[Marxism] Re: Forwarded from Marcus Strom

[Peter Boyle <peterb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Forwarded from Alex Miller (a letter sent to the CPGB's Weekly Worker):

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


Marcus Ström wrote:

> Democratic Socialist Perspective, the main component of the
> Australian Socialist Alliance, is in a bit of a pickle. Peter Boyle, a
> leading figure in the dominant grouping on the DSP's national
> committee, is in full damage-limitation mode after the
> publication of an article by Greg Adler on its internal divisions
> (`DSP split over future' Weekly Worker December 1)...




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