At the International Â鶹´«Ã½ Conference in Sydney at Easter, Peter Camejo identified the key problem for the socialist movement as being the isolation of socialists from the necessary agency of socialism — the working class. This problem must be acutely felt by socialists in the United States, but our position in Australia is scarcely any better.
The only political party in Australia with any reasonable claim to be connected to the working class is the ALP. Yet the dominant ideology in the ALP is such that an ALP government poses no threat whatsoever to capitalism in Australia.
The socialists outside the ALP are divided into half a dozen (at least) fragments of parties, each with pretensions to be the one true "vanguard" party. If the history of the working class movement in Australia tells us anything, it is that most workers are not impressed with "vanguards" who regard workers as mere cannon fodder for "the revolution".
Many of these groups just repeat Lenin's scathing denunciations of bourgeois parliamentary democracy as a "fraud". Compared to genuine workers' democracy, based on workers' councils, the limited parliamentary form is a fraud, and it is still right to say so.
However, since the experience of Stalinism, which in terms of democratic rights was a whole epoch behind bourgeois democracy, it is necessary also to say that socialists defend parliamentary democracy against any alternative except workers' councils. Today, the simple denunciation of parliament and elections as fraudulent has repellent connotations that Lenin never intended. For similar reasons, simply to denounce the ALP as an enemy, the party with a clear majority support among the working class, is a highly dubious strategy for socialists to adopt.
The relationship between socialists and the ALP should be both for and against. For the working class supporters who want the ALP rather than the Liberals to form the government; against the pro-capitalist nature of ALP governments.
In 1944, the Australian section of the Fourth International issued a manifesto which contained the lines: "Within the labor movement as a whole, the Labor Party as well as the unions, the revolutionist should not cease in his [sic] activity, but should always attempt to stem the rising tide of reaction, calling for resistance to the growing subordination of officialdom to the capitalist state. He [sic] should also cooperate with any section of the movement that adopts a sound working class policy on some particular issue."
Today we would prefer to use gender-neutral language, but the political principle being expressed was: Be where the workers are, be part of their struggle! Unfortunately, Australian Trotskyists in more recent times tended to lose sight of this principle.
George Georges resigned from the ALP in 1984, but has recently rejoined. In an interview with Dave Riley (GLW #159), Georges calls for a 10-year program of rebuilding the left of the ALP. Provided it is understood that socialists also want to see a democratisation and revival of rank-and-file activity in the trade unions, this proposal is worthy of serious consideration.
Jim McIlroy (GLW #160) is more concerned to reject Georges' proposal out of hand, than to find a way out of isolation for the left. His argument has three stages: (1) Raise petty quibbles. (2) Say "impossible" in a dozen different ways. (3) Claim (misleadingly) to have an alternative.
The petty quibbles centre around Georges' talking of re-establishing socialist policies. The ALP's "socialist objective" (which Georges probably had in mind) was formulated after the first world war. Triumphantly quoting Lenin's 1913 article about the ALP is therefore hardly scoring a bullseye. Even if Georges' project might have been more precisely formulated, his general intention is clear enough.
Similarly the questions about the political projects of ALP leftists are hardly relevant. The project under discussion is to attempt to build a strong, effective (and genuine) left with class-struggle politics. What then happens to the ALP depends, among other things, on the response of the ALP right to a new situation within the party. Why not just do it and see what happens?
How to say: "it can't be done".
"This is a utopian dream. The ALP has never been socialist." (Do socialists have an inflexible rule of resigning from trade unions that have never been democratic?) "The ALP left is a prisoner of the right". (Mind-forged manacles. The project is to build a left that isn't a prisoner of the right.) "The ALP left ... is not free ... to publicise its ideas." (Would Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly not be prepared to help? Was my point about DSP sectarianism really so irrelevant?) "The ALP left ... must limit itself to factional manoeuvres within the secret confines of Labor organisation." (Why "must"?) "If your strategy is based on changing the Labor Party from within, then that strategy is doomed to failure. It is wasting precious human resources on a hopeless project." (We hear this every day about the socialist project — which is based on forces arising within capitalism!)
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The New Zealand alternative
Jim offers the formation of the NZ Alliance as the alternative. To put the recent electoral achievement of the NZ Alliance into an Australian perspective, consider the following scenario.
The ALP splits when the left attempts to defend the traditional Keynesian (bourgeois liberal!) policies against economic rationalism. An alliance is formed between the left split from Labor, the Greens, the Democrats and the Indigenous Peoples Party. The alliance puts up an Aboriginal activist against Keating as a candidate for the seat of Bankstown — and wins!! (The parallel is with Sandra Lee's victory over Richard Prebble in the predominantly working class electorate of Auckland Central.)
Socialists would have legitimate concerns about whether the presence of the Democrats in the alliance was consistent with class struggle politics. Nevertheless, wouldn't Australian socialists be overjoyed at such a result? Even this is not clear. There are groups on the Australian Left for whom it has to be rev-rev-revolution or nothing at all.
Jim and his DSP comrades are not like that, and they are a thousand times right not to be like that. But a very genuine desire for something like the NZ Alliance to happen in Australia, doesn't square with consistently pooh-poohing the tactics that the NZ Left employed.
When "Rogernomics" was turning NZ into an economic moonscape, trade unionists like Matt McCarten didn't pontificate that Lange and Douglas were "the natural leaders" of the NZ Labour Party. They recruited people to the Labour Party to strengthen the opposition to new right policies. They didn't even have a precise "political project" in mind. Rather than trying to win the Labour Party for socialism, they were more concerned to simply defend the welfare state against the ravages of Thatcherism.
What about the NZ "vanguard" groups who "supported" the formation of the New Labour Party? Keith Locke writes in Links #2: "A few small 'Marxist' groups existed when the NLP was formed in 1989, but they were no help. Basically, these groups all see the NLP as a left reformist diversion for working people. Two of these groups had a short-term tactical orientation to the NLP, to pick up some members, but both are now hostile."
Thus if we really want to learn from the New Zealand experience, two points should be considered. (1) The concept of a "vanguard" party needs to be thoroughly reworked, to free it from all "substitutionist" connotations. (2) The formation of something like the New Zealand Alliance is not an alternative to Georges' project of rebuilding the left of the ALP; it is an example of a possible outcome of this project.