Louise Walker is a national co-convener of the Socialist Alliance who is not a member of any of the organisations affiliated to the alliance.
What do you consider to be the major gains of the Socialist Alliance so far?
The Socialist Alliance has developed credibility within campaigns like anti-war, refugees, and, hopefully, the union fight-back against Howard's anti-worker agenda. However, one of its greatest achievements has been the mobilisation at the leadership level of people who are not members of any alliance affiliate. This has put the prospect of genuine socialist regroupment on the political map and shown a way to break out of the isolation and persistent factionalism that has hamstrung the socialist movement.
More specifically, it was our mobilisation in the form of the original NAC which provided a circuit-breaker in a serious stand-off within the alliance between the two largest affiliates, the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) and the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP). That intervention enabled the alliance to move from being a loose electoral coalition toward becoming a multi-tendency socialist party (MTSP).
It was based on a specific NAC perspective, which envisaged a broad, united socialist party emerging that would be far more than the alliance's founding revolutionary affiliates. Our presence as arbiters enabled a discussion about building the Socialist Alliance in the name of socialist renewal, while also creating a way for affiliate organisations who didn't share our viewpoint to remain in the project.
Yet after two-and-a-half years of moving in a "partyish" direction the Socialist Alliance seems to have reached a watershed in its development. Do you agree?
Without question — it would be foolhardy for even the most loyal Socialist Alliance member to avoid this. But we need to be clear about what this is. There have been histrionics and mudslinging in the debate leading up to the current conference — accusations that NAC comrades are DSP-bashing, red-baiting and responsible for behind-the-scenes slur campaigns. These accusations have obscured the core problems.
What are these? Are they surmountable?
With a lot of hard work and frank discussion in the coming months it is still possible to overcome them, but we need to grasp where exactly the alliance stands and why. Firstly, the pro-MTSP decisions of the last two national conferences provoked a retreat from a genuine leadership role by all the anti-MTSP affiliate organisations — only the DSP fully supported an MTSP course.
Secondly, the ISO has retained a national leadership presence in the alliance but has slowly reduced its involvement to a handful of people in the cities where it has members. Other affiliates have continued to attend some meetings but have systematically resisted caucusing with Socialist Alliance members and continued to build their own organisations publicly.
We in NAC have tried to fill the political vacuum created by these reactions. However, NAC was never supported by any of the smaller affiliate organisations as the beginnings of an objectively necessary vehicle for developing new leaders of the alliance. Indeed, rather than fostering the promise for the future of the alliance indicated by NAC's emergence, all anti-MTSP affiliates reacted negatively to it.
The critical juncture that has now been reached is that the DSP too has withdrawn its support for the continuation of NAC as the second base of MTSP support. This is a major political mistake. Without any core collective leadership role for NAC members we are heading toward a single-tendency, DSP-centred alliance.
No-one disputes the hard work of DSP comrades and their active supporters. But it is not "DSP-bashing" to say that withdrawing ongoing support for the only other pole of working support for the MTSP will not lead to a broad-based multi-tendency party. New members to the alliance may not be initially aware of the DSP-centred alliance that will emerge with this course. But the rest of the socialist left knows and in time new members will realise it from firsthand experience.
NAC is accused of continuing some sort of ongoing "factional culture" for pointing this out. Yet the DSP itself, the largest alliance faction, shows no signs of disbanding. It is still making factional decisions about the course it wants for the alliance, decisions its members are bound to carry out and not negotiable by the rest of the alliance unless the DSP so wishes. Given its weight this is a serious barrier, a problem for independent socialist leaders who may have a different vision of what the alliance can and should be and a problem for the smaller affiliates.
I'm not at all saying that the whole of the DSP has intentionally exercised its power irresponsibly. By and large its members have tried to be responsible in complex and difficult circumstances. But the current response to our disagreement has itself been factionally over-reactive, as if the DSP leadership expects all the pro-MTSP forces to march in step with their version of a revolutionary-centred alliance.
To many people on the left today the Scottish Socialist Party is an inspiration. Yet you are on record as saying that the SSP "has never been an organisational form that ... I have thought would be successful in the Australian political context". Why do you think this?
I agree that the SSP is a tremendous example of socialist unity, giving us lots of ideas about new ways to connect with working-class and progressive struggles. My objections with trying to use the SSP model in Australia right now are not with its formal leadership and decision-making structures, nor its voting system.
It's vital to remember that the SSP is a product of a different political context. In Scotland, the vast majority of organised socialists agreed at the outset to divest themselves of their distinctive public profiles. In Australia, only the DSP has tried to become an internal alliance tendency. The other affiliates have not ceased to operate under their own banners, believing that this is the only way to build their idea of an explicitly revolutionary party in Australia.
I completely disagree with their political judgment, but it remains the case that while they continue committed to this approach it remains important to take that into account in the alliance's organisational forms. But with the increasing dominance of the DSP many of the smaller affiliates have become more disenchanted with and publicly critical of the alliance project, also citing a lack of confidence in the alliance's ability to attract new affiliates. Like it or not, this is a crucial point, one we fail to grasp at the alliance's peril.
From Green Left Weekly, June 8, 2005.
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