The National Executive’s draft perspectives resolution has two major elements to it. The first part of the resolution presents an analysis of the Australian political situation, focusing in particular on why there has not been a generalised fight back by the working class against the Howard government’s Thatcherite offensive. The second part concerns the party-building perspectives and main tasks for the party that flow from the Australian political situation and from the stage we are at in building a revolutionary workers’ party.

We are now in a new period, blessed with a conservative government, led by Neanderthals like Howard, Costello, Vanstone, Reith and their gang. After 13 years of ALP government and Accord politics, this is certainly a new period. It’s the type of period, the type of government, that the majority of our membership, even the majority of our leadership here, would not have experienced.

Nick Origlass, a central figure in the history of the Trotskyist movement in Australia, died on May 17 at the age of 88 with more than 60 years of political activity on the side of the working class behind him.

New Zealand Alliance leader Jim Anderton outlined a bold plan to rescue the country’s remaining unsold pine plantations at the party’s national conference, held in Wellington April 6-7. A week prior to the conference, the National Bolger government had announced its intention of selling the vast North Island forests off to the highest bidder.

The following two letters – to Melbourne branch member Chris Slee and to Green Left Weekly contributor Phil Shannon, respectively – were written in response to comments made by them in letters published in Green Left Weekly last year.

This report has to set forth our immediate party-building perspectives for the rest of this year, and also prefigure the perspectives we are likely to be presenting to the national conference in January to guide us internationally and in Australia for the following two years.

What is our balance sheet of the year, internationally, and in Australia, from a party-building perspective? Our fundamental assessment of the period, that we’ve analysed and discussed at recent party conferences and National Committee meetings, hasn’t basically changed.

Our strategy for achieving socialism is to build a mass revolutionary workers’ party on the Bolshevik model, which can imbue the working class with revolutionary consciousness and thus lead the masses in carrying out a proletarian revolution and the construction of socialism. Without the leadership of such a party the workers, no matter how massive or militant their struggles, will not be able to achieve decisive victory over the capitalist rulers.

Dear Phil,

I thought it would be helpful to follow up the brief comments in my letter in this week’s Green Left with a direct letter to you on the points raised in your letter in GLW 211.

Rather than begin by responding to the specific arguments you raised in your letter, I think it will help clarify the issues if I begin with a general presentation of how I assess the differences between Lenin and Trotsky on the relationship between the bourgeois-democratic and socialist revolutions. I will then take up the specific arguments raised in your letter.

The Communist Party of Australia developed a strong base in important industrial unions during the 1930s. As the depression eased, CPA members recruited from the unemployed and trained in action through the struggles of the Depression, had got jobs in industry. This working class base, which became the core of the CPA, grew and was consolidated during the 1940s.