Dette er noe KK burde gripe fatt i og skrive en artikkel om. Ganske
revelant for vår egen venstresidesituasjon.
Mvh,
Per
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AUSTRALIAN LEFT UNITES TO FORM SOCIALIST ALLIANCE
(From Green Left Weekly, Feb. 28, 2001)
BY SEAN HEALY
The word is out. The Australian left is on a roll. Fresh from the
inspiration of S11, when tens of thousands confronted the world's power
brokers at Melbourne's Crown Casino, and with plans well underway for
mass blockades of stock exchanges and financial districts on May 1,
eight radical left organisations have united to form the Socialist
Alliance, a combined electoral front to contest this year's federal
election.
Meeting in Sydney on February 17, the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP),
the International Socialist Organisation (ISO), the Freedom Socialist
Party, the Workers League, the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq
(Australian branch), Workers Power and Workers Liberty agreed to form
the alliance. Socialist Democracy has also agreed to join.
Others also are likely to get on board. The Melbourne branch of the
Progressive Labour Party has recommended to the rest of the party that
it too join the Socialist Alliance and leading PLP members in Canberra
and Sydney have expressed enthusiasm for doing so. The Communist Party
(formerly the SPA), Socialist Alternative and the Socialist Party
(formerly Militant) are discussing whether they will join the alliance.
'EXCITING'
The Socialist Alliance is an unprecedented step forward for the
Australian socialist left — and enthusiasm for it is total.
"This is a tremendously exciting development”, the International
Socialist Organisation's Ian Rintoul told Green Left Weekly, summing up
the mood of all the alliance's participants.
Rintoul argues that the alliance couldn't come at a better time: “All
political indications from the Western Australian and Queensland
elections are that the Socialist Alliance will strike a chord with a
large number of people who are looking for an alternative to economic
rationalism — that was also the message of S11."
The Democratic Socialist Party's Peter Boyle agrees. “The context for
this initiative is the revival of radicalism following Seattle”, he
said, referring to the massive protests against the World Trade
Organisation in the US west-coast city in November 1999, which kicked
off the burgeoning anti-corporate movement in the industrialised
countries.
"That has brought a renewed confidence to the radical left, particularly
after S11, which was a very big mobilisation of the forces to the left
of Labor and which was organised by the left. There's a huge pent-up
frustration expressed in society against the almost-common neo-liberal
agendas of the major parties. S11 has given us the extra confidence to
feel we can reach that frustration and channel it leftward”.
Alison Thorne, of the Freedom Socialist Party, says the prospect of more
effectively challenging Labor is the alliance's biggest potential
strength.
"A lot of people are jubilant at the Coalition going down the gurgler,
and rightly so. But Labor provided no sharply defined alternative in WA,
did they? They continued to support mandatory sentencing, for example,
which is absolutely disgraceful. So it's critically important that we
popularise socialist ideas; it's crucial that socialists work to build
an alternative to the Labor Party”, she told Green Left Weekly.
'HANSONISM PHASE TWO'
Thorne also raises another reason why she's keen on the Socialist
Alliance, a reason which weighs heavily on the minds of all the alliance
partners: “Hansonism phase two”, One Nation's attempt to “pose as an
anti-globalisation protest vote” and the “crucial need for the left to
provide an alternative movement to globalisation which is not economic
nationalist”.
The way Boyle puts it is that while S11 has given the radical left the
confidence to form the Socialist Alliance, the re-emergence of One
Nation has provided the “urgency”, adding “If the left isn't able to
present as the radical opposition to the major party consensus, then
some of that dissent will go to the far right”.
Rintoul sees it similarly, but believes the alliance can be a very
effective counter to One Nation.
"Hanson does represent the danger of pulling the whole
anti-globalisation sentiment to the right”, he noted. “But the election
results aren't so much an indicator of that yet; they show rather that
people are looking to the left. In terms of a popular critique of
economic rationalism and globalisation, the Socialist Alliance can be
tremendously important.”
Lisa Farrance, of Workers Power, also sees the WA and Queensland results
as a sign of a “significant shift leftwards” in the working class'
views, adding that “at the same time, people don't have full illusions
that Labor will deliver”.
“That frustration amongst working-class people is a big part of what's
forcing us to be unified, to provide the alternative that's needed”, she
said.
She believes the growing anti-corporate movement is an obvious part of
the alliance's core target audience. “The movement is a little more left
here than elsewhere and a lot more unified in a number of ways; it's a
lot less hostile to the idea of unity than in countries where more
anarchist forces are dominant. There's a huge political opportunity with
the anti-corporate movement for the alliance to draw towards it
significant numbers of forces, especially given the ALP is so hostile to
the movement.”
But Farrance also thinks the Socialist Alliance can play a “key role” in
“joining forces from a number of areas, joining them into a common
struggle”, listing especially industrial disputes, such as that in
Victoria's Yallourn Valley, and indigenous struggles. “We could be the
only political organisation nationally that really campaigns for land
rights”, she stated.
POSITIVE POLE OF ATTRACTION
The Socialist Alliance provides a chance to do more than take advantage
of immediate opportunities, though, its participants say: it's also a
chance for the left to find some much-needed common ground and common
purpose.
Socialist Democracy's John Tully told Green Left Weekly, “For longer
than any of us care to remember, the left has been split into a plethora
of small groups, and it hasn't been helpful.”
“We can't keep blaming `the objective situation' for our failure to
grow”, he said. “The objective situation surely must favour a genuine
alternative to the present system. There is a crying need for an
organisation that gets stuck in there and attacks everything that is
wrong about this system.”
“The left's lack of unity has not helped. None of us have been innocent
of wanting hegemony for our own small group”, he said, adding, “We have
been hegemonists in our thinking when we should be pluralists”.
The Socialist Alliance provides an opportunity to change that for the
better, Tully believes. “The alliance should provide a positive pole of
attraction and enable us to intervene much more effectively in the
political process than we've been able to do before.”
Boyle believes that it is “very significant” that there is a “greater
degree of political unity of the forces coming into this alliance” than
in some other attempts at left regroupment in the past.
“For a start, these are all radical groups, they all have revolutionary
politics as their basic ideas”, he said. “Any differences are specific
to how to implement those ideas.”
In contrast, most past attempts to regroup the left have been “based on
a liberal, rather than a radical, opening, with unity with
left-reformist forces, like the Greens or the old Communist Party”,
Boyle argued. “This attempt is very different.”
“From the point of view of the DSP, the one factor which has made the
Socialist Alliance feasible is the willingness of the second major
socialist organisation, the ISO, to participate in it”, he added.
Ian Rintoul said that there were two major developments which led the
ISO to take a closer look at electoral openings and the possibility of a
left electoral alliance: “First, there was the whole development of the
anti-capitalist movement, which demonstrated that there's a whole layer
of people in Australia looking for a radical alternative.”
“Along with that, there's the tremendous crisis in social-democracy, in
reformism”, he added. “The Labor Party has moved rightwards and
disaffected many of the working-class people who in the past looked to
it. We can appeal to them now to support us.”
S11 LEGACY
Rintoul and Boyle both say that international efforts at socialist
electoral alliances, particularly in Western Europe, have had a big
impact on their respective organisation's thinking.
“The experience of Britain [where the ISO's sister party, the Socialist
Workers Party, is a leading force in a network of socialist alliances]
has been important, giving us another look at how electoral activity can
be used”, Rintoul said.
“Our experience, and that of the left, has been that elections are
treated primarily as propaganda exercises. The Socialist Alliance
experience in Britain has shown us that it's an opportunity for more,
for building an active membership organisation, which can mobilise on
the issues and which isn't about electoralism.”
Boyle adds the examples of Scotland, “where the regroupment of the
radical left has gone even further, into a new party, the Scottish
Socialist Party”, and that of France, where an electoral alliance
between the two largest socialist parties, the Ligue Communiste
Revolutionnaire and Lutte Ouvriere, won five seats in the 1999 European
parliament, “an unprecedented electoral victory for the radical left in
a rich country”.
Boyle also believes that the decision to make the Socialist Alliance a
membership organisation, rather than just a pact between parties, is an
important one and a “recognition of the legacy of S11”.
“What S11 showed was that there are people coming to radical conclusions
in this country far greater in number than the collective organisational
reach of the existing left”, he said. “So there's a recognition now that
for us to get to that bigger community of radicals, we have to be united
— there's a common desire to break out of marginalisation.”
“The decision to make it a membership organisation shows an ambition to
grow”, Boyle stated.
The next steps for the alliance include discussion on a summary document
on its process, structure and politics and the consolidation of groups
in all major cities. The stage will then be set for big public launches
of the Socialist Alliance.
The upshot of the Socialist Alliance's formation is hard to
underestimate: the days of a weak, divided, ghettoised left appear to be
ending, amid a rise of massive, new protest movements and a new sense
that revolutionary socialists can unite to popularise their message and
again become an important force in Australian politics.
[Visit the DSP web site at http://www.dsp.org.au/]
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