Socialist Alliance and Green Left Weekly
As a non-aligned member (NAM) of the Socialist Alliance, I look forward to when the Socialist Alliance (SA) becomes a multi-tendency party and has a paper which has the quality of Green Left Weekly.
While there is a plethora of competing left newspapers, they all have very similar politics on most issues, the only differences being strategies and tactics. I sporadically buy other left papers to get a feel for where that group is at, but I regularly read GLW because it generally covers all the issues the other papers cover and more besides.
I welcome the fact that the Democratic Socialist Party is now moving to throw its considerably energies into building SA and continue to encourage all the other affiliates to follow suit.
My only criticism of GLW is that I wish that it had more Australian content. If a conscious effort was made, maybe we could see GLW printing articles from a wide range of non-aligned SA members. SA has some valuable academics in its ranks and I would love to see GLW become a forum for regular articles from them which aid us in our understanding of Australian society.
It is great to see an increased number of articles reporting the various union struggles, but I would like to see them combined with articles that provide us with an overview of the union movement and its representative bodies.
As a Workers First member, I thought the coverage of the struggle against Doug Cameron was brilliant. I would love the spotlight to broaden so workers get an understanding of the cancerous behavior of the union bureaucrats around the country and their political masters, the ALP.
While the GLW international coverage is unsurpassed, I most value articles that deepen my understanding of Australian politics.
While SA doesn't have a regular paper to call its own, I would love to see more NAM using GLW to expand the coverage of local issues. I am sure there are many budding or experienced journalists out there who can help local activists like me understand issues like water, casualisation, youth suicide and the current struggles and conditions of Indigenous Australians. I would love to read an article which outlines the make-up, origins and evolution of Australia's ruling classes.
It is simply a truism that the broader and deeper our collective understanding of Australian society, the more likely we are to successfully change it. I think that there may be untapped writers out there who could, with the encouragement of GLW, funnel their understanding of a particular issue through GLW so we all gain from it.
To all those tireless writers and sellers of GLW I salute you comrades.
Simon Millar
Brunswick Vic [Abridged.]
Brazil
I was annoyed by Jorge Jorquera's article on Brazil in GLW #543. It is simply not true that the Lula government has a commitment to "neoliberal economic policies beyond anything Washington had expected". What is true is that the Workers' Party government is a contradictory phenomenon, having within it the seeds of a shift both to the left and the right.
Certainly international capital has been attempting to move Lula into line. There has been an ongoing campaign of flattery by Washington and the media aiming especially at getting his support for the Free Trade Area of the Americas and softening his support for Venezuela and Cuba. This campaign would be unnecessary if the Brazilian government was already firmly on their side.
Similarly, the Movement of Landless People has realised that Lula is not automatically with them either. Their resumption of land occupations (halted after the election) is recognition that there is a struggle for the soul of the Brazilian government.
We should not act as if this struggle is already lost.
While it is true that some policies of the PT government are regressive, we should not forget that revolutionary processes do begin in the most unexpected places. Nobody was looking at Russia in 1917, and GLW did not even bother to comment on the 1998 election of another "orthodox" president Hugo Chavez.
Luke Fomiatti
Emu Plains NSW
Scottish Socialist Party 1
Graeme Kemp (Write On, GLW #541) asks why the Scottish Socialist Party wants to include nationalism in its program and how Scottish independence from the rest of the UK would help workers.
Scotland was an independent nation state for a millennium prior to its union with England in 1707. Since this unequal union (achieved by a mixture of economic bribery and military threats) Scotland's distinctive identity and culture have been under continuous assault by British imperialism. In the 20th century, with almost all the "Scottish" media owned and/or controlled from outside Scotland, this barrage (some of it racist in nature) intensified, further damaging indigenous culture and self-confidence of the people.
Scots have seen little of the billions of pounds in royalties derived from the exploitation of their offshore oil in recent decades. The UK government has no doubt used most of this fortune to help finance its "nuclear deterrent" and sundry military adventures. An independent, non-militarist Scotland would retain all this wealth and could use it to build world-class social services. Dissolving the union with England would accelerate Scotland's political and social development, due to the latter's stronger collectivist ethos, which stems from the Scots' long history of shared hardship. That's part of how independence would help workers in Scotland.
The independence cause is a genuinely progressive one which deserves the support of progressive people.
RW McKenzie
Swanbourne WA
SSP 2
Graeme Kemp (Write On, GLW #451) questions the Scottish Socialist Party's position calling for Scottish independence from the United Kingdom. I believe that the SSP's policy on this issue is correct, and that Scottish people are supporting the party in increasing numbers partly because they see the need for national independence for their country, as well as social liberation.
The great Scottish labour leader John MacLean, who pioneered Marxism in Scotland at the turn of the 20th century, argued in favour of an independent Scottish workers' republic, and sought unsuccessfully to persuade the Communist International to sanction a separate Scottish Communist Party. Had MacLean been able to attend Comintern gatherings in Moscow (he was denied a passport by the British authorities) it is quite possible that Lenin and other leaders may have been persuaded by him to support such an idea (see John MacLean, In the Rapids of Revolution: Essays, Articles and Letters 1902-23, ed. by Nan Milton, introduction pp 16-18).
The national question in "British" politics has to be addressed by all socialists working for progressive social and political change. The right of self-determination for the disadvantaged constituent nationalities of the "United Kingdom" the Irish, the Welsh and Scots is a key demand for revolutionary transformation in the British Isles. In my opinion, the right of the Scottish nation to form a separate state is inviolable, and all socialists should uphold it.
Graham Milner
Wembley WA
From Green Left Weekly, July 2, 2003.
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