Stop the massacre in Libya! Power to the people

A statement by the Socialist Alliance in solidarity with the people's uprisings in Libya and the Arab world

26 February 2011

The Socialist Alliance extends its full solidarity to the people of Libya now being brutally repressed for demanding an end to the corrupt and unjust regime of dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

Their courageous struggle, launched on February 15, for democracy and economic and social justice has resulted in hundreds, if not thousands, of people being killed. Civilians have been strafed and bombed from helicopters and planes, and snipers with high-powered rifles have fired into unarmed crowds. The regime’s murderous crackdown has concentrated on Benghazi - Libya’s second largest city, and the poorest – on the country’s north-east coast, but fighter jets and snipers have also been used against protesters in Tripoli.

Australian elections: ‘Greenslide’ a shift to left

By Peter Boyle
national convener of the Australian Socialist Alliance
August 24, 2010

By denying both the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the the Liberal-National coalition an outright majority in primary votes and in House of Representatives seats, Australian electors voted “neither of the above” for the traditional parties of government.

This followed an election campaign in which the major parties conducted an ugly race to the right, most notoriously by scapegoating the few thousand desperate refugees who attempt to get to Australia on boats.

The effect of this race to the right was to promote racism, further breakdown community solidarity, and a bolster a range of other conservative prejudices on issues ranging from climate change to the economy to same-sex marriage rights. Important issues like Indigenous rights and Australia's participation in the imperialist war of occupation in Afghanistan were totally screened out.

However, there was also a reaction to this push to the right. The Greens, a party with a record of taking positions well left of the major parties on many critical issues enjoyed a 3.8% swing, taking most of its votes away from the ALP.

At the time of writing, the Greens had obtained 1,187,881 (11.4%) of the first preference votes for House of Representatives. Yet under the undemocratic system for lower house elections, the Greens only got one of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives, that of Melbourne. There were a string of other once-safe ALP seats that came close to being taken by the Greens.

The contradiction between the size of the Green vote and their small representation in Parliament grows, suggests the need for a grassroots campaign for democratic reform of the electoral system. It is not democratic that the Nationals, who won a third the number of votes as the Greens, should get seven times their representation in parliament!

The power of corporate Australia to buy elections with massive donations and their domination of the media also has to be confronted.

The Greens won the seat of Melbourne with the open assistance of the Victorian Electrical Trade Union and many other militant trade unionists. This was an important break from the total domination of the labour movement by the pro-capitalist ALP.

At the time of writing, the Greens had won 1,266,521 first preference votes in the Senate election and socialist candidates, including the Socialist Alliance, a further 39,186 votes. The Greens look like raising their number of Senators from five to nine — giving them the balance of power in the Senate.

The progressive social movements, including the trade unions will be looking to these Greens Senators to offer strong support in the struggles ahead, no matter which major party eventually forms government.
The result after election night on August 21 was a hung parliament. The major parties are now desperately trying to negotiate agreements with three or four independents and the Greens MP to form a minority government, while the outcome in a number of seats remains uncertain. If a deal to form government cannot be made, the Governor-General has the power to call another election.

While the three independent MPs certain of a seat, Tony Windsor, Bob Katter and Rob Oakeshott, are former members of the conservative rural-based National Party, all broke over strong objections to particular aspects of the neoliberal agenda that has been pursued by both Liberal-National coalition and ALP governments since the 1980s.

Further, they have consolidated the hold on their seats by taking “community-first” positions on issues directly affecting their electorates. So neither major party can be certain of their support.

Newly elected Greens MP for Melbourne, Adam Bandt, indicated earlier in the campaign that he would support a hypothetical ALP minority government but since August 21, he's been reluctant to be so specific. He told ABC TV's 7.30 Report on August 22 that the Greens were entering discussions with various parties and independents and “there's nothing on or off the table”.

Progressive independent Andrew Wilkie, a former Greens candidate, has a chance of winning the Tasmanian seat of Denison away from the ALP. He laid out a position, on the August 22 7.30 Report on how he would be prepared to support a minority government:

“If I'm elected, the party I support will only be assured that I won't block supply, and that I won't support any reckless no confidence motion.

“Beyond that, it's all up for grabs. I will look at every piece of legislation, every issue and assess them on its merits. I think it's self evident what is reasonable ethical behaviour and what isn't. And any acts of lying and so on, I won't accept that and I won't support legislation in that regard.”

The Greens should make an offer to support a minority ALP government along similar lines because clearly a Liberal-National government would be a greater evil. However, entering or making any further commitments to a possible ALP government would trap the Greens in a conservative government that will be bad for the majority of people, bad for Indigenous communities, bad for refugees and bad for the environment.

See also: Federal Election: We didn’t get what we deserved

Climate Action Now! Australian Socialists Adopt Climate Charter

July 20, 2010

“Change the system, not the climate: A safe climate is not possible unless an informed and mobilised community fights for it.”

2010 Climate Charter adopted by Australia’s Socialist Alliance and supported by SA candidates in the country’s current General Election.

For years, climate scientists have warned us that we need to act on climate change. Now, science is saying that climate change is taking place more rapidly than everyone previously thought.

The warning signs are obvious. April and May were the world’s hottest months since records began. This year’s Arctic ice sheet melt is taking place at a pace never seen before.

Scientists say carbon pollution has made the world’s oceans more acidic than they have been for at least 20 million years.

There is already too much carbon in the atmosphere. The warming already in the system risks the crossing of various natural “tipping points” that would raise temperatures further and faster.

If these points are crossed, it would bring average temperatures to levels that have not existed for millions of years, and to which today’s nature is simply not adapted.

In a warmer world, most existing species would die out. Large-scale agriculture would be difficult or impossible.

Video: Socialist Alliance conference in Australia

An excellent video of the 7th National Conference of the Australian Socialist Alliance, which features short interviews with participants, including Peter Hughes from Socialist Worker-New Zealand. Bronwen Beechey (SW-NZ) and Mike Treen, National Director of Unite, also attended the conference.

The conference marked the formal merger of the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) into the Socialist Alliance. The DSP was one of the initiators of the Socialist Alliance in 2001. See It's time for the DSP to merge into the Socialist Alliance by Peter Boyle.



The idea of bringing socialists from different backgrounds and traditions into one organisation is something that we should be considering in New Zealand. A New Zealand Socialist Alliance perhaps? Such a coming together would greatly improve the capacity of the socialist left in this country to give leadership at such a crucial time in history.

Peter Boyle: 'It's time for the DSP to merge into the Socialist Alliance'

from LINKS - International Journal of Socialist Renewal

This report and summary, presented by Peter Boyle on behalf of the DSP National Executive, was adopted by the 24th DSP Congress on January 2, 2010.

We are proposing to take an important step forward in our party building effort, an effort that has now spanned some four decades. We propose, at this 24th Congress, to merge the Democratic Socialist Perspective into the Socialist Alliance, to take everything we have learned and built over these years of political struggle (organised through the DSP) into a broader political organisation, an organisation which has a majority of members who don't come from the DSP.

We see this as the next best step to advance our objective of building a mass revolutionary socialist party that is capable of organising the Australian working class to bring into being a socialist society through replacing the political rule of the capitalist class with a working people's government.

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Western Australia: Socialist wins council seat

by Alex Bainbridge Perth 17 October 2009 from Green Left Weekly Socialist Alliance WA co-convenor Sam Wainwright was elected from the Hilton Ward to the Fremantle Council in the October 17 poll.

Wainwright polled over 33% (438 out of 1310 valid votes). His nearest competitor, an ALP member, polled 337 votes (25.7%). Under the new, undemocratic first-past-the-post local government electoral laws in WA, Wainwright was elected as the candidate with the most votes. In the mayoral poll of six candidates, Greens member Brad Pettit triumphed with over 45% of the vote, well in front of two fellow Greens Michael Martin and Jon Strachan. Both Pettit and Strachan were endorsed by the Fremantle Chamber of Commerce. Of the six new councillors elected there is one ALP member, two Greens, two independents and one Socialist Alliance. However under WA electoral law local government candidates can not formally run for political parties and Wainwright was the only candidate to declare his political affiliations in his campaign material. Issues Wainwright campaigned on included: making Fremantle a “fight climate change” council; better public transport, including linking Fremantle to Beaconsfield, Hilton and Samson with CAT buses; for council and community workers’ rights; maintaining the areas beaches, parks and green spaces for everyone; for rates based on ability to pay, not just house value; and council democracy. For more details of Wainwright’s campaign, visit www.samforhilton.blogspot.com.

Aussie Socialists Adopt 10 Point Action Plan to Stop Climate Change

Our Common Cause: Climate Change − the Danger is Now from Green Left Weekly 24 January 2009 The fate of advanced human civilisation − and perhaps of our species itself − hangs in the balance. Fuelled by human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, global warming is advancing at a pace inconceivable to scientists just a few years ago. The complete melting in late summers of Arctic sea ice − something that scientists used to predict for the final decades of this century − is now widely expected by 2013-15. As the highly reflective ice is replaced by dark water, much more of the sun’s heat is captured. Mean Arctic temperatures in recent years have been as much as 3°C above their long-term averages.

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Peter Boyle: 'It's time for the DSP to merge into the Socialist Alliance'

from LINKS - International Journal of Socialist Renewal

This report and summary, presented by Peter Boyle on behalf of the DSP National Executive, was adopted by the 24th DSP Congress on January 2, 2010.

We are proposing to take an important step forward in our party building effort, an effort that has now spanned some four decades. We propose, at this 24th Congress, to merge the Democratic Socialist Perspective into the Socialist Alliance, to take everything we have learned and built over these years of political struggle (organised through the DSP) into a broader political organisation, an organisation which has a majority of members who don't come from the DSP.

We see this as the next best step to advance our objective of building a mass revolutionary socialist party that is capable of organising the Australian working class to bring into being a socialist society through replacing the political rule of the capitalist class with a working people's government.

Over the last few months the detailed terms for such a merger have been negotiated with Socialist Alliance leadership bodies, and the DSP National Executive is satisfied that these terms will allow all the gains we have made to be preserved and used to build the Socialist Alliance. Comrades can read the transition proposals in Alliance Voices Vol 9, Nos. 6, 7 & 8.

If delegates adopt the general line of this report, the new draft DSP Constitution, and the resolution that defines the DSP as a non-caucusing tendency of opinion in the Socialist Alliance, we will be deciding to make the Socialist Alliance our sole party project.

If we make this decision, we will no longer organise our political work through the DSP. The DSP will no longer operate (except for dealing with any necessary transitional matters relating to the merger) unless the trigger to reconsider this decision, provided for in the proposed new DSP constitution, is activated.

The new constitution will oblige the DSP members to meet (at least briefly – perhaps around a future Socialist Alliance conference) within two years and then decide to wind up the DSP or continue to exist in some form.

If you adopt the line of this report and the draft new Constitution, the DSP will no longer collect dues but it will be a requirement that DSP members are financial in the Socialist Alliance and financially support the Green Left Weekly project through a solidarity subscription. Further, DSP members should maintain (if not increase) their level of financial commitment within the new party framework. This can serve as a positive encouragement and example to others in the Socialist Alliance who we hope will take on greater financial responsibility for our common project.

While Resistance continues to organise as an independent socialist youth organisation affiliated to the Socialist Alliance, its political collaboration will be with the Socialist Alliance not the DSP. We should be optimistic about this new relationship because already in branches where youth recruitment is strongest, for example in Wollongong, we find young people are being attracted as much through Socialist Alliance as through Resistance.

The DSP National Executive does not envision that the trigger to reconstitute will ever need to be used but it is there – just in case. We don't even envisage the DSP a likely basis for a revolutionary or Marxist caucus in Socialist Alliance – should one become necessary in the future – because any such caucus should include many non-DSP members in the Socialist Alliance. That is the reality of the Socialist Alliance today.

In the present relationship of forces in the Socialist Alliance, the reconstitution of a separate organisation of DSP members would block the process of building the new party. It would cheat us of new synergies within the Socialist Alliance. It would create unnecessary divisions within the Socialist Alliance. It would hold back the development of a new collectivity we are forging in the Socialist Alliance between socialists from different traditions.

Over the past decades in the DSP, we've always sought to build an inclusive party, a party that has a broad leadership team, that is always trying to absorb new leaders and expand the base of that team. This has always been our approach. And we want to take this approach into Socialist Alliance without reference to who was in the DSP and who was not.

If significant political differences and alignments develop in the Socialist Alliance in future, such differences should be based on our new collective political experience in the Socialist Alliance and not on our former political attachments.

It flows from this that, if the proposals in this report are adopted, from now on we won't be recruiting to the DSP – instead we'll be recruiting to the Socialist Alliance. Nominally, the proposed DSP National Steering Committee could decide to accept a new member to the DSP but it is unlikely that this provision will be used. In addition to the new Constitution, this report proposes that Congress adopts the following motion:

"This 24th Congress of the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) resolves that the DSP will cease meeting or making decisions separately from bodies of the Socialist Alliance except for any decisions needed to be made by the DSP specifically to facilitate the merger of the DSP into the Socialist Alliance, or to prepare for conferences or meetings of the DSP as provided for under the new constitution of the DSP adopted at this congress."

The minority platform

First of all, I want to acknowledge the constructive character of the minority platform in this Congress. The comrades who supported the minority position have demonstrated that it is possible to be a loyal minority in the DSP. We've always accepted constructive criticisms and the right to be a loyal dissenting minority in the DSP and the DSP National Executive has made every effort to ensure that minority platforms are presented to the membership. Indeed, in the three years to 2008, the DSP also demonstrated its incredible tolerance of a factionally-destructive and disloyal minority. Comrades from many collaborating parties have expressed their amazement at our endurance! But the conduct of the minority platform at this Congress has been a sharp contrast to the conduct of the minority platforms in the two previous DSP Congresses.

The minority platform presented to this Congress argues that the DSP should continue to organise separately to carry out Marxist education. The minority platform argues that the rest of our political work, including our intervention in the movements, can be organised through Socialist Alliance.

If Marxist education was some sort of exotic ideology then perhaps only an explicitly “Marxist” organisation can be trusted with carrying out Marxist education. But this is not the case, as Marx and Engels argued over and over again. Marx and Engels practiced and promoted a scientific approach to understanding social reality in order to transform it. Marxism is not a religion. It can be and is taught by institutions other than declared “Marxist” parties. Meanwhile many so-called “Marxist” parties teach a severely distorted Marxism.

Further, as I argued in DSP pre-congress discussion, keeping political theory the preserve of a “Marxist” tendency in the Alliance separates political theory from political practice in the new party – and that eventually leads to bad theory, in particular to sectarian distortions.

We see many examples of this in the left today. There are socialist sects that abstain from all movement work and just try to promote their own little “party”. Each of these groups has made a shibboleth of some political difference that separates them off from all other socialists. We also see the academic socialist individuals whose political practice is confined to lecturing others (often on internet lists) about what others are doing wrong while their own theories are never put to the test of practice.

We need to keep theory together with action in the party we build.

But can we effectively take the DSP’s theoretical heritage into the Socialist Alliance without narrowing the Alliance? That's the second concern, voiced by the minority platform.

This is a practical challenge and prospects of doing this look pretty good. The ten points of consensus in the transition proposals on socialist ideas and education (published in Alliance Voices,Vol 19, No 6) are:

1. Socialist Alliance recognises that access to the educational assets and publishing resources of the DSP would be of benefit to all SA members as part of a wider exposure to all socialist perspectives. Socialist Alliance may make use of the accumulated educational experience and assets of the DSP.

2. Socialist Alliance establishes an educational committee with the task of facilitating access by all SA members to education and published resources that inform them of a range of socialist ideas. The range of socialist ideas discussed may be broader than SA policy which is set out in its adopted resolutions.

3. The Socialist Alliance political education committee should investigate the merits of proposing to the NE that it recommends that all branches form socialist ideas committees.

4. Socialist Alliance aims to encourage various forms of political, social and environmental education, so that members are able to take advantage of training and learning programs that may increase their understanding and raise consciousness.

5. Socialist Alliance recognises that political, social and environmental educational resources will include discussions, forums, publications and multimedia techniques.

6. Socialist Alliance encourages states and branches to organise and hold socialist ideas forums when practicable, to facilitate a wide-ranging discussion of socialist ideas.

7. Socialist Alliance seeks to make available the Links website as an information resource for all branches.

8. That Socialist Alliance may make recommendations to Resistance Books in line with its educational and political needs, and may make use of Resistance Books titles in its education programs.

9. Socialist Alliance recognises the Marxist schools being organised in January 2010 as part of the broad range of educational activities that it offers its members.

10. To use the drafting of the proposed book on socialism to frame a discussion on socialist ideas in Socialist Alliance branches.

Why have we been able to reach this significant consensus in Socialist Alliance on socialist ideas and education? First, the DSP has always been open and upfront with its politics in the Socialist Alliance. Second, we’ve worked together with others in the Socialist Alliance for nearly a decade now, so our political ideas are not alien or threatening to non-DSP members. Third, the DSP has stuck with the Socialist Alliance through good and bad times and it has won a lot of respect and authority for this.

Other Socialist Alliance members don't want the theoretical positions of the DSP forced upon the Alliance but they welcome discussion of our ideas. Why? Because they realise that we have a lot of experience and ideas to share and that the Socialist Alliance is continually forced to develop its policies and political positions as it intervenes in the political struggle.

Because of the basic healthy and anti-dogmatic approach of the DSP to political theory, our ideas have been influential in the Socialist Alliance and over the years the programmatic gap between the DSP and SA has narrowed.

Is this a problem? Does this narrow the Socialist Alliance too much? We don’t think so. Indeed, the question that is posed to the supporters of the minority platform is: what sort of socialist education would you have the Socialist Alliance carry out?

At the beginning of the Socialist Alliance we argued against the approach (then put forward by comrades from the International Socialist Organisation) that would have kept the Socialist Alliance to a more social-democratic or reformist platform. We argued instead for a transitional platform that could develop over time through the actual experience of SA members from their collective intervention in the class struggle. The Socialist Alliance adopted this approach from its first national conference in 2002.

Over the years, the Socialist Alliance has developed its policies and political positions. The Socialist Alliance has developed a platform/program that is explicitly anti-capitalist and therefore implicitly revolutionary.

So there is no contradiction between the DSP’s explicitly revolutionary socialist politics and those of Socialist Alliance, and therefore it would be wrong for us to keep organising separately as the DSP.

Further we should not exaggerate the political gap between DSP members and others in the Socialist Alliance. They have all decided to join an explicitly socialist and anti-capitalist party – and one with nearly a decade of political history. These people aren’t members of Socialist Alliance just because they support us on this or that movement campaign (no more than this is the case in the DSP).

A concern about the loss of the DSP's democratic centralism is raised by the minority platform. When the development of theory is combined with political practice you also have a process that builds a political basis for greater unity in action. That’s what Lenin reminded his comrades from other countries about very sharply in Leftwing Communism. Democratic centralism is not some organisational fix that can automatically give us a disciplined party: it is based on the development and accumulation of real political authority by a party engaged in effective struggle.

It is true that you need the structures for democratic discussion and decision-making. These are basically in place in the Socialist Alliance and will be improved and developed especially once DSP members are fully focused on building just Socialist Alliance as our common party.

This is how the current Socialist Alliance constitution puts it:

5.3 The Socialist Alliance is politically pluralistic and encourages all individuals and perspectives to participate fully in our struggle for a socialist society and in our way of working as an alliance. Members of other parties, organisations and groups who join the Socialist Alliance are expected to be able to keep their identity as members of these organisations whilst participating fully in the development of the Alliance. Any individual or affiliate organisation shall have the right to form a political tendency for the purpose of influencing Alliance policy and activity.

5.4 To further this end, membership assumes a commitment to a non-sectarian and co-operative way of working, looking to build unity, positively supporting and encouraging the notion of alliances and ensuring that any critical debates are conducted in a positive manner and without personal attacks.

5.5 Once decisions have been taken by the elected bodies of the Alliance all members are expected to present that decision as the position of the Alliance, both in public and in dealings with other political organisations. At the same time, individual Alliance members and affiliate organisations are free to indicate their agreement or disagreement with any Alliance decision.

There's is a healthy combination of democracy and unity and action in this approach, one that has probably more in common with the actual Bolshevik practice than the many distorted versions of “democratic centralism” commonly practiced in small revolutionary socialist groups today which call themselves “Leninist”.

We must never forget that the real basis for strong unity in action in a socialist party is political. In the far-too-theoretical and schematic way that most of us have first come to the political legacy of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, it once might have seemed to us that formal and detailed theoretical agreement on explicitly Marxist doctrine was the basis for the “Leninist” discipline of the DSP members. But that's not the case. And we saw in the past how quickly discipline was broken by certain former DSP members who still proclaim loyalty to the DSP program.

Over the next few years, the political confidence, political unity and political loyalty of the members of the Socialist Alliance in the organisation will grow. I am confident that it will soon rival that achieved by the DSP through its four decades of existence. When the class struggle escalates – and provided SA keeps offering the political leadership (including its leadership in left regroupment) needed – the unity in action of Socialist Alliance members will then eclipse that achieved by the DSP.

Two questions

I think there are many comrades here who are wondering why it has taken us so long to get to this point? Perhaps more comrades are wondering more about this than they are about why we are finally proposing this step today. But I am going to spend sometime on answering both these questions, because the answers to these two questions are interrelated.

So why has it taken us so long?

It wasn't just the faction fight that broke out in the DSP in 2005 that is the reason why it has taken us this long. It's because, through the process of building the Socialist Alliance, we've come up against a persistent trend in all small revolutionary socialist groups to want to hang on to the idea that you can only build a genuine socialist party if it has complete or near complete programmatic agreement. We've come up against this false idea that you have to agree not just on how to move forward in the class struggle today but also on how you see every twist and turn in the Russian Revolution, how exactly you understand the roles of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Fidel, the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Venezuela, etc, etc. In the end, the faction fight in the DSP was just the last in a string of expressions of this approach that we came up against in the Socialist Alliance.

After the Socialist Alliance was initiated by the DSP and the International Socialist Organisation in 2001, a handful of smaller left groups joined in. Other left groups, such as the Communist Party of Australia and Socialist Alternative, were invited but declined to join the Alliance.

The groups that did join the Alliance agreed on a common political platform focused on immediate class-struggle responses to neo-liberalism. It was a platform that was explicitly socialist but we agreed not to make the historical and theoretical differences between the groups a barrier to working together around what we agreed on. At the same time, the Socialist Alliance created forums for ongoing public discussion and debate.

The basic idea was that we didn’t have to have all the ideological and historical disputes that divided the various factions of the left resolved before agreeing to organise together on a fighting program against capitalist attacks and for socialist solutions to the urgent problems society faces today. Indeed, we were more likely to resolve these differences after we had gone through an extended experience of working together around what we agreed on – which was substantial.

We agreed on a basic structure and constitution which put the emphasis on inclusivity. As the biggest of the groups that founded the Alliance, the DSP made concessions which restricted itself to a minority vote on leadership bodies and in conferences. We saw this as an interim confidence-building measure.

The unprecedented coming together of these left groups, groups which until then had spent lots of energy criticising each other, made a significant impact on the much broader layer of left activists who had not joined any of the pre-existing socialist groups. Hundreds of them joined the Socialist Alliance, quickly becoming the majority of its members. Among those who joined were a number of militant trade unionists (shop-floor delegates as well as a few elected leaders of militant unions) and leaders of other social movements, including the prominent socialist Indigenous leader Sam Watson. These people also gave the Socialist Alliance a more significant hearing among a broader layer of trade union and other movement leaders and activists.

This was an important opening for the left in Australia, which was (and remains) small and relatively isolated in the labour movement. Would the left seize this as a chance to build a multi-tendency socialist party with a significant connection to the labour movement and other key social movements? This was the clearly expressed wish of the large majority of Socialist Alliance members who were not members of any of the founding affiliate groups, and the DSP agreed with them. However, all the other affiliated revolutionary socialist groups disagreed. Each thought their own “correct” programs would be liquidated if they built the Alliance as our common party. They could conceive of the Alliance only as a site for their “real” revolutionary parties to intervene in or, at best, as a “united front of a special kind.”

This view, which is sectarian because it spurned a chance to unite politically with a broader layer of left leadership in the movements, was rejected by the majority of Alliance members in at least three Socialist Alliance national conferences in a row (in a situation where the DSP restricted its representation in both delegates and elected leadership bodies).

By the Socialist Alliance’s May 2005 national conference, it was clear that all the other revolutionary socialist groups affiliated to the Socialist Alliance were opposed to taking the Alliance forward. At most they were willing to participate in the Socialist Alliance as a loose electoral front in which a minority retained veto powers by right of their group affiliate status. They began to pull back even the relatively modest resources they put into the Socialist Alliance. By 2007, all the founding affiliates aside from the DSP and Resistance, the youth organisation allied to the DSP, had left the Alliance.

Then in 2005, a minority emerged in the DSP which essentially agreed with the approach of these former affiliates.

The DSP majority decided that it would be wrong to abandon the Socialist Alliance, arguing that the large majority of people who had joined and were not members of the founding affiliate groups still saw the Alliance as their party and that the Alliance had won a modest but significant broader recognition and respect in the labour movement.

The DSP then underwent a protracted three-year-long internal faction fight, which took significant energy away from building the Socialist Alliance. We were forced to divert a lot of time and energy into this fight, which was a fight not just for the Socialist Alliance but also a fight to defend the real political heritage of the DSP.

Amazingly, through all this protracted hesitation, the majority of the non-affiliate group membership of the Socialist Alliance continued to see the Alliance as their party. Most of the militant trade union shop-floor delegates and social movement activists who joined the Socialist Alliance are still proud members. This is a lesson about working class values of perseverance and loyalty which contrast with the characteristic middle class traits of vacillation and faint-heartedness.

Since then other leading Indigenous activists have joined the Socialist Alliance. Since then several longstanding branch builders have left the Australian Labor Party to join the Socialist Alliance.

Since then, the Sudanese comrades who produce The Flame, the Arabic supplement to Green Left Weekly, have come into the Socialist Alliance.

Since then, the Socialist Alliance won its first local council position in Fremantle.

Since then, two large and successful international socialist ideas conferences, Climate Change|Social Change (in 2008) and World At A Crossroads (2009) have been held.

Since then, Green Left Weekly has been strengthened with a Spanish-language supplement, thanks to the comrades in the Latin America Social Forum in Sydney.

When we emerged from the faction fight in the DSP (with an overwhelming 80% victory in 2008) we had decisively to confront the challenge of Socialist Alliance once again. And over this year, with the encouragement of others in the Socialist Alliance, the DSP has moved to make a decisive turn which comes to a head in this 24th Congress of the DSP. And we should do so with great confidence in Socialist Alliance as the new party we build.

This is not just a long answer to the question “Why we took so long” but it also answers the question “Why we have to take this turn”.

All comrades who have lived through this protracted struggle must understand what we experienced and draw the lessons from this experience.

One of the most important lessons we should learn is that for socialists party building is a permanent struggle to bring together and unite the actually existing leadership of the working class struggles and the struggles of other oppressed groups. Marx and Engels taught us that socialism is not just a set of good ideas about how society should be run. If socialism is going to be more than just another utopia people dream about, it has to become a movement of the social forces that can put an end to capitalism. It has to be a movement of the working class and other oppressed groups.

Today we are still in the low foothills of the struggle to build such a socialist movement this country. So all small socialist groups, including the DSP and including the Socialist Alliance, need to understand that our party-building challenge is to unite with the actual leadership or (to use an old word) the “vanguard” of the working class and oppressed groups that emerge in real struggle against capitalism.

This has been the DSP's understanding since the 1980s – though some of our erstwhile comrades retreated from this approach more recently.

This is how our approach was summed up by the late comrade Jim Percy in a talk “What Politics for A New Party” in January 1987 (published in Building the Revolutionary Party: Selected Writings 1980-87):

" ... Above all, we’re confident the people fighting for real change today can successfully come together in an organisation that will be far more effective than anything we have today.

“We don’t believe we can build a vanguard party without the vanguard — the real vanguard, the people who are involved in struggle today. Getting them together in a party will be a big step towards the creation of the instruments of struggle we need."

The reason why we must commit fully to building the Socialist Alliance today is because it brings more – though far from all – of that “vanguard” into a common party.

Of course, we realise that the struggle to bring together the class leadership that can win a socialist future does not end with the Socialist Alliance. There are still many other genuine leaders of this class we have to unite with outside the Socialist Alliance. Some are in the Greens and some are still in the ALP. Others are in no party at all. We work with the others the best we can. Comrades see this in our movement work and you saw it in the successful campaign in Fremantle Council in which comrade Sam Wainwright won through a campaign in collaboration with activists in the left of the Greens and the ALP. We know that in this ongoing process of regroupment there may be other political formations that will have to be built in the future. But right now, we also recognise that we can take a small but significant step in that process by building the Socialist Alliance.

One of the excuses that has been made by the former DSP members who split off to form the Revolutionary Socialist Party is that the Socialist Alliance is not a mass party. We know that. Everybody knows that. But that is totally beside the point. The RSP, along with many of the small socialist groups, say they’ll be in a new left party if what is on offer is a new mass party. Indeed, they’d be in such a party even if its politics was reformist or liberal. The Socialist Alliance is not a mass party (and neither is it reformist!), but it is a concrete opportunity to build a bigger and more effective and influential socialist party around a class struggle program, like that of the New Anti-Capitalist Party in France.

The late Jim Percy answered this sort of hesitation, two decades ago, in a report to the October 1987 DSP National Committee (also published in Building the Revolutionary Party: Selected Writings 1980-87):

"How can we rebuild a major socialist current in this country? Our approach has always been to set some goals, to decide what we can do given our present situation and resources. There’s no point dreaming about what we could do if we had 10,000 members and unlimited funds. We must start from our real situation today ... This flowed from our realisation that the tactics of party building are more complex than we might previously have thought. It’s not just a question of recruiting one by one, or even 10 by 10, until we’ve eventually got a mass party."

Implicit is this approach has to be our openness to regroup with not just new forces but also to regroup with any of the groups that were previously in the Socialist Alliance. Remember the groups that left the Alliance did so despite being able to agree on a common political platform and despite years of common experience working effectively together in the trade union and other social movements. This is an amazing part of our experience in Socialist Alliance, and it should not be missed. Between 2001 and 2005, the Alliance proved that the notoriously fractious left could work together and that in doing so it could become more effective.

But it also showed us that the political will to do so has to be there as well. The various left groups that walked out of the Socialist Alliance could work together in the future if they have the will to do so. Come the day when any of those groups find the will to work together, we'll be willing partners. The doors will be open.

However, this does not mean that the Socialist Alliance cannot continue to regroup the left until the former affiliates come back in. Altogether, those groups comprise a very small section of the left in this country, the biggest proportion of which does not belong to any socialist party. Our approach at each stage of the struggle has to be to unite with those who are willing to work together at the time.

We confront the challenge of left regroupment in a time of severe, multiple crisis of capitalism. First, the climate change crisis, which threatens human survival on a global level; second, the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression (though Australia appears to have got off much more lightly than other countries, it is unlikely to be all over); and third, the widespread crisis of legitimacy of capitalist neo-liberalism. The legitimacy crisis of capitalist neo-liberalism is not a new phenomenon. It has been mounting up for decades and underpins the revolutionary advances in Latin America today.

The left in Australia is too small to force the pace of the movements needed to fight the capitalist “solutions” to these crises that are being prepared and beginning to be imposed. We have to be in the growing resistance to these capitalist “solutions”. We know that any left group that is content to just shout from the sidelines “Capitalism has failed, embrace socialism!” is doomed to become ever more sectarian.

That's why we need to merge the DSP into the Socialist Alliance, and turn the page on the near decade of hesitation.

Conclusion

I want to end with another quote from Jim Percy's Building the Revolutionary Party: Selected Writings 1980-87, from the chapter “What Politics For A New Party”:

Our basic position is to unite everyone who’s interested. I’m reminded of a previous attempt to build unity around a party that was appropriate for an earlier time.

When a unified Communist Party was formed in the United States, James P. Cannon (one of the founders of the Communist Party in that country, and later a leading Trotskyist) discussed the question of unity and the workers’ attitude towards it. He said:

“… They will hail it as the morning star. They are looking for it. I say, comrades, they are looking for it with longing eyes. The workers do not like division, there is nothing that dispirits them more than to see their own battlefront divided, their own leaders demoralised. In the past we were not able to give them unified leadership. Let us move quickly away from past mistakes. The past is dead. Let the dead past bury its dead. We have come together to face the future. Let us judge each other upon activities of the future and not upon activities that lie behind us.

“The final word is for unity, unity of the revolutionary workers.

“Down with those who speak against it! Down with those who seek to divide the revolutionary movement! Long live the unification of revolutionary forces!”

Of course, the language is different. The time was different, perhaps the needs were different, but the task is the same: To develop unity among the real forces that are challenging capitalism today.

If we eventually find that more than one new party comes out of the movement we’re discussing, we’ll do our best to develop practical unity wherever possible — particularly in electoral projects, and in other campaigns.

Some people may ask whether we’re going too fast in this process, whether we shouldn’t discuss it further. In truth, we’re going too slowly. The time is ripe now, and we should try to seize it.

What does this project mean for us, as people who’ve been involved in revolutionary organisations and parties? Above all, it means rethinking our approach to politics, and one of the most important lessons of politics is that there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies.

People and circumstances change, ourselves included. In fact, if they don’t change, there is no hope for social change in this country. We believe that the leadership of the movement for fundamental change will be recomposed and renewed repeatedly in the course of the political process. Without that process of renewal and change, there’s no chance that the masses of people can change and make a social revolution.

For people not in parties, there’s another message. Perhaps there is cynicism, scepticism, disappointment with past attempts to build parties. These people must risk it. They must have a try, or in some cases another try.

People who are not in organisations have an enormous responsibility — perhaps even more responsibility than those who are already in organisations. These people must make their views known. Join the process in any way they can, and above all, by the weight of their influence, enforce unity on it.

Is all this going to be easy? No, not at all. But can we do it together? Yes, we think we can. That’s the promise and potential of the movement for a new party of the left.

Comrades, this is the spirit we need to take into the Socialist Alliance conference that starts tonight. We must say goodbye to the DSP that has helped us get this far, and we must embrace the Socialist Alliance which will get the socialist movement, further ahead in its struggle for fundamental social change.

Summary:

We've had a rich and frank discussion today. A wide range of comrades have spoken up. And they demonstrated in their contributions that they have a good grasp of the political methodology bequeathed to the socialist movement by Marx and Engels.

Comrades spanning different generations have demonstrated today that they have all grappled with the meaning of our collective political experiences – collective experiences that for some time now have involved comrades beyond the DSP and even beyond the broader of the Socialist Alliance. These collective experiences have involved a greater and more sustained engagement in working class struggles.

The cross-generation interventions in this discussion are especially significant because one aspect of the three-year faction fight we came out of in 2008 was a failure by a section of the old central leadership of the DSP to face up to generational leadership change.

Perhaps this is the silver lining to the near decade of struggling with the organised left's protracted hesitation in the face of a real opportunity for left regroupment.

But we don't need to dwell on the past. The real challenge now is to build a new and broad leadership team in the Socialist Alliance. One of the important proposals that we will be discussing in the Socialist Alliance national conference is the establishment of a national council, a broad leadership forum that can develop the sort of broad and inclusive leadership team that we found so valuable in the DSP. That broad leadership team built the DSP and also allowed us to decisively defeat the destructive and sectarian factional challenge to our regroupment perspectives.

We know that there was an objective basis to the development of the sectarian view of revolutionary politics as the defence of a timeless “sacred flame” in the Trotskyist movement's response to the rise of Stalinism. But we also know there are now powerful objective international developments that are breaking up this sectarian approach – the rise of the new revolutionary forces and governments in Latin America, among them.

There's a dialectic between the hopes and trepidation comrades feel as we complete this turn to building a new party. Comrade Stuart Munckton put it very clearly. This will be resolved if this turn results in more people throwing their lot in with the Socialist Alliance, if more comrades gain in confidence and deepen their commitment to the project.

In this turn, we are not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We've won strong support for all the key strengths and gains we bring from the DSP, including:

• our strong movement building engagement;
• Green Left Weekly;
• systematic socialist education – look at the transition proposals on socialist education;
• our professional, “bricks and mortar” approach to party building;
•  a flexible and transitional approach to the permanent challenge of working out just what we need to agree on at each stage in the long and complex struggle to accumulate the forces to build a party up to the job of leading a successful movement for socialism (a lesson from all revolutionary movements including the Cuban and Venezuelan revolutions).

We are fighting for an effective revolutionary democratic centralist party but not for democratic-centralism-in-a-bottle. The famous ship-in-a-bottle is just for the mantle piece. We're interested in a ship that sails, in a democratic centralism that grows out of real struggle and that is earned not decreed.

We are also fighting for a revolutionary program – but we know that such a program for this country is not yet developed. Any socialist group in Australia today which thinks it has an impeccable or true revolutionary program is suffering from an arrogant delusion.

The socialist movement in this country is in its very early stages and therefore its political program has a lot of development to go through. Many programs will be advanced in the process. In the next period we will have a rich experience in developing the program of the Socialist Alliance, an experience in which we will learn much from others in the Alliance and make an important contribution ourselves. It is an exciting time ahead.

We must not let nostalgia for the DSP form get in the way of what needs to be done to move the struggle forward. We all value the gains and lessons from our decades in the DSP but because we value those things, we must not be nostalgic for the old party forms. The new party is both a break from past forms and yet, in its content, has grown in a significant way out of our experiences in the DSP.

We would not have got here without the DSP, but now it is time to build on that rich past and move on to a new stage. Today we are not here to bury the party project but to make the decisions we need to make to build a stronger party for socialism.

Aussie Socialists Adopt 10 Point Action Plan to Stop Climate Change

Our Common Cause: Climate Change − the Danger is Now from Green Left Weekly 24 January 2009 The fate of advanced human civilisation − and perhaps of our species itself − hangs in the balance. Fuelled by human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, global warming is advancing at a pace inconceivable to scientists just a few years ago. The complete melting in late summers of Arctic sea ice − something that scientists used to predict for the final decades of this century − is now widely expected by 2013-15. As the highly reflective ice is replaced by dark water, much more of the sun’s heat is captured. Mean Arctic temperatures in recent years have been as much as 3°C above their long-term averages. A band of increased warmth 1500km wide stretches south from the Arctic Ocean to cover the main regions of Arctic permafrost. The permafrost is now melting. As it does so, ever-growing volumes of methane gas are bubbling from lakes and swamps. Given off when plant matter decays in an oxygen-poor environment, methane has a potent greenhouse effect. Though relatively short-lived in the atmosphere the gas, while present, traps heat at around 72 times the rate of carbon dioxide. Global warming threatens to become self-accelerating as natural “tipping points” are passed, triggering “positive feedbacks” that pour additional carbon from soils and forests into the atmosphere. After the sea ice, the next tipping point may lie in the forests of the Amazon. Heating up, drying out and burning, its trees and peatlands threaten to let loose a fresh flood of greenhouse gases. Scientific advances in the last few years have sharply changed the way researchers perceive the climate danger. Earlier computer models of the Earth’s climate suggested that if rises in average global temperature could be kept below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, compared to today’s figure of 0.8°C, the worst effects of global warming could be avoided. But new studies warn that there is no level of additional greenhouse gases that we can “safely” release into the atmosphere. Even present levels of warming are highly dangerous, as the swift decline of Arctic sea ice shows. Moreover, additional warming of at least 0.5°C, the result of greenhouse gases already emitted, is built into the climate system. To have any hope of avoiding disaster, human society must allot truly massive resources, immediately, to the task of cutting atmospheric greenhouse gases to a point no more than marginally above pre-industrial levels. The Socialist Alliance acknowledged at its sixth national conference in December that from its present level of just under 390 parts per million (ppm), atmospheric carbon dioxide needs to fall to 300-325ppm. Targets for future emissions must be set at zero, or even negative. And the time-frame? As soon as humanly possible. Our new position reads: “Current science indicates that annual emissions reductions of at least 5% will be essential. We propose immediate economy-wide and sector-by-sector planning for all greenhouse gases, to meet these targets on time or before. We must establish mechanisms to review and change these targets as scientific forecasts are updated.” It is true that life on Earth has thrived during long geological ages when temperatures were far above those of the present. But the plants and animals then were very different from today’s species, which evolved over millions of years to live on a relatively cool planet. However, the rate at which global temperatures are now rising appears to be without precedent in the geological record. Could human beings flourish in the radically impoverished, highly unstable biosphere that business-as-usual emissions are likely to create? Small groups probably would, in a few favoured locations. But civilisation as we know it could not survive. In the boardrooms of huge capitalist corporations, the emerging picture has executives terrified for their profits. Giant polluters like Rio Tinto plead to be exempt from climate change legislation. Big-business media organs conceal the new science, belittle the scientists, and give top billing to ignorant claptrap from denialists and climate sceptics. And in the government offices, politicians loyal to the corporations frame emissions reduction targets which − like Rudd Labor’s 5-15% by 2020 − amount to suicide notes for most of nature and humanity. These miserable targets and Rudd’s carbon emissions trading system simply cannot produce the reductions required within 10 years. Yet the resources needed to avoid climate catastrophe exist − our enormous challenge is to organise a climate action movement strong enough to enforce implementation of a plan for climate sustainability. Without a plan the movement will be without perspective; without a powerful movement conscious of what it is fighting for, the best climate sustainability plan will never be realised. This is the understanding with which the Socialist Alliance has produced the second edition of its Climate Change Charter. It will soon be available online and in print. It outlines the peril we face, and how ordinary concerned people can force history onto the path of climate sustainability. It’s time to stop looking to official Australia for any serious response to global warming. The only force capable of bringing real change to government policy is the climate change movement itself, organising, protesting, spreading awareness of the drastic seriousness of the crisis and collaborating across the planet. For the scale and speed of the changes now needed, the best example history offers is the conversion of major economies to wartime production during World War II. The Socialist Alliance will be doing all it can to help strengthen the movement to make that possible. We offer the following 10-point plan as the minimum needed to meet the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. Ten-point climate action plan Bringing greenhouse gas emissions under control will require deep changes and immense effort at every level; international, national and local. The Socialist Alliance says: 1. Implement immediate emission reduction targets with the aim of reducing net emissions to zero as soon as practicable, with a goal of achieving 100% of power from renewable sources by 2020. Introduce annual reduction targets of at least 5% to ensure that these targets are met. 2. Initiate further international treaty negotiations aimed at getting all countries to agree to these targets. Prioritise cutting rich industrial nations’ emissions, and supply aid to poorer countries to assist them in harnessing renewable sources of energy for industrial development. 3. Start the transition to a zero-waste economy. End industrial energy waste by legislation. Improve or ban wasteful consumer products. Engage workers in industry, with the appropriate technical experts, to redesign products and jobs sustainably. 4. Require the fitting of all feasible energy efficiency measures to existing houses and subsidise owner-occupiers for the costs. Allow renters to use the same system. Install photovoltaic solar panels and solar hot water heaters on home roofs, subsidised or owned by the electricity authority. Give commercial buildings a deadline to meet six-star energy standards within two years, and 10-star standards within 10 years. 5. Bring all power industries under public ownership and democratic control. Begin phasing out coalmining and coal-fired power immediately. Provide guaranteed jobs and retraining on full pay for coal mining and power-station communities, with new sustainable industries being built in their areas and paid redundancies offered. Run the maximum possible base-load power from existing natural gas and/or hydro power stations instead of coal only as an interim measure until renewable energy is available. Coal to be used only for predicted energy peaks in the short term. 6. Bring the whole car industry under public control. Re-tool this industry to manufacture wind turbines, public transport vehicles and infrastructure, solar hot water, solar photovoltaic cells. Subsidise the conversion of private cars to electric power. 7. Accelerate the construction of wind farms in suitable areas. Boost research into all renewable energy sources. Build pilot solar-thermal and geothermal plants now. Create localised power grids. 8. Stop logging old-growth forests and begin an urgent program of reforestation, carbon farming and protection of biodiversity to provide increased carbon sinks. 9. Phase out industrial farming based on fertilisers, pesticides and fuel sourced from petroleum. Work with farmers and their organisations to make food production sustainable and carbon negative. Restrict farming areas to ensure that riverine, forest and other indigenous ecosystems return to healthy states. Encourage new farming practices including organic and urban farming. This process must allow for security of food supplies, and guarantee full employment and retraining for rural communities. 10. Make all urban and regional public transport free and upgrade services to enable all urban residents to use it for regular commuting. Nationalise and upgrade interstate train and ferry services to provide real alternatives to air travel. Prioritise rail freight. All rail, light rail and interstate freight to be electrified or to run on biofuels from waste where possible. Encourage bicycle use through more cycleways, and better facilities for cyclists. Implement free or very cheap bicycle rental networks.