
Issue No 92		20 April 2001

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The Soapbox

Another Generation Lost?

Lev Lafayette has doubts about the new Socialist Alliance launmched last week amidst much hope and fanfare.

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There can be no doubt it was an enthusiastic evening. On April 10, some two hundred people attended a meeting at Brunswick Town Hall launching an electoral alliance of the radical left calling itself "Socialist Alliance". Consisting of the Democratic Socialist Party, the International Socialist Organisation, Socialist Alternative, Workers Power, Workers Liberty, Workers League, the Freedom Socialist Party, Socialist Democracy, and the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq (in exile), the alliance is being heralded as having "enormous potential", "huge opportunities" and so forth.

Notably absent from this Alliance are major radical left parties such as the Communist Party of Australia, the Socialist Party, and the Socialist Equality Party, along with at least a dozen minor - and probably forgotten - organisations. It seems that even to this day, only a tentative alliance with significant exclusions can be formed among the alphabet soup of the far left of Australian politics, who continue to form separate political organisations on differences concerning an uprising in a Slavic kingdom some eighty years ago. And as much members of these organisations laugh at the tiny sect known as the Sparticists, they seem oblivious to the fact that the joke's on them. The Sparticists are merely a microcosmic parody of far left parties as a whole - sectarian, ineffectual and irrelevant.

It is not as if the confused miasma of the Australian far left hasn't experimented with unification in the past. In the mid-1980s far larger alliances that the current circumstances were cooked up between the Communist Party of Australia, the Socialist Workers' Party, the Socialist Party of Australia, the Association for Communist Unity, the BLF and a multitude of left independents (Bob Gould, Frank Hardy, Ken McLeod). The local and international circumstances were better as well. The Australian Labor Party was at the time as right-wing as it ever had been and hopefully ever will be. At the same time positive developments in the Soviet Union through 'glasnost' and 'perestroika', as well as a genuine commitment to nuclear disarmament made socialism a viable and credible local and international alternative.

Eventually of course, these discussions all fell apart. The CPA dissolved, with a section going into the ALP. The SPA re-named itself as the CPA and the SWP renamed itself the DSP. Meanwhile, Gorbachev's attempt to reform communism collapsed and the conservative Coalition gained national government in this country. The momentum for the much-heralded "new left party" was taken up by the Greens, a body and ideology which defies the chief theoreticians of the fringe parties and which continues to grow.

The radical left parties in Australia, then and now, are too fragmented, too centered around tiny sects with cultic leaderships, utterly paranoid of others encroaching on their territory, virulent in their defense of obscure interpretations of their version of history and Marxist (and only Marxist) orthodoxy. As part of his excellent far-sightedness it is little wonder that Marx himself once remarked Je ne suis pas une 'Marxiste'

But it doesn't stop there. The platform of Socialist Alliance is, to say the least, undeveloped and for that matter, nor particularly socialist. There is no mention of public ownership of infrastructure industries. There is no mention of democratic control over the means of production, let alone even partial industrial democracy. There is no mention of community control of their local environment and decentralised essential industries. There is no mention of automatic union membership. There is no mention of Constitutional or electoral reform.

Indeed, on a whole slate of issues - personal and civil rights, the environment, international relations, and natural monopolies the Socialist Alliance is actually far more right wing than say, the Greens, or for that matter, the A.L.P's Pledge Unions - Labor Left group. The platform of Socialist Alliance exposes them as merely liberals in substance with a radical vocabulary. Either that or their practical perspective is so Moribund that their leadership is more interested in enticing slogans rather than the possibility of making policy reality.

Actually the latter is most probable. Because the simple fact of the matter is that Socialist Alliance will have next to zero effect on Australian politics. Since 1984, there have been forty-seven candidates for the House of Representatives from the radical left, including the Socialist Workers' Party, the Democratic Socialist Party (same leopard, different spots), the Communist Party of Australia, the Socialist Party of Australia and the Socialist Equality Party. The highest vote that any of them has received was 3.0%, which was R. Daniell of the SWP for Reid in 1984. Even then that vote was less than half of what the informal vote was.

In fact, since 1984 radical left parties have received an average vote of less than 1.0%. In the past decade, the highest vote received in 1.5%. Informal votes are typically between four and ten times greater than their primaries. They've never even had a single trade union affiliate to them. Rather than displaying leadership, intrusions into community actions and mass movements have been notoriously destructive.

Under such circumstances, one would imagine that at some point that these organisations might actually consider that there is something fundamentally wrong with their ideological perspective in Australian conditions. Instead, the same hackneyed apologies are repeated over and over. Sometimes the mass media is at fault for being opposed to the socialist agenda. Sometimes it's the fault of electors, who ignorantly cast their vote apparently against their own interests. Sometimes parliamentary democracy is to blame.

These apologies simply don't hold up to the cold light of day. The capitalist media certainly have some capacity to temporarily distort people's opinions, but they cannot control their ideas and reasoning in the long term. Yet the people consistently vote against these organisations but have voted for the Greens, who are certainly equally disliked by the capitalist powers. As for the complaints about alleged elector ignorance or the parliamentary system, one wonders whether these people have ever considered the possibility that people - and not through any alleged ignorance - do not actually want the abolition of a democratic system but rather an expansion of it to the economic sphere?

Despite this litany of cultic sectarianism, an irrelevant, ungrounded platform and a history of mass movement, union and electoral indifference, the organisations that make up Socialist Alliance manage to attract a number of young activists each year, who - with starry-eyed idealism - believe they have discovered the true shining path. True, many have joined simply for drinking partners or for the opportunity to belong to an organisation where every day is like Scavenger Hunt. For this and the reasons outlined the numbers of these organisations only vary slightly over the years. But a number are genuinely interested in politics in a serious manner - and these people I feel particular sorrow for, as they are potentially a lost generation.

For what use it to spend youthful political motivation in an alliance that will collapse within a few years, through a combination of inter-Nicene warfare and electoral indifference? Just as deconstruction is always easier than reconstruction and criticism always easier than critique it is perhaps understandable that inexperienced political activists seek solace in the bizarre subculture of far left orthodoxy with no prospect of actually implementing social change.

But at some stage - and hopefully earlier rather than later - the dual desires of universal justice and personal freedom will demand political maturity from the most serious of the individuals involved in these organisations that are doomed to the trashcan of history. When that bolt of enlightenment strikes these individuals then perhaps they will be able, with sober senses, to direct their energies in the institutions of real political power with the practical intent of exposing the political and economic system to conspicuous tests. For it is only in this fashion - as unfashionable as it may be - that one can make an effective stand for the "old fashioned" values of individual freedom, social democracy and most of all, that most anachronistic of values - human dignity.

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  Issue 92 contents

Interview: Beyond the Accord
Simon Crean cut his teeth in the trade union movement, now he's gearing up to run the economy.

Politics: In Defence of Della�s List
The proposition that trade unions should ask members of the ALP for a commitment that they uphold Party policy should hardly be controversial.

Corporate: The Real Rorters
The unspoken sore of the WorkCover Scheme is non-compliance by employers. None more so that in the construction industry, as this CFMEU paper details.

Legal: In the Real World
Lawyer Ross Goodridge exposes the defficincies in the new medical assessment guidelines for workers compensation by looking at real case studies.

International: The Docklands and Global Labour
Ma Wei Pin and Jasper Goss recount how the struggle of a group of Indonesian hotel workers effected a lucrative Melbourne contract.

History: Sweatshops in America
Since the dawning of the Industrial Revolution, many generations of Americans have toiled in sweatshops.

Unions: Losers Never Start
At the end of her six week vigil, Grenadier delegate Michelle Booth gave her heartfelt thanks to the trade union movement.

Review: Working Classes: Global Realities
The Socialist Register 2001 looks at class realities and the lives of workers in the new century.

Satire: Democrats Change Leader
The Democrats have a new leader after belatedly discovering that Meg Lees had become the second Democrats leader in a row to defect to another party.

» Costa To Join Della�s List

» Compo Campaign Gathers Steam

» Della�s List: Dissident MPs Targeted

» Day of Mourning to be Compo Focus

» Small Steps in Negotiations � But Hard Yards Still to Come

» Important First Step for E-Mail Privacy

» Outraged Cleaners Continue AXA Axings Protests

» Grenadier Picket Ends � But Legacy Lives On

» Entitlement Dramas in Health and Printing

» Nurses Still Waiting on Olympics Bonus

» IRC Delays Hit Eight Month Barrier

» Claims of Dirty Tricks Conspiracy at Mobil

» Sydney Water Workers On Strike

» MUA Rides Anti-pollution Wave

» Governments Urged On Child Slavery

» Time To Act on Pay Discrimination

» Construction Union Supports Folk Festival

» Activists Notebook