A W E S O M E !
Introducing the artist formerly known as the Leninist Party Faction…
The Revolutionary Socialist Party!
The Leninist Party Faction, a dissident minority expelled from the Democratic Socialist Perspective on May 13, and Direct Action, an organisation established by former DSP members in Melbourne and Geelong after they left the DSP in June 2006, have united to launch a new party, the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), with members in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth, Geelong, Adelaide, Newcastle and Cairns, and others currently residing overseas.
This is a principled unification of our two organisations. Both the LPF and Direct Action support the Program of the Democratic Socialist Party, a program that the DSP remains formally committed to but which it is abandoning in practice. Together, LPF and Direct Action members waged a common struggle against the degeneration of the DSP until June 2006, when six LPF members decided to leave the DSP to establish Direct Action.
Both the LPF and DA seek to preserve the continuity of the revolutionary tradition of the DSP prior to its political and organisational degeneration in recent years, culminating in the wholesale purge of the LPF on May 13. The LPF and Direct Action share not only basic programmatic agreement, but also agreement on the main tasks and perspectives for regrouping and rebuilding the revolutionary Marxist current once embodied in the DSP and its predecessor, the Socialist Workers Party, founded in 1972. The RSP’s strategic aim is to build a mass revolutionary workers party capable of leading the Australian working class and its allies to overthrow capitalism and, together with the working people of other countries, to build socialism, a global society of shared wealth and democratic planning to meet social needs. We recognise that we are not the only revolutionary socialist organisation in Australia, and that a future mass revolutionary socialist party will not be achieved solely through the incremental growth of any one of the existing far-left organisations.
Building towards the future mass revolutionary workers party will require a variety of tactics, among them efforts to unify the existing far-left organisations. But in today’s conditions of continuing working class retreat, the creation of a broad left party of anti-capitalist resistance is simply not on the agenda. The necessary partners for such a party — substantial new class-struggle forces and leaders — do not yet exist, and will not come into existence until there is a sustained mass upsurge of working class resistance. The Socialist Alliance is not such a broad left party or even a modest step torwards such a party, but a front for the DSP. The RSP rejects any such sectarian attempt to masquerade as a broad left party. Rather, we seek to collaborate with all left and progressive organisations and individuals to achieve the maximum unity in action where we have agreement.
The RSP’s ongoing campaign priority is to help build a broadly based solidarity movement with the Latin American socialist revolutions in Venezuela and Cuba. Building solidarity with the Venezuelan and Cuban peoples is the duty of revolutionaries everywhere, especially in an imperialist country closely allied with US imperialism. Moreover, the inspiration of these living socialist revolutions is key to winning a wider hearing for revolutionary socialist ideas among working people in Australia. The RSP seeks to build the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network as a democratically functioning national network of affiliated solidarity groups and individual solidarity activists.
Next week the RSP will launch a new monthly radical left publication, Direct Action. This new publication, and its associated website, will present the views of the RSP as well as encouraging constructive debate on the left and will seek contributions from a broad range of radical commentators, activists and organisations. The RSP will hold a delegated founding congress in early 2009.
May 28, 2008
* * *
The RSP has set up a website, where the party’s documents and political positions will be progressively uploaded. The RSP’s initial Perspectives Resolution is available there, as well as the RSP’s program and constitution… For further background on the political debate in the DSP see the article by Allen Myers, “The Political and Organisational Degeneration of the DSP” on the LPF website.
The RSP has established a National Office in Sydney at Suite 72/65 Myrtle St, Chippendale 2008. For further information contact John Percy 0419 989 720, Marce Cameron 0413 158 480 or Doug Lorimer 0434 209 342, or email nationaloffice[at]rsp[dot]org[dot]au.
The Bad News: RIP Direct Action and LPF. Nevertheless, one must maintain the
Party spirit
25. We must strive to cultivate the spirit of revolutionary comradeship in the RSP. We need a party spirit that can sustain us through the ups and downs of the struggle, that takes from each of us all that we are capable of giving and that gives each of us, in return, something infinitely precious and beautiful – a tiny glimpse of the communist future of humanity.
RSP wrote:
I actually find that pretty lovely. It sounds like a sound desire in any revolutionary organisation. It’s the other stuff about the need for clear leadership and all that entails that has to be argued against.
rebel love
Dave
RSP
Perspectives
Constitution
Program
I was going to jot a bit about them on my blog and mention “I bet Andy will note this!” lol
I read their entire programme and goodness me…talk about a contradictory document. On the one hand they talk of working class consciousness and organisation, yet in the same breath go on to the leadership of the party, a necessary pre-condition even(!), in a revolution and also in a “socialist” society. The party needs to show the proles the correctness of its politics to get that leading position.
They make a grand deal of “a transitional society” which…cough…will have commodity production, wages and capitalists!
It really looks like a cut ‘n’ paste of programmes.
If you want to talk about contradictory documents, gray, one need go no further than your own blog.
While the title asks the gentle question, “Isn’t it about time we tried socialism?” – which I read in the tone of my drunken grandmother asking my grandfather whether they should try a different brand of whiskey – the actual URL (or ‘web address’) is far more demanding, LET’S HAVE SOCIALISM NOW – which puts me to mind of my stoned grandmother angrily announcing her desire for nachos.
What’s that all about?
At any rate, I look forward to receiving invitations to the RSP’s Venezuelan-themed social events, allowing me to RSVP the RSP’s VPs.
In the interests of Public Health & Safety & Mental Hygiene:
Andy,
Surely this is worthy of your trot guide…
Following the revelations last year that David North, leader of the group behind the World Socialist Website, is actually David Green, director of a multi-million dollar non-unionised printing firm in the USA, comes news that his Australian collaborators in the Socialist Equality Party also run a similar operation in Sydney which has just won the contract to print the Financial Times!
[“just won” = 2004.]
See: http://printnet.com.au/news_items/financial_times_and_mpd.html
As it happens, managing director of Marrickville Print and Design is none other than SEP Assistant National Secretary Linda Tenenbaum!
Could this be the same Linda Tenenbaum who stood for the seat of Blaxland in 1993 against Keating?
Bill,
There is a difference. To the best of my knowledge, North/Green, as well as being its CEO, actually established the Grand River company. In other words, he owns the enterprise (along with, presumably, a number of other stakeholders). Linda, on the other hand, merely has a job as a manager. Further, while Grand River is a union-free workplace, I’ve no idea what the situation is at MPD. Beyond that, it’s hardly unusual for socialists to be employed in the printing industry…
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