re: DSP and the Labour party

["Gould's Book Arcade" <ggouldsb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A response to Peter Boyle, Jon Strauss, Shane Hopkinson and Nick Fredman on
the Labor Party

It's useful to start by responding to Shane's question as to what industrial
relations changes I was referring to. The fact that readers of Green Left
Weekly and people around the DSP are not too familiar with those changes is
a point in itself.

Australia has two industrial relations systems: federal and state. With the
election of state Labor governments, pressure built up from the unions in
NSW, WA and more recently Victoria for the state systems to reverse the
trend of the previous 10 years or so by restoring the award system,
re-establishing the centrality of trade unions in the industrial relations
system, and downgrading individual enterprise bargaining.

In NSW, changes incorporating most of what the unions wanted were steered
through the lower house by the then industrial relations minister Jeff Shaw.
To everyone's surprise, Shaw also managed to steer most of the changes the
unions wanted through the upper house, which at that time was a bit more
right-wing than it is now.

In WA the Gallup government dragged its feet for a while but eventually
agreed to about 90 per cent of what the unions wanted. In Victoria, the
Bracks government accepted most of what the unions wanted.

Another example of successful trade union pressure on a Labor government was
the resistance to electricity privatisation in NSW. Union agitation, mainly
from the Labor Council and right-wing unions, led to almost unanimous
rejection of electricity privatisation at a state ALP conference, and the
Carr government gave up on electricity privatisation, perhaps only
temporarily, but it hasn't tried again, yet.

Jon Strauss (who can't bring himself to use my first name in his polemics)
and Peter Boyle are obliged to interpret these events by using their
convoluted conspiracy theory about such progressive reforms being the
product of capitalist Labor governments. They develop a schema in which
these extremely useful reforms, from the union point of view, are a
conspiracy by the ruling class to deceive the workers. (This isn't very
different from the view of primitive socialist sectarians who think all
reforms are a capitalist conspiracy and who therefore are indifferent to
them or oppose them.)

Strauss says: "Marxist discussion of the state includes consideration of the
possibility of the state acting in a manner contrary to the desires and
interests of a section of capital, or even the immediate interests of the
whole capitalist class, in order to attempt to support the general,
long-term interests of capital. In general such action represents liberal
politics, while conservative politics represents existing interests." A
cruder conspiracy theory masquerading as Marxism is hard to imagine. Note
the bullshit impersonal formulation: "Marxist discussion, etc". For "Marxist
discussion" read Jon Strauss and Doug Lorimer's opinions presented as some
kind of holy writ to preclude empirical analysis and investigation. The real
world contradicts this schema very sharply. In reality, these days, there is
constant pressure from the ruling class to get rid of all industrial
relations set-ups that entrench any role for trade unions, and the
conservative parties, with the support of the overwhelming majority of the
ruling class, ruthlessly push for eliminating the role of trade unions.

It's only in the bourgeois workers' party, the ALP, that there is
substantial resistance to this anti-trade-union push of the ruling class,
and it's expressed in conflict between the trade union base of the ALP and
some conservative Labor politicians who want to go along with the ruling
class. On these trade union questions, the unions, in recent times, have
frequently been partly successful.

These reforms are even expressed in the idiosyncracies of individuals. Jeff
Shaw put a great deal of effort and ingenuity into getting reforms
favourable to the unions through the NSW parliament, and more power to his
Social-Democratic elbow, in this instance.

A straightforward Marxist analysis and description of the class forces in
conflict within Laborism is useful. A crackpot conspiracy theory that blinds
you to the actual forces in conflict is a substantial hinderance to useful
intervention by Marxists.

These realities are the practical reason why the overwhelming majority of
socialists active in trade unions fight for the maximum trade union
affiliation to the Labor Party, because it is through the maximum
mobilisation of the ALP's union affiliates that pressure is exerted on Labor
governments to achieve trade union objectives.

It's obvious that this affiliation has the negative side that pressure is
exerted on unions by Labor governments. All this underlines is that the mass
labour movement is an arena of conflict. No sterile propagandist preaching
by socialist sectarians like the DSP has ever prevented, for any length of
time, the majority of the more class-conscious unions from participating in
this conflict within Laborism.

PETER BOYLE SUMS UP THE DSP'S MYSTIFICATIONS ABOUT LABORISM IN EIGHT POINTS

Peter Boyle has done us a service in summarising the essence of the DSP's
approach to Laborism and its historical analysis of Laborism. Part of
Peter's eight points are an unacknowledged reproduction of Steve Painter's
1987 introduction to a DSP pamphlet, but he takes this analysis a good deal
further than the earlier piece.

Responding to the electoral upsurge of the Nuclear Disarmament Party in
opposition to the early neo-liberal policies of the Hawke Labor government
and its support for nuclear power, the late national secretary of the DSP,
Jim Percy, took the initiative for a re-theorisation of the DSP's attitude
to Laborism and one member of the then leadership was set to work digging up
supporting material from Lenin and another worked on the empirical
descriptive material.

An empirical turn was thereby made with the ideological buttress of a rather
artificial and essentially incorrect re-reading of Lenin to give greater
weight to the ostensible ideology of political organisations than to their
class composition. It's at this point in the DSP's history that the
exaggerated conspiracy view of Laborism commences, and replaces the previous
approach, which in my view was more correct.

Unfortunately for the DSP, this new orientation became frozen in time and
space. The charismatic general secretary who was mainly responsible for
initiating the turn, Jim Percy,
sadly died young some years later, and a combination of political reverence
for his
memory and the inertial momemtum of the organisation has left this
construction in place ever since.

This set of circumstances is reinforced by the aspect of this turn that has
in fact been quite useful for the growth of the DSP: the DSP has perfected
an organisational emphasis in which it recruits successfully, year after
year, among students, who usually lack any previous knowledge of labour
movements and who quite naturally are repelled by the reactionary side of
the Labor Party.

This process tends to become self-reinforcing and there is little natural
internal pressure in an organisation constructed in this way for any serious
reorientation towards the labour movement.

Another feature of this ideological turn away from the labour movement is a
kind of political amnesia. Internal DSP education has since this turn
focussed almost entirely on the Marxist classics and lessons and analogies
from the Russian and Cuban revolutions, etc, with a heavy emphasis on the
organisational aspects of the extremely authoritarian Cannonist-Zinovievist
version of Leninism. There is little education in the history of the
Australian labour movement.

Even extremely useful texts produced in the past by the DSP, such as Peter
Conrick's history of the Australian labour movement, are long out of print
and never referred to or consulted in the DSP.

The DSP's previous view of the labour movement put the primary emphasis on
the class composition of Laborism and the political and social conflicts
within Laborism. The new theory, buttressed by a schematic and
out-of-context reading of Lenin, places a total emphasis on ideology, rather
than the conflict of class forces, underpinned by sociology.

This excessively ideological emphasis can have a profoundly opportunist
side. Very quickly the DSP was advocating a vote for the Democrats over
Labor on the grounds that on some issues they were to the left of Labor. The
subsequent evolution of the Democrats has underlined what an opportunist
mistake that was, but it was a mistake that flowed from concentrating
entirely on the ideological expressions of politics and not giving enough
weight to the class forces at work.

Peter Boyle's eight points assert that the ALP is not now, and never was, a
workers' party. From the sociological point of view, if you consider Labor's
voting base and its physical support base in the trade unions, this is
nonsense.

But, Boyle says: "Ah, you don't understand. To be a workers' party, you have
to be ideologically a workers' party", with the implication that only his
group is a workers' party, the whole 321 of them.

This is an extravagant construction, and from a practical Marxist point of
view, very destructive. It cuts off those who hold it from any realistic
appraisal of how they might seriously intervene in the existing structures
and organisaitons of the working class.

Practically speaking, the existing structures and organisations of the
working class are the trade unions, a number of community organisations, the
Labor Party, and the relatively new, substantial Green political movement.

Between them, these mass organisations of the working class and the more
radical section of the petty bourgeoisie occupy almost all the social space
on the left of society. Small groups of Marxists are, in this context, a bit
of a sideshow. Their real task is to nut out a way in which they can
intervene and implant themselves in the mass organisations.

A sectarian get-rich-quick posture, in which you arrogate to yourself, in
your own head, the right to political leadership because of your "working
class ideology" and the fact that the ideology of all these mass
organisations is not working class, is a kind of political religion, and
groups that adopt this view of the world and themselves more and more tend
to resemble religious sects.

Part I of two parts. The second part will follow soon.


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Shane Hopkinson wrote: "The [DSP]line as I understood
it was that there are 2 capitalist parties (ie they
are the same). If they are both capitalist parties but
different then why not say that one is one is
bourgeois LIBERAL and one is a bourgeois WORKERS
party?"

Shane, permit me a brief comment, written while I
check emails during my lunch break.

Why not say a bourgeois LIBERAL party and a bourgeois
CONSERVATIVE party? For a bipolar characterisation of
the two major capitalist parties in Australia (the
conservatives in their various forms - United
Australia, Liberals, and so on), this probably serves
best.

This is what is intriguing about Gould's remark "that
most of these [state] Labor governments are right
wing, they frequently do things that contradict the
interests of the bourgeoisie, such as introducing a
large part of the industrial arrangements desired by
the unions in WA and NSW" (in WA, and earlier,
Victoria, this would refer to the partial reversal of
industrial relations legislation, etc, of the previous
Liberal governments; in NSW I can't imagine Gould has
the workers' compensation changes in mind, though).

Marxist discussion of the state includes consideration
of the possibility of the state acting in a manner
contrary to the desires and interests of a section of
capital, or even the immediate interests of the whole
capitalist class, in order to attempt to support the
general, long-term interests of capital. In general
such action represents liberal politics, while
conservative politics represents existing interests.

Against the interest of some sectors of Australian
capital, the ALP helped secure unification of the
Australian colonies, eventually taking Australia into
WWI, (although it opposed conscription). In the 1940s
it developed a welfare state system while suppressing
the strike wave after WWII (first slowing it and
directing it through arbitration; later crushing the
coalminers' strike). In the 1980s it politically
corralled the workers movement into a form of the
neoliberal strategy by which capital is trying to
extricate itself from its long-term structural crisis.

Now Gould cites another liberal action, which tries to
soften the intensity of the class struggle: in both WA
and Victoria there were significant struggles against
the Liberals' legalisation, and today militant
unionism in Australia is centred in these two states.
No doubt the bourgeoisie doesn't like the (perceived)
need for this concession but the liberal ALP has
determined it is needed (indeed its election suggests
it is necessary).

The issue for the workers' movement is: what next? Do
we cheer the Labor government for its efforts which
(seek to) preserve capitalism or do we set about
considering how to use openings it concedes to our
strength to further the struggle to get rid of
capitalism?

The other material, as discussed, is still coming.

Jonathan Strauss1



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Below are eight key elements of the DSP's position on the
ALP. Bob Gould should shoot at these positions and not at
positions the DSP doesn't hold. (Please note that these are
not positions held by the Socialist Alliance. The Alliance's
positions are still in development, and as one would expect
in a multi-tendency organisation, different members and
affiliates have varying views.)

***

1. Though socialists helped to found the ALP and have always
been active within it, and though most of the more
politically conscious workers have *traditionally* given it
their support, the ALP has never been a working-class party.
Today it remains, as it always has been, a liberal bourgeois
party.

2. The trade unions played a central role in the
establishment of the ALP, though they weren't the sole
force. In the 1890s, the formation of the ALP represented an
important political step forward by the trade union
movement. It reflected the realisation that working people
and trade unionists needed their own political arm. But the
ALP *never* became that.

3. The union movement's great step forward of the 1890s was
only ever a partial success. Seeking a political party that
would fight for working-class interests, the unions and
their allies succeeded only in creating capitalism's party
of reform - the one that would step in during times of
crisis and carry out measures that could head off social
upheaval, so ensuring the maintenance of capitalist rule.
Today's socialists must recognise that the great step
forward of the 1890s has become the great obstacle of the
1980s, and be prepared to take all the steps - political and
organisational - that flow from that recognition.

4. The view that the ALP is the political arm of the labor
movement, as distinct from the industrial arm represented by
the unions, carries with it the idea that socialists are
obliged not only to call for a vote for Labor, but to see it
as the fundamental organisational framework for their
political activity. The DSP argues that while it may be
necessary to vote for the ALP as a lesser evil against the
Liberals or Nationals, the only way to really defend
working-class interests is to break politically with the ALP
in every arena, including the electoral and industrial
arenas.

5. For as long as the ALP has existed, some socialists have
chosen to work within it, and some without. The DSP believes
there are times for both courses of action, and at present
the appropriate course is to work from without - to
encourage an organisational break with the ALP and the
formation of a new party.

6. The ALP and the trade union bureaucracy preach unity in
words, but vigorously oppose it, in action. The unity they
want is a unity of passivity in the face of the capitalist
offensive. To the fake calls of the Labor and union
bureaucrats for working-class unity, socialist counterpose
the need for a united front of anti-capitalist struggle.
Such unity can best be built through the broadest
mobilisation in campaigns around specific issues or reforms.
United front campaigns are a mechanism for advancing the
interests of the working class and its allies, and for
helping those who look to the ALP to recognise the need for
anti-capitalist policies and class-struggle methods in order
to defend their in terests.

7. Electoral campaigns present socialists with an
opportunity to address workers at a time of heightened
interest in political issues, and a challenge to do so in a
manner that undermines parliamentarist illusions, rather
than reinforc ing them. The tactic of critical support for
Labor against the conservative parties can be useful in
advancing this goal. The aim of this tactic is to gain a
hearing from workers so as to explain the need to break with
Labor's politics. It is also a specific electoral
application of the united-front tactic.

8. Whatever the exact course of events, because the ALP is
the political instrument of the trade union bureaucracy, the
decisive arena of struggle against Laborism will be the
trade union arena. In the long run, revolutionaries will not
be able to defeat the influence of the ALP over decisive
sections of the working class without defeating the
class-collaborationism of the trade union bureaucracy
through consistent struggle to transform the unions into
class-struggle instruments. On the other hand, the fight to
transform the unions will not be successful so long as the
majority of the organised working class remains politically
imprisoned by Laborism.