Re: Where, oh where has the SWP gone?

["Alan Bradley" <alanb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jose's comments are very interesting.  I've added a couple of comments
about where the DSP fit in, since we are part of the picture of the
decomposition of the SWP tendency.

I've added this bit last:  Actually it has turned into quite a bit of a
rave in its own right, but what the hell.

> From: "Jose G. Perez"
> At the beginning of the 90s, the current around Barry Sheppard, Caroline
> Lund and Malik Miah were in SA; they left apparently over differences
> over regroupment and the SA's organizational policies.

These are pretty much the comrades who are closest to the DSP at the
moment.  We do supposedly have some differences with them.

There is quite an interesting difference in the way the DSP relates to
these comrades and the SWP relates to its comrades in Australia and
elsewhere.  We recognise that Barry and co are veteran comrades of the US
left, and former serious leaders of the SWP and the Fourth International:
they are equals.  The SWP on the other hand, treats its overseas comrades
like flunkies.

Guess what tipped off the DSP (then the Australian SWP) that the US SWP was
going nuts?  You guessed it:  they tried to convert us into puppets.  Ever
since then the DSP has had an allergy to the all too common kind of
"Internationalism" where a central organisation, often centred in London or
New York, sometimes in Paris, Buenos Aires, or wherever, sets up a bogus
network of little sects in other countries and dubs it an International.
Alternatively, they can do the same, but not call it an International:
this is how the IS Tendency works.

Having said that, the DSP has a whole bunch of friends and allies around
the place:  but most of them are in organisations with their own distinct
histories and seasoned (or at least rapidly developing) leaderships.  In
fact, the DSP is probably the _smallest_ party in its "international
tendency", (if I can use the term at all).  That is, the other groups are
nothing resembling clients of the DSP - and that is how it MUST be.

For the record:  the DSP does not consider the Fourth International (USec)
to be one of these "bogus networks of little sects", despite other
differences.  Then again, the DSP is not averse to working with members of
these "bogus networks" when it is appropriate, either.

> The SF comrades around Nat, if I can engage in a gross
> oversimplification, viewed themselves, I think, as continuing the
> politics of the Hansen-Barnes-Moreno-Percy Leninist-Trotskyist
> tendency/faction.

Cough cough!  Hansen-Barnes-Moreno-Percy indeed!

Well, OK, fair cop, I guess.  I have heard of Jim Percy being described as
Jack Barnes' hatchetman.

The DSP doesn't play this game so much, as we really have to draw whatever
legitimacy we can gather from our actions in the class struggle in
Australia.  If we were pushed, we might go for being a continuation of the
Cannon-Hansen tendency, although we would never express it in such silly
terms.

(And we never refer to ourselves as Percyites or other forms emphasising
the role of the Percy brothers.  In any case, Jim Percy is dead, and John,
while National Secretary, is a much more laid back character.  If you want
to put names to our most influential party leaders you would have to look
elsewhere.)

Of course, if we did want to play "Revolutionary Continuity", we could say
that _we_ were the continuation of the Cannon-Hansen line, and they, in
turn, were Trotsky's closest allies during the Coyoacan period, and since
Trotsky was the political heir of Lenin, then the DSP are the heirs of
Lenin!  Oh yeah.  More Nitrous Oxide please...

> In both cases, if my memory is right, what drove these cdes. up the wall
> was Jack Barnes's avowed attempt to modify/ditch Trotsky's theory of
> permanent revolution ("Their Trotsky and Ours"). I believe this was an
> overwhelmingly false and sterile debate on the level of abstraction it
> was handled.

The DSP ditched permanent revolution too, on basically similar grounds to
the SWP (Nicaragua).  We didn't go nuts (I think).  We don't use it as a
shiboleth though - I can't see any particular reason why someone who
believes in PR shouldn't join the DSP.  On the other hand, FI people
occasionally feel the need to get stuck into us about it, and it has been
used as an excuse by some sectarians for why they can't join the DSP.
Their real reasons lie elsewhere, I tend to think.

Personally I regard it as a non-issue:  a piece of paper written in some
other decade/century.

> Also I think most of us who came through the shipwreck are perhaps less
> inclined to demonize people over differences. We've lived long enough to
> know that today's "menshevik revisionist betrayer" may be your only ally
> on some issue tomorrow.

There's nothing quite like watching your party (or your party's closest
ally, in our case) disappearing into a sectarian swamp.  There's a real
sense of there but for the grace of god...

Finally, for what it's worth, the DSP is in a pre-conference discussion
period at the moment.  Noone is going to be expelled, and hopefully noone
will walk out, but we are going to have to use scrubbing brushes to get the
blood off the walls... Vigorous debate is alive and well.

Alan Bradley
alanb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx