[Marxism] Political situation in Australia

[Ggregray@xxxxxxx]

As foreshadowed in my trial posting I offer some background on the political
situation in Australia to help place the rather heated discussion about
developments in the DSP/SA in context.
On the electoral level the conservative LIberal-National  coalition under
Prime MInister  John Howard has held power since 1996. It was re-elected in
October last year for further 3 year term.
Importantly the coalition at this election won a majority in the upper house
of parliament
the Senate. This meant that the way was clear for the very conservative
Howard to push through a range of anti-union and anti-worker legislation in the
face of opposition from the Australian Labor Party and minor parties including
the Greens.
In the past week so called anti-terror laws which attack fundamental civil
liberties in the name of the phony war on terror were also passed. In this
instance ,to its disgrace the ALP supported the legislation although as a whole 
it
had called for amendments to the legislation and sections of the left of the
party had been opposed to the legislation as a whole.
The fact that for constitutional reasons the federal government needed the
support of the state governments to introduce this reactionary law and that the
ALP holds power in all the states is a further black mark against the ALP.

The contradictory element in all of this is that there has been a powerful
campaign against the changes to industrial relations law that were passed last
week. On November 15 there were nationwide rallies and marches that drew some
650,000  people. To give this perspective on a proportional basis in the USA a
similar turnout would be about 9million.

In conjunction with these mass demonstration the right-wing leader of the ALP
, Kim Beazley, said that his first action, if re-elected to government would
be to rip up the new laws on the steps of Parliament. The Australian Council
of Trade Unions (ACTU) - roughly equivalent to the AFL-CIO- played a key role
in organising the campaign against the new laws . In the video hook-up shown
nationwide at the rallies the ACTU head, Greg Combet, declared that he would not
comply with the anti-union provisions of the legislation even if it meant
going to prison.

How socialists relate to the ALP and the union movement have been keen
questions for the left here for a long time. The different approaches to these
issues have often been central to disputes between socialist groupings. This is
interestingly illustrated in "Resistance " the book published this year by John
Percy,a forty year long leader of the Democratic Socialist Perspective and its
forerunners.In the early part of the book he gives a brisk history setting
forth the "three main sources in Australia for our revolutionary tradition "
(p18) which he lists as the Industrial Workers of the World; the early Communist
Party of Australia;and the early Trotskyists.
In regard to the ALP he sets out a series of notorious anti-working class
actions by a variety of state and federal Labor governments and  quite
justifiably writes:
"...It's a sorry record- consistently pro-capitalist and anti-working class
when the chips are down.
It's not our tradition. It's not a radical tradition , but an obstacle to the
development of a radical tradition, an instrument to counter radical or
revolutionary developments."
 Later in the book talking about a factional fight in his group in 1972 Percy
writes:
"( The leader of he opposing faction) emphasised the bourgeois nature of the
Labor Party, a correct position that our united party came to adopt in the
1980s. However his current didn"t have a very transitional tactical approach to
the ALP. Their tactical excesses were sometimes taken from Britain - 'Piss in
the polling booths ' was one particularly unmemorable piece of advice offered
to British voters by the IMG's   (International Marxist Group) paper. Our line
was to call for a vote for Labor and to fight for socialist policies." (p261)
The point of quoting the above is not to have a go at Percy but to show how
vexed a matter this is for socialists in Australia and how even in the one
group the approaches have differed over time and between factions.

It is beyond the scope of what I am trying to do here to further discuss the
historical aspect of this issue. Anyone wanting to find out more about it
could usefully read Percy's interesting , but, in my view , self-justificatory
book or check out the Ozleft and Green Left Weekly sites.

The existence of the ALP ,its still strong organised connection to the union
movement and the electoral support it wins amongst the majority of workers
creates a situation that socialists much deal with in any attempt to build unity
and the needed new leadership in the fight for socialist solutuion to the
crisis of the capitalist system. It is,I would argue a very different situation
to,for example, the Democratic Party in the US.
I am not here going to try to set out the"correct" approach to the ALP
question for socialists.

I note, however that it was my view in the Socialist Alliance, that the DSP
had too dismissive a view of how to deal with this and saw the proclamation of
the fantastic policy of reorienting the SA  as a multi tendency socialist
party as, in effect ,a solution to the long term problem.

It might be useful here to briefly explain the  electoral system in
Australia. At federal and state levels voting is compulsory which results in 
much
greater turnout than in the US, Britain or the recent elections in Venezuela for
example. Preferential voting is also available. To explain this a simple
illustration will help. Say there is a vote in seat where there are three 
candidates
A,B and C with A getting 40% B getting 43% and C getting 17%. As I understand
it in the US and Britain B would therefore win the seat. Here if the voters
for C cast second preference votes which went eg 11% to A and 6% to B then A
would end up winning 51% to 49%.

I go into this to point out that socialists who want to contest elections in
Australia have certain practical advantages. They don't have to devote great
effort to turnout the vote and can therefore concentrate on getting those who
are going to vote to consider voting for a sociailist candidate even though at
this stage it has been many years since there was any real prospect of a
declared non-ALP socialist winning a state or federal seat. The other problem 
not
faced here  is the lesser evil one. By this I mean the sort of argument that
even some leftists  made in the US that, for example, a vote for Nader was
wasted and having been taken from Gore helped Bush jr to victory. The 
availability
of preference voting means that a vote can be given to a socialist candidate
even if the voter is not confident that such a candidate has any realistic
prospect of success knowing that a second preference can be given to the Labor
candidate and still count against the conservative candidate.

All of this I suggest makes it more likely that the vote received by a
socialist candidate in an Australian election will be closer reflection of the
underlying level of support than in countries such as Britain and the US. The
failure of the SA to ever get a vote that could be described as significant has
some importance in this context. Undoubtedly however the fundamental difficulty
for any electoral hopes for the SA were objective ones . Included in that is
the fact that the relative electoral success of the Greens who receive some 10%
of the vote and much higher votes in some inner-city seats  sopped up the pool
of voters who might otherwise have at least considered a socialist
alternative.

I'll mention here that the Greens have not won lower house seats nationally
but have won seats in upper houses of parliament in some states and some seats
in the state of Tasmania where there is a system of voting that I will not
even attempt to explain .There are currently two Greens members in the federal
Senate- Bob Brown and Kerry Nettle .Both have taken strong stands on the
anti-union laws,very creditably distinguished themselves from the ALP's craven
support of the repressive anti-terrorist laws. Both of these senators have been
highly identified with a range of left political activities including strong
involvement in the anti war campaign. Bob Brown came to national prominence many
years ago through work in a campaign to save the Franklin River from being
dammed for hydro-electrical production in Tasmania.He is also one of the very 
tiny
number of openly gay elected officials in the country.

There is much more I could write about the overall political situation in
Australia but I think there is a limit to what I should impose on list readers. 
I
am confident that we are entering a very important period in the fight for
socialism with the immediate campaigns around the anti-union laws, the so-called
anti-terror laws and the continuing campaign against the imperialist invasion
of Iraq. I regret the fact that the SA  as dominated by the DSP has proven to
be inadequate to meet those tasks and we must look elsewhere for our allies
in the fight while keeping open a willingness to cooperate with SA members on
all fronts on which that is possible. I hope that even this brief overview of
the political circumstances here leads people to understand that it is
perfectly possible to view leaving the SA as opening to connecting effectively 
with
real struggles without engaging in the DSP/SA fantasy that they are the leaders
of the class struggle.

I want to turn briefly to some issues in regard to the discussion that has
arisen, originally around a piece by me that was posted here and elsewhere in
which I quoted from some DSP internal  bulletins. This has led to a vastly
over-excited discussion in which various DSPers have covered me in vituperation,
misrepresentation, slander and outright lies.

Life is too short for me to chase all these elements of their concerted
effort to discredit me down every possible rabbit hole but I will be doing a
response to a selection of them elsewhere.

I do want to correct a few factual issues  that have arisen possibly more
from misunderstanding than misrepresentation.
A number of people have made mention of Morenoites in relation to me and the
Workers League. I take this to be reference to a belief that I have some
allegiance or connection to the LIT. This is not the case I was not required as 
a
Workers League member to adhere to the LIT and I did not do so- I do not do so
and I have strong political disagreement with the LIT.

On the question of the Workers League the claim that it had 3 or 4 members is
wrong but understandable as we could never convince the majority of our
members to consistently involve themselves in the SA . It required a peculiar
combination of a strong stomach and possibly a lack of good sense to put up with
the way we were treated by the DSP. I am proud of the work I did with the
Workers League in trying to turn the SA from the destructive path the DSP has 
led it
down. I am sorry that we failed.

Finally I want to make it clear that when I resigned from the SA I did so as
an individual. I was not seeking to disaffiliate the WL from the SA. What I
have written since which has been partly the subject of discussion on this list
has not been written at the direction of nor in consultation with the Workers
League. It bears no responsibility for anything that I have written in this
period including this posting.




________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism