Today, more people are deeply disillusioned with the capitalist system than for many decades. The permanent wars, gross inequality and ecological unsustainability of the system are undeniable. There is widespread awareness that something is dreadfully wrong with the system.
In workplaces, schools, universities, at home and even in the streets it is not unusual to have a conversation about this crisis in the system. You can have this conversation with friends who don't consider themselves the least bit political. You can even have this conversation with your parents — and believe it or not, most of us did not have this experience with our parents when we were young radicals.
It makes a difference to be a socialist today because the revolutionary challenge to the system is not just a good idea but a living reality. Millions of people in Venezuela and other countries in Latin America are participating in the first revolutions of the 21st century. And their example is inspiring people around the world.
If this is a time when it makes a difference to be a revolutionary socialist, then every young revolutionary socialist makes an even bigger difference. Youth have always played a special role in the revolutionary movement.
The capitalist system, like all systems of class oppression, grinds down the human spirit. Millions of working-class folk have put up resistance to the exploiters but, over time, have had their fighting spirit broken — if not through repression, through the daily grind of making a living under capitalism. But the system has not yet ground down that spirit in you young rebels.
The Australian ruling class has been able to buy a class peace that has spanned generations. But today it is smashing that up by trying to wrench back some of the concessions that underpinned this peace. The attacks on workers' rights, the welfare system, and public health and education are forcing the working class to become political actors again.
This is not a simple or necessarily progressive process. One of the early symptoms of the smashing of the old class peace was the rise of Pauline Hanson's racist One Nation party in 1997. A section of workers was duped into supporting this racist, populist reaction to the capitalist neoliberal attacks, especially as Labor governments had carried out some of the first neo-liberal attacks. But there was a strong anti-racist reaction to One Nation from young people, and Resistance played a major role leading the famous anti-racist high-school walkouts.
Hanson and One Nation were knocked back, although many of their racist policies were taken up by the Howard Coalition government.
The working class was drawn more powerfully into action in solidarity with the Maritime Union of Australia after the infamous attack on it by Patrick's Stevedoring, in collusion with the Howard government, in 1998. And over the last two years, hundreds of thousands of workers have been drawn into political action against new laws that seek to roll back 100 years of workers' rights.
The Democratic Socialist Perspective and Resistance made a serious commitment to building the Socialist Alliance as a common political project with leading elements of this new militant minority in the working class and other activists inspired by their leadership. We could have worked with these militants simply as allies in the movement, but we wanted to try and have a broader political engagement by building a new political party of class struggle with them.
This has been a project with many challenges, but it has helped revolutionary socialists make a difference in these significant working-class campaigns. If not for the interventions of militant unionists, the ALP-dominated ACTU leadership would have avoided mass action as a response to Work Choices. Their preferred strategy was to lay low and hope that the Labor Party would win the next federal election.
Young revolutionary socialists played a part in this, most dramatically with the June 1 student strike. Your action had a far broader effect than the numbers who made it to the rallies would suggest. Militant workers from Perth to Geelong have spoken with great admiration of Resistance's initiative, and we in the DSP are proud of you.
The DSP takes very seriously how Resistance fares because we know that from your ranks come our best reinforcements. This Resistance conference is a great inspiration. If we can convince more of you to join the DSP, we will be even more inspired!
All power to your struggle!
Peter Boyle, national secretary, Democratic Socialist Perspective
[Abridged from greetings to the 35th Resistance conference.]
From Green Left Weekly, July 19, 2006.
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