[Marxism] re: Australian Socialist Alliance

[Dave Riley <dhell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

To follow up my previous post on this thread. I need to address the notion that 
Dave Riley is 'defending his mates' in the DSP. Well it's  bit more than that.

As I pointed out before I had been ill in the period after the June conference 
of the Alliance, but when I recovered, my first act was to join the DSP last 
month. So, to state the obvious,maybe I do know much more than Greg Adler about 
the debates in the DSP as I have spent some time catching up with them , even 
submitting my own two bob's worth -- and given my very active role and 
leadership activities in the SA these past three years I also do know a lot 
about the Alliance..maybe even more than Greg does or thinks he does.

But the interesting question is why did I join the DSP? I had been a member in 
the past, that's true, but  usually a past membership of a socialist formation 
is an excuse not to re-join(as many members on this list attest). And in one 
sense thats' true as I had come up these last  36 years through far left 
politics and know the milieu and its frustrations. I'd even been retired -- 
'bolshevik emeritus' as I called myself -- from activity  for a few years. 
Indeed I had no intention of being re-activiated what so ever.

But what got me back in the saddle was my passion for regroupment and the 
promise of the Socialist Alliance once the DSP signaled its major turn towards 
it in late 2003. If you check the exchanges on this list at that time  you'll 
find many threads dealing with that issue and my own contributions to that 
exchange. This presented a remarkable opportunity for socialist politics to 
reboot itself in this country.

But now, three years down the track, when I looked at the state of the left 
here in Australia -- it was obvious that the major factor driving regroupment 
in this country is(or still is!) the collective membership of the DSP. I think 
thats' an incontestible fact. And I wanted to support that as this process 
would not be possible if the DSP wasn't fostering it. Sectarian whingers may 
want to read any number of bogeyman scenarios into the DSP's activity but the 
reality is that the DSP has become synonymous with that core trajectory. 
Handled by any of these other elements -- if that is even imaginable! -- and 
that promise would have been squandered long ago.

And it hasn't been only I who thinks that way as other non DSP members of the 
SA have signed on as I have done -- no doubt for the same reasons. Let';s just 
say, that we know the good oil when we see it and aren't blinkered by rabid DSP 
baiting.

As you gather, there is a tendency in the DSP who would prefer it otherwise -- 
but according to the adage that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, it 
is the DSP who has relentlessly  charted a determined course designed to 
coalesce the amorphous left in this country.And over the last three years the 
DSP has garnered a lot of experience engaging that dynamic, as I have.

So I know the limitations and I know the potentials and take pleasure in the 
gains...

When I joined the DSP I did so in the wake of the June 30 trade union actions 
which were a harbinger to November 15 -- so I was very aware how crucial this 
campaign was to the future, not just for the trade unons here, but also for the 
very survival of some form of organised socialist politics.

The sick irony of Adler's deprecation is that he chooses to selectively out the 
DSP during the very week the Industrial Regulations  Bill is before parliament. 
How inopportune is that? Here we are facing the biggest struggle the left and 
trade union movement has faced for decades and some among us on the left want 
to petulently indulge in  sectarian potshots for the sake of assuming a 
preferred smugness.

I approach that challenge very differently: I choose to throw in my lot with 
that current which is dedicated to engineering some broader alliance among the 
isolated activists in the trade unions and other sectors so we can work to 
encourage  the biggest conscious  fightback within our collective means.

As I suggested before in an earlier post, rather brutally I guess, my 
disappointment with other organised sectors on the left here is immense --and 
the last three years has soured my view of all of them. I wonder: are they 
capable of learning ANY lessons from their determined isolation and inwardness?

The other related issue is an important one I think and this topic is taken up 
in a polemic against Adler and Strom on the Socialist Unity Network site:

Broad Socialist Parties and the Cadre Question  by Andy Newman
http://www.socialistunitynetwork.co.uk/index.htm

I have  had a lot of exchanges with Andy about regroupment politics as we have 
swapped our individual experiences (by email!)-- he in the UK and me in 
Australia/ he was ex SWP and I was ex DSP -- and I think it's true that there 
is an important relationship between regroupment, broad party building and the 
cadre question. It is this topic too that goes to the heart of the debate in 
the DSP and underscores the success of the Scottish Socialist Party. Without 
'cadre' I think it is nigh impossible to pull these projects off.

Adler and his cronies on the left --either ideologically signed up or floating 
--  deprecate the cadre question as the MAJOR PROBLEM  with these regroupment 
enterprises. That somehow the SA's fatal flaw was the DSP's determined 
commitment to the project! This is why the facile  turning away of the small 
affiliates has impacted so on the SA as it isn';t about a sentimental notion of 
"unity" for its own sake but very much a question of how many hands would take 
turns at the wheel.

We Marxists want to talk on and on about the crisis of leadership but when we 
are offered the helm, even in such a small beginning as the SA, so many of us 
prefer to return to the bunker.

The DSP, fortunately, is not like that and the impetus that this project has 
generated over the past three years is such that in confronting the challenge 
indicated by November 15 we in the SA (which includes other forces besides the 
DSP -- but not now Greg Adler )are much better placed to relate to its 
potential and promise than any other format the left has created for donkey's 
years.

So maybe the real ask at the present time is not what is happening inside the 
DSP but whether the Socialist Alliance can rise to the challenge presented by 
the politics before it. I'm sure that we have a a large audience,  both locally 
and overseas --all watching to see if this project is at all relevant to  
working people.


dave riley

_________________________________________
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http://ratbaggy.blogspot.com/
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