unites all of the more militant unionists (some are Socialist
Alliance members, some are still in the alp, but most are not members
of any party), a paper like Green Left Weekly can help bring such
people together in a process which might eventually lead towards a more
party-like formation.
23. The DSP will continue to make available
meeting and organising space to the Socialist Alliance and will stand
by the agreed protocols between Socialist Alliance and Green Left
Weekly encouraging and securing greater access and input by the
Socialist Alliance, its members and affiliates into Green Left Weekly,
and placing the projection of the Socialist Alliance within Green Left
Weekly in the hands of an editorial body that is accountable to and
appointed by the Socialist Alliance. dsp members will also continue to
politically organise together with other Socialist Alliance members
through branches, caucuses, committees and working groups, wherever
effective, in order to build the most united left political
intervention possible and to build the Socialist Alliance.
24. In
the meantime, the DSP has to continue to take urgent steps to replenish
its cadre base and maintain the political, organisational and financial
viability of its own structures. Socialist Alliance structures remain
too loose and weak to win, educate and train new socialist activists,
and the Socialist Alliance caucuses and working groups have only
partially begun to organise united interventions into the movements. We
need to recruit to the dsp from within and outside the Socialist
Alliance and, primarily through Resistance, win, educate and develop a
new generation of revolutionary youth cadre.
25. In short, the DSP
has not been able, and cannot afford, to operate as a purely internal
tendency in the Socialist Alliance. The DSP functions as a public
revolutionary socialist organisation, while continuing to be affiliated
to the Socialist Alliance, to build it and to seek to provide political
leadership to it.
Our revolutionary perspective in the Socialist Alliance
26.
The DSP is a revolutionary socialist, Marxist, organisation. This means
that the dsp is convinced that the socialist society for which the
Socialist Alliance fights cannot be built unless the working
class – which comprises the overwhelming majority in society
today – conquers the power to make the decisions which are presently made
by the corporate elites and those who govern for them. Only then will
it be possible to put an end to inequality, injustice, poverty and
oppression through the systematic and democratically decided
restructuring of all social relations.
27. For this transformation
to take place, the vast majority of working people have to become
conscious socialists – conscious of their own power as the productive
majority of society and convinced, too, that the socialist alternative
represents their interests and remains viable despite the perversions
and crimes that Stalinism committed in its name. Such consciousness can
only arise through working people participating in struggles to defend
their own immediate interests and in solidarity with working people in
struggle elsewhere.
28. But socialist consciousness cannot grow in
the absence of socialist organisation – a mass revolutionary socialist
party based in the working class. This is because socialist
consciousness does not develop spontaneously. It has to be struggled
for in the face of a capitalist class with immense and highly
centralised military, financial, political and ideological power.
29.
The experience of all mass working-class and popular struggle to
overthrow capitalism and establish a socialist society – beginning with
the Russian Revolution – confirms the following key lessons of the
pioneering Bolshevik experience in this regard:
Socialist consciousness and successful struggle are impossible without a revolutionary program for leading the class struggle to a revolutionary socialist conclusion;
That program can only be developed and effectively applied by a party which – through its consistent political activity – can win a leadership or vanguard role in the working class;
That party must be composed of activists who carry out such a program and who agree with and are capable of working collectively (i.e. in a disciplined way) to advance it; and
That party must have an internationalist perspective, understanding the role of imperialism, and be firm in its goal of overthrowing its own ruling class.
30.
However, neither in Australia nor anywhere can these features be
decreed or conjured up. The revolutionary program, organisation and
leadership have to be developed and tested in a real struggle to
provide leadership to Australian workers in all the battles – economic,
political and ideological – that they will face.
31. By the same
token, the mass revolutionary socialist party in this country will
never be built simply by the incremental growth of the existing small
socialist propaganda groups. The road to such a party will be
conditioned by the specific social conditions and political
developments that emerge. Crucial in this process will be the
consistent effort by the consciously revolutionary forces to win over
and fuse with the leaderships that emerge in the working class.
32.
The DSP continues to see the struggle to build a broadly based
anti-capitalist party as a stage in the struggle for a mass
revolutionary party in this country. This has been our view since our
11th Congress in January 1986, when we affirmed: “Only the creation of
a serious anti-capitalist alternative, necessarily founded on a
complete break with Labor reformism, can open the way to working class
victories in the struggle against the bosses – attempts to make working
people pay for the capitalist crisis. Revolutionaries therefore place a
high priority on helping to develop such a political alternative – a
broadly based party that consistently counterposes defence of the
interests of the workers and their allies to the illusions of class
peace fostered by the alp and the trade union bureaucracy. The road to
building such a political alternative lies along the line of seeking
unity among all who are willing to break with Labor reformism and to
encourage the most broadly based action in defence of the interests of
workers and their allies.'' (Resolution on “The ALP and the fight for
socialism'', available in the pamphlet Labor and the Fight for
Socialism). We are confident that, while such a broad left party
necessarily begins with an incomplete class struggle platform and a
broad socialist objective (i.e. does not have an explicitly
revolutionary program), in the course of united engagement in mass
struggles, it will steadily and democratically develop its program in a
more explicitly revolutionary direction.
33. While the Socialist
Alliance has adopted as its perspective transforming itself into a
multi-tendency socialist party, this is just a beginning of such a new
party project. If there is a new rise in the class struggle, new
potential partners will be drawn into the project for a new party and
the Socialist Alliance may have to become part of or be transformed
into or be supplanted by new structures for best organising the
strongest political voice for anti-neo-liberal resistance.
34. In accordance with the perspectives outlined above the objectives of the DSP within Socialist Alliance are as follows:
To build the Socialist Alliance as a campaigning alliance in the social movements (particularly the trade union movement) that seeks to build, in actions and in words, a new mass workers' party because the greater political unity, confidence and active commitment required to advance this new party project will be forged through such collective struggle;
To promote internationalism and comradely collaboration between the Socialist Alliance and socialist organisations in other countries on the basis of solidarity and mutual non-interference;
To win other Socialist Alliance members to revolutionary socialism; and
To provide revolutionary socialist political leadership within the Socialist Alliance.
The DSP will pursue these aims and objectives within the democratic framework of the Socialist Alliance.
35.
We are totally open about our revolutionary politics and seek to win
others in the Socialist Alliance to it. Those comrades with whom we
work now—and the many more who will join the Socialist Alliance in the
future – will always know where the dsp is coming from. It will not seek
to trick them into collaboration by hiding its revolutionary
perspective.