Comment by Jim McIlroy
The Australian Labor Party is a political prison for the left. This is the inescapable conclusion of a century of Labor political history — and especially the last decade or so.
In the previous few issues of GLW, a debate has occurred on this crucial issue facing the Australian left — what approach to take to the party which has dominated the leadership of the workers' movement throughout this century.
The questions have been posed: what attitude should socialists outside the ALP take to the Labor left; and should socialists join the Labor Party and fight for change inside it?
In GLW 159, veteran former ALP senator George Georges, who resigned in 1987 in disgust at party betrayals such as the smashing of the Builders Labourers Federation and the ID card, argues for a return by left-wingers to the party and a 10-year program of rebuilding the left of the ALP. Georges has recently rejoined the Queensland branch of the party.
While respecting Georges' personal record of struggle for progressive causes, I strongly disagree with his view that the ALP is, or can be, a vehicle for socialism or radical change.
Roger Clarke (GLW 157 & 159) criticises Max Lane, writing on behalf of the Democratic Socialist Party in GLW 154 & 157, for an allegedly sectarian attitude toward rank-and-file left-wing members of the ALP.
Lane writes: "While there are some well-meaning supporters of the left in the ALP, this does not alter the fact that its main role today is to serve as a cover for the ALP right."
Clarke's analysis of the issue entirely misses the main point: what political project are leftists within the ALP pursuing? This has to be answered before the tactical question of how to relate to left-wing ALP branch members.
Part of the problem
The fundamental question is posed by Georges' call for socialists to "recapture the Labor Party and to re-establish its socialist policies." This is a utopian dream. The ALP has never been socialist, and has now betrayed even its former principles of social reform.
The ALP is a social-democratic, liberal capitalist party. It is part of the status quo, not of the political alternative.
Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917, observed already in 1913: "The Australian Labor Party does not even call itself a socialist party. Actually it is a liberal bourgeois party, while the so-called Liberals in Australia are really conservatives."
Bullseye!
And the Labor Party has become a lot more right wing now than it ever was in the early part of the century.
The ALP has a special character among liberal capitalist parties, which is its structural relationship to the bureaucratic leaderships of the ACTU and its affiliates. This distinguishes it somewhat from the US Democratic Party, for example. But politically there is almost no basic difference.
On some issues, the ALP is to the right of the US Democrats. At a time when the Democrat-controlled US Congress has voted to cut military aid to Jakarta, the Australian Labor government has moved to increase it!
Far from Hawke and Keating "hijacking" the ALP, they are the natural leaders of the party, just as Socialist Left ministers Brian Howe and Gerry Hand have been in helping to implement the economic rationalist program of the current government.
Any left strategy based on shoring up the ALP, building a loyal left faction within it, in the final instance defending and strengthening the Labor Party, is fatally flawed.
The ALP is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Hemmed in
The ALP left is a prisoner of the right. It is not free to act, to publicise its ideas, to organise or mobilise in any way which might eventually threaten the survival of a right-wing Labor government — or even the electoral chances of an ALP opposition.
It must limit itself to factional manoeuvres within the secret confines of Labor organisational bodies. It inevitably finds itself making dirty deals with the right, to maintain this or that position within the party.
What exactly has the left achieved in the past dozen years of federal (or state) Labor government?
And if it did win something, how would we know about it? If any modest gains are made only behind closed doors in factional compromises, what good is that to the larger goal of winning and mobilising the working people to act in their own interests?
It is obvious that the two WA Green senators (and even the Democrats, to a lesser extent) have won more social gains on key issues like the 1993 budget and Mabo than all the ALP left MPs in the country put together.
Not only have they forced concessions from Keating, but they have advanced the cause of social justice by publicly promoting these issues among the people and openly challenging the Labor government — something the ALP left cannot and will not do.
What about rank-and-file ALP members who may be genuine left-wingers or socialists? Clearly, it is essential to encourage any joint work which is aimed at mobilising people to struggle for progressive aims.
Nevertheless, the question must be asked of all members of the left in the ALP: do you believe the Labor Party can be reformed, changed into a vehicle for socialism?
In the final instance, are you seeking to defend the ALP, or are you seeking to replace it with a genuine alternative force for progressive change and socialism?
If your strategy is focused on changing the Labor Party from within, then that strategy is doomed to failure. It is wasting precious human resources on a hopeless project.
Alternatives
So, what alternative strategy is there?
We need look no further than New Zealand for a clue.
NZ Labour Party president Jim Anderton, unable to stomach the New Right policies of the NZ Labour government, led a split to form the NewLabour Party in the late 1980s.
With other left colleagues, Anderton has led a struggle which has completely transformed NZ politics. A major new force has been created with the formation of the Alliance, uniting NewLabour, the Greens, the Maori Party (Mana Motuhake) and the Democrats and the Liberals.
Anderton is now the most popular politician in NZ, and recently the Alliance almost won a by-election in a National Party stronghold, reducing the Labour Party to a 10% rump.
A key part of this development was the internal struggle of Anderton and others inside the Labour Party, keeping true to the issues and refusing to put "party unity" above the interests of working people.
Why hasn't an equivalent struggle occurred inside the ALP?
Partly because social conditions have not worsened as much here, partly because the NZ Labour Party moved even more grotesquely to the right than Labor in Australia, partly because there has been no leadership as resolute as Anderton and Co and partly because the ALP right has been effective in isolating opposition.
With the ALP National Conference coming up in Hobart, there is no sign that the left is prepared to go to the wire to defeat endorsement of privatisation, extension of uranium mining and up-front fees for tertiary study.
Some kind of deal will be done to save face for the left, while adopting the main lines of the neo-liberal policies of Keating and the right.
Almost all the radicalisation and all the social action are outside the ALP at present. To drag young activists back into the Labor Party would be to strangle the new struggles in their infancy.
The role of the ALP left in social movements has invariably been to attempt to buy them off or limit them to lobbying in order not to embarrass Labor governments.
True, as George Georges states, the attempts at a new left party or alliance did not succeed in the 1980s. There is now a gaping vacuum on the progressive side of politics, not filled by the Greens, the Democrats or the socialist parties.
But the clear need for such a progressive "third force" in Australian politics is keenly felt by thousands who are totally disillusioned by the betrayals of the ALP.
Parties such as the Democratic Socialist Party are helping to do the groundwork for a future alliance or coalition of left and green forces which can begin to build a genuine alternative to the ALP. [Jim McIlroy is the Brisbane secretary of the Democratic Socialist Party.]