Comment by Jonathan Strauss
A recent ad in the Macquarie University student newspaper Arena reads: "If you're sick of left-wing groups that never do anything, so are we. We have no party line, no paper sales, no nostalgia and no leaders. Greens, feminists, civil libertarians, animal libbers, socialists, anarchists and don't knows, members of any party or none, everyone except Howard and co., welcome."
The "we" in the ad is the Newtown Political Collective (NPC), which has become active this year in the inner-Sydney suburb of Newtown and the surrounding area through posters, two public meetings on the theme "Why is everything I do against the law?", weekly organisational meetings and the organisation of a May 1 demonstration around the slogan "Beat the right-wing backlash" and a street party against the "yuppification" of Newtown. It is attracting some interest from radically minded students (Newtown is near Sydney University) and others in the area.
Since no-one on the left in Australia can produce overwhelming evidence to demonstrate that they have found the politics and organisational forms for achieving the fundamental social changes that are needed, we should ask ourselves if the NPC formula is a guide for action, or at least represents real steps on the way.
For example, avoiding a nostalgic, rose-coloured-glasses view of history (including the left's own history) seems wise, although this should not turn into a concern simply for the here-and-now, because from the past we can draw a perspective that radical change is possible, and by studying it we can find suggestions for the way forward.
Selling papers
The organisational signature of the NPC — no paper-selling (the Arena ad is accompanied by a sad-faced caricature of a seller, the paper labelled "Green Left or Socialist Worker", captioned "I didn't join the revolution to sell papers") — is more difficult to accept, especially perhaps for GLW supporters, who find the NPC submitting, and having published, articles, letters and calendar listings in our paper.
No doubt the NPC submitted its items to GLW for the same reasons we all do — to provide news to, and take part in the discussions among, the left on our experiences and the way ahead, to persuade people of its views and to alert people to its existence and activities (for example, "What's happening to Sydney?" in GLW #235 carried an organisational by-line). To many of us the value of the paper is so self-evident that we tend to assume everyone understands it.
To achieve this, we have not only had to publish GLW but also to distribute it — necessarily by volunteers, convinced of the political value of the project, because of monopoly controls over the distribution of publications to newsagencies and the left's lack of finances to fund commercial advertising. From my own experience as a member of the DSP and regular GLW seller, I know how important "taking it to the streets" is for regularly and frequently presenting radical ideas, building actions and networking among the left.
To maintain and develop GLW as an effective tool for rebuilding the left requires consistent effort by those who do support the paper to distribute it, in new forms (such as putting it on the internet), street selling, buying subscriptions for friends, persuading shopkeepers to stock it and so on. "No paper-selling" would mean "No Green Left Weekly". To submit articles to GLW and then persuade people to join an organisation that dissuades people from selling left papers is contradictory, to say the least.
No party line?
The NPC's claim to have "no party line" is also confusing and potentially damaging to efforts to rebuild a left that can seriously challenge the entrenched power of business and its state. The NPC sometimes presents itself as an all-in, more or less informal, discussion group. But it also makes decisions, in its own name presenting a critique (in the previously mentioned article, NPC says that developers want to turn cities into "machines for making profit", that big parties and all levels of government are in their pockets and that the law protects them) and advocating and organising actions — even if all "members" (this determined by attending meetings) are not required to implement these decisions.
Thus the NPC does have a "line" — oppose capitalist destruction by direct action — although it is not a party. It calls for sexual freedom, legalisation of drugs and street parties and community and environmental preservation. However, while all of these are necessary to make life more livable, and when they are put as demands they have broad appeal, their achievement will not change the "present state of things" — the existence of the capitalist system and the dominance of its drive for profit.
Changing things
This problem is made clearer by the ambivalence of the NPC towards parties and its proposals for direct action. For example, in its article on Sydney's environment, it proposes that we should "donate money or time to one of the green parties". There is only one "Green" party in NSW, so presumably this could also include the Democrats and socialist parties campaigning on environment issues. Yet these parties have fundamental differences, some proposing to make changes within the system, others to change the system. Which does the NPC want us to support?
Later in the same article, after discussing actions such as writing graffiti and blockading and occupying offices, NPC asserts, "You really have to be prepared to break the law in minor ways" (emphasis added). Perhaps we do — to achieve minor changes.
To achieve major changes — to break the power of big business through the social ownership and workers' control of large companies, to establish participatory democracy for working people and to make environmental sustainability, social justice and human rights the basis of society — we will need to break with the law, to change it wholesale. For that we will need to build a large, democratic, national political organisation of all those seeking that end — a mass party of working people.
The NPC has moved from an understandable distrust of "big parties", which at present are all pro-capitalist parties, to an indifference to all parties and party projects, expressed in its lack of clarity about green parties and its failure to call on people to join one or another of these — even though evidently thinking they are in some way effective.
Such indifference is not neutrality, however, because business can ensure that pro-capitalist "green parties" get the bulk of resources and publicity, as the Democrats did in the last election, and without counteraction will dominate the political scene on the left.
If we want to end the capitalist way of life, then we need to consciously throw ourselves into efforts to develop an anti-capitalist party. Without this, we cannot rise to a level of politics that takes on the capitalist system as a whole.