See also : Defend the Legacy of Michael Jackson! (August 8, 2009) and read between the lines.
As noted, the Socialist Alliance (SA) held its seventh annual conference in January. Immediately prior to the conference, the Democratic Socialist Perspective (formerly known as the Democratic Socialist Party nee Socialist Workers Party nee Socialist Workers League nee Socialist Youth Alliance nee Resistance) dissolved itself into SA.
At the time of its formation in 2001, SA was indeed an alliance, an electoral alliance, of several socialist parties — principally the Democratic Socialist Party and the International Socialist Organisation (ISO), but also the Freedom Socialist Party, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Democracy, Workers Power, and a handful of other, even more obscure political formations (and the DSP’s yoof wing, Resistance). Currently, the ‘Alliance’ is what used to be called the DSP (and the DSP’s yoof wing, Resistance) — the other members having either abandoned it at some stage over the last nine years and/or having themselves dissolved.
The Revolutionary Socialist Party — which split from the DSP in May 2008 to form first the Leninist Party Faction and then the RSP — is not convinced by the reported success of SA’s seventh national conference. Splitter Doug Lorimer writes (‘New period of left unity launched’?, Direct Action, No.20, March 2010):
Several weeks after the GLW article [New period of left unity and struggle launched, Kerryn Williams, January 16, 2010] appeared, the minutes of the SA conference were posted onto the SA website. These reported that 11 people were elected by the conference to the SA’s national executive, all but one of whom had only three days earlier been members of the DSP — making it clear that claims that the SA has become “a true alliance of a very broad cross-section of views that are of the historic left” are either the product of self-delusion or deliberate and shameless puffery.
For its part, Van Rudd from the Revolutionary Socialist Party Announces Campaign Against Julia Gillard in the Seat of Lalor.
SA held its Victorian state conference in February and, inter alia, Margarita Windisch was preselected to be a Senate candidate. Windisch battled Labor in the Altona State by-election last month and achieved 1.6% and a minor miracle. Elsewhere, Ben Courtice will be contesting the seat of Gellibrand at the next Federal election, while Alex Bainbridge will be contesting the seat of Perth.
In South Australia, the Communist Alliance is standing Bob Briton in the seat of Lee in the State election on March 20; in the Tasmanian State election, also on March 20, SA is fielding two candidates, Melanie Barnes in Denison and Jenny Forward in Franklin. In 2006, SA also stood two candidates: Linda Seaborn in Denison and Matthew Holloway in Franklin. The results were not good: Seaborn got 257 votes (0.4%) while Holloway received 237 (0.4%). In 2002, SA stood six candidates, who collectively won 722 votes (0.2%).
The Socialist Equality Party, meanwhile, has denounced SA, Socialist Alternative and Solidarity as ‘petit-bourgeois’. In Leninist terminology, this is almost as bad as being called anarchist (something which the DSP denounced the International Socialist Organisation — the precursor organisation to Socialist Alternative and Solidarity — as being in the 1980s).
Under these conditions the role being played by the various petty-bourgeois tendencies (Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative and Solidarity) is critical. They are working to boost the credentials of the AEU. According to Socialist Alternative’s Tess Lee Ack, the AEU is preparing to lead a national boycott against the next round of NAPLAN tests that are due in May. The AEU is preparing nothing of the sort. Its bogus resolution, adopted at the AEU’s national conference in January, was aimed solely at heading-off growing anger among teachers toward Labor’s plans.
Lee Ack claims: “So the scene is set for a confrontation.” And the site of this “confrontation”? “The AEU executive will meet on 12 April to decide whether the boycott will go ahead”. In the meantime, advises Socialist Alternative, teachers should “familiarise themselves with the arguments against league tables” by… visiting the AEU web site, to which it provides a link. This is a recipe for preventing independent action by teachers and subordinating them to the very union organisations that are enforcing Rudd’s agenda.
In 2007 Socialist Alternative and the entire middle class ex-left called for a Labor vote, claiming that a Rudd government would represent a “lesser evil” to the Liberals. According to the AEU, Labor’s election presented “an opportunity for a change in policy direction following more than a decade of systematic attack on public education and training”. Far from inaugurating a change in “policy direction,” Labor is enforcing a new wave of free-market reform, following on from those of the Hawke-Keating governments between 1983 and 1996. The chief role of groups like Socialist Alternative is to bolster the trade union bureaucracy and prevent a conscious political break by working people from Labor.
~ Australia: Labor’s war on public education, Laura Tiernan, wsws.org, March 8, 2010.
Across the Tasman, similar ideological failings on the part of the so-called ‘International Bolshevik Tendency’ have been detected by the ever-vigilant International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). Hate Trotskyism, Hate the Spatactist League, Hate Vajazzling. See : The BT on Haiti: Postscript to IGiocy: More Gas from the Swamp, Workers Vanguard, No.953, February 26, 2010.
Eleswhere, the Communist Workers’ Group of New Zealand/Aotearoa is committed to building a new communist international to lead workers to the revolutionary overthrow of global capitalism, and until recently was a member of the Internationalist Leninist/Trotskyist Fraction (IFLT). In an exciting new development with important implications for the construction of a new communist international to lead workers to the revolutionary overthrow of global capitalism, this month the CWG announced that it was in a Liaison Committee with the Humanist Workers for Socialist Revolution (US) (formerly known as Humanists for Revolutionary Socialism).
Humanist Workers for Revolutionary Socialism (HWRS) is an organization composed primarily of former members of the now-defunct Workers’ Voice organization… From July 2009 until early March 2010, HWRS was affiliated with the International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction (IFLT or FLTI). In March 2010, HWRS, together with the Communist Workers Group of New Zealand (CWG-NZ) split with the IFLT and formed a liaison committee…
I’m unsure what’s become of the Communist Party of Aotearoa, and I’m also unsure if the World Socialist Party of New Zealand is still meeting monthly or holding an annual conference, but fortunately “Comrades and supporters who miss [our radio] broadcasts or are outside our transmission area are welcome to send a blank C-60 cassette to the Party with a request for broadcasts to be dubbed on to it.” Socialist Aotearoa, on the other hand, after having split from Socialist Worker New Zealand, is still busy revolutionising social relations (as of course is Socialist Worker New Zealand); the Workers Party of New Zealand is also busy working, and the International Socialist Organisation organising.
With all this activity, I must say that the future is looking very red.
Are you sure Socialist Alternative played in the Socialist Alliance playground?
Now to find a shop that sells C-60 tapes – only BASF is real.
“More gas from the swamp” is a pretty good insult.
lumpnboy:
In its initial stages, apparently. I imagine that they soon understood that it was not to their benefit to participate — something that the ISO only realised after it was too late.
Paul Justo:
That’s why they call it the struggle.
Lumpen:
It is pretty neat. The conclusion ain’t bad either…
Reforge the Fourth International!
Alert all Melburnians – the SEP/WSWS are organising two “public lectures” (no less!) next week at RMIT and U Melb to “politically expose” those running dogs of Cliffism, Socialist Alternative. An event not to be missed!
See: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/isse-m13.shtml
Fuck, I can’t go to either of them. If it wasn’t for work, I’d don the black anorak and start some serious leftist train-spotting.
Fight! Fight! Fight!
The lecture will also be delivered at universities in Sydney and Newcastle following the Easter break. Details will be announced shortly.
RMIT
Wednesday, March 24, 2.30 p.m.
Union Meeting Room
Building 8
Room number 8.3.18
(Opposite the gym)
University of Melbourne
Thursday, March 25, 1.00 p.m.
Raymond Priestley Room
Classic, the SEP’s first meeting in Newcastle was ‘In Defence of Leon Trotsky against the falsifications of history by’… some dude, I forget the name. But are these guys serious? One of them in Newie has really smelly breath too.
…some dude, I forget the name.
Robert Service? The Trots are totally pissed @ Service. And yeah, they’re serious — very serious. (Perhaps a little too serious — to be taken seriously anyway.) They’re also time travellers. The SEP’s founding congress was held in January 2010, about fourteen years after it was established.
Perhaps the (alleged) bad breath has something to do with the time travel?
more fun: http://icl-fi.org/english/wv/953/BT.html
Why do you guys even discuss Socialist Alternative, SEP, Freedom Socialist Party etc given you think they’re irrelevant knobs? Honestly.
Doesn’t that make you the bigger knobs, discussing obscure groups, that have a bigger political ‘profile’ than you do?
Vajazzling? WTF? I stumbled across this site and it’s f*cking feeble. Where is the politics?
My guess is that you have given up the anarchy in favour of apathy. Sh*t.
Dunno precisely what “you guys” means, but this blog is authored by one person; why others choose to comment is for them to explain, not me, Your Honour. In any case, afaik, ‘lumpnboy’, ‘Paul Justo’, ‘Lumpen’, ‘Fatal Paradox’, ‘Thomas’ and ‘Entdinglichung’ are all anarchists or communists, who enjoy a good gossip and a laff, and hence frequent my blog. Beyond that, leftist trainspotting is a hobby, and should not be taken too seriously. A hint that this may be the case is the frequent use of jokes.
Like, vajazzling.
The politics may be found lurking both here (albeit covered in glitter), in 2,453 other posts, and hiding in among just over 12,000 comments.
If you have a serious question to ask, feel free.
“You guys” means the comments of all the above on this topic which are, without exception, juvenile.
I’ll ask for the gold dust now. What is the anarchist position on this site on health care, education or industrial relations?
Spartacists “obscure”. Have you ever attended a May Day rally or leftist public meeting at which they attended and not noticed their “intervention”?
Anyway the lovable rogues have produced ‘Australiasian Spartacist’ No. 208 and it’s a doozie.
Best article runs under the heading – ‘Anti-Communist Opportunists Fall Out – DSP Endgame; RSP same old Story’
A three page article with paragraph headings straight from the Spartacist style manual –
“Anti Soviet Pimps of Racist Australian Imperialism”
“The Unspeakable in Pursuit of the Inedible”
“RSP: Old Muck in New Pail”
They threw in a free copy of WORKERS VANGUARD as well.
Just $5 for an annual sub to
Spartqacist ANZ Publishing Co.,
GPO BOX 3473,
Sydney,
NSW2001
“You guys” means the comments of all the above on this topic which are, without exception, juvenile.
And what, precisely, is the topic, do you think?
I’ll ask for the gold dust now. What is the anarchist position on this site on health care, education or industrial relations?
First, there is no anarchist position as such. This is because it was not my intention, on establishing this blog, to articulate a series of positions on such matters as health care, education, or industrial relations. This, I would suggest, is one of the distinguishing characteristics of most blogs: that is, a more informal tone. Of course, if I wished to establish a blog that might deal with such matters in a more straightforward manner, I could, but I would prefer that to take a different form, and to be more of a collective effort.
Secondly, while I’m not sure what “the anarchist position on this site on health care, education or industrial relations” might be if I were interested in pursuing such a line of argument, I’ll assume that what you mean is: what approach does the author of this blog, a self-proclaimed anarchist, take towards issues to do with health care, education or industrial relations in contemporary Australia?
Obviously, this is a very broad subject: the health care and education industries are massive, and the precise impact of the KRudd Government’s ‘Fair Work’ policy upon industrial relations a subject of much debate.
That said…
Inre the latter, I’ve not read the thousands upon thousands of pages of legislation which collectively make up the ‘Fair Work’ program, nor am I an industrial lawyer. What I have noted is the fact that the KRudd Government, in apparent contradiction to its pre-election position, has retained the ABCC, and that one worker from South Australia has become — quite unfairly, it seems to me — the victim of its machinations. As such, I’ve made reference to his case on a number of occasions, partly in order to highlight its injustice. In that context, I’ve also made reference to an industrial dispute at the West Gate bridge (which, although I haven’t noted it on my blog, resulted in the imposition of massive fines upon the workers concerned); the decline in levels of strike action in Australia; the shrinking coverage of the trade union movement; issues associated with the introduction of 457 visas and the response of unions (in particular the CFMEU — see the discussion which follows rocky o’rourke’s comment here), including, in particular, how this issue intersects with issues of ‘race and nation’, and how these have been dealt with in popular media.
Aside from this, I’ve made particular note of the meaning and significance of ALP domination of the labour movement, an International Day of Mourning, May Day, and various other events or projects of significance to local workers (a dispute at a Bakers’ Delight, another at Australia Post, and so on).
My general position, on a very broad level, is that workers can and should organise collectively, both in order to obtain immediate improvements in their living and working conditions, but also in order to subvert capitalism. This, obviously, is a minority position. By most measures that I’m aware of, the contemporary labour movement is failing with regards the first (that is, the proportion of national wealth which accrues to workers is decreasing), and the second is not even thought possible, let alone desirable, by most. There is also a tension — or, at least, potential conflict — between these two broad aims, the nature of which is dependent on one’s understanding of the place of unions within the legal and political framework of the capitalist state.
Of relevance, in this context, is the fact that legal measures which have been aimed at destroying, or at the very least seriously hampering, the capacity of workers in one workplace, sector or industry acting in solidarity with those in other sites, have to some extent been circumvented by some notion of ‘community unionism’ — the success of which, it seems to me, is dependent upon the existence of a broader class consciousness. (The most typical example of this ‘new’ form of working class solidarity — which is, in fact, quite old — is that provided by the MUA dispute; an event about which I’ve also had occasion to remark.) In recent years, ‘Union Solidarity’ has, to some extent, been motivated by a desire to tackle this issue, and achieved some degree of success in doing so.
These are some preliminary thoughts of mine on ‘industrial relations’, which are, of necessity, quite general. If you’d like answers to some more specific questions again, feel free.
On health care and education, later.
What’s notable about your blog is that any serious commentary relating to workers issues – which you give links to – has very virtually zero commentary, or is dam[n]ing. The Westgate issue – zero comments; Ark – zero comments; your inflam[m]atory KKK article – nothing but hostility.
But when you talk about sects, who your readers shitcan, the commentators have plenty to say. I’d suggest this is indicative of a crappy site, crowded out by dheads.
OK.
You asked for my ‘position’ on health care, education or industrial relations. I made a few comments with regards the latter, which you’ve ignored. This fact, to me, suggests that you’re not interested in engaging in a dialogue with a view to achieving greater clarity, but rather that you’re motivated by a desire to engage in what you accuse others of being interested in pursuing with regards left-wing sects: shit-canning.
What’s notable about my blog depends on the reader. This has varied quite considerably. Otherwise, an objective assessment would require some recognition of its purpose. In this case, it’s worth noting that this is not to provide a comprehensive review of “workers’ issues” (assuming that this was even possible for one person to accomplish).
Secondly, you appear to assume that what constitutes “workers’ issues” is straightforward and, by implication, is “industrial relations”: I wouldn’t be the first to suggest that issues which concern workers are not confined to this domain.
Thirdly, with regards the three posts you cite:
1. As noted, there are almost 2,500 posts on my blog.
2. I drew attention to these for illustrative purposes. Thus, they do not exhaust the list of posts which concern industrial relations. Another post on the subject of the dispute @ the West Gate was commented on by somebody called ‘eddy jackson’, a rigger.
3. With regards Ark Tribe, you’re correct: not only in response to the post in question, but on the three other occasions I made reference to his case (0.163% of the total), there was no response. And?
4. With regards the ‘KKK’ post, I fail to see your point. In what sense was it ‘inflammatory’? What ‘hostility’? As far as I can tell, the commentary concerns an article which was published in the political/literary journal Overland: ‘Permanent residency not sold separately, education not included’ by Liz Thompson and Ben Rosenzweig, who have both had occasion to comment on my blog, especially inre the issues raised in their article. That rocky expressed a differing opinion is a bad thing, in your opinion?
From memory, the most popular posts on my blog, in terms of commentary, concern:
a. Jock Palfreeman, an Australian currently serving a 20-year sentence for murder in Sofia, Bulgaria (January 1, 2008, 371 comments);
b. Ian Stuart Donaldson, the good fascist who established the neo-Nazi network Blood & Honour in 1987 (September 25, 2006, 250 comments);
c. The Blackburn South Sharps, a yoof gang that was one part of a sub-culture unique to Australia (and concentrated in Melbourne) (September 12, 2006, 246 comments).
Are these “workers’ issues”? If not, why not? Further, why should I care if you regard them as such (or not)? Or whether you regard those who post comments here as being dickheads (or not)?
In summary, either stop being a troll, or make a substantive contribution.
It’s not even funny, but this –
“Currently, the ‘Alliance’ is what used to be called the DSP (and the DSP’s yoof wing, Resistance) — the other members having either abandoned it at some stage over the last nine years and/or having themselves dissolved.”
– is kinda wrong, what with the consistent majority of the Alliance’s members having almost always been (ie since soon after inception) non-affiliates of any of the original organisations that helped set it up. This remains the case.
Boring for trot-watching, I’m sure, but true nonetheless. (Disclaimer: I’m part of said outfit, so my knowledge of the numbers comes with whatever nefarious intentions you want to ascribe to it. Oh, and Green/ ALP/ Socialist shitfight in Leichhardt – http://inner-west-courier.whereilive.com.au/news/story/leichhardt-deputy-mayor-launches-tirade-against-labors-darcy-byrne/.)
Two more things:
1. Davey Boy, your comments haven’t been exactly stellar in the erudite and contributory stakes either. Where’s your policy on long-nosed bandicoots in Dulwich Hill? Eh? Eh?!?
2. Carn the Pies! (And, yes, I do believe that amounts to a political position.) Sorta.
Andy: “You asked for my ‘position’ on health care, education or industrial relations. I made a few comments with regards the latter, which you’ve ignored.”
On health care you’ve said nothing. The same with education.
On industrial relations there’s nothing here at all that is unique to workers in terms of information. Tell us something we don’t know.
I assume you are trying to connect with workers at some level, but it[‘]s clear you not only have failed to provide a point of connection, but attracted only a layer of glib and smug studenty gobsh*tes who are happy to talk to themselves. Good-luck to you.
So Davey boy wants to be a troll.
Bye bye Davey boy.