Re(1): revolutionary factionalism

[ben <benj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think Louis has a certain point. The DSP admits it has what Alan
Bradley previously referred to as a "semi-sectarian" existence. The
working class has been atomised and demoralised for some time in
Australia. We are isolated from workers' struggles. We can't help that.
In those circumstances we have achieved a rather remarkable political
homogeneity. This is not because we don't think, we consciously organise
education where comrades read Lenin, Trotsky, Marx, Engels, Cannon,
Castro etcetera (not necessarily in that order). Rather, in the absence
of struggle it's hard to formulate different political perspectives, and
those we have been carrying have seemed to work (certainly we've
survived pretty well where the much bigger CPA, SPA, Labour Left, etc
have vanished).

When I say "absence of struggle" I mean relatively of course. During the
1990s political campaigns tended to be very short lived, even if they
drew large crowds of supporters for a rally or two. There were no groups
of left activists outside the DSP who stuck at it long enough to form
any meaningful "broad inclusive revolutionary front". Except the other
socialist groups, and it's taken a long time for all of us to even get a
common electoral platform. For most of this time the Greens have been
small and fairly conservative in most states. Electoral alliances with
them have occurred (in Victoria--a non-aggression pact in a state
election) but they don't want anything formal.

I don't doubt that in the times to come, we'll have more political
disagreements, maybe factional, in the DSP. And the DSP itself could
potentially dissolve into the Socialist Alliance (something like the
Scottish Socialist Party experience) further down the road. We aren't
inflexible or superglued to current perspectives. But the concept of
"revolutionary factionalism" won't be dropped. That is, while we're
always willing to learn from the movements (like the Seattle-inspired
movement which has revived civil disobedience tactics for example), we
don't make some effort to invent differences between ourselves when they
don't exist, and we do try to reach "homogeneity"--more popularly called
"consensus", and a voluntary consensus at that. It makes it so much
easier to work in the movements, and explain our ideas, if we have one
set of ideas.

Alan Bradley wrote:
> First, there is _no_ way that the DSP could "grow much more rapidly". It is
> a total fantasy to think otherwise.
That's true in the sense that the DSP as is won't grow much more
rapidly. But that's exactly what Louis is criticising us for. However,
the DSP is not only trying to grow by incremental recruitment. We are
trying to build a larger party (which would not be, but would include,
the currrent DSP) by many and flexible means. I've mentioned the
Socialist Alliance. We would like this to regroup the existing Marxist
currents into one party. If that happened, a lot of unaffiliated
individuals would also join. That would create a party maybe three or
four times the size of the DSP. If the militant union current that
exists in Victoria, or parts of it, join the Socialist Alliance (as
individuals, as a political current, but we don't agree with union
affiliation), that would qualitatively and quantitatively move the
Socialist Alliance onto a higher level. How would the DSP operate in
this? We would defend Marxist ideas, and argue for revolutionary tactics
and strategy, like any other Marxists in the party. This might, at least
initially, involve caucusing (as the DSP, or with others) to discuss
these perspectives (Louis probably disagrees with that, but until our
practice tells us otherwise, we'll keep doing what seems to work for
us).

We _are_ trying to build a "broad inclusive revolutionary front".
Whether Cannon or even Lenin were right or wrong is a side issue really.
We choose to read them, and read particular lessons into them. As a way
of thinking about the present. But we also take great stock of our own
experience, we haven't learned our perspectives from reading history
books but by being "in the middle of things" as Louis concedes. And if
we ask people to adopt a perspective because Lenin or Cannon said
such-and-such so many decades ago, we'll get nowhere; we always have to
test our ideas and arguments against the living situation. I think
there's a bit of truth in what Peter Boyle suggested: Louis, by telling
us categorically NOT to think about Cannon, is adopting a far less
flexible position, far more based on generalisations about the past.

Louis, its easy to say that the July 26 movement, or the MST in Brazil,
or the PRD in Indonesia, or whoever, are doing "better". They have/had
mass struggles to be involved in, and if they were failing in this
regard it would be fairly easy to see. But--often in the imperialist
countries, less often elsewhere--when there are no mass struggles, it's
a bit unfair to say "you are doing it all wrong, you should be much
stronger" and so on. That's why, despite all our criticisms of (for
example) the ISO, particularly their theoretical basis (state
capitalism, support Labour as the "workers' party", economist reading of
Lenin etc etc etc) we've been quite willing to work with, talk with and
consider merging with them in the SA. They are unwilling unfortunately.
But we believe in testing theories in struggle, and unless they
decisively leave the revolutionary camp, we'll keep our communications
with them (and others) open.

Can you name a comparable situation to Australia today (or the USA)
where a party is testing your ideas in struggle? That's not a rhetorical
question. I'd like to know. The SSP? The LCR? Rifondazione? (How about
Camejo's examples, Causa R and the New Zealand Alliance? but that's
being a bit cheeky and is rhetorical).

Lastly: having just written all this, I've noticed yet another list
digest in my inbox, with 1000s more messages on this topic. So I'll post
this off before I read them all or my message may get too long.

solidarity
Ben Courtice
http://home.connexus.net.au/~benj


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