On Labor Parties

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I have followed the recent debates on Labor Parties with a good deal of
interest, though with no hope that we will ever get it right.  By "we" I
mean the Revolutionary Left.  Truly we have been scrapping and fighting
over two great issues for the best part of a century. These were the nature
of the Soviet Union and how to relate to Labor Parties.  Time and tides
have taken care of the first issue but we are still there chewing away like
a puppy on what to do about Labour.  To enter or not to enter, that is the
question.  To critical support or not to critically support etc etc.

Well I entered and only Lou Proyect's posts on Lenin managed to pull me out
of the resultant coma.

Politically I agree with Phil Ferguson on Labor. If we look at the mob
around Simon Crean, the labor leader, we see the same mixture -  a petty
bourgeois layer coming up through the academy or the union bureaucracy.
This was the caste that produced the more radical elements of the 60s and
now is producing the most "pragmatic" push of our time.

However I have read Bob Gould's posts with a great deal of interest
generated at least in part out of my respect for someone who has been of
the Left for ever so long. Ours is a cause where staying power deserves at
least some acknowledgement. Nevertheless as I agree with Phil, I don't
agree with Bob.  But there is one caveat which I would like to air.

I strongly suspect that when the working class becomes politically active,
it will do so through the ALP - at least here in Australia. That means for
me that a lot of our criticisms of the ALP do not make sense, to the
working class.  That does not mean we should not make them, but we should
not underestimate the residual loyalty among workers towards the ALP. I
truly hope I am wrong here.  Nothing would delight me more to see the
working class flock into the Socialist Alliance.  Whatever its faults or
weaknesses it is an infinitely  better organisation than the ALP and as
such I fully intend to join it.

However I will continue to vote for the ALP but will use the preference
voting system to send a message.  I will vote Labor second wherever
possible.  That is a very pathetically small gesture, but one I advocate
strongly in my column here in central Brisbane.

In the meantime it is ironic to watch the "pragmatic" maneuvering of the
ALP around two of the key issues for us in Oz - the treatment of the
refugees and the coming attack on Iraq. Opposition to the war is so
widespread in Australia that the Labor leader is forced to enter some
reservations, but there is a strong unwritten agreement between all major
parties that on foreign policy the values of the Right must prevail.

Thus one of the key pillars of Australian political life for ever has been
the insistence from the ruling class that Australia must be part of some
major imperial bloc.  Once that was the British Empire and then it was
America's sphere of influence as leader of the "Free" World.  There is a
question though of whether following the Cold war's ending, whether
Australia can be dragged along in support of the creation of a new blatant
version of the American Empire.

The ground has not been prepared for this.  The rise of a very vicious,
brutal and crude right wing clique in Washington has caught many by
surprise.  We are just beginning to come to terms with the fact that
Wolfowitz & Co mean what they say.  Nothing less than America's hegemony is
at stake here so the struggle will be vicious and it will be fought out at
many levels.  Just for once though the victory of the Right is by no means
assured, at least not here in Oz.

regards

Gary


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