[Marxism] A Glasgow Kiss for Greg Adler (and Weekly Worker)

[glparramatta <glparramatta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A Glasgow Kiss for Greg Adler

<>I am writing to comment on Greg Adler’s contribution to Weekly Worker 
603, “DSP split over future”.

<>I joined the (Australian) Socialist Alliance in January 2004; the NSW 
State Conference elected me on to the SA National Executive in April 
2005, and the SA National Conference in June 2005 did so too. My main 
work within SA has been chairing the Green Left Weekly–Socialist 
Alliance Liaison Editorial board, a board charged with overseeing the 
production and publication of material relating to Socialist Alliance 
within the leading left-wing newspaper in Australia, the DSP-owned Green 
Left Weekly.<>

The main reason I joined SA in January 2004, after a decade-long hiatus 
in political activity, was the fact that the Socialist Alliance was 
taking concrete steps to transform itself from a loose elections-only 
alliance of socialist groups into a united, broad “multi-tendency” 
socialist party, a kind of party loosely resembling the inspirational 
Scottish Socialist Party <>.

Following the National Conference of SA in June 2005 I decided to join 
the DSP. Why? The main reason was that my experience within SA since 
January 2004, at branch, state and national level, clearly told me that 
the main engine driving the move towards the formation of a broad, 
united socialist party in Australia was the DSP. Indeed, the DSP had 
voted in December 2003 to begin putting its considerable assets at the 
disposal of SA, including a relationship with its highly successful 
paper Green Left Weekly.

Week in, week out, I had ample opportunities to compare the approach of 
the DSP members working within SA – diligent, practical, politically 
sophisticated, non-sectarian to a fault, friendly, and often even 
charming – with the approach of the members of many of the smaller 
groups affiliated to SA – sectarian in the extreme, motivated by a 
desire to promote the perceived virtues of their own tiny sect to the 
complete disregard of the cause of left-regroupment, dogmatic, 
underhand, unhelpful, rude, politically unintelligent, and (sorry 
folks!) BORING. This was borne out in particular in the debates that 
raged over the relationship between Green Left Weekly and Socialist 
Alliance.

The DSP, recognizing that a nascent political party needed the formal 
backing and support of a newspaper, put control of SA material in GLW 
under the control of a board democratically elected by the Socialist 
Alliance. None of the other affiliated groups with newspapers were 
prepared to match this offer or to do anything comparable. Indeed, the 
lack of actual commitment of the other groups to the cause of founding a 
united socialist party in Australia manifested itself in an attack on 
the whole idea of a formal relationship between SA and GLW, an attack 
that I frequently experienced at first-hand as a participant in the 
GLW-SA liaison board.

I hope that at least partially explains why I joined the DSP in June 
2005. I had seen the DSP comrades attacked time and time again by 
sectarian bigots for their efforts in trying to establish a left 
regroupment party project in Australia, and more than anything else I 
felt a need to display some solidarity with them in their struggle 
against the sectarian opponents of a broad left party project.

Greg Adler’s contribution, then, failed to surprise me. It exhibits 
exactly the qualities that so turned me off from (many of) the smaller 
affiliates in SA. For one thing, it is underhand. Adler has put into 
public circulation a set of quotes from documents that he knows were 
intended for private circulation only. He has done this without the 
permission of the writers he quotes and without the permission of the 
DSP. Moreover, by taking the quotes out of context he has presented a 
crude snapshot of the views of the writers he quotes that is incomplete 
and open to the grossest distortion. Having read the documents he has 
pilfered for quotes, I think I can say that he succeeds in representing 
certain of the authors as having views that are actually the exact 
opposite of those they explicitly hold! Of course, Adler’s reply to this 
is to challenge the DSP to publish the internal discussion in full. By 
why should the DSP do that? Why should the DSP be forced into making 
public a private discussion just because some blinkered sectarian has 
illicitly published a selection of quotes that grossly distorts the 
views of some of its members?

More importantly, Adler has attempted to create the impression that the 
outlook he tries to pin on the writers he mangles is that of the DSP. It 
should be noted that Adler has pilfered and mangled these quotes from a 
pre-congress discussion. The DSP has yet to vote on the nature of its 
continuing relationship with SA (this will take place at the DSP 
Congress in early January). What gives Adler the right to attempt to 
undermine or pre-empt internal democratic processes taking place within 
the DSP?

In conclusion, it is perhaps worth reflecting on some figures. Adler is 
a member of Workers League, which as far as I am aware has a membership 
of around 3. Under the leadership of the DSP, and in the teeth of 
sustained sectarian obstruction from the likes of Workers League, the 
Socialist Alliance has grown from an organization consisting of a few 
hundred members belonging to the founding affiliates (of which the DSP 
was the largest) to a fledgling political party of around one thousand 
members, the majority of whom are not in any of the founding affiliates 
and who clearly favor the attempt to build a new broad-left 
multi-tendency socialist party in Australia. The whole regroupment 
process is of course very delicately balanced and fraught with 
difficulty, but the numbers surely speak for themselves. Adler’s 
contribution has one aim and one aim only: to derail that regroupment 
process, by fair means or foul.

Alex Miller


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