The Activist - Volume 15, Number 9 – October 2005
By Doug Lorimer, Sydney branch

At the September 26 national executive meeting comrades Max Lane, John Percy and I presented for a vote four amendments to the NE’s draft resolution on "The DSP and the Socialist Alliance" (see "Minutes from DSP national executive (extracts), September 26, 2005", The Activist Vol. 15, No. 8). These amendments were motivated in the draft party-building report for the October 15-16 National Committee plenum presented by Comrade Percy to the NE meeting and in our PCD articles printed in the The Activist following the August 15 NE meeting. All of these proposed amendments were opposed by Comrade Peter Boyle and voted down by a majority of the NE. An examination of the arguments made by Comrade Boyle and those who supported the general line of his draft NC report reveals a failure on their part to face up to the objective reality of the Socialist Alliance, of what it can do and what it can’t.

Before discussing this, however, three issues raised by Comrade Boyle in his summary of the discussion on the two draft NC party-building reports deserve comment.

The first is Comrade Boyle’s argument for rejecting our amendments. He urged the NE to vote against "all the motions" that comrades Lane, Percy and I put forward on the grounds that the "best procedure to sort out this difference" is that after "the discussion and decisions of the October 15-16" NC plenum, the "incoming national executive", i.e., the NE that is elected at the October NC plenum, "should be charged with re-drafting the ‘DSP & SA’ resolution along the lines of the general line of this discussion [i.e., the discussion at the October NC plenum]". Whether this is the "best procedure" to clarify and "sort out" the differences that exist within the NE and the NC is questionable. If we had followed that procedure prior to the August 15 NE meeting, for example, we might not have been able to arrive at a draft resolution that "express[es] the main things we need to change in our perspective", as Comrade Boyle put it in his August 15 NE report (after urging the NE to adopt a third version of the draft resolution that incorporated most of the amendments Comrade Percy and I circulated to NE members on August 13).

The ‘biggest source of confusion’ in the party?

A further issue that deserves some comment is Comrade Boyle’s claim that "perhaps the biggest source of confusion" in the party "arises from the fact that John, Max and Doug all voted for the draft resolution that this report supports". (As a point of fact, Comrade Lane did not vote for the draft resolution that Comrade Boyle presented to the August 15 NE meeting – he was not able to participate in the meeting, as he explained at the outset of his PCD article "The DSP and the Socialist Alliance: party and campaigning alliance of militants" in The Activist Vol. 15, No. 5). Comrade Percy and I voted for the draft resolution presented to the August 15 NE meeting precisely because it expresses what we think are "the main things we need to change in our perspective" for the Socialist Alliance.

If Comrade Boyle now thinks this is the "biggest source of confusion" in the party, he has only himself to blame – he was the one who urged the August 15 NE meeting to adopt a version of the draft resolution that incorporated the main amendments to his second draft that Comrade Percy and I circulated, along with written motivations, to NE members on August 13 (reprinted in The Activist Vol. 15, No. 4). He argued in his report to the August 15 meeting: "Many of the suggested amendments that Doug L and John P have circulated should be incorporated into the draft, in my opinion. I have circulated a 3rd draft which incorporates the amendments which I will argue should be incorporated... I think these points express the main things we need to change in our perspective" (emphasis added).

Comrade Percy and I put forward a series of amendments to Comrade Boyle’s second draft of the resolution, amendments that in our opinion expressed the main things we thought needed to be changed in the DSP’s perspective for the Socialist Alliance. Comrade Boyle incorporated the major amendments we proposed into his third draft of the resolution and urged the NE to vote for the amended draft, arguing that the incorporated amendments "express the main things we need to change in our perspective" for the Socialist Alliance. And now he claims that "the biggest source of confusion" in the party is the fact that we voted for a draft resolution that expresses the main things weargued needed to be changed in the DSP’s perspective for the SA!

In reality, the biggest source of confusion in the party arises from Comrade Boyle’s claim that he "defends the general line" of a draft resolution that unambiguously states that the perspective for the SA that we adopted at our last party congress – to progress the SA’s transformation into a new party – has failed, while at the same time he declares that the attempt to implement that "turn" has given us the "SA as a second party" and he rejects the proposition that the DSP (the only actually existing party we have) should be "the party we are building". It arises from Comrade Boyle’s claim that he defends the "general line" of a draft resolution that unambiguously states that the objective political conditions to transform the SA into a new party did not exist over the last two years and will not come into existence without a new upturn of working-class resistance to the capitalist neoliberal "reforms", while at the same time he declares that the "opening" in the political conditions that we (mistakenly) thought existed in September 2002 to transform the SA into a new party "has not closed", and is even "still opening up".

The September 2002 NE report ("For a new step forward in left unity", The Activist, Vol. 12, No. 10), it should be remembered, argued for "making the Socialist Alliance the party we build today". It began with the statement that: "When we decided (in March 2001) to initiate the Socialist Alliance we foreshadowed the possibility of taking a further step towards left regroupment, at an appropriate time. This report proposes that we begin the process of making the Socialist Alliance the party we build today by transforming the Democratic Socialist Party into an internal tendency within the Socialist Alliance from the 20th DSP Congress in December this year [The threat by the ISO to split from the SA if we did this led us to delay the implementation of this "turn" until our 21st DSP Congress in December 2003. – DL.]

"The purpose of the Democratic Socialist tendency will be to complete the process of left regroupment while preserving the main political gains of our 30-plus years of struggle (such as a popular weekly newspaper, our nationwide network of branches and activist centres and a politically educated cadre) for the Socialist Alliance. It will seek to recruit to the Socialist Alliance and not to itself."

The report argued that "Our estimate is that by making the Socialist Alliance the party we build today we will gather more of the class-conscious vanguard of the working class and increase its ability to link up with the broadest masses... Among those who have come to the Socialist Alliance are some very exceptional people – natural leaders of the working class like Craig Johnston, Brett Cardinal and Chris Cain. As the attacks on the militant unions has escalated, the number of such people turning to the Socialist Alliance is growing... We have not been brought into such a close working relationship with such a big layer of natural leaders before in our party’s history. We have worked closely with these forces in union election campaigns and in S11 [the September 11, 2000 blockade of the World Economic Forum in Melbourne – DL] and the last two May Days. They have mobilised thousands of workers again and again, against the wishes and interest of the conservative Laborite union bureaucracy. In Socialist Alliance we will be able to work in the same party with the most politically advanced elements of this militant leadership."

Despite the conclusion drawn in the NE’s draft resolution that the "turn" we embarked on to "make the Socialist Alliance the party we build" has "failed because the conditions to build the Socialist Alliance into a new party did not exist" and will not come into existence without a "regroupment with broader forces that are generated by a new upturn of resistance to the capitalist neoliberal ‘reforms’", Comrade Boyle asks the DSP NC to vote for a report that affirms that these conditions have not disappeared ("the opening we were responding to in 2002 has not closed"), but are even getting better ("is it still opening up").

This, apparently, is not a source of any confusion in the party. No, the "biggest source of confusion" in the party, according to Comrade Boyle, is the fact that Comrade Percy and I voted for a draft resolution that expresses the main things we argued need to be changed in the DSP’s perspective for the Socialist Alliance. Yes, it’s terribly confusing when we vote for what we believe in, rather than what Comrade Boyle would like other comrades to think we believe in – for example, that we want to shut down the SA.

The essence of Comrade Boyle’s position

Finally, in his summary to his draft NC report, Comrade Boyle argues that we should not "confuse the absence of [the] objective basis to carry out our December 2003 integration perspective [i.e., the absence of broader left forces that can only be generated by an upsurge of working-class resistance to the capitalist neoliberal "reforms" – DL] with the collapse of the political space for a new party of left regroupment built around our engagement with the new militant tendency in the trade unions".

While the NE’s draft resolution says that our "integration perspective" (the perspective of integrating the resources of the DSP into the SA so as to transform it into a new party) "has failed because the conditions to build the Socialist Alliance as a new party did not exist’, Comrade Boyle argues that we must not "confuse" this with the "collapse of the political space" to build a new party. Why? Because, by continuing to publicly affirm that the SA is the "the party" we are building, we are able to have an "engagement with the new militant tendency in the trade unions".

In his August 15 NE report, Comrade Boyle argued that "If we rename ourselves the ‘Democratic Socialist Party’ at the coming Congress we will send out the signal far and wide that we are abandoning this specific new party initiative" – the proclaimed aim of transforming the SA into a new party – "and we will pay a price for it. One part of that price is to risk squandering our historic opportunity to work more closely with important leadership elements in the militant trend in the trade unions. Socialist Alliance or a similar broad left party project is an essential supplement to industrial collaboration" with these leadership elements (i.e., Craig Johnston and Chris Cain).

Stripped down to its essentials, what Comrade Boyle’s argument amounts to is the claim that if we don’t keep bullshitting to Craig Johnston and Chris Cain that we in the DSP regard the Socialist Alliance as "the party we are building", they won’t collaborate ("engage") with us and we’ll lose "an historic opportunity to work more closely with important leadership elements in the militant trend in the trade unions". But as Comrade Percy points out in his draft NC report, "the surest way to alienate them big time, is if we bullshit with them".

The campaign against Howard’s new anti-union laws

The first amendment that comrades Lane, Percy and I put forward for a vote at the September 26 NE meeting sought to replace the formulation in the NE’s draft resolution which leaves unanswered the question of "whether the current trade-union leadership has the will to organise a sustained and united mass campaign that is capable of defeating the new anti-union laws". We proposed an amendment that recognises that the dominant class-collaborationist leadership of the trade union does not want to organise a sustained mass campaign that is capable of defeating Howard’s new anti-union laws, citing the most salient facts since the June 30/July 1 protest actions that support such a judgement, i.e., the ACTU leadership "did nothing to organise protest action against the draconian policing regime imposed upon the construction industry unions by the government’s Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act 2005 (enacted on September 12) and succeeded in limiting further nationally coordinated protest action by unionists to a series of Sky Channel mass meetings on November 15."

Why did the majority of NE members vote against this amendment? As I have pointed out above, some comrades may have accepted Comrade Boyle’s argument about how "best" to proceed in making changes to the draft resolution, i.e., leave it to the NE to re-draft after the October NC plenum. Other comrades, however, made political arguments against the adoption of the amendment during the discussion of the two draft NC party-building reports. I do not wish to be accused of putting words in any of these comrades’ mouths, and so I will not attempt to recount their verbal arguments. Furthermore, as Lenin pointed out in the 1921 PCD in the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), "Only a hopeless idiot will believe oral statements" in an inner-party struggle, rather than rely on a study of the "most exact, printed documents that can be thoroughly verified" ("The Party Crisis", Collected Works, Vol. 32, p. 44).

One NE member, however, did put his political objections to the amendment in writing. In an email sent from Spain on September 25 to all the members of the NE in which he expressed his support for Comrade Boyle’s draft NC report, Comrade Dick Nichols argued against adoption of the first of our proposed amendment as follows:

The last sentence of section 12 of the draft resolution certainly needs to be rewritten to reflect the fact that the building of the militant current in the unions will take place in the struggle against the inevitable and entirely predictable betrayals and foot-dragging of the ACTU and labour council officialdoms (and in struggle against tendencies among militant unions to conciliate to that). That is, what the "current trade union leadership" does isn’t a given but, as we have seen, dependent on our intervention in alliance with other forces in the unions, and on having Socialist Alliance as the umbrella under which this takes place. However, the amendment simply states that the ACTU is selling out in place of the original text which says we have yet to see whether they will sell out. The underlying problem here is that of judging which conjunctural events need registering in the resolution (and how to weight them). We need a resolution that registers the ‘general curve’ of the class struggle, where we are in this and what possibilities and challenges it is throwing up and can reasonably be expected to throw up. We should really grasp the point that Peter makes in the last section of his draft report, which is that it’s early days yet – we are still at the beginning of constructing a class struggle pole in the unions and in sharpening differences in the Greens through acting on their left flank. Until we have a better united front instrument that allows us carry out this work with greater impact we need to find the ways and resources to maintain and build Socialist Alliance.

Comrade Nichols observed that the amendment comrades Lane, Percy and I proposed "simply states that the ACTU is selling out in place of the original text which says we have yet to see whether they will sell out." (In fact, the existing text actually says we don’t know if they want to sell out.) He acknowledged "the inevitable and entirely predictable betrayals and foot-dragging of the ACTU and labour council officialdoms". Why then did he oppose the amendment? Why did he want the draft resolution to leave unanswered the question of whether the "current trade union leadership" has the "will to organise a sustained and united mass campaign that is capable of defeating the new anti-union laws"? Because, he argued, "what the ‘current trade union leadership’ does isn’t a given but, as we have seen, dependent on our intervention in alliance with other forces in the unions, and on having Socialist Alliance as the umbrella under which this takes place".

This, however, is a different question from the question of whether the ACTU officialdom "has the will" – wants - "to organise a sustained and united mass campaign that is capable of defeating the new anti-union laws". It is the question of whether we and our allies in the unions can force the current trade union leadership "to organise a sustained and united mass campaign that is capable of defeating the new anti-union laws" before they are enacted, i.e., before the end of this year. The implication of the amendment that comrades Lane, Percy and I proposed is that we won’t be able to do this – the dominant class-collaborationist leadership of the trade union movement "has succeeded in limiting further nationally coordinated protest action by unionists to a series of Sky Channel mass meetings on November 15".

As was the case on June 30, there will be large rallies and marches in Melbourne and Perth. In Sydney, however, at best we may have a repeat of July 1 – a large Sky Channel meeting at the Sydney Town Hall followed by an unofficial march (not initiated by us and our allies in the unions, but by some of the union bureaucrats who are under a bit more pressure from their ranks to be seen to be mounting a fight-back). On July 1, the march was initiated by the MUA national and NSW officials. As of October 3, Unions NSW has not even confirmed any venues for the November 15 Sky Channel public meetings (none are listed on the ACTU website).

Does Comrade Nichols really believe that between now and the end of this year we and our allies in the unions will be able to force "the ACTU and the labour council officialdoms" to "organise a sustained and united mass campaign that is capable of defeating" Howard’s planned new anti-union laws? Doesn’t the fact that we and allies in the unions were not able to force these officialdoms to organise any protest actions against the passage through parliament and enactment of the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act 2005 (one the most draconian pieces of anti-union legislation now on the books), demonstrate that we won’t?

Comrade Nichols leaves unanwered the question of whether we and our allies in the unions can force the Laborite union bureaucracy to organise a sustained and mass campaign that is actually capable of defeating Howard’s new anti-union laws. Instead, he switches the subject again – this time to the need for "a resolution that registers the ‘general curve’ of the class struggle, where we are in this and what possibilities and challenges it is throwing up and can reasonably be expected to throw up".

At the October NC plenum, the NE will present a report on the Australian political situation that covers this subject. However, the NE’s draft resolution, in paragraph 14, already gives an assessment of the "general curve" of the class struggle, drawing the conclusion that "Our characterisation, at our last Congress, of the post-1998 political developments as the beginning of a turn in the working class struggle was over-optimistic. Certainly those developments marked a broadening legitimacy crisis of neoliberal politicians and the rise of some new political vanguards and the partial revival of advanced political elements which had previously retreated into relative passivity. However, the working class as a whole remained generally on the retreat. The long 15-year capitalist economic expansion cycle (with all its contradictions) continues to dampen resistance to capitalist neoliberal reforms."

Does Comrade Nichols agree with this assessment? Once again, he switches the subject – this time to where we are at in "constructing a class struggle pole in the unions", telling us something we all know (that "we are still at the beginning" of this task), and all agree on, i.e., "Until we have a better united front instrument that allows us carry out this work with greater impact we need to find the ways and resources to maintain and build Socialist Alliance." But as what? That is the issue that is in dispute. Should we build the SA as our "new party", our "second party", as Comrade Boyle affirms in the last section of his draft report, or as a "campaigning alliance in the social movements (particularly the trade union movement) that seeks to build a new mass workers’ party", as the NE’s draft resolution affirms? In his arguments against the second and third amendments that comrades Lane, Percy and I put for a vote at the September 26 NE meeting, Comrade Nichols indicates that he does not agree with the latter perspective.

Comrade Nichols’ opposition to building the SA as a campaigning alliance

Amendments 2 & 3 were aimed at making it clear that DSP members will not seek to organise all of the DSP’s public political interventions through the structures of the SA, but "will seek to work with other Socialist Alliance members through those structures of the alliance (trade-union and other caucuses, branches, working groups, etc) that are effective in enabling it to build itself as" a campaigning alliance that seeks to build a mass workers’ party.

The final sentence of paragraph 23 of the NE’s draft resolution states that "DSP members will also continue to help politically organise together with other Socialist Alliance members through branches, caucuses, committees and working groups in order to build the most united left political intervention possible." In the written motivation that Comrade Percy and I circulated to NE members prior to the August 15 meeting, we argued that:

[This sentence] commits DSP members to "continuing" to carry out their, presumably public, "political intervention", through "branches, caucuses, committees and working groups" (presumably of the SA) "in order to build the most united political intervention possible". But even now we do not organise our main public political intervention – the distribution of GLW – primarily through the structures of the SA. We have already decided to devote considerable DSP resources to a campaign of political solidarity with the Venezuelan revolution, again not carried out through the structures of the SA... [Paragraph 24] acknowledges that ... the "Socialist Alliance caucuses and working groups have only partially begun to organise united intervention into the movements and we are forced to rely on DSP structures to fill significant gaps". So why does [paragraph 23] commit DSP members to "continue" to do something that 24 states they can’t?

In his email to the NE, Comrade Nichols opposed the adoption of our second and third amendments with the following argument:

This sets arbitrary and formal limits to what Socialist Alliance can and should be (‘a campaigning alliance’). But, despite our enforced retreat from our original plans for SA, it is already more than "a campaigning alliance". It has a program and policies that are in development, and it is seen by the majority of SA members as their party (whatever meaning they give to that). If there’s a lift in the struggle and more people come towards us and existing members become reinspired SA would and should take steps towards having more real activist party life and hence with more real all-round political weight. That growth path for SA cannot and should not be closed off, and we have to maintain SA in such a way that it is not closed off. Defining it as a ‘campaigning alliance’ is really a way of saying that we are closing off this perspective on SA development and that the DSP is ‘the party we build’ without saying so openly.

Comrade Nichols’ argument was thus not only against our proposed amendments, but against the new perspective proposed in the NE’s draft resolution for building the SA, i.e., "To build the Socialist Alliance as a campaigning alliance in the social movements (particularly the trade union movement) that seeks to build a new mass workers’ party."

Like comrades Margarita Windisch and Karl Miller, Comrade Nichols believes that to set an objective of building the SA as a campaigning alliance would be a retreat from where the SA is already at. According to comrades Windisch and Miller, the SA is an already formed new socialist party, a "party formation". Comrade Nichols is less forthright in stating his view of where he thinks SA is at. He claims that "despite our enforced retreat from our original plans for SA", i.e., to transform it into a new socialist party, "it is already more than ‘a campaigning alliance’." The SA, he claims, "already has a program" (where one can find such a document he does not tell us), "and it is seen by the majority of SA members as their party (whatever meaning they give to that)."

When comrades Miller and Windisch made the same argument to support their claim that the SA is an already formed new party, I suggested to them in my PCD article replying them (The Activist Vol. 15, No. 5) that most SA members think that it is an already formed new party "because their conception of a party is any group that is able to get registered with the bourgeois state’s federal and state electoral commissions as a ‘party’ and thus have its ‘party name’ next to its candidates’ names on the ballot papers for bourgeois elections." That is, most of the SA’s membership (the large number of "paper" members) have a bourgeois electoralist conception of political parties.

To argue that the SA is a party because these members see it that way is an opportunist accommodation to their bourgeois electoralist prejudices. Comrade Nichols’ argument that the SA is already more than a campaigning alliance because most of its members regard it as a party makes a similar accommodation.

Of course, what large numbers of people believe can alter objective reality, but only if they act on those beliefs. Most of the SA’s members act on their bourgeois electoralist prejudices by restricting their political activity in relation to the SA to paying a yearly membership fee and voting for it in bourgeois elections. This, along with the opposition of other affiliates (the pseudo-Marxist sects) and the small number of independent activists in the SA who are capable of providing political leadership to the SA, is why our "turn" toward transforming the SA into an activist party has failed. As the NE’s draft resolution points out (paragraph 2): "despite our best efforts, we have not been able to build the Socialist Alliance into an effective new party... While the smaller affiliates remain opposed to, obstruct, or abstain from most collective political activity in the Socialist Alliance, too few leaders and activists are emerging from the majority of Socialist Alliance members who are not in any affiliate group. Further, those leaders and activists that have emerged from this non-affiliate majority are not very confident or united around how to build the Socialist Alliance."

Comrade Nichols, however, does not want to face up to this reality. The SA, he argues, is already more than a "campaigning alliance" (because most of its members see it as "their party"). Furthermore, he argues that "If there’s a lift in the struggle and more people come towards us and existing members become reinspired SA would and should take steps towards having more real activist party life and hence with more real all-round political weight."

The NE’s draft resolution argues that it will require much more than a "lift" in the struggle against the capitalist neoliberal "reforms" for us to be able to reverse our "enforced retreat from our original plans for SA". In his May NC report, Comrade Boyle (The Activist Vol. 15, No. 2) correctly made the point that our integration plan "cannot resume without new political developments – developments that unleash new forces and greater political confidence in SA. Not with just an isolated victory here or there but at best a new step forward of a significant enough militant minority in the working class that can reinvigorate broader actions of the movement with a stronger will to struggle. The class struggle as a whole need not shift onto the offensive, but there has to be enough militant minority action to inject significant new forces into any broad left regroupment project" (emphasis added).

The NE’s draft resolution estimates that this is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future, arguing that "The long 15-year capitalist cycle (with all its contradictious) continues to dampen resistance to capitalist neoliberal reforms"), and it draws the conclusion that the "Socialist Alliance will have to go through a more extended period of united campaigning and regroupment with broader left forces that are generated by a new upturn of resistance to the capitalist neoliberal ‘reforms’ before it can harness the leadership resources and political confidence to take a significant step to creating a new socialist party".

Comrade Nichols appears not to have grasped this point and thus argues that a perspective of building the SA for an extended period as a campaigning alliance would be setting "arbitrary and formal limits to what Socialist Alliance can and should be". What concrete perspective he thinks we should have for building the SA today and in the foreseeable future he does not tell us. He simply holds out the hope that in the very near future there will be "a lift in the struggle" against the capitalist neoliberal "reforms" and then we can resume the "turn" toward "having more real activist party life" in the SA that we have unsuccessfully pursued for the last two years.

Comrade Nichols argues that setting the objective of building the SA as a campaigning alliance (as the NE’s draft resolution does) "is really a way of saying that we are closing off this perspective on SA development", i.e., the perspective of building it as a new party, "and that the DSP is ‘the party we build’ without saying so openly". This argument is obviously not directed against the position that Comrade Percy and I have put forward, since we haveopenly argued that the perspective that we could "make the SA the party we build" did not exist two years ago, is "closed off" today and will most likely be for the foreseeable future. We have openly argued that the coming party congress should adopt the position that the DSP is "the party we build".

Comrade Nichols’ argument is really directed toward those comrades on the NE who, like Comrade Nichols, support Comrade Boyle’s draft NC report, but who fail to see that the logical corollary of the perspective of "building the Socialist Alliance as a campaigning alliance in the social movements (particularly the trade union movement) that seeks to build a new mass workers’ party" is the position that comrade Percy and I have argued for, i.e., the need to unambiguously affirm that the DSP, and not the SA, is "the party we build", including by reversing the name change we made at our last party congress.

In opposing the perspective of building the SA as a campaigning alliance and the perspective that the DSP is "the party we build", Comrade Nichols’ position at least has the merit of being logically consistent. Its drawback, however, is that it is inconsistent with the objective political conditions we face and offers us no perspective other than continuing (at a slower pace) along the mistaken and failed course that we have attempted to implement for the last two years.

The SA as an alliance that seeks to build a mass workers’ party

In her PCD article in the previous issue of the The Activist ("The DSP, Socialist Alliance and the DSP cadre"), Comrade Sue Bolton presents a defence of the first bullet point in paragraph 34 of the NE’s draft resolution – though not against those in the NE majority, such as comrades Windisch, Miller and Nichols, who have argued against the perspective of building the SA as a campaigning alliance that seeks to build a mass workers’ party.

After claiming that "Several comrades have argued in their contributions in The Activist that SA is ‘a campaigning alliance in the social movements’, but leave off the last half of the sentence ‘that seeks to build a new mass workers’ party’," she cites as an example of this the following sentence from Comrade Percy’s draft NC report: "We can regard SA as a campaigning coalition, with roles also a supporters’ organisation, and an electoral vehicle. We should see SA as an auxiliary of our party..."

Comrade Bolton states that the "problem with regarding the Socialist Alliance just as a campaigning alliance in the social movements removes the most attractive element of Socialist Alliance for unionists and others who are looking for an alternative to Labor" – the implication being that because in the quoted sentence Comrade Percy did not attach the words "that seeks to build a new mass workers’ party" to the words "campaigning coalition" he is arguing for building the SA "just as a campaigning alliance in the social movements".

Has Comrade Bolton forgotten that it was Comrade Percy and I who put forward the perspective of building the SA "as a campaigning alliance in the social movements (particularly the trade union movement) that seeks to build a new mass workers’ party" as an amendment to Comrade Boyle’s second draft of the resolution "The DSP and the Socialist Alliance"?

In Comrade Boyle’s second draft of the resolution (circulated to NE members on August 12), the first bullet point of paragraph 34 set as the DSP’s objective "To build the Socialist Alliance as a campaigning alliance that seeks to construct a united, multi-tendency socialist party". (His first draft, presented to the NE Secretariat on August 8, set the DSP’s objective as "To build the Socialist Alliance and progress its transformation into a united, multi-tendency socialist party", i.e., continuation of the mistaken and failed perspective adopted at our last congress). This was in line with the first sentence of paragraph 32 in his second draft of the resolution: "The Democratic Socialist Perspective continues to see building of a united, multi-tendency socialist party as a stage in the struggle for a mass revolutionary party in this country." It was also in line with what was then paragraph 22 of his second draft, which stated:

We should recognise that the Socialist Alliance has to go through a more extended period of loose regroupment (primarily with a broader left beyond the membership of the affiliates and other non-affiliate socialist organisations) before it can harness the leadership resources and political confidence to take a significant step into transforming itself into a united socialist party. Nevertheless, it is our championing (through actions and not just words) of such a perspective of building a broad (multi-tendency) socialist party that continues to recruit people to the alliance and win the respect of broader militant layers. Many alliance members see the Socialist Alliance as the "new party" or at least "a step towards a new mass workers’ party", as Craig Johnston expressed it at the Fightback Conference. This is the first time in many years that a lot of unionists have looked towards a left party project. So we need to persist with this new party perspective for the Socialist Alliance.

Among the amendments that Comrade Percy and I circulated to the members of the NE on August 13, and which Comrade Boyle urged in his report to the NE on August 15 be incorporated into the draft resolution were:

* 21. The Socialist Alliance will have to go through a more extended period of united campaigning and regroupment with broader left forces that are generated by a new upturn of resistance to the capitalist neoliberal "reforms" before it can harness the leadership resources and political confidence to take a significant step to creating a new socialist party. Nevertheless, this is the first time in many years that many unionists have looked towards a left party project. By championing the need for a broadly based anti-capitalist party or a "new mass workers’ party" (as Craig Johnston put it at the Melbourne 2005 National Trade Union Fightback Conference) the Socialist Alliance can continue to win the respect of and recruit broader layers of militant workers to its ranks.

* 32. The DSP continues to see the struggle to build a broadly based anti-capitalist party as a stage in the struggle for a mass revolutionary party in this country. This has been our view since our 11th Congress in January 1986, when we affirmed that "Only the creation of a serious anti-capitalist alternative, necessarily founded on a complete break with Labor reformism, can ...open the way to working class victories in the struggle against the bosses’ attempts to make working people pay for the capitalist crisis. Revolutionaries therefore place a high priority on helping to develop such a political alternative – a broadly based party that consistently counterposes defence of the interests of the workers and their allies to the illusions of class peace fostered by the ALP and the trade union bureaucracy. The road to building such a political alternative lies along the line of seeking unity among all who are willing to break with Labor reformism and to encourage the most broadly based action in defence of the interests of the workers and their allies." (Resolution on "The ALP and the struggle for socialism", available in the pamphletLabor and the Fight for Socialism).

* [First bullet point of paragraph 34] To build the Socialist Alliance as a campaigning alliance in the social movements (particularly the trade union movement) that seeks to build a new mass workers’ party. Such a campaigning alliance should remain open to standing candidates in local, state and federal elections under the Socialist Alliance name in order to advance its campaigning work in the social movements and to promote the need for a new mass workers’ party, and should therefore seek to retain electoral registration.

Comrade Bolton states that there "are some important elements of the draft resolution ‘The DSP and the Socialist Alliance’ which have been ignored in this debate". She then goes on to motivate points made in the NE’s draft resolution in favour of us utilising the Socialist Alliance as a "political bridge" to reach out to those "people who are looking for a political alternative to Labor (and in some cases the Greens, for disenchanted Greens members) to a class-struggle workers’ party, even if it is not yet a revolutionary party", quoting from the amendments that Comrade Percy and I proposed be incorporated into Comrade Boyle’s second version of the draft resolution.

Comrade Bolton ends this section of her PCD article with the following quotation from paragraph 21 of the NE’s draft resolution: "The Socialist Alliance will have to go through a more extended period of united campaigning and regroupment with broader left forces that are generated by a new upturn of resistance to the capitalist neoliberal ‘reforms’ before it can harness the leadership resources and political confidence to take a significant step to creating a new socialist party. Nevertheless, this is the first time in many years that many unionists have looked towards a left party project."

Paragraph 21 goes on to make the point that, "By championing the need for a broadly based anti-capitalist party or a "new mass workers’ party" (as Craig Johnston put it at the Melbourne 2005 National Trade Union Fightback Conference) the Socialist Alliance can continue to win the respect of and recruit broader layers of militant workers to its ranks." Why does Comrade Bolton leave out this last sentence? Does she no longer agree with it? Does she now share Comrade Boyle’s view, as he expresses it in his draft NC report, that "A weakness in section 21 of the resolution may be the phrase ‘championing the need for a broadly based anti-capitalist party or a ‘new mass workers’ party’ might suggest that the Socialist Alliance should just advocate rather than try to organise what steps towards such a new party may be feasible. It should take any such steps."

The NE’s draft resolution states that the SA "will have to go through a more extended period of united campaigning and regroupment with broader left forces that are generated by a new upturn of resistance to the capitalist neoliberal ‘reforms’ before it can harness the leadership resources and political confidence to take a significant step to creating a new socialist party". But now Comrade Boyle tells us that there are "feasible steps" in the current political situation that the SA can take to organise a mass workers’ party. What steps does Comrade Boyle think the SA should take to actually try to organise a mass workers’ party in the absence of broader left forces that can be organised as part of such a political project? He doesn’t indicate any such "feasible steps" in his report.

The NE’s draft resolution, citing our 11th Congress resolution on the ALP, argues that the "road to building such a political alternative lies along the line of seeking unity among all who are willing to break with Labor reformism and to encourage the most broadly based action in defence of the interests of the workers and their allies". In the current political situation, where there aren’t broader left forces, mass forces, moving to break decisively to the left of Labor or the Greens and seeking to actually organise a big workers’ party, that means trying to build the SA as a campaigning alliance that encourages the most broadly based action in defence of the interests of the workers and their allies and advocates the need for, i.e., carries out propaganda, for a mass workers’ party. Any other course will simply amount to adventurist clowning.

With regard to the organisational functioning of the SA, it means that DSP members should "seek to work with other Socialist Alliance members through those structures of the alliance (trade-union and other caucuses, branches, working groups, etc) that are effective in enabling it to build itself as such a campaigning alliance", and not go through the motions, the charade, of acting as though it is an already formed left activist party.

‘Rebadging the DSP’ in our international solidarity work

The fourth amendment that comrades Lane, Percy and I put to a vote at the September 26 NE meeting was to delete the second bullet point of paragraph 34. ("To promote internationalism and comradely collaboration between the Socialist Alliance and socialist organisations in other countries on the basis of solidarity and mutual non-interference.").

In his email to the NE, Comrade Nichols made the following argument against this proposed amendment:

This amendment really says that SA doesn’t do international work beyond issue statements on international issues – the real international work is therefore done by the DSP. This is a sectarian approach to international relations among socialist organisations and progressive movements. If adopted it would mean that we don’t, for example, seek to have Socialist Alliance establish relations with organisations like the United Left in the Spanish state, or the Venezuelan government. Yet, to take an example from here, the Catalan organisation affiliated to the all-Spanish United Left, the EUiA, wants to have relations with Socialist Alliance and wants to discuss (and has discussed!) problems of alliance-building, parliamentary v. mass work and all the complexities of advancing the socialist pole in advanced capitalist countries like Spain and Australia. Wouldn’t the Socialist Alliance ranks gain in internationalist consciousness if such a connection were consolidated?

Comrade Nichols’ example of how he thinks we should use the SA to carry out our international work illustrates perfectly the problem that Comrade Percy drew attention to in his PCD article "SA or DSP? How can we best carry out our international work and international relations?" (The Activist, Vol. 15, No. 6), i.e., it will mean "rebadging the DSP" and its politics as the SA and its politics. What views on the "problems of alliance building, parliamentary v. mass work and all the complexities of advancing the socialist pole in advanced capitalist countries like Spain and Australia" did Comrade Nichols present to members of the Spanish United Left? He could not have presented the views of the SA on "all the complexities of advancing the socialist pole in advanced capitalist countries like Spain and Australia" since it has not adopted any. He presumably therefore presented the views of the DSP, a revolutionary Marxist party with some rather well-developed views on this subject. But did he tell those he was discussing these "complexities" with that they were the views of the DSP, one of the affiliates of the SA, and not the commonly agreed on views of the SA?

In his draft NC report, Comrade Boyle defended the retention of the objective for the DSP’s work in the SA set out in the second bullet point of paragraph 34 with the following argument: "The point here is not to force the Socialist Alliance to take the DSP’s revolutionary analysis of the Cuban, Venezuelan or Vietnamese revolutions but that we need to take the Socialist Alliance into international solidarity work and not keep its focus narrowly at the level of local or industrial politics."

We certainly need to advocate that the SA take an anti-imperialist position against the imperialist foreign policies of the Australian capitalist rulers and their governments, both Coalition and Labor, and participate in broadly-based united-front-type campaigns that oppose these policies. But the second bullet point in paragraph 34 relates to much more than this, i.e., to solidarity and collaboration with overseas socialist organisations. It is also not just a question of whether DSP members use the SA as a front in their meetings with representatives of overseas socialist parties, as Comrade Nichols advocates. It is also a question of how the DSP conducts its solidarity work with those parties in Australia.

For example, we have decided to devote considerable DSP resources to building a campaign of solidarity in Australia with the Venezuelan socialist revolution and its developing revolutionary socialist leadership, headed by Hugo Chavez, and its closest international collaborators, i.e., our sister party in Cuba, the Cuban Communist Party. We can’t carry out this campaign through the SA without forcing on the SA the DSP’s revolutionary analysis of the Cuban and Venezuelan revolutions, their governments and political leaderships. And if we did so, that would be the surest and quickest way to blow up the SA. It would give all of the other affiliates a justifiable reason to publicly split from it, one that would have a lot of resonance with most other members of the SA – that the DSP used its numbers in the SA to force the SA to adopt the DSP’s "Stalinist" views of the Cuban and Venezuelan governments.

Yes, we shouldn’t accept vetoes from the other affiliates on building the Socialist Alliance – as a campaigning alliance that advocates a mass workers’ party. But we also shouldn’t propose that the SA do things that will reduce it to little more than a DSP front. We should work in the SA with a realistic perspective of what it can do and what it can’t. The perspective – or rather, the different and contradictory perspectives – being argued for by members of the current NE majority fail to face up to this task.