Comment by Doug Lorimer
Roger Clarke (GLW #174) claims that the Democratic Socialist Party has an inconsistent approach to the ALP, ie, that we characterise it as a capitalist party, but we also recognise that in some conditions it may be tactically correct for socialists to work inside the ALP.
According to Clarke, if the ALP were a capitalist party (an idea he rejects) then "there would be no reason for socialists to work inside the ALP". Does Clarke accept the Marxist idea that parliament is a capitalist institution? If so, does he then say that there is no reason for socialists to work in it? Or does he agree with Lenin's argument that, as long as the majority of working people have the illusion that parliament serves their interests, socialists should utilise this capitalist institution to propagate revolutionary views?
Clarke takes issue with the DSP's view that the ALP is a capitalist party. In an earlier article (GLW #168) Clarke argued: "Lenin described the ALP as a 'liberal-bourgeois' party. In the same article, Lenin said that the ALP was 'the unalloyed representative of the non-socialist workers' trade unions'. In other words, the ALP (in 1913) was a workers' organisation with 'liberal-bourgeois' politics."
In response to this argument, I noted (in GLW #170): "If an organisation has a predominantly working-class membership then, according to Clarke, it's a workers' organisation. With such an approach, socialists would have to conclude that the NRMA, the RSL, the US army in World War II, or even the Nazi party in Germany after 1933 fall into the category of 'workers' organisations'.
"What distinguishes a workers' organisation from a capitalist one is the role it plays in the class struggle. Thus trade unions are workers' organisations because, no matter how poorly led, they defend the wages and conditions of workers against the employers. The ALP is a capitalist organisation because it defends the interests of the capitalist ruling class against the working class."
I pointed out that Lenin never described the ALP or parties like it as "workers' organisations with bourgeois-liberal politics", but as bourgeois parties with working-class memberships. I cited Lenin's description of the British Labour Party (made in 1920), as "a thoroughly bourgeois party, because, although made up of workers, it is led by reactionaries". I argued that Lenin's description of the BLP as "an organisation of the bourgeoisie, which exists to systematically dupe the workers" was equally applicable to the ALP today.
Clarke fails to respond directly to these arguments. Instead, he now claims that Lenin's views on the ALP have no relevance, because Lenin "lived long ago and far away".
Karl Marx also "lived long ago and far way" — does this make his analysis of the laws of motion of capitalism irrelevant to socialists in Australia today? Of course, if you believe that modern capitalism has fundamentally different laws of motion from those discovered by Marx, then you'd be justified in dismissing the contemporary relevance of Marx's analysis.
This is the tack Clarke now takes with regard to Lenin's views on the ALP. But before he makes this shift, Clarke makes one last attempt to lean on Lenin. He argues that Jim McIlroy's claim that Lenin described the ALP as a "liberal capitalist party" is an "inaccurate paraphrase" of what Lenin wrote in 1913. Clarke is absolutely right: Lenin actually described the ALP as a "liberal bourgeois party". (Perhaps McIlroy's "mistake" was due to his assumption that the French word "bourgeois" is synonymous with the English word "capitalist". The Concise Macquarie Dictionary makes the same "mistake".)
According to Clarke, the ALP is not a capitalist party thanks to its "socialist objective", ie, because in its platform the ALP describes itself as a "democratic socialist party" and has the objective of the "democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange, to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features".
Clarke argues that the ALP's vague "democratic socialism" (which 99% of the Australian population is probably totally unaware of) distinguishes it from the "private enterprise" parties.
By contrast, Lenin, following Marx, argued that the correct way to assess the class character of any political party was not by what it called itself, or what its objectives were on paper, but by what it actually did in the class struggle (by "the content of its actions"). Applying this materialist method to the British Labour Party, which in 1920 also had a vaguely worded "socialist objective" (all the better to dupe the workers), Lenin concluded that it was "a thoroughly bourgeois party". No wonder Clarke wishes to dismiss Lenin's views as not relevant to understanding the real nature of the ALP!
Clarke responds to McIlroy's statement, "Working inside the ALP may well be a subsidiary tactic as the class struggle develops and this engenders political differentiation inside the Labor Party", with the argument that it "does not make sense to say that working in the ALP is 'doomed to failure' today, but maybe not tomorrow". He states that the "development of the class struggle is a prerequisite for the success of any tactic; why not prepare for this development now?"
Clarke fails to understand that a tactic that may become applicable in the future is not necessarily correct today. Thus, the tactic of an armed insurrection may be applicable in the future (if the class struggle develops into a revolutionary situation and the revolutionary socialists win majority support within the working class), but only a demented adventurist would advocate such a tactic today.
Of course, we should prepare for every possible future development in the class struggle now: that is what the DSP is doing by seeking to convince as many people as possible today to join us in building a mass revolutionary socialist party.
The real question, which Clarke avoids addressing, is whether the most effective tactic to employ today to advance this objective is for socialists to join the ALP. We don't think so. It's the DSP's view that the most effective tactic we can employ today to win radicalising workers and students to the socialist movement is building an independent socialist party (even if it is now small).
Roger Clarke obviously disagrees. The proof of the pudding, however, is in the eating. While the DSP is still small, we have won many more workers and students to the socialist movement than any, or even all, of the socialists who've adopted the tactical prescription advocated by Roger Clarke.