Re: Convincing practical alternative to the "sect" form ?

[Shane Hopkinson <s.hopkinson@xxxxxxxxxx>]

This is a great post. Its the sort of sharing of experience that we need.
It begins by identifying the issue of opportunism versus sectarianism
which every socialist seeks to steer a path between and a lot of pointless
debate could be avioded if we all realised that everyone is trying to aviod
this and disagrees about the balance others strike.

> From: Jurriaan Bendien <j.bendien@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
>
> The problem was always to negotiate this basic contradiction of unity and
> principle somehow (there are of course other contradictions), and the way
> to do that seems to be (1) to actually go and discover through
> investigation what actually concerns or moves ordinary working people in a
> political sense,

Right but the problem is that in many cases what moves them aint progressive.
So we try and pick the issue that people move on in a progressive direction and
support that presently this is Refugee Rights - (challenging racism in the 
working
class is an historic task for socialists in Australia) and defending the 
'Skilled Six'

and the AMWU militants in Victoria.

> (2) realise that you cannot deal with all of that simultaneously,

We have to do what you can we 300 or so well trained people.

> (3) filter the various issues through your own political
> understanding in an appropriate way ,(3) pick a relevant issue (or issues)
> out that comes up that meets certain criteria, such as your personal
> ability to tackle it, political relevance, consistency with your own
> beliefs etc.

So we run on issues that have meaning for socialists and progressives.

> (4) make very sure that it is an issue where you have a pretty
> good chance of winning it, however modest the issue may be, and where you
> can define clearly what it means to have won it, making sure it is easy for
> people to join in

Not so sure about this.  I think you are thinking on a local level but there is
point in a principled stand. We can't win much even with good activists the aim
is to mobilise others, so we are part of the Refugee Rights movement and part
of Defending the AMWU.  I think these campaigns will be won (the militants
will keep their positions and the union will be stronger - not sure if the 
Greens
are involved in this at all?).  Ending Mandatory Detention can be achieved if
people can be mobilised to protest enough.

> (5) then work on it as a team, communicating well, until
> you get results, where your constituency can actually see that you've won
> it. Since there is nothing that succeeds like success, every little success
> you have encourages more success.

Sounds good.

> This, put in a maybe naively simplistic summary way, is what the Dutch
> Socialist Party did (using basically the Maoist conception of the "mass
> line" or a variant of that which some detractors call "populism"),

Sorry Jurriaan you'll have to remind me about the 'mass line' thing.  Populism
in my vacobulary means ignoring class which doesn't sound Maoist.

> and they
> have about 30,000 members in 20 years hard work. A purist might well argue
> they attained this unity at the expense of "hard" Marxist principles, but
> there's no denying that their method works. Once you get people joining
> you, a cumulative dynamic sets in, because ordinary folks like to join
> something that is growing, successful, visibly effective and above all big.
> I am not saying the SP project is without problems, to the contrary. You
> can get too focused on party growth, for instance. But they were able to
> get real political influence where others failed, that is the only point I
> am making here. It can be done (see www.sp.nl).

The website looks good. Is there a Green party in Nederlands? What are
the SP's roots?

>  SA was conceived as a "party-movement", some
> way between a cadre party and a campaign coalition. We were all socialists,
> and we would work together on issues of common concern.  We saw the
> elections as an opportunity to talk socialism with ordinary people, and we
> wanted some practice. We were interested in a real dialogue. We had two
> basic slogans, "participatory democracy" and the "shorter working week",
> and we tried to "sell" this to a district electorate, covering thousands of
> households. It was enjoyable, we had media coverage, people found it
> worthwhile to do this, but we got few votes, few new members and little
> real political effect. We were really just acting as the "conscience of the
> Left".

Interesting observations.  I like the SP's website.  My first impression is
that it is visionary. I wonder if we haven't tried to inspire people with
'concrete' demands which are fine but not putting
enough energy into the visionary aspects of Marxism.

> In retrospect, the problem seemed to be really that we hadn't followed the
> kind of method sketched above. Our two slogans hadn't been distilled out of
> a real study of political opinion, they were just two things we hoped would
> catch on, and we were trying to see whether they would catch on. <snip>

I see - I think you need to move where people are moving already. In fact I 
guess
when are small you don't have much choice. Still interesting experiences.

> I happen to think that a lot of far-left projects failed simply because
> they don't follow one or more of the five or so criteria mentioned above,
> and I have given an illustration of how that could happen. That would be my
> main point in this mail. You have to pick a fight where you have a real
> chance of winning something tangible in the eyes of your constituency. Many
> far left projects don't even do that. Either they don't believe they can
> win anything in the present situation ("optimism of will, pessimism of
> intellect"), or they try to win something they cannot possibly win. Or
> perhaps they fight without even especially wanting to win anything specific.

Perhaps you have a point. Winning is important but most of us are too small
to do that so we participate in whats moving people.  More thought should
go on how to win or how to lay the basis for winning in the future. The Left
certainly needs a win badly.

> Of course, I haven't got the philosophers stone. I make no claim whatever
> to have discovered anything like a "fool-proof" political method or
> anything like that; there are no such guarantees in politics, and we always
> have to do with PERSONALITIES who have their individual strengths and
> weaknesses or ideosyncrasies.

I don't think personalities are so much the problem as making a leadership
team which works collectively.  Personality clashes (which may be not
quite what you meant) in my experience occur when you haven't got the
politics, leadership dynamics right and its manifests in personal clashes
instead of political ones.  Its very hard to aviod in societies which are so
individualistic..

Many thanks for these observations.

Cheers

Shane


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