Appendix B: LPF document – Tell the truth about the DSP and SA

[The following is an appendix to the counter party building report and summary by Marce Cameron on behalf of the LPF.]

What would we say to those remaining SA members about our decision to resurface the DSP and what it would mean for SA?

An important letter to SA members from the DSP

Dear Comrades,

This is to inform you that, at the January 2008 Democratic Socialist Perspective national congress, the DSP rescinded its 2003 decision to become a tendency of the Socialist Alliance. The DSP has resumed the name Democratic Socialist Party and will campaign and build itself as a public revolutionary socialist party. The reasons for this necessary move are set out below:

In proposing to establish the Socialist Alliance, the DSP was initially inspired by the example and experience of left regroupment projects that had some success internationally, such as the Scottish Socialist Party. The DSP at the time hoped that the increased openness and willingness to begin a genuine move towards working with other left groups and parties by the International Socialist Organisation, for example, would also gain support amongst a range of others who supported left unity. However, the move to form the Socialist Alliance was primarily based upon an expectation that there would be a significant rise in working-class struggle in Australia.

The Democratic Socialist Party has gone through a long and thorough internal discussion and come to a clear conclusion about its inability to sustain SA as a party in formation. Socialist Alliance is not an alliance of socialist groups or parties. SA as it exists today is the DSP and a mostly inactive SA membership of about 500, with a core of only a few dozen independent SA activists. This situation has become unworkable and has been so for some time.

The DSP recognised in 2001 that there was an opening for the Socialist Alliance, which came on the back of a limited political upsurge that followed the MUA struggle in 1998 and spilled over into broader social movements during and after the S11 blockade of the World Economic Forum in Melbourne . Up to early 2003, the Socialist Alliance achieved modest success in facilitating greater practical collaboration and constructive dialogue amongst its revolutionary socialist affiliates and its unaffiliated members.

Trade union leaders such as Craig Johnston and Chris Cain were attracted to SA because of its left unity dynamic, as were a layer of independents. However, there proved to be too few to transform SA into a broad left or multi-tendency socialist party at this time. After 2003, the upsurge in the social movements ebbed as the anti-war mobilisations declined, making it impossible to progress SA into a party-like formation.

Despite significant effort and resources on our part, SA was unable to develop into a multi-tendency socialist party: the other affiliates were opposed and eventually left; few leaders emerged from the non-affiliate majority; most SA members were not active. This stalled process had a demoralising effect on SA and DSP members. The Socialist Alliance remained heavily dependent on the DSP’s political and organising efforts and fundraising. Green Left Weekly continued to be distributed and funded by the DSP and its supporters.

The DSP had already decided in May 2005 that it could not continue integrating its resources into SA without a new rise in the political conditions creating new forces willing to participate in building SA. We recognised that the DSP itself was under considerable strain as the other left affiliates withdrew from being active in SA. We noted that without existing partners and without substantial class-struggle forces coming from a sustained mass upsurge of working-class resistance, the conditions for SA to become a broad left party did not exist; and such forces have not come into existence over the past two years.

Also in May 2005, the DSP was concerned that it was seriously overloaded and that its level of substitution for SA was unsustainable. The DSP was facing a financial crisis, declining circulation of GLW, an erosion of its cadre and a weakening of Resistance. Nevertheless, it decided to continue to be a tendency of SA. This has proved unworkable. Despite regaining its federal and state electoral registration, SA is not on a course to become a genuine broad-left party.

The DSP’s decision to attempt to turn SA into a broad-left party despite the opposition of the other affiliates was a mistake, an error that set back socialist collaboration. The decision of the 2006 DSP congress unilaterally to continue trying to build Socialist Alliance compounded the original error.

At the close of 2007, Socialist Alliance is still just the DSP, a few hundred SA members, with only a small number who are SA activists which has diminished further since 2005. Only a small fraction of its members attend SA branch meetings if these still occur. Most work undertaken as SA is not directed or organised through SA branches, except perhaps in very few regional cities. Most of the decisions are made for SA by comrades in the DSP, whose activity is falsely presented publicly as coming from SA.

The recent congress decision means that the DSP will not continue attempting to build SA as a broad left party. We will aim to continue SA as a revolutionary socialist electoral vehicle, which experience shows is the most that SA can be without a change in the objective situation. We want to keep SA registered for state and federal elections and to collaborate in elections with other socialist and progressive individuals and groups.

The DSP, as a revolutionary socialist party, will openly build and seek to recruit from a range of progressive movements that take up the issues of the day. The DSP will explain our Marxist politics in a variety of ways – in forums, meetings, actions and in GLW, at conferences and in a range of other ways – and will continue to take part in united front formations, including building broad-based international solidarity campaigns with the revolutionary peoples of Venezuela and Cuba and in solidarity with all oppressed and exploited. We seek to gain the widest possible readership for GLW and will continue to encourage others to write for, distribute and sell this important and effective tool for disseminating left and progressive views.

To this end, the DSP, in explaining the reality of Socialist Alliance and our role with it and resuming as a public revolutionary socialist party, the DSP hopes to continue working together.

In solidarity,

The National Executive of the Democratic Socialist Party