An appeal for socialist unity
With the increasing polarisation of politics and the rise of the far right, socialism is making a comeback as a current. The Socialist Party, the expansion of the Victorian Socialists into a national organisation, currently has more than 5,400 financial members, a significant increase from the 800 members the Victorian Socialists had a year ago. The aim of the party is to unite all major socialist currents in Australia in a broad project. The following letter was drafted by former members of the Socialist Workers Party and Democratic Socialist Party to urge comrades in the Socialist Alliance to join the new project.
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A plea to old comrades
The success of Victorian Socialists and its growth into a national organisation present socialists in Australia with a much awaited opportunity. Since the demise of the Communist Party of Australia and the failure of numerous unity processes among the socialist left throughout the 1980s and ’90s, the socialist movement has not been in a position where it could aspire to pose some sort of albeit modest mass alternative. The global context demands the socialist movement rise to this challenge. The heyday of neoliberal capitalism is behind us, crises abound, and the far right threatens.
Comrades in the old SWP-DSP tradition who were part of attempts at regroupment in the 1980s will remember that these included a range of party building tactics: the intervention in the Nuclear Disarmament Party, the New Left Party process with the Communist Party, the fusion discussions with the Socialist Party and the work in helping to form the NSW Greens. In none of these were we the obviously larger numerical force. The critical element was the confidence and courage our tradition had accumulated after nearly two decades of party building, which put us in a position of playing a leading role in these regroupment attempts. During our discussion in this period, Jim Percy rightly observed:
“Some [on the left] get caught in the trap of defining their role in ideological terms and general principles while failing to recognise the equally important role of active tactical approaches. Some simply proclaim their program and assume that this guarantees them a big future role. But programs are really products of life itself. They need living verification. It’s no use proclaiming the need for a party in general while failing to take the necessary and possible steps to build one. Such a course reduces formally correct positions to paper abstractions.”
None of the opportunities for regroupment in the 1980s worked out the way we would have wanted, but we did the right thing trying. With hindsight, such ambitions were not likely to bear fruit in the context of a long retreat. Today we are in a very different situation. Difficult, yes, but different. While not all of the decay of the old left is behind us, there are the beginnings of the new. In any case, we haven’t the choice but to try again. Everywhere, the far right is growing, taking advantage of the blame social democracy has for the crises of neoliberalism, and the failure of the revolutionary left to build mass alternatives. We have to win back the language and the practical leadership of discontent.
We have an opportunity now to take the advice Jim Percy put to our old party back in the 1980s:
“What would we, as the SWP, do if a new party comes along more or less fitting our bill? Above all, we’d slip the SWP into idle mode and give the new party our best shot. The most important thing about our best shot will be our attitude. If we join a new party with the view that we have all the answers because of our past experience or theory, we could risk wrecking the whole project.
“The real test of the organisational viability of the new party will be how soon decisions start to cut across old views and alignments. We have to approach things with open minds and assume that everyone else who joins a new party will do the same … The new party must develop its own life, and institutions that have the confidence of all members. A simple federation of factions wouldn’t last very long.”
A number of us, long-term ex-members of the SWP-DSP tradition, long ago joined Socialist Alternative. We’ve been a tiny minority in an organisation where we have important differences that at some stage may well play out, but we have had the courage to put our perspectives in the context of the class struggle, as it is, which is so much bigger than the small organisations and programmatic positions of the historic tendencies of the far left. You work with what you have, and you put your confidence in the class (the long view of history), even if that puts you in a tiny minority.
The challenge of Socialist Alliance joining the Socialist Party is, frankly, a much more modest ask than the risks the SWP was willing to take in the 1980s. There are already a lot of guarantees in place that were not certain in past regroupment attempts, including the right to maintain and build existing organisations publicly and as tendencies in the Socialist Party. This is simply a beginning, one step at a time without a predetermined path as to where it may lead.
We hope comrades will look back to the rich history of the SWP/DSP and find in that the inspiration to take up this challenge.
Jorge Jorquera, Nick Everett, Kim, Bullimore, Andrew Ian Jamieson, John ‘Togs’ Tognolini, Margaret Perrott, Allen Myers, Helen Jarvis
