[Marxism] Re: Australian ISO leaves Socialist Alliance

[Nick Fredman <srcsra@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Below are some questions from me for the ISO comrades in regards to their
rather overdue statement. Firstly a couple of responses to the discussion
here: Joaquin, the ISO don't seem yet to be uncritical of Labor, but in one
recent article on a challenge on economic policy from some ALP left union
leaders to the ALP leadership they seem to think it irrelevant (or
undiplomatic?) to mention the actually alternative economic perspective is
thoroughly nationalist and protectionist, http://tinyurl.com/2hnjmy; Tom,
I'll think you'd find the DSP has noted both objective and subjective
problems for SA, and that it's initial perspectives were over-optimistic,
and has, unlike the ISO, changed its perspectives over the years, but would
argue at least some of the radical left (which doesn't just consist of
Marxist groups) has been regrouped to some positive effect, the recent,
actually successful campaigning for justice for Indigenous people suffering
pig violence in Queensland led by Sam Watson (including over 100 people
campaigning for SA with Sam as candidate in Brisbane in recent elections), a
case in point; Louis, you are a snide bastard.

Some questions for the ISO:

If your perspectives are and were so correct, how come virtually none of the
dozens of non-ISO, non-DSP delegates at each of four Socialist Alliance
conferences you participated in ever agreed with them, and why does the ISO
now seem considerably more gutted than Socialist Alliance? Perhaps you got
some things a teensy weensy bit wrong?

If the perspective of a multi-tendency socialist party and a move towards a
socialist alliance paper were merely a number crunch by the DSP unrelated to
any political reality, why did over 150 non-DSP members of SA, including
most of its prominent union activists, feel the need in 2003 to organise a
platform to push for these perspectives?

If the Socialist Alliance position on the ALP is and was so appalling, why
did ISO members write the main articles in GLW on the 2004 ALP conference,
with no apparent disagreement? Why did the ISO vote for various SA
resolutions on the unions and the ALP? Why the silly dishonesty that the
Socialist Alliance has used the term "Another Liberal Party" when one merely
has to Google 'site:www.socialist-alliance.org "another liberal party"' to
see that this term appears nowhere in the hundreds of documents there?

Also why did you bother writing these and other articles if the mere
possibility of a joint paper is so terrible? Is having your articles read by
10 times as many people and engaging in debate really worse than the safe
and bland, but pretty much unread, comfort zone of Socialist Worker?

Have you actually met anyone from the Greens or the ALP left? If you
seriously think, in this era of Iraq, asylum seekers, global warming,
impending expansion of uranium mining, water crises and Work Choices, that
"local issues" are inherently most important in building a "broad left
party", inherently more attractive to "discontented Labor supporters" let
alone everyone else a "broad left party" needs to attract (however blithely
unaware you remain of these), can I have some of what you're smoking?

And when you come down, would you perhaps consider that your bizarre
re-imagining of gas and water socialism, your just as odd fetishisation of a
homogenous mass of "discontented Labor supporters" who appear to be
genetically programmed to be unable to go beyond Old Laborism, and your
self-serving exaggeration of differences while refusing to engage in a real
sustained debate, appears to everyone outside your ranks as self-deluding
schemas?  

And so on. Call us when you find the Aussie George Galloway comrades.






________________________________________________
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