By Kathy Newnam

Crisis of capitalism 

The defining feature of Australian politics today is the ongoing retreat of the organised working class. In the face of the serious capitalist economic crisis there is no mass expression whatsoever of the working class alternative. The class-collaborationist leadership of the trade union movement is unwilling and incapable of challenging the ruling class solutions to the crisis – cutting deals for pay cuts, shorter hours and other solutions demanded by the bosses to supposedly “save jobs”. 

In the face of the environmental catastrophe facing the planet, the focus of the mainstream political debate shifted to a falling out amongst thieves. Meanwhile, the fundamentals flaws of the carbon trading scheme remain unchallenged by the unions, the environment peak groups or the Greens. Compare the situation in Australian politics to the international stage – where the working class alternative was posed so sharply by Chavez at the Copenhagen summit.  

It reminds us that while we are part of an international struggle, the development of our movement is markedly uneven across the globe. This in turn highlights the importance and indeed the centrality of understanding the political terrain in which we are working to build the socialist movement. 

While we discussed this morning the international political situation and the revolutionary advances in Latin America, the political situation we face is far from revolutionary. If a party does not understand the political period, it can make major mistakes and lose its grounding.

Capitalism is in crisis, but it can overcome the crisis as long as it is able to force the costs onto working people. The propaganda machine is in overdrive to convince working people that Australia has avoided the impacts of the economic crisis. The core message of most of this PR is “don’t panic – keep spending” – dig deeper into debt to keep the system afloat. But the commentary is contradictory – as they know that the system is not out of crisis and they also have to work to convince working people to “bear the burden” in the longer term, to advance the idea that our interests are tied up with the survival of capitalism and with the “national interests”.

Take this example in December 24 edition of The Australian from an article titled “We aren’t just larrikins” by a researcher at a bourgeois think-tank “Centre for Independent Studies”: “That Australia is one of very few countries to survive the global economic crisis relatively unscathed is hardly news. Many Australians also take for granted they live in a prosperous and vibrant nation with a fantastic quality of life, and which is a good place in which to do business”. I’ll come back to the reality of this “fantastic quality of life”, but what’s the author’s explanation for it? Because “governments since the 1980s had modernised Australia to make it a leader in the industrialised world”.

What he means by “modernised” is the gutting of social services, welfare, widespread privatizations and the massive shift of wealth from wages to profits. This was part of an international trend as capital worked to claw back the ground that it had to concede to workers under pressure of the widespread social upheaval of the 60’s and 70’s.

In Australia, these attacks were carried out under the Labor government with the compliance of the union leadership under the Prices and Incomes Accords. Agreements struck between the government and the class-collaborationist leadership of the union movement in the ACTU. Any union that stepped outside the framework of this agreement – like the BLF and the Pilots were smashed.

As their fighting capacity was strangled by the Accord process union membership declined and union structures were decimated. Union membership fell from 51% in 1981 to 39.6% in 1992 (ACTU figures supplied in 1991, 1993 congresses). By 1992 the number of work days lost in strikes had dropped to its lowest level in 30 years.

This decimation of the unions was what laid the basis for the ongoing rollbacks and the anti-union attacks under the Howard government (more on this later). It is this that the bourgeois propagandists are talking about with their slippery code-words like “modernization”.

But no matter how much they rip out of working people they still can’t avoid the contradictions inherent in their own system. When the latest crisis hit in 2008 and panic was setting in, one of the central themes of the reporting and bourgeois analysis was that they did not know how their own system works. You had liberal journalists and commentators begrudgingly acknowledging that only Marx could explain the crisis.

Now that they think that they’ve weathered this round and there’s no immediate pressure to provide answers they’ve picked themselves up, dusted themselves off and returned to the script.  Back to the sales pitch. Capitalism might have some ups and downs, but it’s the only system that can guarantee your “quality of life”.

But is it true that Australia has avoided the crisis?

The Government was crowing after the release of the economic figures for the September quarter – which registered a 0.5% growth. This means that according to the widely accepted classification, Australia is the only imperialist nation to have thus far avoided a recession (defined as a contraction of the economy for six months in a row).

But even with the crowing, they know full well that the global crisis is still bound to hit harder. The economic situation in Australia is highly dependent on China and in turn on Europe and the US – no country can avoid the crisis. They also need to keep the pressure on to convince working people to accept “paying the price” for the crisis.

The slight growth in the economy was in part fuelled by increased household spending - and increasing debt. The Australian reported on December 27 that debt on mortgages, credit cards and loans now stands at $1.2 trillion – up 71% in five years. Reserve Bank figures show personal debt now equates to 100.4 per cent of Australia's annual GDP, one of the highest ratios in the developed world.

At the end of 2007 the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) estimated that there were around 13,000 borrowers 90 days or more in arrears on their home loans. Today that figure has almost doubled to 25,000 and, as interest rates, unemployment and underemployment are expected to grow this is bound to keep climbing.

While unemployment decreased slightly from October to November from 5.8% to 5.7%, the reports generally only focus on the immediate figures, the monthly changes and how it compares to what was forecasted. So the reports of the November figures commonly reported that 5.7% was “better-than-expected” because “financial markets” were estimating 5.9% unemployment. Never mind that it is still a 1.3% increase on the same time last year. Or that underemployment has risen from 5.9% in May 2008 to 7.8% in November this year.  

In manufacturing there was 77 000 jobs lost in the year to October (Adelaide Advertiser, October 25). The decline in manufacturing has been a long-term trend since the 1970s, but the economic crisis also gives cover for many companies to carry out long planned job cuts and closures.  

While most working people are drowning in debt to try to buy happiness that consuming allegedly brings – this “fantastic quality of life” is a world away from the millions of people living under the poverty line. While academics debate what this “poverty line” is – according to the Salvation Army if the same methods of determining poverty are used as in the UK, 3.8 million people in Australia live in poverty – 19% of the population.  

• Nearly 27% of people over the age of 65 in Australia have incomes below the OECD poverty threshold  (OECD)
• Nearly a quarter of a million people who are looking for work have not had substantial work for a year or more (http://www.workplace.gov.au)
• Each night there are over 100 000 people homeless and about 100 homeless families that cannot find places in refuges.

The illusion of the “fantastic quality of life” in Australia is a myth – and it is a racist myth which denies the ongoing reality of the third world living conditions in indigenous communities and the deep going social disadvantage borne of dispossession and systemic racism and violence at the hands of the state. Life expectancy is 16-17 years less for Indigenous people – 53% of indigenous men die before the age of 50, compared with 13% for the population as a whole. Infant deaths amongst indigenous children account for 23% of all infant deaths. Aboriginal men are locked up at a rate five times greater than Apartheid South Africa.

This social reality predates the most recent crisis. While the super-profits ripped out of the Third World benefit a layer of working people in this country, the alleged “fantastic quality of life” is a myth and always has been. It is an ideological tool – to keep working people struggling to achieve the unachievable – trapping working people in un-payable debt that dampens any impulse to radicalism.  Forcing people to work until they drop to keep up –literally: The Age reported on December 17 that more than 500,000 people say they intend never to retire. And in the last year, the number of people declaring themselves retired has shrunk by 65,000.

A report released in November (Something for nothing - unpaid overtime in Australia) also found that the threat of unemployment and the struggle to “get ahead” also sees workers in Australia doing an average of 70 minutes of unpaid overtime a day – this equates to six and half weeks work a year and is the equivalent of 6% of all economic activity in Australia – a $72 billion rip-off to add to the “fantastic quality of life” of the bosses.

Meanwhile, the use of racism, sexism and homophobia is intensified in an attempt to shift the blame for the struggles faced by working people and to sew division amongst the oppressed. 

In September 2008 at the onset of the crisis, Richard Branson wrote an article titled “In Defense of Capitalism” where he wrote “Capitalism may be in some sort of a crisis at the moment, but I still know of no better way of increasing human wealth and happiness”.  

But then with an estimated personal wealth of $3 billion, he would say that. But it highlights our main barriers in the battle of ideas. While bourgeois ideas and individualism predominate, the majority of working people know from their lived experience that capitalism does not bring wealth and happiness. But socialism remains discredited on a wide-scale by both the historical experience of Stalinism and by the anti-communism in academia and popular media.  This of course is where the advances in Venezuela and Cuba in building “socialism of the 21st century” is crucial in our propaganda.  

But social revolution will not happen through gradual convincing of the small numbers of people who revolutionaries are able to reach today. This brings us to the second major barrier we face in the battle of ideas - without social struggle and working class resistance, the consciousness of and confidence in the strength in collective action is also eroded.  
 

Contradictions: crisis of leadership 

This bring us back to the long term contradiction that we face – while crisis, poverty, social devastation is inherent in capitalism and while the objective interests of working people can only be met by a revolutionary reorganization of society along socialist lines – there remains a crisis of leadership of the working class. The objective need for socialism is not met by the preparedness of the working class or its leadership.  

This is a long-term contradiction but one which is exacerbated in this country by the decades long retreat of the working class – a retreat that has been led by the class-collaborationist leadership of the trade union movement.   

But it is a retreat that has been punctuated, especially in the last decade by brief upsurges of mass struggle – in 1998 with the Maritime dispute in 1999 with the mass solidarity movement against the slaughter in East Timor; in 2000 by the mass anti-corporate protest against the World Economic Forum; in 2003 by the movement against the Iraq war and against the Israeli wars in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2008.  

When a lead was given around issues of immediacy then there was a willingness to mobilise – including taking militant mass protest action. But these upsurges and their decline once again demonstrated the crisis of leadership.  Mass struggles require leadership that can imbue a movement with a historical perspective and a detailed understanding of the forces at play. Only this way can a movement be sustained to achieve victory. 

This leadership did not exist in any of these upsurges, with the partial exception of the East Timor campaign, which will be discussed at length tomorrow morning. To a more or lesser degree, in all of these upsurges, the leadership was either too weak or politically dominated by liberalism to continue to struggle – or dominated by conscious class collaborationists who acted to contain the upsurges. The short-lived nature of the upsurges meant that there was limited opportunity for these politics to be challenged.  

The anti-war movement is probably the best example of the this. While the demonstrations were massive – the largest in the country’s history, there was a widespread demoralisation when the protests failed to stop the start of the war. This demoralisation imbued even much of the radical left – as if a series of one-off demonstrations would stop the war.  

There is no spontaneous understanding of the sort of movement that would be needed in a given circumstance to achieve victory. While socialists were central to organising the protests there was no capacity to imbue the movement with the political understanding necessary. The fact that the demoralisation imbued much of the far left is also an indication of the political weakness of the socialist movement and the widespread misunderstanding of the nature of the mass action strategy and the united front.  

This misunderstanding, which again came to the fore in much of the left analysis of the WorkChoices campaign, misconceives of mass action as a series of large protests. So the “united front” becomes about kow-towing to the class collaborationist wing of the movement – just to get the numbers, regardless of the political content and political development of the movement.  

There was a lot of lamenting in liberal circles after the start of the war “protests just don’t work anymore”. Thus  writing out of history the real danger posed by victorious movements in the past – the anti-Vietnam war movement were not successful simply because of the massive moratorium demonstrations. The size and politics of those protests were reflective of a much deeper going movement  -a movement that was premised upon long years of ground work, agitation and propaganda. It was a movement that was empowering working people to take political action in other spheres – triggering many of the other social movements and the militancy that arose in that period.  

[see statistics/graphs] 

Just look at the comparison between the two graphs here of the total number of work days lost to industrial action – the first is 1998 and 2008. The second is between 1966 and 1975 – the period of the anti-war movement. (It’s hard to compare the exact figures – because the ABS statistics are recorded differently now). But the graphs do paint a clear picture. The period of the Vietnam war movement saw a massive increase in industrial action. The social upheaval triggered by the anti-war movement saw a widespread empowerment of working people.  

Throughout the 60’s and into the 70’s unionization stood at over 50%. On the other hand the brief upsurges that we have seen in the last decade have been in the context of an overall retreat – with union membership gradually declining from 33% in 1997 to 19% in 2008. It is this context in which we have to understand the ongoing weakness and demoralisation of the social movements. With this retreat is also a decline in class consciousness and the capacity to organise and educate.  

But it was not just a misunderstanding of this context and history that saw such a rapid decline in the anti-war movement. The parties of the ruling class also learn from history – and the ALP and its lackeys operate consciously within any social movement to contain it and redirect it into channels that are safe for capitalism – into the electoral arena. 

It is this class conscious maneuvering that also explains why the ALP will operate to isolate the radical leadership of any developing social movement from the unions – setting up internal party groups “Labor for Refugees”; “Labor for Palestine” for example to “fight the good fight from within”.  

That is, it is not only a lack of direction, but conscious misleadership and demobilization of the movement. This in turn feeds the disillusion and demoralisation as promises made are not realised. The same dynamic is apparent on a much broader scale in US politics at the moment. But this can also give rise to an atomized radicalization of sorts – an anger borne of betrayal and disappointment (more later).  

State of the unions 

Where there is strong political leadership the willingness to fight is there – something that has been demonstrated by the experience of the WA Branch of the MUA – which stands in stark contrast to the overall state of the union movement. In the latest issue of Direct Action comrade Jammo, an MUA delegate in Fremantle, reports that in the six years since the current leadership of the branch was elected membership has gone from 1200 to 3000.  

Jammo writes “They also provide lessons for many in the union movement frustrated by the lack of willingness by most union officials to seriously challenge assaults by the employing class for fear of upsetting the electoral fortunes of the ALP at the federal or state level...Since the election of the Rank and File Team in 2003, democracy with the WA branch has been paramount. At every turn, the leadership has sought the commitment and backing of the membership, allowing the ranks to continually take control of their union.

“Attendance at meetings and rallies has risen, state conferences have been organised to gauge the response of members, delegate structures have been revitalised. A real pride in the ability of the union to act has been generated. Through this, a branch leadership has risen that goes well beyond the three elected branch office-bearers. Confidence in the ability of locally elected delegates in the handling of safety and other industrial issues on the job has also secured a growing strength and militancy.

“The leadership that is being developed around the elected officials is widely recognised as contributing to the militancy of the branch…“The WA MUA has also been actively seeking involvement in a range of social issues. The branch doesn’t hesitate to send rank-and-file members around the globe in acts of international solidarity with striking wharfies or when other maritime unions are under attack. It was the first union in Australia to endorse the goals of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign directed at Israel’s continued oppression of the Palestinian people…”

This stands in stark contrast to the overall state of the union movement. The ALP bureaucracy in the unions has, for decades, mothballed the democratic structures of the unions. They know too well that it is what allows rank-and-file workers to challenge their mis-leadership - and they can’t weather much opposition. On the other hand a leadership that is committed to the interests of the workers, not the ALP, has nothing to fear by empowering workers to take control of their union.  

There is the veneer of inclusiveness from the ALP bureaucrats. But rather than strengthening delegate structures, to genuinely involve and empower the union, there’s “community” campaigns; there’s interactive websites where you can “email your mates” a form letter about a campaign and “put yourself on the map”.  

This is how the campaign against the Australian Building and Construction Commission is being led, as is the anti-privatisation campaign in Queensland. It is the model of the supposedly “successful” WorkChoices campaign.  And from the point of view of the ALP bureaucrats, the WorkChoices campaign was successful. They successfully routed the anger and protest of workers against the anti-union attacks into a elect Labor campaign.  

But it didn’t defeat WorkChoices, the core of which remains in tact in Rudd’s “Fair Work Australia” regime. When our comrades pointed this out this elephant in the room at a public meeting about the privatization in Queensland the ALP bureaucrats and their fellow travelers in the Socialist Alliance pulled out the trusty old “you gotta fight smart” rhetoric – because strikes will alienate the “community”.  

Despite all the rhetoric about “new style” campaigning that can involve people there is nothing really new about their tactics and strategy at all. They might employ some techno savvy campaign managers, but on the ground, it is the same story as it has always been. When comrade Andrew proposed strike action against the privitisation at a stage managed mass meeting at the Redbank rail workshop in Brisbane– the officials told the meeting Andrew was “steering the AMWU on a dangerous path and pitting it into the unknown. One of the officials seized on this asking members to read between the lines” and of course there was the usual dose of red-baiting.  

This example again demonstrated that there is a willingness to fight – the motion for strike action passed, but with the officials dead against it and a widespread demoralisation borne of a history of being sold out, as Andrew reported “the numbers don’t tell much of a story. The membership felt gypped… the officials equivocation and body language was enough to know they'd been sold down the drain.” 

There’s nothing new. Keep a lid on any militancy to keep the political direction within the framework of what is politically safe for the ALP – in or out of government. No strikes action please, we’re busy talking to the government – or “good faith discussions” as State President of the ALP Queensland Branch and State Secretary of the AMWU Andrew Dettmar wrote in a letter to ALP members and unionists in December – discussions “facilitated by former Reserve Bank Governor Bernie Fraser”.  

Breakdown of solidarity

It is this class collaborationism that has been at the political heart of the decline of the union movement and the retreat in the face of the ruling class offensive. It is this retreat that provides the context for the ongoing social decay and breakdown of solidarity - the ideological retreat as the bourgeois ideology of individualism is left unchallenged – an ideology and culture that is more and more expressed as consumerism. This consumer culture is heavily marketed especially amongst young people. Popular youth culture is dominated by deliberate and contrived banality and emptiness. In reality though this is a foil for the promotion of crass individualism and the breakdown of social solidarity through the promotion of racism, misogyny and nationalism. Disturbing evidence of this are the music festivals where you can witness thousands of young people waving the flag and brandishing their southern cross tattoos. 

There is opposition to this culture amongst young people. But without organised expression, without a galvanising movement, this opposition is isolated and atomised. This is also why so much goes into promoting this culture of individualism. It is of course about creating new markets for the new consumables, but it is also ideological. It’s about isolating dissent amongst young people – creating the idea that you’re alone in your opposition and disgust.  

The breakdown of solidarity and promotion of nationalism, racism and misogyny also lays fertile ground for false solutions. As people’s expectations from the world come up against the harsh reality of capitalism and they look for somewhere to lay the blame. It’s only a few years ago that we saw the mass expression of this racism and nationalism in the Cronulla riots (2005). But the worsening experience of racism and sexism are a daily reality for many. 

The far right nationalist and conspiratorial Citizens Electoral Council have also been noticeable more active in the last year – with interventions in the anti-privatisation campaign in Queensland and more active presence in street campaigning. The dangers of such outfits are poorly understood – another product of the low level of class consciousness or historical perspective – sections of the left in Brisbane had to be convinced that the CEC and their fellow travelers should not be welcome in the anti-privatisation campaign. In 2005 the CEC published a statement against the anti-terror laws in The Australian – signed by dozens of union secretaries from across the country who had no problem lending legitimacy to the CEC.  

Anti-racism, anti-imperialism

Nationalism is one of the greatest barriers to the development of consistent working class consciousness. It underpins the class collaborationist political outlook in the trade union leadership and it suits their aims – as the idea that the interests of workers in Australia are tied up with the interests of the national ruling class disarms working people. The relative privilege of the layer of workers in a rich imperialist nation like Australia is borne of the super-exploitation of the workers of the Third World. This lays the basis for the false consciousness that exists and for the perpetuation of the ideology of nationalism from within the labour bureaucracy.  

The solidarity campaigns and struggles against imperialism and racism are not a distraction from the political struggle in Australia – these campaigns are part of the fight for consistent working class internationalism which is at the heart of the struggle to build a class-struggle left wing within the union movement. The idea that international solidarity campaigns are not related to Australian politics is a-historical – ignoring that some of the most significant and radical political protests in the countries history have been solidarity struggles – but moreover it is political concession to class collaborationist politics of the union bureaucracy.  

Some fake-leftists in the union bureaucracy will take up solidarity with struggles in other countries, even revolutionary struggles, to give left cover as they do rotten deals and quell militancy in the unions. While such support is generally within the framework of a sort of paternalistic charity or a token gesture –our solidarity work is firmly in an anti-imperialist framework. We seek to expose and build the struggle against imperialist domination of the Third World and against military intervention which is the extension by other means of the ongoing economic and political war and super-exploitation of the workers of the Third World.

At a speech given to a forum in Melbourne on December 8 about the Rudd governments “Indonesian Solution”, comrade Sam expressed this approach in explaining the newly formed Indonesia Solidarity Forum, initiated after the successful tours of KRPM-PRD comrades Zely Ariane and Vivi Widjawati. Sam told the form that the solidarity work “is not simply an act of kindness to Indonesians or a form of aid or charity but a responsability given Australia’s relationship to Indonesia. The lack of even basic knowledge...among the majority of people in this country, about what is going in our own neighbourhood, is a major contributor the conservatism and ignorance that dominates Australian society. If [people in Australia], who live in an isolated and priveleged country simply ignore our 240 million neigbours, the fourth biggest society on the planet, then Australia can not overcome its continuing history of racism and xenophobia. This can be overcome by building organisations and eventually movements that provide people to people solidarity with the poor in Indonesia and the rest of the third world – that is, with the majority of humanity”.

This is also why the ruling class and their governments put so much into reinforcing racism amongst working people. This constant campaign is being intesified again in the latest racist campaigns of the government against refugees and Aboriginal people.  
 

The “Indonesian Solution”

For two and half months a boat carrying 255 Tamil refugees has been moored in Merak, West Java since the Indonesian navy intercepted the boat after a personal request from Rudd to Indonesian president Yudiyono. Since October 11, the refugees have refused to disembark from their boat because of fears they will not be properly processed under UNHCR regulations.

On December 23, one of the people on board – a 29 year old man from Colombo, died after being denied medical attention despite being seriously ill for several days. Solidarity activist, Ian Rintoul visited Merak recently and told media that a seven year old girl had also been taken to hospital with similar symptoms.  

This is the human cost of Rudd’s “Indonesian solution” under which the Indonesian government will be paid hundreds of millions of dollars to detain refugees seeking to reach Australia.  

Meanwhile most of the 78 Tamil refugees who refused to leave the Australian Customs vessel, the Oceanic Viking for four weeks after their boat was intercepted in October are now in the process of being resettled after their action and the solidarity movement in Australia forced a concession from the government. Though there are still 13 people who were aboard the Oceanic Viking in detention.  

The refugee rights groups have been revived in most cities and while protests were held in most of the capital cities over December, the campaign has nowhere near the strength that it did at its height in the late 90s and early 2000’s since it’s demobilization under the Rudd government. The legacy of that campaign is evident though in the ability of the small campaign groups to prepare responses and in the legitimacy of left-wing activists as spokespeople for the campaign. This is a long-way ahead of where the movement started in the late 1990s when there was little preparedness to engage in the debates and the main spokespeople were from the conservative refugee organisations.  

NT Intervention

In December a committal hearing was held in Alice Springs for five men charged with the murder of an Aboriginal man in July. The court heard from witnesses about the violent gang bashing of the young man. Media reports have denied that it was racially motivated, but witnesses have given evidence of the racist abuse from the five men as they went on a drunken rampage through Aboriginal camps on the Todd River.  

While this case is receiving media attention, this violence is a daily reality, a daily threat for much of Aboriginal Australia - from white racists like those facing court in Alice Springs and from the state – from the racists in uniform. According to reports from Alice Springs, this violence is intensifying as a direct result of policies of the NT intervention. Policies that are legitimising the already widespread racism and fanning the flames to justify the massive attacks that the intervention represents.  

Under the intervention Aboriginal welfare recipients receive 50% of their payments on “basics” cards – ration cards, which can only be spent on food, clothing and medical supplies and can only be used at some shops. The big supermarkets now have separate queues for Aboriginal people with the ration cards. Workers on the CDEP programs are also being paid onto “ration” cards. These are the “work-for-the-dole” jobs that are paying around $14/hour for jobs that should be created. This is the case across the country – in the Torres Straight for example, there are over 1400 CDEP workers – 48% of them in government positions. Cheap labour and no entitlements (www.torresnews.com.au).  

In six remote communities in the NT as well as outer suburbs in Perth and Brisbane where there are high numbers of Aboriginal people the Federal government has also begun to link social security payments to School attendance. A similar attack is part of the Cape York “Family Responsibilities Commission” scheme.  

The government has now announced that it will extend this attack on social security across the country.  

As well as laying the basis for the slashing of social security, the other central plank of the intervention is a massive land grab – intensifying the roll back of the gains of the land rights movement.  

There has been much self-congratulation from the government and a chorus of paternalism in the bourgeois press about the take over of the Alice Springs Town camps. The four year resistance to this take over was eventually defeated – with a forty year lease signed over to the government. The “return” for the people is the clean up of the camps and construction of 85 houses. Much is being made in the media of the clean up – ignoring the fact that rubbish collection is an expected service in the rest of the country. In the camps, Aboriginal prisoners are being bought in to do the clean up.

This is part of what the government calls “mainstreaming” – NT Housing Services has taken over housing associations and the Tangentyere Council as tenancy manager. The limited self-governance that was won during the height of the land rights movement, set-up to fail, underfunded and politically manipulated is now being smashed.  In the height of hypocrisy, Macklin wrote in The Australian on December 19 that progress will mean “difficult and complex decisions for indigenous leaders and individuals, as they take responsibility to shape and control their future”.

This hypocrisy and double-speak is being lapped up in The Australian which is running an almost daily campaign in support of the intervention policies and by liberals who have no alternative because the paternalistic racism that underpins the liberal approach to Aboriginal Australia has no conception of genuine self-determination.

But the resistance to the intervention on the ground continues – since July a protest camp has been maintained by Alyawarr elders who walked off the Ampilatwatja community, which is in a prescribed area three hours north west of Alice Springs. Alyawarr spokesperson Richard Downs, who toured the Eastern states in October, says the government is playing a waiting game. They don’t want to draw attention to the protest – as it has the potential to spark similar moves in other communities.

But with support with the camp being developed through the campaign work, led by activists in Solidarity, the October tour was able to raise over $20 000 from unions to fund the sinking of a bore. In February a union work brigade will go to the camp to start construction of a protest headquarters.

Marxist intervention

We seek to understand the political situation, not because we want to be social commentators but because understanding the political situation is the first step to determining our strategy and tactics.  

Here it’s worth spending a bit of time looking at how far a party can go off track if it gets this wrong. We learnt this well from our party’s recent history and the decline of the old party, the DSP. Probably about now, up the road, they’re voting to dissolve themselves into the Socialist Alliance – formalizing a shift that’s been happening for some years now away from building a revolutionary party. Observing this shift and engaging in the debate is important, because behind all the rhetoric, it represents an attack on the revolutionary perspective that has a long history in our movement.  

I’ll quote here from a report adopted by their National Committee in October motivating their dissolution. The report (available on the web) started with a display of a photo of a protest in Honduras against the coup and a quote by Fidel about the developing revolutionary movement in Honduras. The report then states that “This is another reminder that we live in revolutionary times and this reality frames our political perspectives, including the perspective to merge the DSP into the Socialist Alliance”.

In another report adopted by their June meeting of their National committee it was stated “We are moving into a period of significant political and social upheaval and we need to have the strongest political vehicle that we can assemble. We also need a vehicle that is able to reach and draw in the new forces for radical change that will be thrown up in such an upheaval and win these forces to a socialist perspective”.  

While there is lip service paid to the need to assess the concrete political situation that we are operating in, there is no evidence of the so called “revolutionary” period that we are in Australia. Meanwhile, on the one hand there is a prediction of potentially revolutionary upheaval around the corner – and on the other hand a motivation to ditch the revolutionary program  - to advance “new fighting programs and platforms”.

This “new” thinking is not new at all. There are many examples throughout history of parties that have departed from a revolutionary perspective – and few if any ever openly declare it (NB workshop on historical experience of centrism). The attacks against the revolutionary movement from those heading in a different direction are never new either. They try to take the moral and political high ground. They call those who adhere to a perspective of building a revolutionary party the “spotless banner brigade”. Which is as much an admission of the compromises they know they are making – it’s OK, just another spot on the banner.  

But there is a moralizing in their political justification also – capitalism is in crisis – we need to be bigger now or else. But capitalism has been ripe for revolution for over a hundred years. We know that without socialism humanity faces a future of barbarism. But this has already been the lived reality of for a significant part of the world’s population for a long time. In human terms there has always been an urgency to the struggle for revolutionary change.  

The environmental crisis adds an even greater urgency – but it is this crisis that makes revolutionary solutions more urgent. But this is precisely what is being ditched. This is the meaning of the statement in the report that it has to be constantly assessed “what an effective party for socialism in the 21st century needs to agree on at each stage in order to advance”. That is - they don’t need to agree on revolutionary solutions now – leave that to later. This is at the heart of where they head off track and they are following a well trod path.  

You can’t build a party to be capable of providing revolutionary leadership if you don’t train the party in a revolutionary perspective – if you don’t train revolutionaries. It’s like an army unit that’s needed on the front line leaving their weapons behind the lighten their load.  

Our weapon is training in tactics, strategy and in applying historical lessons in a popular way that can win the confidence of the people. It is training in knowing the balance of forces and understanding the political terrain – how to win allies and how to deal with enemies. This cannot be built overnight. It cannot be built in the midst of a revolutionary upheaval – especially as this is precisely when the forces against revolution are the most dangerous.  

So this is where those leaving a revolutionary perspective start going off track – their trying to take short cuts. But once you’ve started down that road you are subject to even greater pressures, especially in a rich imperialist country like Australia, where there are still real opportunities for leftists to do pretty well for themselves as long as they are willing to play the game and get a few spots on their banner.  

It also comes through in their arrogant derision of the revolutionary left – that we’re happier to be small, that we just want to sit around in reading circles affirming ourselves.  None of this is new either – its epithets thrown at the revolutionary movement for decades. They’re off “making a difference” – sure they might have to do a couple of dirty deals to get that position in the union. They might have to water it down a bit to get elected here or there, but they’re “making a difference”.

The “spotless banner brigade” is the sort of attack that upsets an opportunist outfit whose goals and aims are very different to a Marxist party. But history shows us that in a revolutionary situation properly prepared cadre can rapidly expand their forces. This was proved by the experience of the Russian Revolution in which the Bolshevik party went from being a tiny minority, only emerging from underground in February 1917, to nine months later leading the worlds first socialist revolution. This has been confirmed by revolutions throughout the 20th century.

This doesn’t mean that we just have to conserve our energy for when the political situation changes in our favour. Not at all. What we do today does matter.

But what we do depends on our analysis of the political situation. There are times when a revolutionary party needs to bunker down – to conserve its forces in the face of reaction or state repression. We are far from this sort of situation in Australia today.

While there is a general retreat, there are many opportunities for Marxists to initiate struggle and to carry out active propaganda interventions and to win more people to a revolutionary perspective. This period of retreat does create a radicalization of its own. Those who are angry at what’s been taken away. Those who can see through the barrage of individualism, consumerism and banality. Those who are angered at the poverty, exploitation, racism and misogyny. And increasingly those who are inspired by the living revolution in Venezuela – this is happening around the world and is being hastened by Chavez’s inspiring interventions at international forums. When Chavez held up Chomsky’s book (US policy, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance) at the UN in 2006 it shot to the top-sellers lists overnight. As did Galleano’s Open Veins of Latin America after Chavez presented it to Obama at the UN last year.

There is a thirst for answers, especially amongst young people. It is why we have focused a lot of effort on working on campuses to build support for the revolutions in Cuba and Venezuela – fighting to break through the idea that there is no alterative through building active solidarity.

It is also young people that are at the forefront of the campaigning that has happened. Where there is a lead given, there are young people that are willing to get involved – that has been the case in the same-sex marriage campaign, the environment campaigns, the abortion rights campaign in Brisbane, in the new Indonesia solidarity group in Melbourne and in the Cuba-Venezuela Solidarity Clubs, especially here in Sydney.

It demonstrates again that while a feature of the atomised radicalization is passivity –it is not an inherent passivity. Where a lead is given there is a willingness to struggle. But there is a lack of confidence in mass struggle and a lack of experience, a lack of knowledge of how to act. This confidence will ultimately only be won through victories – through experience.

The intervention of Marxists cannot change the balance of class forces, but through initiating and intervening to lead campaigns we can demonstrate to broader forces how to struggle. We can strengthen the class-struggle left wing of the movements and this has a dynamic of its own – it creates a pole of attraction for those who are radicalizing and the political education and understanding that is at the heart of such interventions can in itself help to break the sense of isolation and atomisation – understanding why things are as they are and the different forces at play is empowering as it can break through the “people are just fucked” sentiment. Developing this within the campaigns lays a stronger basis for the development of the movements. On the other hand, demoralisation and atomisation can deepen if attacks are not resisted at all, even if they cannot be defeated.

The movements that historically helped to shift the balance of class forces didn’t come out of nowhere.  The popular history of movements only ever focuses on the high points – the large mobilisations and the stunt actions. They focus on the individuals and on the impacts within bourgeois politics. They don’t tell the story of the ground work – the hundreds of small actions, the slow and painful building up. The people who come and go, who lose hope because of a lack of historical perspective. The failures, the set-backs and the mistakes.

That’s the background to all the victorious campaigns and movements – and when you look into the history of that slog work you’ll almost always find that there’s a communist or two involved. It’s that work that premises the victories, and it is those victories that are necessary to imbue a sense of confidence in collective action.  

The other feature of the atomized radicalization is that it takes place around a variety of issues and attacks. The rollback of social and political rights is happening across the spectrum, and based on different experiences, effects and expectations, people will be affected by some issues more than others.

In the abortion rights campaign in Brisbane this has been very marked – with much of the sentiment in the campaign being one of sheer fury at the charging of a woman for having an abortion. The campaign has helped to galvanise a layer of young feminists, many of who are involved in collective organising for the first time. It demonstrates what is possible – while we may be small – through building alliances and taking initiatives we can draw people into action.

We are a small party but in our short existence as the RSP we have continued the proud tradition of struggle that we inherited from the old party (NB. workshops on history of the DSP). The goals and the vision of a new society that we fight for drives a motivation and commitment that has always been a hallmark of our movement – here and around the world. It is the sort of commitment that gets a strange patronizing admiration from liberals – but one that they can’t really understand. Our movement demands commitment because we know that without it our goals will never be realised. But within the ideological framework of bourgeois individualism it doesn’t make sense as the goals of a revolutionary have no concern for individual advancement.  

But it is this that enables us to punch above our weight (excuse the boxing analogy). The RSP started out less that two years ago with only a little over 50 people, but we have already taken a leading role in building solidarity with Venezuela and Cuba, especially on the campuses; we are centrally involved in Palestine solidarity campaigning in three cities; we have comrades who are delegates in the MUA, the CPSU, the AMWU, the ASU, the NTEU and comrades active in the teachers union. We’ve helped initiate and lead the abortion rights campaign in Brisbane; initiated the Indonesia Solidarity Forum in Melbourne and the anti-war Veterans group Stand Fast. We have had comrades involved in the Aboriginal rights campaign; solidarity with Burma; the environment campaign and we have comrades involved in some cities in the reformed refugee rights campaign groups. In Melbourne we have also had comrades involved in political cultural activism. 

There is a great deal of cynicism and wariness about parties, borne of disillusion with bourgeois politics and through the anti-party sentiments predominant in liberal circles. But this sentiment is also fed by the opportunist and sectarian practices that have also been part of the experience of the socialist movement.  It is only through experience of a different sort of approach that we win people’s confidence. Marxists have to demonstrate that we are serious – not by declaration, but in action.  

Being serious about building campaigns and rebuilding the socialist movement also means being serious about working with others on the left – not the sort of false unity proclamations of the so called Socialist Alliance, but unity in action. We have many differences with other socialist forces over some central political and theoretical issues and we’ve been able to find the ways to have constructive debates around the differences we have on a number of issues through Direct Action. But we’ve also worked with others on the left constructively to the benefit of the campaigns and the left in general. This approach in turn also enables us to minimize the destructiveness that some of the more sectarian inclined groups have on the campaigns.  

Building the party

What we do today does matter. It matters in the people that we can draw into action and into revolutionary politics. It matters in the alliances, networks and the trust that we build.  

But moreover it matters in terms of what sort of party we are building. We might be small today, but we are seeking to build a party fit to lead a revolution. A party of the sort that must be strong enough to withstand enormous pressures. While the pressures that are on our movement today are nothing compared to what it will face in the future or what revolutionaries in other parts of the world face on a daily basis, the pressures are real nonetheless – and our movement has suffered major setbacks in the last decade because of an inability for the old party to withstand these pressures.  

It is a pressure borne of demoralization and impatience. It is a pressure borne of the political environment in which we operate – of the opportunities that exist for parties that are willing to compromise on principles. In a period of greater political struggle, this pressure is even greater – we can see that in Venezuela today in the ongoing battle against the opportunist elements within the revolution.  

The party has to be prepared and educated.  And most of all it must be a party prepared to struggle and win people’s confidence.  That means training not only in the historical experience of the revolutionary movement but in how to apply it. It means training a cadre that is capable of putting the perspective into practice – of knowing how to raise class consciousness and winning people to a revolutionary perspective. Of how to see and test the political openings through initiatives for action and of how to build alliances.  

Starting a new party in a political period like we are in today is not easy. Compare our situation with that of the founders of the old party in the period of social upheaval of the 60’s and 70’s (and then spare a thought for those comrades who have to do it all over again). But that does remind us that we are not starting from scratch. Our party already has a strong history of struggle – of intervening and leadership. It might not be in the popular history, but its many of our comrades who were the those communists in the hidden history of many of the movements over the past four decades.  

The struggle that our party has gone through in the last few years adds many important lessons in that history of struggle. It has strengthened our collective political understanding of the complexities of the struggle to build a revolutionary party. And it has also strengthened our collective political resolve to build a revolutionary party that will live up to its name. This is no small undertaking, which is why even though the political conditions in Australia today are far from revolutionary, everything we do today to prepare the groundwork for the future does matter.