Australian politics and campaign priorities counter-report

By Kathy Newnam for the LPF

[The general line of the following report and summary was rejected by the national committee. The vote for adopting the report was 5 full NC members in favour, 23 against, with 0 abstentions, and 2 candidate members in favour, 11 against, with 0 abstentions.]

Comrades, as this counter-report has only twenty minutes, it will not be able to cover a detailed analysis of the political situation, nor will it be able to detail the LPF’s analysis of all the campaigns that the DSP is involved in.

Rather, it will focus, as a counter-report ought to do, on taking up where the LPF disagrees with the majority’s line and where we think that this line is leading the party.

It will explain what our campaign priorities should be and in what ways we consider the current DSP line to be failing in relating to the existing political openings.

But, again, there is not the time to fully elaborate on this analysis and this counter-report should be read in conjunction with the LPF reports to the last three NC’s and the minority report on Australian politics to the 2006 DSP Congress as well as our updated Party Building resolution presented at this plenum.

Our basic approach

There are always more opportunities to intervene than our small size will allow us. We always have to prioritise where and how to intervene.

Central to evaluating our priorities is the question of building the party – of how we can extend its political influence, recruitment and politically developing our cadre force.

There are a broad range of openings for our intervention, but the single most important opportunity we have to win more people to revolutionary Marxism and build the DSP today is the Venezuelan solidarity campaign.

Firstly it is important to address Venezuela solidarity as a direct intervention into Australian politics – a perspective that is consistent with our internationalist history, but one which has been brought into question by DSP majority leaders in what amounts to a political downplaying of our solidarity work.

This political slide was best encapsulated in the summary of the Australian Politics report adopted at the 2006 DSP Congress in which comrade Sue Bolton asked the question “How much better for Cuba that the Venezuelans decided to address their own class struggle and build a revolution in Venezuela, as well as building solidarity with the Cuban revolution?”

The fundamental political tenet of this argument has been repeated time and again by comrades since that congress, in branch discussions and at the last three NC plenums.

There have been two trends evident when comrades are making this argument. The first is a very basic economistic argument – that worker’s will radicalise first and foremost around “bread and butter” issues. This argument has been repudiated by a number of comrades in the majority leadership.

We all know that some of the deepest radicalizations in Australian history have not been on “bread and butter” issues – but on imperialist wars and occupation. But there is another trend of this same argument that is still being peddled.

The argument is that building a solidarity movement with Venezuela is taking an abstentionist position on Australian politics or that to argue for Venezuela solidarity to be our over-arching priority is to advocate a line that would see the DSP “standing on the sidelines” of the struggle in Australia.

Some majority comrades have claimed that if our line was adopted all the DSP and Resistance would do is Venezuela solidarity work and Marxist discussion groups, or something along those lines. Anyone who has seriously studied our line already knows that this is rubbish, so we won’t waste time in taking that up.

Rather, we’ll look at why building solidarity with the Venezuelan revolution is one of the most important interventions into Australian politics.

In the battle of ideas amongst those radicalising through various issues and campaigns, our best weapon is the example of the Venezuelan revolution and its deepening collaboration with socialist Cuba. Not only does it demonstrate in practice the possibility of the socialist project, it also provides an antidote to the nationalism that the working class is so imbued with. It is the best way that we can reach out to radicalising youth and convince them of Marxist ideas.

Comrades will argue that we are doing precisely that – by popularizing Venezuela– taking it into our different campaigns, passing motions in our unions and getting trade union support for tours and so on.

Certainly this work needs to happen – but it has to happen in the framework of building the solidarity movement – with the focal point being building lively, youthful and independent Venezuela Solidarity Network committees in all branches. Propaganda is not just the written word – the key to winning people is through active interventions.

The majority’s framework strips propaganda of its action component – which is the most important way in which to raise political consciousness. We aim to win people to ideas in order to motivate action. We don’t just want to go into other areas of work and convince people to support Venezuela in the abstract – we want people to become actively involved with building solidarity. This is not just about passing motions of support or giving money, though this is all important. It is about convincing people to commit to getting the word out and convincing other people to do the same. This activity needs a political framework. If we are going to convince people to become active in the solidarity movement, we also have to give them a say over its direction. This means putting the resources and political thinking through into how to build active and independent AVSN committees.

Throughout our history, from our formation through the anti-Vietnam war movement, we have been part of building solidarity movements as part of our intervention into Australian politics. Some comrades have argued that this was because campaigns such as solidarity with East Timor or Vietnam were central to Australian politics at the time. That is a distorted view of the history of these movements.

Our solidarity work with East Timor is a good example. For years, since the early 1990’s we had prioritized East Timor solidarity work. From around 1994, Resistance took the lead in organising solidarity rallies and other actions. We built AKSI and later ASIET – which became central in the national solidarity movement, despite a great deal of sectarian opposition to our role.

These years of work and dedication of serious party resources meant that when the semi-spontaneous upsurge in response to the post-referendum carnage in East Timor spilled out onto the streets, we were able to take a central leadership position. We didn’t take the lead by positioning ourselves when the movement sprang up. We were able to do it because of the authority that we had won already. This role would not have been possible without the years invested in building the solidarity movement – even when it was not “a central issue” in Australian politics.

Venezuela is not the “central issue” is Australian politics today, though it will quickly move to centre stage when imperialism ramps up its counter-attacks. Australian politics is not defined by what is in the polls, or the issues that will impact on what box people mark with a number one on election day. As Marxists, we understand the political situation to mean the stage of the class struggle in all its manifestations. That is our starting point – and again it comes back to how we can relate to the existing openings in order to strengthen the Marxist cadre force of the DSP.

Right now, this means our number one campaign work priority should be the dedication of resources to building AVSN.

Fundamentally, the argument that Venezuela solidarity is not a direct intervention into Australian politics is a product of the political slide that the current DSP majority is on – which is making the DSP increasingly unable to withstand the pressures from the political environment that we are working in within the trade union and social movements.

Our trade union work and the anti-WorkChoices campaign

This political misdirection is most clearly manifested in our approach to our trade union work and the campaign against WorkChoices.

There has been a failure by the DSP majority leadership to understand the nature of the anti-Workchoices campaign. From before the 2006 congress, the massive anti-WorkChoices mobilisations were misinterpreted as a real mass struggle – there was a failure to recognize that it was entirely possible for these mobilizations to fit within the ACTU leadership’s re-elect Labor strategy.

The ACTU leadership successfully channeled the popular anger about WorkChoices into electoral support for the ALP.

Without a consistent political analysis of the campaign, the DSP majority leadership began to misread the various maneuvers within the trade union bureaucracy as a political struggle about the direction of the campaign, rather than power-plays between the so called “left” and “right” of the ALP.

There has been a failure to understand and to explain that a politically independent campaign is not a question of tactics but of politics.

There was, and still is, the continual implication that the “Your Rights at Work” campaign was independent, or at least there were sections of the trade union bureaucracy that want to take it in that direction. And that through Socialist Alliance we were linking up and giving a lead to these sections. The reality has been the other way around. We haven’t been giving the lead – we have been tailing the so-called “left” of the ALP.

If the “Your Rights at Work” campaign had any independent life, or had at least spurred the development of a politically independent militant current within the trade union movement, why then has it been so easy for the Rudd leadership to come forward with their WorkChoices-lite policy and pretty well the entirety of the trade union bureaucracy shut up about it?

Even the criticisms from the trade union bureaucracy are totally embedded in the Laborist political framework. Take the open letter from the National Assistant Secretary of the TCFUA, Michelle O’Neill to Rudd and Gillard.

The politics of this protest letter is to mislead workers into thinking that the ALP can change.

Why are comrades hailing this political misleadership as some sort of victory or even a shift to the left? Are there any signs that the ALP-left trade union leaders in Victoria are going to lead a political break? Dean Mighell made noises too, which got some comrades a little excited – but what came of that? There are no projections for building a politically independent campaign, no public meetings or forums to discuss political alternatives.

Again, the September 26 mobilisation in Melbourne is been touted as being “outside the ALP framework” – simply because the union leaderships in the Building Industry Group are not willing to accept the tactic of the ACTU leadership of not calling mass mobilizations in the lead up to the Federal election. This is a tactical difference – it does not put the politics of rally outside the framework of the ALP.

Will the absence of Labor politicians on the platform (and the presence of ‘allies’ of ours, such as Dave Oliver and Dean Mighell) mean that the platform will advocate an independent class struggle approach to workers rights free of illusions in ALP electoralism?

No, and this was made explicit by Brian Boyd in the interview in this issue of Green Left (#723) in which he states that “the main party we identify with is the ALP. And I’ve got nothing wrong with [supporting Labor] because the only way we’re going to defeat Howard is through an ALP victory”.

Even Craig Johnson is now calling for workers to vote for the ALP – because under the “lesser evil” pragmatism that prevails within the trade union movement, the argument for the need to build a real political alternative, starting here and now today, remains isolated.

Without a consistent revolutionary Marxist grounding, most, if not all, will yield to this political pressure.

Even in the isolated pockets of militancy, the strongest in the WA MUA there is no trajectory of a break with the ALP. The militant leadership of that union are by necessity focusing on rebuilding union structures.

If we fail to understand the current political conditions the party is opened up to opportunistic errors. This has been clearly played out in our uncritical support for the “deal” in the AMWU between Worker’s First and the Cameronites.

This counter-report does not have time to detail our analysis of this deal – but comrades should read the comments by Comrade Andrew Martin to the Brisbane DSP branch [see appendix].

It is no good for comrades to avoid the politics of this debate by misrepresenting the LPF’s position on our trade union work. The claim that the LPF line would see the DSP abstain from trade union work or from building the IR rallies is as ridiculous as it is dishonest.

From the beginning of this debate the minority and later the LPF have advocated a very clear line of march for our trade union work and intervention into the anti-WorkChoices campaign – it is all there in our reports, so there is no need to re-motivate it at length here.

Our assessment, which has been borne out in reality, was that the main form of struggle against these laws once they were implemented would be in localised “spotfires”. And that our emphasis should be on working in the various union solidarity committees to relate to and build solidarity with these outbreaks.

We would also turn the party’s attention once again to getting comrades into politically useful jobs and training and organising comrades in doing political work on the job – a political necessity that has almost completely fallen by the wayside. Our key task in our trade union work is winning workers to socialist views on the job – and this work is not going to happen effectively if it is left to chance – which is exactly what happens if we are not organising politically toward this goal.

Where is the re-assessment? Floundering around for the ‘next big thing’

This work is not happening because of the current political line of the DSP. The aims and goals of our interventions and identification of openings have shifted from building cadre to the need to politically justify the new broad left party project.

Not only were the DSP majority leadership wrong in their analysis of the anti-Workchoices campaign and its potential to provide new partners for SA – they have completely failed to re-assess and to correct their mistakes.

The Australian Politics report adopted by the 2006 Congress, given by comrade Sue Bolton for the NE majority stated:

“Howard is gambling that the union campaign will fizzle out as the anti- Kennett campaign did. If the union campaign was solely dependent on the ACTU leadership, Howard’s wish for the campaign to fizzle out would be successful. But there are some union leaderships that want a serious campaign and don’t want to put all their eggs in the basket of getting Labor elected”.

Similarly, in the Party Building report adopted by the Congress, Peter Boyle stated that “there are real and significant forces moving left-ward in the working class, forces that we are relating to, on a broad political basis, through building the Socialist Alliance as a new party project”.

This political methodology of substituting hopes for reality is dangerous – but even more so when the re-assessment does not take place once it is demonstrated to be wrong.

Rather than a re-assessment, what we witness is an ongoing floundering as the majority leadership searches for “the next big thing” – anything that will keep alive the hopes for a new broad left party.

We saw this through the Murri rights campaign in Brisbane branch, with the analysis that the Deaths in Custody campaign was spurring an “indigenous political renaissance”. This campaign did not spur a political break. The focus of the Murri community in Brisbane, which has the strongest and least isolated radical political leadership, continues to be on re-building at a community level. There is no “political renaissance”.

There is no question that comrades did important work not only in Brisbane but nationally in taking initiatives for action. But the need for the DSP majority to find justification for the SA myth also meant that we missed, and continue to miss real opportunities in building solidarity. The political thinking through of our intervention focused almost solely on how we could profile Sam as an SA member, or how we could link it in with the SA election campaigns.

The majority leadership refused to organise a DSP/Resistance fraction to co-ordinate our intervention. This lack of political thinking through in the party meant that there was a complete failure of Resistance to consistently relate to the campaign. There have been no Resistance comrades at the organising meetings and no consistent effort to relate to the young people around the campaign.

Again, this is not a failure of Resistance, it is a failure of the DSP. Further, it is not a failure of individual comrades or of organisation – it is a failure of the political line, a political line that is in a desperate and hopeless search for justification.

Our line of march

The coming period and the election campaign

Moving on now to outline more about our perspectives for our campaign work.

Firstly, one of the main campaigns for the coming period will be the Federal Election campaign. We have already outlined what we see as the key opportunities for this campaign in the Socialist Alliance counter report to the May 2007 NC, so we won’t repeat that here.

Venezuela Solidarity Work

Our single biggest opportunity in Australian politics today to intervene in order to increase the size of the revolutionary Marxist forces is Venezuela solidarity work.

Again, while we agree on an assessment of the significance of the Bolivarian revolution, there remain significantly different approaches in terms of how to prioritise this work. We have already assessed the political basis for this difference.

What would the LPF line mean in practice? It comes down to a question of resources, of division of labour – which is fundamentally a political question.

The LPF line would see a radical re-allocation of resources into building AVSN committees in every city where we have DSP cadre.

The LPF line would see a similar radical re-allocation of resources in Resistance – with comrades assigned to actively build AVSN committees on every campus where Resistance has a presence.

Just imagine if all those precious resources that are currently being ploughed into to propping up the Socialist Alliance myth were ploughed into building AVSN.

There would be those in our periphery, who perhaps aren’t quite yet convinced of joining the DSP, who we could convince to get active with us in building AVSN. How much more useful their political activity would be in AVSN than in the moribund SA.

We would have functioning, youthful AVSN committees with real political life. We would be training a new layer of youth cadre in carrying out solidarity work – building networks, organising, explaining our Marxist ideas as they relate to the unfolding revolutionary process.

We would organise the Venezuela brigades in the framework of building AVSN in this way.

It is a complete failure of political leadership that there are so few of the brigadistas, from the DSP, Resistance or our contacts who are actively involved in building AVSN. This in itself is a clear enough demonstration of the lack of a clear political framework for our solidarity work.

It would be a priority for DSP branch leaderships around the country to be consistently thinking through the state of AVSN committees – who’s around? What initiatives should we propose? How can we involve them? Who can we recruit to the DSP and Resistance through the work?

Campaign work

Along with this radical reallocation of resources toward AVSN, the LPF line would also see us taking a more consistent political approach in a range of other campaign areas.

In intervening to build the anti-imperialist pole of the anti-war movement; in the civil liberties campaigns, union solidarity groups, indigenous rights campaigns, refugee rights groups, women’s rights, anti-nuke and other environment campaigns.

In many areas there is no political divergence on recognising the openings, but rather an increasing divergence as to how we should intervene.

While there have been a range of useful initiatives and important work done by comrades in the Stop Bush intervention, the Haneef defense campaign and others, our work continues to be held back by a lack of a clear perspective on what we are building through these interventions and why. This also impacts most seriously on our ability to train cadre through these interventions.

The heart of our interventions should be organising to train new youth leaders in carrying out this work. Indeed, where the DSP has backed Resistance in relating to campaign openings and where DSP/Resistance comrades have been assigned to movement work and organized through joint DSP/Resistance fractions and educationals, as in the Brisbane anti-war work in the lead up to Talisman Sabre, or the Stop Bush protest in Sydney, there have been the beginnings of re-building real teams in Resistance.

But even where there have been examples of this sort of approach, it is still haphazard and inconsistent. We still know how to do this sort of work – that is not the problem. The problem is one of political prioritisation – that is it is ultimately a problem of the political line.

We need to be training comrades to build and lead movements, not for “position” and “profile” for candidates and SA electoral campaigns. We need to be training comrades in how to win a hearing for revolutionary Marxist ideas through active interventions.

This is the framework that should guide our political work and interventions. It is relatively easy to have comrades, especially our full-timers playing a central role in campaigns. We can take “good” campaign initiatives and organize “good” meetings or conferences – but if we are losing sight of our goal through all this work we are mis-training comrades and failing to build revolutionary cadre.

Political reality must guide of line our march

The line of march argued by the LPF is what is called for in the current political conditions. There are no “significant leftward moving forces” in Australian politics today. But there are significant opportunities to build the Marxist cadre force of the DSP.

Why does the DSP continue to hide our revolutionary politics behind the left-reformist platform of the Socialist Alliance when the political basis is not there to build it as a genuinely new left party?

This was answered, by way of a question that comrade Sue Bolton posed in the Australian politics report adopted at the May 2006 National Committee plenum. She asked, “What is the LPF’s answer to workers who hate Howard but who are also angry with Labor and don’t see the Greens as an alternative but who haven’t quite made the leap to revolutionary politics?”

The answer to the question also uncovers the political failure of the majority line.

Firstly, we would, as the DSP has done throughout its history continue to advocate the formation of a new mass workers party. We would politically explain the need for such a party and some of the pre-conditions for such a development.

Secondly, we would, as the DSP has done throughout its history, find the ways to involve such workers (who aren’t coming to us on a mass scale but in ones and twos) in the campaigns and movements that we are involved in building. We would work alongside them in our unions, VSN, the union solidarity committees, the anti-war groups and so on. We would apply the (real) transitional method to raise the level of political consciousness toward revolutionary socialist conclusions.

What we would not do is bullshit to them. We wouldn’t pretend that we have a new broad left party that they can join and have a say in when we know full well that it is nothing but a charade – the DSP masquerading as a new left party.

Through our work, we will join some of these workers – others might tell us that if the norms of membership in the DSP were lower they would consider joining. Others might tell us that they agree with socialism, but not with Leninism, or they’d join us if we were bigger. Throughout our history we withstood this pressure and deliberately and very consciously did not create “half-way” houses.

To do that actually damages the future prospects for building a new workers party. Not only does it damage the very idea of a “new broad left party” – making a mockery of what such a party would really look like. But more importantly it holds us back from building the DSP in today’s conditions in order to have the strongest possible cadre force for when political conditions are ripe for such a party – when there are “significant leftward moving forces”.

Why does the majority leadership persist with this line? Because of the political pressure borne of isolation. The revolutionary forces in this country are isolated, but it is not an isolation of our making – it is a product of the political situation – the state of the class struggle.

There are no shortcuts to overcome this isolation. Revolutionary parties will have breakthroughs – but they will be determined by how they relate to actual political developments – not by subjective will, by hope and by delusional hype. We cannot will ourselves out of our isolation, and any notions that we can only lead to increasing sectarian and opportunist errors.

What we must do is make the most of the actual political openings that exist. Right now, the most significant political opening in Australian politics that we intervene into in order to strengthen the Marxist forces in this country is building solidarity with the Venezuelan revolution.

Summary

Comrade Pip has just told us that today’s discussion was the first time she had heard John P, or the LPF, say that the Stop Bush demo was good – that until now it has just been “long faces”. Well the rally was just yesterday! This is how ridiculous things can get when comrades are reduced to petty point scoring. Pip also stated that there were weaknesses in our intervention into the rally and that it would have been better if we had a united party. What is this based on? What difference do these discussions and the debate have on our ability to get out and do the work? LPF comrades were there yesterday alongside other comrades doing the work. And we’ll continue to do so in all the other work of the party – including the election campaign.

What this is, and we’ve seen it before in the debate, is scapegoating the LPF for the problems in the party. It’s a distraction from the political debate.

Our counter-report only had twenty minutes – but again, as in previous discussions at NC plenums, comrades have got up and complained that we didn’t fully elaborate our position on various issues and campaigns. We couldn’t do that in twenty minutes comrades. Get real comrades! But not to worry, we’ve got PCD coming up and we’ll have the chance to fully elaborate on our perspectives for the party’s work.

We can’t say everything in twenty minutes, but what would make these discussions more useful is if comrades actually listened to what was said and engaged in the actual debate – rather than with straw arguments.

Comrade Pip said that the LPF was running down the Resistance comrades and claiming that no training happened through the Stop Bush intervention. Listen to what the counter-report said comrades – that through the Stop Bush protest in Sydney (and it also noted the Talisman Sabre intervention in Brisbane) “there have been the beginnings of re-building real teams in Resistance”.

But there is still a problem of the framework. This work is still haphazard and inconsistent.

Of course, it is also worth noting that the strength of the Stop Bush intervention was based entirely on the work of the DSP – not Socialist Alliance. But yet again, we have the DSP masquerading as SA – “what a wonderful intervention that Socialist Alliance made into the rally”.

Now comrades have got up and pointed out that the LPF hasn’t got all the answers, that we don’t have a “fix all” for how to massively build the party. But we never claimed to comrades. What we have put forward is a perspective that we believe is the best way forward for the DSP in today’s conditions.

The revolutionary forces in this country are relatively isolated. We face a political situation in which there are no significant leftward moving forces which could lay the basis to build a new broad left party. Those that we relate to through SA are individuals who we related to before SA – and would continue to do so if we re-emerged the DSP and adopted the line advocated by the LPF.

But this isolation does not mean there are not openings for us, or that the LPF is advocating a “circling the wagons” approach. We are not for retreat. Our orientation has to be to the newly radicalizing layers, especially youth. Our best weapon in this is Venezuela solidarity.

But we are not arguing that all the party and Resistance should do is Venezuela solidarity work – and the counter-report explicitly stated that is not our perspective (in fact we pointed out that we wouldn’t waste time taking up this argument because anyone who is serious about this debate would have studied our line and would know that this is a complete distortion).

The counter-report focused on where we think there is an important political difference emerging about our approach to international solidarity work.

Comrade Jim Mc took a very subjective approach in the discussion about the argument in the counter-report that there has been a political downplaying of our Venezuela solidarity work. This is not a very useful way to approach the debate. We are not saying that no-one is doing Venezuela solidarity work! But the counter-report did present evidence of the political downplaying – and this downplaying has continued in today’s discussion – with comrades claiming that this work is not the same as our historical solidarity work with Vietnam or East Timor because Australian imperialism doesn’t have a direct role (have comrades heard of the Australian-US Alliance?). This summary doesn’t have time to take up these arguments, but we will do so through PCD.

There was another complete distortion about our argument for Venezuela solidarity to be our number one campaign priority. Comrade Simon B stated that we were basing our perspective on a prediction that Venezuela will become a central issue when imperialism ups its attacks. The counter-report did state that Venezuela would move to centre stage when this happened but Simon completely missed the point that was being made and in fact presented the exact opposite of what we are arguing. What the counter-report clearly stated was that Venezuela is not the number one issue today in terms of profile and awareness – but that as Marxists, we don’t determine our interventions by what is in the polls or what will influence voting patterns rather that “we understand the political situation to mean the stage of the class struggle in all its manifestations. That is our starting point – and again it comes back to how we can relate to the existing political openings in order to strengthen the Marxist cadre force of the DSP”. If comrades actually listened to what is being said, we could have a much more fruitful discussion.

There were similar distortions of our position on trade union work. Of course we’re not arguing that we should denounce [Michelle] O’Neill, but we have to have an analysis of the politics of this layer. Yes we have to “relate to people where they are at” in order to break their illusions in Laborism – but O’Neill’s approach won’t do that. It is enforcing these illusions.

I don’t have time to respond to comrade Sue Bull’s contribution on Worker’s First deal – but we welcome her comments about this being useful discussion to have out more thoroughly through PCD. One comment though is that the analysis that the party has or is making opportunistic errors does not equate with calling comrades “sellouts”. That is not our view.

Finally, comrade Katie in her contribution said that “we don’t have a cache of cadre resources that we’re hiding somewhere”. But that’s precisely our point! We do! We’re wasting precious cadre resources in propping up SA when there is no basis to build it as a new broad left party!

Comrades have argued that we are doing AVSN work – such as in Adelaide. But our argument was about allocation of resources on a national scale. The steps we have taken, in some branches, is too little and too late. How long now since the April revolution? 2002! It’s mid 2007 comrades and we’re still talking about how great it is to be making such initial links and networks. We’ve had too much gloss comrades and enough is enough. If comrades are really willing to accept that this is good enough – that all this time and we still haven’t got functioning AVSN committees wherever there are DSP cadre – and that the committees in Sydney and Melbourne (our two major centres) continue to be under-resourced and neglected as we plough ridiculous amount or resources into propping up SA – which anyone who actually participates in SA (ie. doesn’t just read the hyped up reports) knows is just a DSP masquerade.

This isn’t going to change – because under this line, it can’t change, because this “new party” myth is going to continue to sap more and more resources in order to prop it up as more and more people see it for what it is – valuable resources ploughed into a dead end – time and political energy from our already diminishing cadre resources.

The talk of prioritisation has been coming for a long time now, and it hasn’t happened. This work hasn’t been prioritized on the ground for a reason. Because the political slide that the majority leadership is on leads us away from our historical internationalism and toward the crass economism that sees building solidarity as an add on to the “real work” of relating to “our class struggle”. Are comrades really willing to accept this? For how long? One more year? Two more years? How much more precious ground will we lose to our opponents on the left? How much further behind will we be when the solidarity movement is called upon to mobilise against imperialism’s ramped up attacks on Venezuela?

Enough is enough. We need a radical reallocation of resources and we need it right now, which means we need a change in the party’s line and leadership. This is not only our internationalist duty, but it is the only way that we are going to take the best advantage of the current political situation and balance of forces to build the revolutionary cadre force of the DSP.

Appendix: Our work in the AMWU

By Andrew Martin (Brisbane branch)

[The following article is based on remarks made by Andrew Martin following a trade union report presented by Jim McIlroy to the Brisbane DSP branch in July. It was distributed as an appendix to the LPF counter-report on Australian politics and our campaigns presented to the September 9-10 NC plenum by Kathy Newnam.]

I’ve asked to present this report as I have concerns with the lack of discussion around such a critical union intervention. The DSP’s support for the Workers First-National Left alliance requires a reassessment of our general perspectives in the trade union movement and further collective discussion. The AMWU is the most powerful factional player in the ACTU and its internal elections have a critical outcome for the campaign against Howard’s “Work choices” and indeed the broader class struggle. We are not talking about the clerks union (no disrespect to ASU comrades intended), the pottery union or the sausage and meatpackers union here, but the largest industrial union in the country that has membership over all the decisive means of production – a union that can bring the entire country to a halt.

As comrades should be aware, a shift has been made in the policy of the party towards working with the leadership of the AMWU. Our comrades in Victoria have played a key role in forming an alliance with the National Left faction of the AMWU.

1. The original aims of the rank and file grouping – Workers First; a rank and file group that offered genuine grass roots democracy, mass meetings, pattern-bargaining and the 36 hour week to name but a few issues. Workers First was one of the most successful rank and file groupings in the union movement in Australia, since the crushing of the BLF and the attacks on the MUA. Not since the green bans in the ‘70s and the anti-uranium/nuclear movement had any unionists spoken out on social justice issues. Workers First represented an independent, class struggle militant current in Victoria; a current on which our party perspectives of a militant fightback has been based.

2. Sue Bolton motivated the DSP’s support for the Workers First-National Left alliance in very broad brush strokes in a report sent to all AMWU comrades in the party after the election results were declared: “One reason for the alliance [between Workers First and the National Left] ….. is that with the massive attacks from the ruling class, [AMWU] members don’t want a divided union, especially if the divisions are over petty things.”

Irrespective of what the members apparently want, the divisions in the AMWU have not been over petty things. Certainly the jailing of Craig Johnston was not a petty incident that we should overlook. I certainly don’t want a divided union, but our tasks in the union should not be premised on any sort of delusions of false unity. Our principal task as revolutionaries is always to raise the consciousness of the working class and should not be determined by the mentality or desires of the ranks of the union. We should not determine policy by whatever is the flavour of the month; however isolated we are or cut off from the masses.

But if we take a principled stand and organize independently of the class-collaborationists, we stand a good chance of striking a resonance with the more militant and progressive sections of the union that will stand us in good stead to mount any future challenge for the leadership. Patience and persistence will win out over shoddy short-cut maneuvers in the long run.

From my point of view the key problem with the dissolution of Workers First is that it ties union activists to the national leadership of the AMWU which is completely dominated by the ALP faction – the National Left Faction. It puts DSP activists in the AMWU in a compromised position leading up to the federal election; there will be no criticisms of ALP policy put out by any organised rank and file grouping in the AMWU.

3. This deal represents more then just an electoral alliance – it represents the liquidation of any organised rank and file grouping within the largest and most powerful industrial union in the country.

4. The AMWU National Left Faction is a powerful bureaucratic machine that completely encapsulates the socio-political outlook of the ALP. The National Left faction’s machine of self-serving bureaucrats provides its officials with social privilege’s that are well out of reach of the membership they are supposed to defend. The AMWU’s national leadership is inherently undemocratic and appoints its organisers in some states and sacks them on a whim – on occasion by fax! DSP support for Workers First seeking unity with such a leadership sets the party out on a fool’s errand – there is no sound basis for dissolving an organisation of the rank and file and seeking unity with a machine based on social privileges that openly collaborates with the national bourgeoisie (and at times even trans-national i.e. calling for government subsidies to prop up the Mitsubishi plant in South Australia). DSP support for the dissolving of Workers First sets the party and its leading cadre in the AMWU in a clearly opportunist direction.

Some basic theoretical issues

One of the most crucial aspects of revolutionary socialist theory, of Marxist theory, is the relationship of the revolutionary vanguard party to the trade unions. For 15 years we have been in opposition to the leadership that has systematically red-baited and routed out any rank and file dissent.

We were in opposition to Doug Cameron’s tactics of class collaboration and negotiations behind the backs of the rank and file before he had even become National Secretary of the AMWU and was just one of their privileged shit-kicker officials. With his ascension to the parliamentary ranks of the ALP the way forward is anything but clear of his influence. Parliamentary leaders hold a tremendous grip of power over the trade unions. Never forget it is the administrative committee of the ALP that ultimately decides who gets what safe seat, not the executive of the union and certainly not the ranks of the union.

It would be a feat of magic for Doug Cameron to lose that grip over the apparatus of the union and the National Left Faction in a flash, just because he’s gained a seat in parliament. But suppose we do suspend disbelief for a moment and take the spin of the majority leadership at face value. Doug Cameron’s gone – we have a new leader; Dave Oliver, much more peaceable, easy to work with, someone we can collaborate with – really? Hang on. Let’s think back a little more than a mistaken tactic ago.

In 2002 Craig Johnston, an ally of the DSP and an SA member, was ousted by Doug Cameron and replaced by whom? – Dave Oliver. Once foe, now ally he was appointed with total disregard to the rank and file. Any decent militant in the AMWU holds this character in total disdain. In the meantime whilst Dave Oliver was being groomed for the top job after doing Doug Cameron’s dirty work, Craig Johnston was left to languish in prison after the national leadership of the union provided evidence to the prosecution in a case that victimized Craig Johnston for defending his members’ interests in an industrial dispute.

  • Whilst an AMWU fraction was held at the last national DSP conference, there was very little time for discussion and it was not clear as to whether Workers First had dissolved. “The deal” was described as a “merger”, the implication being that Workers First activists had simply formed an electoral alliance with the National Left Faction whilst maintaining itself as a separate grouping in the union. A decision of the magnitude of dissolving Workers First deserves a more serious and broader discussion amongst the party.

    The only way forward at this particular juncture in time is to maintain the organizational independence of any rank and file grouping we are leading and if not leading we should argue strongly for it with all our conviction. In the DSP, we have long held the view that any advance in the trade union movement must be made with a view to winning leadership of the rank and file. We have recognized since the smashing of the BLF by the ALP that the working class in this country cannot defend any economic gains and democratic rights won through hard fought years of struggle by going down the path of coalition politics by joining forces with their class enemies.

    Only by organizing the working class for intransigent and independent struggle against the bourgeoisie, their policies and their governments can the revolutionary party succeed in winning the leadership of the trade union movement.

    The lack of discussion or motivation for DSP support for the Workers First alliance with the National Left faction suggests very strongly to me that we need to make more of a conscious effort in planning our trade union work. We need an approach that is maneuverist on the one hand, but also one that is fully accountable to all the respective bodies of the party. What is really necessary is a closer analysis of class-struggle trade union politics so we can derive the real strengths and weaknesses of the movement. Our party’s line at the last congress was predicated on the class-struggle current within the trade union movement.

    I suggest to you all that the political weaknesses and inconsistencies of the militant current in the trade union movement is what has led to this situation where the party has supported the drastic measure of supporting Workers First forming an alliance with the National Left faction. If we had held in view our long standing analysis of the class-struggle wing of the trade union movement there would be no such room for confusion.

    To conclude I’d like to point comrades to a section from our December 1995 NC report (The DSP’s Movement Work Perspectives and Tasks, The Activist Vol 6, No 1)

    “Because it seeks to organise the workers to fight the capitalists only for reforms within the boundaries of the capitalist system, spontaneous class-struggle trade-union politics, no matter how militant, does not seek to replace bourgeois democracy with workers’ democracy. While such class-struggle trade-union trends may proclaim socialism as their ultimate goal, in practice they do not seek to organise the working class to overturn the capitalist system, but only to reform it.”

    Class-struggle union politics will inevitably become subordinate to larger social forces, better organized, resourced and ultimately more powerful unless revolutionary leadership is provided to generalize the struggles of the trade unions into more combative and broader struggles of the entire class. Today more then ever, despite of and indeed because of all the conservatising pressures we are under from working with even the best militants in the class struggle, we need a revolutionary perspective if we are to truly win the leadership of the rank and file.