Labour parties

["Steve Painter and Rose McCann" <spainter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A review of the discussion on labour parties, and an investigation of the
sociology of labour parties and trade unions in English-speaking countries
with labour parties, from the standpoint of trying to arrive at the best
tactics required to build a class-struggle left wing
By Bob Gould
Part 2.

The traditional labour movement, the Greens and the new shape of Australian
society

In my universe, the politics and sociology of the existing organised working
class movement is one of the most important question in developing a
strategic approach. Here, I'd refer readers to my sociological construct
above, and to the piece on Ozleft, "The People's Choice". Trade unionism has
declined percentagewise from about 50 per cent at its Australian peak in the
early 1970s to about 30 per cent of employed workers now. From a Marxist
point of view, the trade unions and the working class are still the decisive
factor in any conceivable model of working class mobilisation towards the
socialist revolution.

Despite the relative demobilisation of the workers' movement for the past 20
years, it still exists and is reviving. When you run through the major
unions in NSW, located in the blue collar or professional blue collar areas
such as nursing, a number of trade unions in NSW, about which I am
best-informed, have a lively, vigorous and militant existence.

NEW SOUTH WALES UNIONS

There are eight or nine unions in this blue collar area that are growing
again. The most successful union in Australia in terms of growth is the
nurses' union, which has 48,000 members, who are in wages terms sometimes
accused of being "aristocrats of labour" in the sense that constant low-key
industrial struggles have led the NSW nurses union, in particular, to make
significant wage improvements even during the rather adverse Accord period.

Due to certain historical peculiarities, this union has a relatively
democratic structure, with about 300 functioning hospital and professional
branches, eight delegates' meetings each year of representatives of these
branches, and a two-day annual conference of representatives of these
branches.

This combination of constant battles against understaffing, the aspiration
for professional and wage improvements, and the historically evolved
democratic union structure, has produced a government and opposition
situation in this union that originated with the substantial development of
a reform movement in the early 1980s. The ideological dominance of the
militants in this union has kept the union growing, even in the recent
period in which the main official positions have been held by a moderate
group, and the hold of the moderates is always a bit tenuous because of the
existence of the militant group.

The democratic structure of this union allows for a free flow of debate and
argument on major industrial questions, and in practice the aspirations and
policy proposals expressed by the militants, effectively define the
industrial atmosphere, which tends to make the union as a whole a very
potent industrial force, and this situation underlies the atypical constant
growth of the membership of the nurses' union despite the adverse industrial
climate.

It's worth considering this brutal industrial reality: with the decline of
manufacturing industry, in the Sydney region, a city of about 4.4 million,
of the top 10 industrial concentrations of workers numerically, seven are
hospitals and two are universities.
RPA Hospital has 6000, Westmead has 7000, Royal North Shore has about 4000,
and Prince of Wales/Prince Henry has about 5000 workers. The big
concentrations of blue-collar workers these days are in warehouses supplying
the retail trade, covered by the NUW, the trucking and transport industry
covered by the Transport Workers, and the constantly booming building
industry.

On the left of the trade union movement the two unions most in the forefront
of the class struggle are the CFMEU (the building workers union), and the
Liquor and Hospitality Union (LHMU). The CFMEU is also a union of relatively
well-paid "labour aristocrats" whose somewhat better wages and conditions
are totally a product of the class struggle.

The other substantial left-wing union of current significance is the LHMU,
whose members are mainly hotel and hospitality workers who are subject to
the vagaries of the industry and who from time to time have outbursts of
defensive militancy, usually organised by the union.

On the right, the main large union from a militant point of view is the NUW
(the old storemen and packers union) with about 20,000 members, which is a
quintessentially blue-collar proletarian organisation with a large number of
immigrant workers, and which fights very hard for its membership. The
recently deceased, and widely respected, secretary of that union, Frank
Belan, was a Croatian migrant from the Dalmatian coast, who proudly had a
bust of Lenin in his office, but who located himself for tactical reasons
within the NSW right faction. Belan over many years led a number of
industrial disputes in defence of his members' interests, which made him the
bane of the Sydney bourgeoisie in the retail trade. This union has among its
staff of organisers and full-time officials, speakers of nine languages,
almost all blue-collar proletarians out of the workplaces that they
organise. It also has an important institution that has existed for 20
years, a quarterly meeting of the 300 job delegates, which discusses the
current industrial issues and campaigns and is followed by a booze-up paid
for by the union - a very sensible institution from an industrial point of
view.

Other unions with a significant militant industrial aspect that are located
within the dominant right faction of the Sydney Trades Hall are the
Transport Workers Union, the Municipal Employees Union (part of the ASU),
the electrical trades (part of the CEPU), the Australian Workers Union, and
even the HREA (health and research union) which covers non-nursing staff in
the health industry.

All these Labor Council majority unions have a substantial and aggressive
industrial aspect to their activities.

It can't be stressed too much that the far left, particularly the DSP, have
only a very tiny presence anywhere in the blue-collar unions. This is the
case in NSW and in Victoria, despite the DSP's rhetorical interest in the
militant blue-collar unions in Victoria, and it's even more so in the
smaller states.

In the landscape of the Sydney labour movement, the small number of members
of the far left who are involved in unions are almost entirely concentrated
in the public servants' union (CPSU), and the NTEU (the union covering
university staff).

These unions, plus the Teachers Union, are also the three unions in which
there is some  support for the Greens, to the left of Labor. The great
majority of unions, other than these last three, both their full-time
officials and full-time staff, who number in NSW maybe 1000, their lay
committee members, who number probably another 2000, and their shop steward
networks that number another 7000-8000 are solidly located in what can be
described as the Labor Party-trade union continuum, the labour movement in
the cities of Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle and the state of NSW.

Despite all the rhetoric of the DSP, there is such a thing as the labour
movement, with its organisational footprint somewhat smaller, but very
clearly with a still robust reality. It has a physical existence that can be
seen, touched and even smelt.

To try to verbally obliterate the reality of the existence of the Australian
labour movement, the ALP-trade union continuum, by rhetoric about there
being two equal capitalist parties, Labor and Liberal, as the DSP does, is a
very defeatist formula from the point of view of Marxism. It is particularly
bizarre when it's advanced by a formation, the DSP, that is almost
completely located sociologically among the new social layers.

What strategic issues flow from all this?

Well, in my construction: the far left groups should adopt the following
strategic orientation:

. First of all, have a serious discussion of all the historical problems of
the socialist movement, and the outstanding tactical questions, between the
members, as well as the leaders of the socialist organisations, which are
for practical purposes, the ISO, the DSP, Socialist Alternative, Left Press
in Queensland, the Socialist Party in Victoria, some smaller Socialist
groups, and various groupings in the ALP Socialist Left.

. Second, maintain the useful and effective work, done by some of these
groups, in universities and high schools, to interest younger people in
socialism, and recruit some of them to the socialist movement.

. Third, maintain and develop various agitations conducted by the groups,
such as the Campaign for Refugees, the movement against Globalisation, the
agitation against racism, etc.

. Fourth, commence a serious programme of educational work, common to all
the groups, directed at their members and supporters, with a serious
combination of discussion and development of basic Marxism, with examination
of current Australian reality, linked with a thorough, comprehensive and
dialectical account of Australian labour history.

. Fifth, the serious commencement of long term, patient and energetic rank
and file organisation in trade unions and the working class.

In this discussion I have been charged by the DSP and others with advancing
a general perspective that the whole far left should engage in entrism in
the Labor Party. That's not what I've been advancing at all. In modern
Australian conditions, such a perspective of working solely in the Labor
Party would be unrealistic, partly because of such matters as the existence
of the Greens as a mass formation electorally in opposition to Laborism, and
the fact that the betrayals of the Labor leadership constantly reinforce,
particularly in the new social layers, a certain disillusionment with
Laborism, which is almost entirely directed electorally to the Greens.

Personally, I engage in activity as a Marxist in the Labor Party and my
perspective in that work is to assemble and organise like-minded people in
that political environment. I certainly regard the Labor Party and trade
union continuum as a decisive area for socialist activity and intervention,
but it's certainly a complex and increasingly difficult arena of activity.
The Labor Party is a bourgeois workers' party, with deep historic links with
the labour movement and the working class, which show no signs of being
fundamentally broken. This makes any orientation that lightly treats
Laborism as an obstacle that can be removed by pure propaganda, an
unscientific and irresponsible perspective.

I also have the view that in due course Marxists will emerge as quite a
powerful force in the Green movement, but Marxist activity in that movement
will have its own framework and logic, not too dissimilar to the framework
and logic within which Marxists in the Labor Party have to operate.

What I do insist on, is that socialist groups and Marxists outside the Labor
Party-union continuum, and outside the Green movement, should have some
sense of proportion, and face up to the reality of the grip that those two
formations have on the masses in Australia, from which flows the necessity
for a sane united front perspective, rather than the bankrupt exposure
perspective.

The great German military strategist, General Alfred Graf von Schlieffen,
the man who planned the strategy of the German general staff before the
First World War, is famous for the following proposition: "There are four
kinds of officers, first idle and intelligent officers, these make excellent
generals; second, industrious and clever officers, these make excellent
staff officers; third idle and stupid officers, these make excellent
regimental officers; finally, industrious and stupid officers, these are not
to be employed in any capacity whatever."

In relation to the fundamental question of a useful strategic orientation to
the working class, with a perspective of organising for the future socialist
revolution, the "team leadership" of the DSP falls squarely in the fourth
category.


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