re: Labour Parties

[benj <benj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bob Gould wrote (among many other things):
... Ben Courtice is an
enthusiastic, energetic activist of his party, the DSP. He belts
out
extravagant sociological characterisations about yuppies, labour
aristocracies, etc, etc, in dialogue with Ferguson. (I don't much
like
having a go at Ben, despite the fact that I think a lot of his
sociology is
wrong, because in my experience there's another side to him that
I greatly
respect. He seems to me to have a burning personal interest in
Marxist
theory. Over a period of seven or eight years, whenever he comes
to Sydney
he does a systematic trawl through the accumulated Marxist
literature in my
shop and his interests are obviously very wide. He avoids much
verbal
encounter with the heretic Gould, but his inquiring mind is
stronger than
the narrow sectarianism characteristic of a number of the
inhabitants of the
far left groups. He's the kind of bloke who would literally go
into the
gates of hell to find a significant book about the Marxist and
socialist
movement that he doesn't have, and there's always hope for
someone like
that. Courtice's inquiring approach is in fairly sharp contrast
with the
other attitude, characteristic, in my view, of many members of
Marxist
groups in Australia - they remain insulated in the texts and
literature of
their own tendency, and are not interested seriously in much
else. In my
view that state of mind is a great obstacle to political
development.
Happily, Ben Courtice is not like that at all.)

Ben Courtice comments:
Gould's amusing flattery basically amounts to "DSP members good,
DSP leaders bad, DSP members good, DSP leaders bad" etcetera. I
find it somewhat condescending. I'm not so much "afraid of the
heretic" as he implies, I just never thought Gould had much to
contribute to the left, being a stalwart ALP member. I guess the
miracle of the internet means he's going to contribute volumes
now. (Captive audience?) But next time I'm in the shop I'll say
hello, OK, Bob?

I haven't followed every post on this thread but it seems to me
that if one focuses on the sociology of a party like the ALP
there will be much heat and little light. I prefer my
sociological characterisations, but that's not the main point.
The actual struggles that are occurring are very much outside and
frequently _against_ the ALP. To try and orient to local ALP
branches would be plain silly. What will we achieve? What is
there of the left in the ALP?. Now the right factions are often
more left in practice than the opportunists and crypto-Stalinists
of the Left like Lindsay Tanner and Doug Cameron. The most
critical noises at the recent ALP conference (rules conference)
seem to have come from right wing unions.

Running his own bookshop, I don't imagine Gould spends much time
in workplace struggle (unless his employees go on strike?). In
the jobs I've worked over the last eight years, the ALP members
and the ALP-aligned factions have been the most destructive force
in the union (Public Sector Union (CPSU) and Manufacturing
Workers' Union (AMWU)). Anyone remotely recruitable to the
socialist cause, or at least interested in reading socialist
literature, has been non-ALP. In fact ALP members have become
rather thin on the ground since they did such a good job of
demobilising (and occasionally destroying) unions while they were
in government.

Ben Courtice

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