John van der Velden
Building socialist and broad-left unity is the most urgent task for progressive people and groups in this era of war and unbridled corporate greed.
Environmental destruction, exploitation and social dislocation pervade vast sectors of the global community. Corporatisation and privatisation of health, education and welfare services and public utilities dominate the policy agendas of governments in the advanced capitalist countries. These governments are steadily rolling back the gains of over a century of struggle for basic economic and social security by working people.
No working sector of the Australian population remains untouched by this pursuit of corporate plunder, which is expressed in the policies of compliant governments. Faced with this onslaught, we need to reach across the issues and perspectives that divide us and find common ground to defend and extend the interests of the majority against the interests of a rapacious minority.
We take inspiration from the efforts in many countries to forge new unity, but also from the anti-capitalist movement that burst onto the international scene in Seattle in 1999, and more recently, the worldwide mobilisations against the war on Iraq.
A number of socialist and broad-left unity initiatives have taken root in the advanced capitalist countries in response to the neoliberal agenda. The membership growth and public support for the convergence that created the Scottish Socialist Party represents the most spectacular success to date in this regard.
Here in Australia, the Socialist Alliance project embraces nine affiliate socialist organisations. After just three years, more than half of the alliance's members are independent socialists and left activists who are not allied with any particular affiliate. They reflect a diversity of historical political currents and experiences.
One outcome of our successful collaboration through the SA unity initiative is being able to combine our resources as a broad movement. In particular, the progressive integration of the Democratic Socialist Perspective as an internal tendency within the alliance has made DSP assets available to the alliance as a whole, including the other affiliates.
This is a tremendous gesture of DSP generosity and faith in the alliance process and a major step forward in building the collective political alternative that the Socialist Alliance offers.
Sharing political and material resources enables a more positive and coherent socialist/progressive message to be developed. It will permit a more extensive outreach to a wider network and maximise the appeal that the prospect of creating a credible broad-based alternative generates.
An important part of this socialist integration is the greater involvement of the Socialist Alliance in Green Left Weekly. GLW already represents a successful 12-year broad-left project initiated and led by members of Resistance and the DSP. It has operated as an independent weekly, accessible to other socialist organisations and individuals and the broad left both here and internationally. GLW is the most important left forum in Australia for sharing perspectives on specific critical political issues and opening dialogues across diverse sections of the socialist, green, labour and progressive social movements.
This column inaugurates a four-month trial period, in which the Socialist Alliance will establish a collaborative editorial relationship with the existing GLW editorial committee. The Socialist Alliance national conference in May will undertake an assessment, in consultation with the DSP and the GLW editorial committee, of the trial collaboration. A decision will then be made on whether to proceed to transfer political stewardship of GLW from the DSP to the Socialist Alliance.
GLW will remain an independent broad-left paper. Likewise the GLW committee will retain its independent charter. The GLW committee, the DSP and the Socialist Alliance have a shared commitment to retain and extend GLW as a broad forum for left dialogue, supporting progressive campaigns and building a united political alternative to the neoliberal agenda.
Over the next weeks and months, GLW readers will begin to see an enhanced SA presence. In this regular column, the SA editorial board will comment on selected issues and how they bear on building greater socialist and broad-left unity. The direction of the ALP under Mark Latham, the Greens as a political alternative, the state of the anti-war movement, the federal election and the fight against the Coalition agenda, and the campaigns in defence of unions, Medicare and public and higher education will figure prominently.
We will provide updates on relevant Socialist Alliance campaigns and debates and solicit written contributions from SA members, affiliates and from the broad GLW readership. There will be greater input from SA members and affiliates as part of the informative, lively and inclusive political culture that GLW represents.
We look forward to commencing our collaboration with GLW and establishing a constructive dialogue and engagement with the GLW readership.
[John van der Velden is a Socialist Alliance national co-convenor. The other members of the SA editorial board are Peter Boyle, Alison Dellit, Humphrey McQueen, Anne Picot, Dave Riley, David Scrimgeour, Andrew Watson and Austin Whitten.]
From Green Left Weekly, January 28, 2004.
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