BY LISA MACDONALD
Given the current political developments and balance of forces, how can we best strengthen the socialist project? That is, how do we use our resources, experience and the political openings in the present context to win more people to socialist ideas and activity, to extend as much as possible the profile and influence of socialist politics?
It was consideration of this central question that led the Democratic Socialist Party's national executive to propose to its membership that from January next year we cease building the DSP as a public organisation and instead commit qualitatively more resources to building the Socialist Alliance as the primary socialist organisation in Australia.
In the 18 months of its existence, the Socialist Alliance has achieved an enormous amount, in profile and membership growth, in geographic spread and movement building, and in achieving, through comradely collaboration, discussion and united action, a broad consensus about what is a principled socialist approach to the main issues of the day.
There are big opportunities right now to both deepen that left unity and strengthen the socialist pole in this country. The recent breaks from Laborism by important working-class leaderships, alongside the growth of a new layer of radical anti-capitalist, anti-war and refugees' rights activists, indicates that the idea of fundamental social change — the idea that "Another world is possible" — is increasingly attractive to more and more people today.
So the potential for the alliance to grow is great. The question is: how best to realise that potential?
Answering this question requires making an assessment of not only the strengths of but also the limitations on the alliance, both those imposed from outside and those within the organisation.
One of the key constraints on the alliance at present was dramatically underlined on October 19 with the Greens' victory in the Cunningham federal by-election. That result is a major victory for the left, in particular because it will give a big boost to the confidence of working people and the left that the two-party stranglehold can be broken.
The vote for the Greens was not an anti-political party vote (the Greens did not stand as "community independents"), it was not a single-issue vote (the Greens have a broader social justice platform). Most importantly, it was not a vote based simply on local issues — the Greens campaigned as and were seen as the party against the war and for ending the mandatory detention of "illegal" refugees. All of these factors should strengthen our confidence in the objective political basis for the existence of the Socialist Alliance.
Nevertheless, the Greens' recent electoral advances — in the last federal and Tasmanian elections, and in Cunningham — also pose the question: how should socialists respond to the Greens' almost total occupation of the left electoral space in Australian politics?
As socialists, we understand the limitations of the Greens' politics — that the Greens make a crucial error in believing that capitalism can be substantially or permanently reformed in the interests of humanity. And we know that fundamental social change will never be achieved by prioritising representation in parliaments. Indeed, a reformist and parliamentarist perspective inevitably operates to conservatise even the most well-meaning radicals.
But this understanding is not yet generalised, even within the broader left. Cunningham showed clearly that, especially where the Greens have a real chance of winning, the socialist vote will be squeezed out by a generalised impulsion to ensure the Greens get elected.
This squeeze will probably exist for some time in Australia: in Europe it has taken more than a decade of Green parliamentary representation, and especially their holding of the balance of power in some parliaments or participation in coalition governments, for the political limitations of the Greens' politics to be more broadly exposed and for space to open up again for a broadly credible socialist electoral intervention.
It is crucial that the Socialist Alliance continue contesting elections: they are an important vehicle for raising socialist ideas, recruiting activists, strengthening the progressive movements and testing for anti-capitalist sentiment.
Nevertheless, it would be foolhardy to not acknowledge that the rise of the Australian Greens' vote means that even less than previously can the Socialist Alliance hope to grow as a purely, or mainly, electoral formation.
To progress much beyond electoral work, however, means placing more emphasis on building the Socialist Alliance as an organisation that campaigns for radical reforms and for socialism outside the framework of elections. And for the alliance to be become such an organisation, more resources are needed.
To embody and offer more than the Greens, or any other left reformist parliamentary party, the alliance will need to become a framework within which all its members can get together regularly to discuss political developments and organise united work in the social movements and trade unions.
To win newly radicalising activists in the unions and social movements to socialist ideas and activity, the alliance will need to take its anti-capitalist propaganda and the education of its membership in socialist theory more seriously.
To accomplish these tasks, it will need, among other things, a frequently published, campaigning paper.
While the DSP proposal is not in any way predicated on the Socialist Alliance as a whole agreeing to our perspective of developing the alliance into such a campaigning organisation, we think this is the key issue facing the alliance today.
As long as each of the organisations affiliated to the alliance, particularly the larger of these organisations — the DSP and the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) — continue to see their primary activity as publicly building themselves rather than the Socialist Alliance, the alliance will simply not have sufficient resources to meet the potential that now exists for it to develop as the active, campaigning vehicle for socialism in this country.
While it is up to each affiliate organisation to decide on its own course of action, we in the DSP hope that if the DSP's congress at the end of this year votes to stop publicly building the DSP and instead to radically increase the resources we devote to building the Socialist Alliance, this will exert a moral pressure on the other affiliates to follow suit.
This is not an ultimatum, as some in the ISO have alleged, but a challenge. It's a challenge that all the affiliates in the alliance need to consider and to act on.
All of us need to do whatever we can to alleviate the constraints on the development of the Socialist Alliance and thereby help ensure the alliance's future as a growing, increasingly participatory, active and democratic vehicle to advance the cause of socialism in this country.
[Lisa Macdonald is a member of the DSP national executive and the Parramatta branch of the Socialist Alliance. This article is based on a talk presented to an October 24 Socialist Alliance-sponsored public meeting on left unity in Sydney.]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, October 30, 2002.
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