BY DICK NICHOLS
There are hundreds of thousands of people in this country who know full well that since 1996 John Howard and Peter Costello have simply been carrying on the pro-corporate policies of the Hawke and Keating Labor governments of the 1980s and early 1990s. They can see that if Labor wins the next election it won't be removing the GST or making the super-rich pay their share.
They haven't forgotten that the Democrats gave us the GST. They know that One Nation are racist trash, and recognise that the Greens are not opposed to the capitalist private profit system. But they also don't identify with any of the still small groupings of the Australian socialist left.
That's why the birth of the Socialist Alliance, which draws together the majority of Australian left organisations, is producing hope and enthusiasm — both among "old" lefties who haven't given up on the struggle as well as among many younger activists who have been the driving force behind the S11 and M1 anti-globalisation protests.
Here is the Australian socialist left doing what thousands have been asking us to do for decades — "Why don't you people get together?" It's no small turn of events.
But hope and optimism in our camp is inevitably being matched by fear and loathing in the political establishment. ALP chieftains on company boards and union barons in harbour-side homes don't need to be reminded that there are a lot of Labor and ex-Labor voters and members out there who would switch to the Socialist Alliance if it builds up a head of steam.
That's why sniper fire against Socialist Alliance has already begun from the ALP trenches. The first shots came immediately after the Socialist Alliance's Melbourne launch in April, in a contribution to the email list, Left Links, from ALP member Lev Lafayette. His piece also appeared on Workers Online, the NSW Labor Council's web bulletin.
Lafayette, who takes care not to disclose his ALP affiliation, weighs in with all the old, predictable arguments. The fist is the claim that "the Socialist Alliance will have next to zero effect on Australian politics". Why, then, waste time in roaring like a lion against such a mouse? Of course, if Lafayette — and like-minded ALPers — were truly convinced that the Socialist Alliance is as "sectarian, ineffectual and irrelevant" as the Spartacist League he would never have dreamed of putting fingers to keyboard.
Lafayette also insinuates that the Socialist Alliance has excluded parties like the Communist Party of Australia and the Socialist Party (formerly Militant). He omits to mention that all Australia's left organisations have been approached to join the Socialist Alliance. Any eventual rejection will not be due to any obstacles placed in their way by the alliance.
Big sneer
Then comes the big sneer: "The radical left parties in Australia, then and now, are too fragmented, too centred around tiny sects with cultic leaderships, utterly paranoid of others encroaching on their territory, virulent in their defence of obscure interpretations of their version of history."
Anyone who's been around the left will recognise a few grains of truth in that description. But is it the whole picture? The vast majority of the English radical left, which has exhibited these vices in a more extreme form, has come together to form the Socialist Alliance in England. Sectarianism, dogmatism and cultism hasn't got in the way of that very-fragmented left's understanding that when an opportunity to build a stronger socialist force comes along, it's their responsibility to seize it.
The same trends are there in other advanced capitalist countries. In Portugal, France, Denmark and Italy the radical left has moved beyond its traditional status of propaganda groups for socialism to playing a central role in the social movements, an expanded social base and a presence in local governments, national parliaments and the European Parliament. That's precisely what the Lafayettes want to avoid here — their "ideal" for the socialist left is more marginalisation and fragmentation.
Why are the "paranoid and cultic sects" now successfully building something bigger? There are two basic reasons. Firstly, far from the local and international circumstances for left regroupment being better in the 1980s than today (as Lafayette asserts), the explosion of the anti-globalisation movement against a background of really deep hatred of the neo-liberal Tweedledee-Tweedledum politics of conservative and Laborite parties has created a broad sentiment of political alienation and discontent across the advanced capitalist world.
This is also the case here, where the S11 and M1 protests have been spectacularly successful, and have followed on a wave of protest movements, from the high-school walkouts against Pauline Hanson, the mass pickets in defence of the Maritime Union of Australia to the mobilisations for East Timorese independence.
Lafayette has nothing to say about these, the objective developments in Australian politics, but they are the spectre haunting his feast. We are seeing the upsurge of movements in which the ALP has practically zero influence and where the activists are rightly very suspicious of "mate, we'll look after you" parliamentarians, no matter how militant the rhetoric they spout at demos and pickets.
Next, the formation of the Socialist Alliance shows that the majority of the "paranoid and cultic" socialist left has recognised that it has responsibilities beyond building its existing organisations. We understand that Australia's workers, pensioners, students and small farmers need a political force that will lead the fight against neo-liberal austerity in all spheres. The Socialist Alliance has big potential to fill this vacuum.
Draft platform
In this context, it's a real joke for Lafayette to attack us because the draft platform of the Socialist Alliance "is, to say the least, undeveloped and, for that matter, not particularly socialist", indeed "far more right wing than say, the Greens, or for that matter the ALP's Pledge Unions-Labor left group".
First, we can leave the Pledge Unions-Labor left group to rest in peace. Such forces have been adopting and printing splendid platforms since 1891. They had an impact up until the late 1970s, but their submission to the Hawke-Kelty wage-freeze accord was their death rattle. Since they've never been prepared to put their platform before their allegiance to Laborism, their "programm" have had no impact save to increase this country's rate of deforestation.
As for the Greens, while they have many good and committed activists and a progressive platform, they simply lack a consistent strategy and political method for implementing it. In this world dominated by the BHPs and the News Corporations, a radical program will only be realised through developing a many-sided counter-power to the capitalist establishment. The core of that power can only be the democratic mass struggle of working people in defence of their own interests. That's what ended this country's involvement in the Vietnam War, stopped the Franklin Dam and saved the Maritime Union from being completely crushed.
This is not to say that parliament — the Greens' preferred arena of political activity — is unimportant. Sending even one fearless and forthright socialist "tribune of the people" to Canberra would bring an inspiring shock wave through the dozy irrelevance of Australia's national parliament. But with the Socialist Alliance such work — for all its importance — is subordinate to the main game of building the movements against the injustices of the capitalist system.
That's where the Socialist Alliance draft platform comes in. As anyone can see who checks the alliance's web site, it's a statement of basic principles combined with action points — key issues around which to agitate, educate and organise.
That's why the Socialist Alliance members will be fighting for their program out in the streets — building the movement in defence of refugee rights and demanding the removal of the GST.
Lost generation?
Lastly, there's Lafayette's ostensible motivation for his piece — concern that good young people who are genuinely interested in politics could get enticed into the Socialist Alliance and become "potentially a lost generation".
Lost to what? To a career in the NSW Labor Council, leading show "campaigns" before landing the preselection and the ministerial seat from which henceforth to oppose the unions? To a stint at the ACTU (and on the Reserve Bank board) before picking up a plush job on the Linfox board of directors? To a "labour movement career" crowned with a nice post managing super funds?
Lafayette is right to be worried. There will always be careerists who make their peace with the system after a "misspent" youth, but the stronger the Socialist Alliance is built, the fewer they will be, because it will win the most committed and energetic to its ranks.
It's already clear — from the attendance at its launches, from the enthusiastic response to its street stalls, from the level of interest in its literature — that the Socialist Alliance is an idea whose time has come. Let the political establishment beware.
[Dick Nichols is a member of the Democratic Socialist Party and an acting convenor of the Socialist Alliance.]