Re: Socialist alternative 'unity' offer to ISO

[NIBS <nibs@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ben wrote:

 >
Holy shit, is there only two competing organisations with
fundamentally the same politics. I thought there were about a
dozen including the tiny ones, I guess Socialist Alternative like
to spend their efforts splitting hairs.

And then:

  On the other hand I
know a few of their members have drifted into Socialist
Alternative, who I think are very sectarian and ultraleft.


Thus it would seem that we in SA are simultaneously identical to the other
groups <and> sectarian and ultra-left -- quite a remarkable achievement.
Still, that's dialectics for you!

Of course, those who bawl loudest about unity are inevitably the most
sectarian -- as evidenced by Alan's decision to adorn his original post
about SA with scare quotes (the DSP proposes unity; SA offers 'unity') or
Gary's diatribe about Mick Armstrong (three words: "Get. Over. It."). But
the claim that no differences exist within the Australian left is probably
the most extraordinary. What was the DSP's thirty year history about, then?
An unfortunate misunderstanding?

Ben suggests the SA document is motivated by the current campaign to turn
the Alliance into a unified party. That's true, up to a point. We've made
no secret of the fact that we think the Alliance has been an unmitigated
failure, and that we think the ISO would do better to have no part in it.

There's been a great deal of discussion on this list about overcoming
Zinovievism. Well, one of the worst legacies of the Stalinised Comintern is
the failure to ever compare predictions to reality.

When the Alliance first formed, its convenors talked up its immediate
electoral prospects. It was, you see, poised to tap into the discontent
within the ALP (that's why it remained the Socialist Alliance rather than
adopting a name likely to appeal to anti-corporate protesters).  How did it
pan out? The Alliance generally polls less than one per cent, consistently
scoring less than the far-right crackpot sects and joke candidates. As has
been reported, in the Cunningham by-election (with its name registered and
all),  it managed eleventh place in a field of thirteen (behind the
Christian Fred Nile group and Australians for Further Immigration).

When the electoral unviability of the Alliance became obvious, its boosters
argued instead that it would draw into its orbit layers of unaffiliated
activists. Did this happen? No, it did not.  Insofar as the Socialist
Alliance has a presence in demonstrations or campaigns, it comes from
members of the ISO, the DSP and the various microsects.

Indeed, that seems to be the main achievement of the Alliance to date -- it
has turned the two biggest groups inwards, into an alliance with every
weird fragment of Trotskyism, at precisely the time real prospects for an
outward orientation are beginning to emerge.

What about the DSP's unity proposal?

Well, what's the basis for this unity? In the past, socialist tendencies
have come together on the basis that a new layer of activists exists which
can discipline the various groups and allow the competing ideas to contend
before a genuine audience. Is that the case in the Socialist Alliance? No,
it clearly is not. A membership so passive that it couldn't even be
mobilised for the massive anti-war demo a week or so ago in Melbourne can
hardly be expected to  discipline the various tendencies within a unified
party.

The other traditional basis for regroupment comes from advances in the
class struggle which transcend the traditional differences between groups
-- as, for instance, when the Russian revolution allowed elements of
the  Australian Socialist Party, the Victorian Socialist Party and other
pre-Bolshevik sects to come together as the Communist Party.  Can anyone
seriously suggest this has happened in Australia?

In fact, the politics of the DSP and the various microsects remain entirely
unchanged. The only real 'development' -- and it's this that's provided the
real basis for the Alliance -- is that a few years ago the ISO received
orders from the SWP mothership to form a Socialist Alliance, which it
dutifully did. In a not unrelated development, the ISO entered a protracted
internal crisis.

Indeed, despite all the noble talk about unity, the DSP proposal involves a
fairly conscious attempt to fish in the ISO's troubled waters (as
individual DSP members privately acknowledge). Now, if the DSP dissolves
into the Alliance, what's going to happen?

Well, if the SWP doesn't give the ISO permission to do likewise, the
Alliance will quickly collapse. If the DSP membership begins working full
time in the Alliance when no other groups are, they will assume de facto
control. Anyone with any experience of politics surely recognises this.
Under those circumstance, the ISO will disaffiliate (in fact, they've
already said as much) and the basis for the Alliance will cease to exist.

On the other hand, what happens if  Britain gives the ISO the nod to
dissolve itself? The younger ISO members (who are all scathing of the
Alliance project) will jump ship, most likely join the anarchists  (as so
many of them have already done). The Alliance itself  an organisation, let
us not forget, consisting almost entirely of Trotskyists and
ex-Trotskyists  will enjoy internal peace for about ten minutes until
internecine warfare breaks once a real struggle occurs. After all, as
recently as 1999, the DSP distinguished itself by campaigning for
imperialist troops to be sent to East Timor -- a demand that was correctly
opposed by the rest of the Marxist left. How in God's name would the
Alliance cope with such a situation?

In the inevitable internal crisis, most ordinary people will bail. The DSP,
however, has some experience with factional warfare (the NLP, the NDP, the
SPA, etc ) and doubtless thinks it will pick some people out of the rubble.
The ISO  -- which these days is neither terribly  organisationally nor
politically cohered -- will implode, thus providing (a la Jim Higgins) more
years for the locust.

Though the ISO is our main competitor on the far left, we do not think that
its destruction is a good thing. That's the basis on which we want to
engage with the ISO -- we do not want to see another generation driven out
of politics, in the way that so many ISO members were during the nineties.

We share a similar tradition to the ISO, which provides some basis for
unity. Of course, we have major differences with the operation of the group
over the last decade, but we think those can be worked through. One of
them, obviously, is to do with the Socialist Alliance. There's a real
potential for an anti-war campaign in Australia. It seems to us that
socialists should be concentrating on that (yes, even working together!)
rather than engaging in intrigues in the tiny ponds of the far left.

Jeff Sparrow
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Jeff Sparrow
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"Comrades, cling to your principles! Be men and women! We are fighting for
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J.W.Fleming, 1889



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