By Frank Noakes
SYDNEY — The Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance Activist Education conference, held here January 2-6, attracted 275 people from around Australia and overseas. Under the banner "Socialism Now More Than Ever", participants enjoyed five days of feature talks, which included international speakers, panels and workshops.
International speakers included Matt McCarten, president of the New Zealand NewLabour Party, Malik Miah, a US black activist and the national coordinator of Activists for Independent Socialist Politics, and Helmi Fauzi, an Indonesian human rights campaigner.
McCarten told the conference about the current state of politics in New Zealand where the NLP-initiated Alliance, which includes the Greens and other alternative parties, is witnessing a spectacular growth in support, worrying and threatening to topple both the Labour Party and the Nationals in elections due this year.
In the 1920s Asia's first Communist Party was founded and soon after launched Asia's first insurrection, Fauzi told conference goers. Over the next 40 years the CP grew to be the biggest in the capitalist world, with over 3 million members. Then in 1965-66 a bloody counter-revolution obliterated progressive movements in Indonesia. Now, after 20 years of quiescence, Fauzi said, there are signs of a new left emerging.
Malik Miah outlined what the election of Bill Clinton would mean for US politics and later spoke of the revival of Malcolm X's ideas amongst young blacks in the US and the relevance of his ideas for the oppressed and exploited in Australia and around the world.
Talks and workshops ranged from the environment and trade union campaigns, to sessions on gay and lesbian politics through to the immigration debate.
But the conference wasn't all deadly serious; the cabaret, billed as an evening of song, dance, humour and high drama, lived up to everyone's best expectations. And Resistance's Year of Living Famously, an audio-visual presentation of the media prominence of the socialist youth group in 1992, left everyone inspired as much as entertained. Watching cynical media personalities like Jana Wendt and Peter Couchman being twisted into knots by articulate young political activists was a real pleasure.
DSP national secretary John Percy told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, "The number of young people attending the conference was impressive and reflects the process of renewal taking place within the socialist movement — a reinvigoration. Young people don't carry the baggage of the old, tired debates; certainly they were keen to learn, through the conference, of the history of the progressive movements, but they are not constrained by it. They don't like this brutal system and orously oppose it.
"The conference exuded optimism, and we expect that the DSP and Resistance will experience a continued growth in 1993."