[Marxism] Re: About Socialist Alliance

[Dave Riley <dhell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In answer to Tom -- I was being a bit non specific there and you are right. I 
was thinking from the eighties as the final decline of the CP set in then.

I am aware of its weight in the fortes, etc but I was trying to arrive at a  
relativity that could give some feel for the SA's industrial context.

As you know the post sixties left has been marginalised from the trade union 
movement pretty much consistently for the past 30 + years. Despite any number 
of attempts to relate to class struggle aspects in a  consistent way  --and 
despite occasional significant successes -- there has been no ongoing merging 
between the new left and any class struggle thread.

My point was that in terms of that historical sweep this was a significant plus 
under the SA umbrella that most commentators ignore  that primarily because of 
their rather ghettoised outlook. What we have here is a developing partnership 
which all attempts to denigrate the SA and dismiss it have not, thus far, been 
able to thwart.

I'm not suggesting that this is therefore an easy route or   a fait accompli or 
that it is without cultural distress --and suddenly the red flag is once again 
being grasped by the working class. Far from it.  But the dynamic is potent -- 
although still  very limited.

Of course that isn't nationally consistent either. It's not as though we can 
point to this sort of partnering all over the country. But it surprises me-- 
yes surprises even me! -- that it has legs, even in my class struggle back 
water of  Brisbane.*

So in referring to the CPA I was trying to give some meaning to that weight by 
comparing it with say, what I should have said, the CPA after Labor was elected 
in 1983 and the party was pushing the Accord bandwagon -- a very eighties thing.

The other related issue is , I guess, more to the point. IF the  SA is as you 
suggest --- moribund (whatever thats' supposed to mean forensically) -- what 
does that say about the whole left given that we are now entering a period in 
which the trade unions and on-the-job wages & conditions are supposed to be 
done over by Howardism?

IF the SA is moribund,  then the WHOLE socialist  left needs to look to its 
guns and work out what it will do about this major threat that bears down upon 
us all.  But I' don't see that happening, do you? (Certainly not outside the SA 
in my experience!) What I see instead is a trek back to the bunker, wagon 
circling and a projection of a lot of this  angst  onto the Socialist Alliance  
-- rather than a brave facing up to the problem of the fast approaching express 
train.

Because we know if the trade unions go down WITHOUT A FIGHT  then the whole 
progressive agenda gets put back as a consequence. So in a very real way the 
whole future of the socialist project --
anybody's preferred socialist project(Tom O'Lincoln's as well as Dave Riley's) 
-- rests on what happens over the next year or so.

By the end of that time,  the left landscape is going to be very different -- 
one way or another.

The way I see it is that  I want us to be better off and  the Alliance is the 
best vehicle  we can employ to help us do just that. - to try and do whatever 
struggling needs to be done. And I'm not talking about programatic questions at 
all -- I've had them up to pussy's bow in the SA. I'm talking about what needs 
to be done, because, in reality, that's self evident.


dave riley


* Here In Brisbane the Indigenous/SA alliance is very real too , primarliy due 
to Sam Watson, and  that partnering is being reflected in some other centres 
too.
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