Socialism vs. 2007 Federal Election: Results

53 Responses to Socialism vs. 2007 Federal Election: Results

1. Lumpen says:

   November 25, 2007 at 7:15 pm

   This is just too funny for words.

   Cue the candidates having a go at anarchists for “doing nothing” and praising themselves for “trying”.
2. @ndy says:

   November 25, 2007 at 7:34 pm
3. @ndy says:

   November 25, 2007 at 7:35 pm
4. Soviet Man says:

   November 25, 2007 at 7:47 pm

   @ndy, what you need to remember is that in Grayndler the trotskyist vote is elevated because both were placed at the top of the ballot, meaning a much greater dummy vote was manufactured accidentally – rather than as a result of any increased campaign activity.

   Overall it has been a “business as usual” vote for the socialist movement, neither above or below the equivalent votes of 1998, 2001, 2004 in any particular way.

   Take the CL in Watson as an example:

   Ron Poulsen, Communist League candidate for Watson has polled 318 votes as of today:

   2007 – 318 votes
   2004 – 335 votes
   2001 – 322 votes

   This is very much on par with 2004 and 2001. In all cases the small core communist vote in south western Sydney remains unshakable. It did not decline. This even in a hard environment for socialists, where Labor won booths in muslim suburbs like Lakemba with votes up to 78% on primary votes alone.
5. Lumpen says:

   November 25, 2007 at 8:38 pm

   Here’s Doc Fruit tearing it up. He’s no Vents. I think they should start a beef. It’ll be like Naz versus Jay-Z, or Castro versus life.

   I accidentally shook hands with Kelvin Thompson yesterday. He jumped out of nowhere, grabbed my hand and without skipping a beat he boomed, “You’ll be voting for me, won’tcha mate.” I nearly crapped myself. All I could think about were his underworld connections.
6. @ndy says:

   November 25, 2007 at 8:52 pm

   Soviet Man,

   Yep, I understand that, and I look forward to this fact being addressed in the GLW’s coverage.

   Arf arf.

   “Business as usual” might also be less charitably read as “stagnation”, especially as:

   1) when the SA was launched in 2001, it was sold as being a new departure in local socialist politics, a consolidation of a number of leftist sects (AWL, DSP/Resistance, FSP, ISO, Socialist Democracy, Worker-Communist Party of Iraq (in Australia), Workers’ Power) into the one electoral front; an attempt to capitalise, at the ballot box, on what was perceived to be an upswing in ‘anti-capitalist’ sentiment capable of this form of political exploitation and;
   2) there has been both a (continuing) evacuation of the Left within the ALP and a growing leftist sentiment outside of it.

   Unfortunately for the DSP, they’ve been largely unable to capitalise on these developments, and instead The Greens have formed what there is of a political opposition in this country to the neo-liberal ‘mainstream’. What makes this an especially worrying development, for the DSP, is the decline in yoof support (ie, Resistance) and a failure to translate the minor support SA has received within the labour movement into real political support.
7. @ndy says:

   November 26, 2007 at 12:46 am

   “…but even if we don’t get in…” ~ Zane keepin’ it real on the campaign trail.

   (What’s with the tea cosy? Anyone?)

   “imagine a hip-hopper in the parliament, throwin’ down to the politicians and really takin’ it to ’em”

   you don’t need a book of karl marx to quote
   to know that capitalist democracy is a joke
   you don’t need to be hugo chávez
   to have imperial wars makin’ ya see red

   word.

   the gauntlet has been thrown down.
8. vents says:

   November 26, 2007 at 1:16 am

   Haha stop encouraging it, seriously. He will go away on his own.
9. @ndy says:

   November 26, 2007 at 1:20 am

   You a player hater.
10. @ndy says:

    November 26, 2007 at 1:31 am

    …and speaking of Chávez, un poco más de realidad:
11. Soviet Man says:

    November 26, 2007 at 4:17 am

    The effect of the ISO, the CPA, the CPA-ML and SAlt backing the Greens, should be factored in to any commentary.

    Combined, these four groups have about 300 members. I’d say a fair number of these were handing out for The Greens and *not* any socialist candidate, so on balance, the socialist vote is under stated.
12. @ndy says:

    November 26, 2007 at 9:07 am

    Um… I’m really not sure how many members these groups have, but from largest to smallest I believe it goes something like SAlt, ISO, CPA, CPA-ML. In any case, even assuming that a figure of 300 is accurate, and that all 300 members were actively supporting The Greens on election day, I don’t see how this explains the dismally small socialist vote.
13. Norm Dixon says:

    November 26, 2007 at 9:42 am

    Of course, SlackBastard is engaged in little more than petty sectarian trolling, with this post. I suppose being a self-declared “anarchist” relieves you of any need to actually attempt to do anything in the elections, just shitcan those that do.

    As such, the concept that there is more to socialist electoral activity other than the simplistic measure of the raw votes as the sole yardstick to beat active socialists with escapes him.

    Among the measures also of interest to socialist activists being how many people participated in support of genuine socialist politics, how many more people were reached by, and agreed with or seriously considered, the socialist message through face to face campaigning, leaflets, posters, the internet and local press (but did not necessarily vote for Socialist Alliance — as always many people gave Socialist Alliance their second or third preference votes, wrongly fearing their vote “would not count”). In all those, SA did very well.

    In Parramatta, where I canvassed, SA’s respect among active Greens and many Labor and Your Rights at Work activists was undisguised. The Greens gave SA their second preferences on their how to vote card. SA also had a crew of Sudanese refugees staffing several booths on our behalf. On my booth, the Greens did not have enough people to staff it.

    Slack Bastard also ignores the fact that other parties, including the Greens, have millions of dollars to campaign with, the socialist vote was split by the mad Socialist Equality Party targeting many SA candidates (the SEP directed 33% of its preferences in the Senate to the Howard government!), and in this election the “Got to get rid of Howard first” sentiment was huge, squeezing all small parties’ votes.

    Nobody argues that SA set records this election (that was never the goal), the vote *was* small, not fundamentally better or worse in raw figures than average, but all in all it was encouraging and worthwhile.

    But that said, within an electorate, the total vote does not tell the whole story. In Parramatta, SA’s Rachel Evans has won 1.15% of the vote overall, but this includes very low votes in areas of the electorate where SA is not active or visible, as well as in the more well-off managerial areas of the hills. In the areas where SA is most active and does most of its political work, and in some strongly working-class areas, SA did well. At the Parramatta Town Hall booth, SA won 2.3% of the vote (compared to the Greens’ 8%), 2% in Parramatta North (Greens 4%), 2% in Seven Hills (Greens 3.7%) and 1.8% in Metalla Rd, Toongabbie (Greens 4.8%). And many of our strongest supporters, young people and recently arrived refugees and migrants, do not yet have the right to vote.

    Norm.
14. Lumpen says:

    November 26, 2007 at 10:07 am

    That was meant to be ‘Nas‘ versus Jay-Z.

    I declare the beef to be on. Vents is just being cagey. I expect a diss song to be on MySpace by this afternoon.
15. @ndy says:

    November 26, 2007 at 10:29 am

    Norm,

    Trolling on my own blog?!? Is there nothing these dastardly anarchists won’t stoop to?

    Seriously tho’…

    I am, of course, perfectly well aware of the rationale for socialist electoralism, over and above actually gaining votes or even — non-existent Heaven forbid — office. Such factors as raising the scarlet standard high, reminding voters of the existence of a ‘socialist alternative’ (not Socialist Alternative) etcetera operate irrespective of the number of votes gained. But what I’m actually engaged in in this post, as in the case of a number of others, is assessing precisely this question: how well (in terms of votes) did the self-declared socialist candidates perform? A hint that this might be the case is given by the fact that I actually examine the number of votes received by every single such candidate that I’m aware of, in both Houses, and from among the CL, SA, SEP, PLP and SP.

    Obviously, the number of votes gained is subject to interpretation. That is, what does it mean? Further, when assessing the impact of such a campaign, what elections actually provide is an opportunity to assess the relative popularity of candidates, parties and (to a much lesser extent) policies, by providing an assessment of the relative ability of each to command a vote ‘for’ some person or party. In other words, in terms of popularity contests, it’s a lot easier to assess by actually counting the number of votes than it is anecdotal evidence about, say, “how many … people were reached by, and agreed with or seriously considered, the socialist message through face to face campaigning, leaflets, posters, the internet and local press” etcetera etcetera etcetera.

    Secondly, in terms of SA itself, it has a history, and it’s possible to compare current results with previous ones. In this manner, it’s possible to make some kind of assessment of the actual political impact of the project.

    I remember when SA was established, in 2001, and the rhetoric which surrounded it. Here, supposedly, was an opportunity for the left to electorally capitalise upon a (re-)emergent anti-capitalist movement (or broadening sentiment). I’ve followed SA’s course since then. Over this six-year period, in terms of votes, the results have been absolutely minimal. Further, it has progressively shed whatever pretence it originally had to being an ‘alliance’ of socialist forces, and has become what it was likely always destined to be: an electoral platform for the DSP.

    Thirdly, in reference to the results in 2007: yeah, Rachel Evans got approximately 818 votes, or 1.1%, considerably more than a number of other SA candidates. She was also placed first on the ballot. (As was the SEP’s James Cogan in Chifley, who received 811 votes, or 1.2%.) In terms of campaign finances, I’m also well aware of the fact that the major parties have greatly more resources than do SA, but the point of comparison is 1) not just the majors, but the other minor parties and 2) previous outcomes. On both these scales, all things being equal, SA is not performing well.

    Finally, a few questions: in Victoria, Joe Toscano and Jude Pierce received 4,181 Senate votes, the SEP 3,258 and the SA 1,916. Given that the other two campaigns were even less well-resourced than the SA campaign, and that the SA campaign had a number of other advantages over both these rivals, how is this result to be explained other than by reference to the fact that, when it comes to making a choice and a political commitment (however minimal), voters would rather support the mad bastards in the SEP and some crackpotkinists over and above SA? Why the relatively massive decline in the socialist vote in Canberra? What evidence do you have to support your claim that I am a “right-winger”?!?

    @ndy.
16. Norm Dixon says:

    November 26, 2007 at 10:55 am

    As I said, I’m in NSW so cannot tell you all the dynamics of Vic. But my experience in NSW is that many who voted for the SEP thought they were voting for Socialist Alliance. They were voting for the “socialists” and did not differentiate.

    In Vic, it looks like the AEC made a mistake attributing 1730 votes from one booth in the seat of Gorton to the SEP (instead of the ALP we think). If we take this mistake into account the SEP polled less than SA.

    SA was never simply or primarily an electoral project, as you claim. And it was never expected that it would automatically translate into remarkably better electoral results. It was well understood that the Greens would continue to be main electoral expression of the left/radical vote, in fact benefitting most from much of SA’s work in building the movements.

    There are many objective factors that depress the socialist vote in general and in this election in particular (which I’ve already mentioned), not least we live in a society dominated by the capitalist parties and their mass media (duh!). Any sensible analysis must take those into account. It is only right-wing columnists, shock-jocks and sectarian nit-pickers like you that ignore them to make cheap debating points.

    The real test of SA’s “popularity” is its year-round activity, involvement and leadership in the mass movements and their political developments. That role has most recently been illustrated by SA members’ leading role in the anti-APEC protests in Sydney, bringing 15,000 people into the streets to defy the Lib-Lab state intimidation, and the Indigenous rights movement in Queensland.

    As modest as they are, SA’s getting the best of the far left vote also illustrates that, of course the Greens have got by far the most of the available left vote without doing much of the movement hard yakka beyond making speeches and issuing press releases. The fact that, for the first time, more than $15,000 in donations from trade unions was recieved by SA this election is also a marker of this.
17. ComeInSpinner says:

    November 26, 2007 at 12:11 pm

    This is all very well and good, but I’d like some figures on how Peter Watson and The Stalinist League fared on Saturday at the polling booths.
18. Kakariki says:

    November 26, 2007 at 12:51 pm

    “I suppose being a self-declared “anarchist” relieves you of any need to actually attempt to do anything in the elections, just shitcan those that do.”

    Absolutely one of the best things about being anarchist. And foreign.
19. Lumpen says:

    November 26, 2007 at 4:17 pm

    My prediction for this thread came true!

    “SA was never simply or primarily an electoral project, as you claim.”

    I’d agree that it was never simply an electoral project, but I’m pretty certain it was primarily an electoral project.

    Talking to friends from regional Australia, it’s interesting that they view SA as an entity unto itself and not as something run by the DSP. Granted this is typical of DSP front groups.
20. sparx says:

    November 26, 2007 at 4:24 pm

    vote 1 for da east brunswick massive!

    omg!

    this guy ALMOST broke my funny.
21. @ndy says:

    November 26, 2007 at 4:27 pm

    Norm,

    1) If voters are voting for the SA or the SEP because they want to vote ‘socialist’, it’s very possible that the distinction between SA and SEP is lost on them. In other words, the reverse could just as easily be the case (“many who voted for the Socialist Alliance thought they were voting for the SEP”).

    2) Inre the SEP vote in Victoria: interesting. I suppose this correction will be made in the coming days or weeks. Still, this fails to explain why Toscano and Pearce at this stage appear to have received more than double the SA vote. Secondly, the SA ranked 18th; the DLP, Climate Change Coalition, Australian Shooters Party, What Women Want, One Nation, Christian Democratic Party, Conservatives for Climate and Environment, Carers Alliance, Liberty and Democracy Party and Senator On-Line all ranked higher.

    3) “SA was never simply or primarily an electoral project, as you claim.” It’s not just me what claims that Norm. In their resignation letter, for example, the ISO writes: “Despite the rise of the Greens as an electoral force, it was clear that there was still a space for a left electoral alternative with more explicitly working class politics. With time Socialist Alliance might have begun to make ground, as Steve Jolly’s Socialist Party did in Yarra – a council where Green control had seen a continuation of neo-liberal priorities.” Further, apart from once having been an alliance of leftist groupuscules, this is what is distinctive about SA; in every other respect — and here I refer to the participation of its members in all the other activities you mention — it is simply another sect. So maybe you’re right: SA was never simply or primarily an electoral project, as I claim; it is now simply or primarily an electoral project for the DSP.

    4) It’s been six years since SA was founded. Of the eight leftist groupuscules which formed it, almost all have since left or disintegrated. Thus the Freedom Socialist Party (March 2007), the International Socialist Organisation (January 2007), Socialist Democracy (disbanded December 2005… apparently), Worker-Communist Party of Iraq (defunct… in Australia?) and Workers’ Power (April 2006) have all upped stumps. That leaves Workers Liberty’ and the Workers’ League (whoever and whatever that is). (Socialist Alternative also appears to have dipped its toe in, however briefly).

    Beyond this, Seeing Red has disappeared, and the number of branches reduced. SA membership is overwhelmingly drawn from the DSP and Resistance, as are its candidates. Speaking of which, Amelia wrote earlier that:

    Just to clarify your comments on Socialist Alliance — Tim Kirchler is the SA candidate for Moncrieff and he is not a member (nor has he ever been a member) of the DSP. No member of the Gold Coast branch working on this campaign is a member of the DSP and we are proudly non-aligned to any faction.

    Media reports last night on radio credited this year’s active campaign by candidates in Moncrieff (as opposed to previous years where the campaign was non-existent) to a dramatic push by the left in the area.

    Kirchler has received 273 votes at this stage (Monday afternoon). How many of the other candidates fall into this category? As far as I can discern, the answer is very very few.

    5) Yes Virginia, there is a ruling class ideology. Nevertheless, one question that can be asked of those opposed to this consensus is: how best to break it? To suggest that I’m not aware of the dominant role of bourgeois ideology in shaping popular consciousness is simply idiotic.

    6) Finally, you claim that “the real test of SA’s “popularity” is its year-round activity, involvement and leadership in the mass movements and their political developments. That role has most recently been illustrated by SA members’ leading role in the anti-APEC protests in Sydney, bringing 15,000 people into the streets to defy the Lib-Lab state intimidation, and the Indigenous rights movement in Queensland”. There’s an obvious problem with this contention, and that is: if SA is truly as popular as such myth-making suggests, why is this not reflected in electoral returns? If SA was so instrumental in bringing 15,000 people on to the streets of Sydney, why did it only manage to get 2,716 votes in the Senate? Or to put it another way, why did SA prove to be even less popular than the Christian Democratic Party, DLP, Shooters, Fishing and Lifestyle Party, Pauline’s United Australia, the Australian Democrats, the Climate Change Coalition, The Fishing Party, Family First, One Nation, What Women Want, the Carers Alliance, the Liberty and Democracy Party and Conservatives for Climate and Environment? None of whom, to my knowledge, have recently — if ever — brought 15,000 people on to the streets of Sydney, let alone played such a leading, indeed absolutely vital role in the vast number of campaigns SA has?

    Or could it be that you’re simply talking a load of bollocks?
22. Ultimate Hater says:

    November 26, 2007 at 5:41 pm

    Norm Dixon I wish you good luck in your socialist revolution that you are trying to kick start by pointlessly participating in the bourgeois elections that function on very few democratic principles. Don’t forget to occasionally reassure yourself that you are DOING SOMETHING, as opposed to lazy anarchists and their crazy ideas about not participating within the current framework, and I’m sure you will make us all proud.
23. @ndy says:

    November 26, 2007 at 5:45 pm

    PS. Norm:

    You cheeky bastard! “And for what they are worth, here is my comment on Ozleft’s dismissal of independent electoral activity (similar “debate” is taking place at the “anarchist” Slack Bastard blog…”

    Of course, “Ozleft” (is that the Greens’ Ed Lewis or Labor Party’s Bob Gould?) is simply engaged in sectarian trolling, I suppose to hide their abandonment of any form [of] socialist activity, inside or outside their chosen reformist groups. As such, the concept that there is more to socialist electoral activity than the simplistic measure of the raw votes as the sole yardstick to beat active socialists with escapes them…

    Any you accuse me of trolling?!?
24. Norm Dixon says:

    November 26, 2007 at 6:00 pm

    Not very cheeky. Do-nothing sectarians (of the anarchist, Green and ALP varieties) use the same stale and petty arguments to belittle socialist activism, and get much the same reply. I’m into recycling!

    For the rest, you are just using circular arguments: “You got a small vote so therefore you are irrelevant”. The Greens have taken the most of the left electoral space, but not the activist space, which for socialists is far more important. That does not preclude electoral participation, for the reasons which I’ve explained. However, Socialist Alliance activists are central to most of the key mass protest movements in this country, and will remain so. That’s a fact and that will continue.
25. @ndy says:

    November 26, 2007 at 6:27 pm

    Norm,

    Now you’re being both cheeky and silly. You’re a “know-nothing” sectarian who self-evidently doesn’t know me, but who’s still prepared to call me a “right-winger” and a “do-nothing”. And I mean shit, mindless abuse can be fun, but aren’t you supposed to be offering some kinda quasi-serious analysis or defence of SA? You also appear to be only semi-literate: “You got a small vote so therefore you are irrelevant” is not my argument. What I’m suggesting is that SA has not only got a small vote, but has done so since its inception. Further, given that:

    1) there has been no significant increase, of any size, in SA’s vote;
    2) the DSP’s “partners” in the “alliance” have all abandoned SA;
    3) almost all of SA’s candidates are drawn from the DSP/Resistance (I’m aware of only one that isn’t);
    4) SA’s sole “independent” journal, Seeing Red, has been abandoned;

    it’s the case that SA is now precisely what I believe it was always destined to become: an electoral front for the DSP.

    To be continued…
26. grumpy cat says:

    November 26, 2007 at 9:03 pm

    Hi all.
    Awesome, radical debate at its best.
    Andy’s argument is pretty spot on here: SA is a political failure. Its attempt to build a broad space of left social democracy just hasn’t worked. The reasons for this I think are both structural and contingent. For me what seems strikingly erroneous is how SA was/is premised on an ideology of nostalgia. It is still trying to build a radical and catalysing force on the left side of social democracy, failing to notice that the social democratic project is over. Post-Fordist/neo-liberal capital is composed of a radically different set of co-ordinates and class composition. Facing this SA can only produce a stagnant but regular series of efforts consisting of protest-as-usual mobilisations and electoralism. With predictable results.

    But Norm’s retort of anarchist inactivity can not simply be brushed away. Yet I think it is framed incorrectly. It is not a question of how “active” one is, but the quality of the political sequence that they are engaging in. And whilst anarchism is a more pleasant ideological flavour than any of the Bolshevik offerings it is also seemly incapable of generating a politics that is both relevant to the current compositions of class and power and that can really participate in the formation of emancipatory popular formations and spaces.

    rebel love
    dave
27. Lumpen says:

    November 26, 2007 at 9:21 pm

    Another thing that Norm’s theory for the vote doesn’t explain is why SA in particular did so badly. After all, One Nation, the CEC and the Carers Alliance all face the same society “dominated by the capitalist parties and their mass media”. SA did worse than other candidates whose platforms were at least similar and just as on the fringe.

    I’m feeling charitable, so I’ll admit that I would have thought they’d at least do better than the CEC. I think it is better explained by the Greens capturing what would nominally by SA’s votes, if SA were better organised and comprised and had feasible policies (if wishes were horses…).

    Just to echo some of Andy’s comments, I think the Greens have played a far bigger leadership role in regard to general left wing activism and Aborigines themselves have lead the way in their own emancipation both in form and substance. As far as I’m aware, organised Aboriginal groups and prominent individuals haven’t had much to do with SA at all, let alone allowed SA to take leadership roles… This is not denying that members of the DSP/SA have been supporters of these campaigns.

    And by your definition, Norm, the electorate are all “do-nothings” because the ‘something’ is deferred to politicians. Anarchists, even ones you inexplicably put between quotation marks, actively organise against this passive role, which is why it’s fun to stick the boot in.

    PS I fucking loved the Kersal Massive clip. An oldie but a goody.
28. grumpy cat says:

    November 26, 2007 at 9:51 pm

    Hi all.
    I am sure Norm will mention this but in Queensland the SA Senate ticket was headed by a prominent and well respected indigenous comrade by the name of Sam Watson.

    rebel love
    dave
29. @ndy says:

    November 26, 2007 at 11:29 pm

    Yeah, at this stage Sam & Co. got 1,585 votes. In 2004 Sam also ran, and after final counting, SA got 2,546 votes (by way of contrast, Help End Marijuana Prohibition got 28,122 votes). Earlier in the year, SA also contested the NSW state election. They got 15,142 votes (according to the updated figures from the AEC). I’ve no idea how prominent she is, but Jakalene X got top spot on the SA ticket for the LC in NSW. She is also an indigenous woman.
30. Lumpen says:

    November 27, 2007 at 12:05 am

    I still wouldn’t characterise SA as being the leaders or taking leadership roles even with Watson’s involvement. I’m not dismissing Sam Watson just because he’s in SA, but it’s a pretty big claim to say that the party has played “[a] leading role in the anti-APEC protests in Sydney, bringing 15,000 people into the streets to defy the Lib-Lab state intimidation, and the Indigenous rights movement in Queensland.”

    None of this respect or prominence has translated into votes. I dispute the effectiveness of the campaigning in raising issues, mostly because there’s no evidence that this translates at all.

    Senate results (Qld)
    Socialist Alliance (Sam Watson): 1,585
    CEC: 1,518

    Does this mean that a Eurasian land bridge is now an issue amongst Queenslanders on the same level as indigenous rights?

    SA do not have a monopoly on indigenous rights as part of the platform and obviously others have campaigned more effectively. Even Norm can acknowledge there are potential risks with the SA strategy, such as low votes delegitimising an issue.

    The idea that SA exists outside of a cynical strategy to recruit on the margins is a total fantasy. Even then it isn’t working. The quality of the candidates is irrelevant. The strategy is flawed.

    P.S. I was listening to some MC Doc Fruit joints today and I thought I heard him rhyme “I’m better than Vents/ I’m Kanye to his Fifty Cents.” I was like, woah, they’re fighting words. You should do something about that Vents. Don’t quote me though. I think it was on his track ‘I’d Give Chavez My Missus’.
31. grumpy cat says:

    November 27, 2007 at 12:42 am

    Hi all.
    I think @ndy and Lumpen in their rush to score points off SA run the risk of validating voting as something with meaning. It is impossible to really interpret what any amount of votes “represent”. Voting is not a practice of active commitment but passivity. It is largely a mute activity – which I am sure is old news to you. So why use essentially parliamentarian arguments to mock SA electoralism? It is not like it is actually funny.

    rebel love
    dave
32. @ndy says:

    November 27, 2007 at 1:42 am

    …aaand we’re back.

    Norm: you’re avoiding the hard questions. You’re also engaged in a question-begging exercise. Both are a product of failing to acknowledge the purportedly distinctive nature of the SA, as opposed to the DSP.

    Before SA formed, the DSP ran in elections, as well as did all the “building” the Leninist construction industry is always engaged in. However, the SA was meant to be a departure, a political broadening based on a minor recombination of the Leninist left and a hope that, with the collapse of the ALP left and the seeming re-emergence of an anti-capitalist discourse, new political space had opened up for just such a venture. Six years later, the results are quite literally in. The ‘Socialist Alliance’ is in reality, if not in name, the DSP and Resistance, re-branded. Back to square one, perhaps, but with the added bonus of having the rival ISO much reduced in strength.

    That’s how I see it.

    Dave: social democracy has collapsed, but I’m not sure this means it may not re-emerge, even despite what are purportedly major shifts in the economic and social infrastructure of Western societies such as Australia. The way I see it, popular pressure can force states to act in the short-term interests of their constituents, and social democratic ideologies and movements are based upon this realisation. The real problem, of course, is the erosion in the economic and social base for this form of political practice — especially in terms of the trade union movement, but also in terms of the labour movement more generally. In terms of Australian economy, I think that the country’s role as a vast reserve of natural resources for export is key to understanding its role in the global economy, and as such, is deserving of special attention. More on that later, perhaps.

    As for nostalgia… well, this mob has justified participating in elections by reference to Engels’ writings on the German Social Democrats so, y’know…

    As far as I’m concerned, Norm’s accusation of “anarchist inactivity” may, in fact, easily be brushed aside, at least insofar as it’s personally directed at myself. I read it more simply as an invitation to engage in a pissing contest. (As an aside, this is the stock-standard response I receive from the likes of Norm.) On the other hand, I agree with you that being ‘active’ is one thing, being effective another (which is how I interpret the meaning of a qualitative intervention in a series). Of course, I disagree with you that ‘anarchism’ “is also seemingly incapable of generating a politics that is both relevant to the current compositions of class and power and [one which] can really participate in the formation of emancipatory popular formations and spaces”, but elaborating the reasons why moves some way from examining the socialist vote in the 2007 federal election.

    Finally, in terms of examining this subject in particular, I’m a political trainspotter, and have been for many years. As such, I find the ups and downs experienced by groupuscules on the far left and the far right to be noteworthy. I agree, of course, that the empancipatory potential of voting in a representative capitalist democracy is negligible; on the other hand, I think it full of comic potential.

    Lumpen: one of the key faults with Norm’s “analysis”, such as it is, is that it fails to compare SA with similarly-placed parties and platforms. Instead we’re treated to the not-exactly-obscure fact that there’s such a thing as the capitalist media, with all that implies for the manner in which political ‘alternatives’ are presented to the public.

    “Duh”, as Norm so aptly puts it.

    In these terms, and not in comparison to the ALP, or the Coalition, or even The Greens, the SA has done very poorly. Their competition is not the majors but the minors. In every single Senate contest, for example, the SA was out-polled by ‘What Women Want’, and by a considerable margin. (WWW formed in 2007.) The same goes for a large number of other parties. In fact, it’s no exaggeration to say that, in the popularity stakes, the SA does battle with the CEC for the title of the most un-popular political formation in Australia; amazingly, despite it’s members ability to get 15,000 people to take to the streets of Sydney (etcetera etcetera etcetera). Ridiculous assertions about the leadership role of the SA in struggles for indigenous rights in Queensland do little more than distract from these realities — presumably Norm’s purpose in making them.
33. Lumpen says:

    November 27, 2007 at 9:56 am

    Um, I think some meaning can be gleaned from votes. Specifically, that the SA platform is not working and that the Fishing Party is more popular.
34. @ndy says:

    November 27, 2007 at 10:52 am

    Not only that, but every weekend The Fishing Party plays a leading role in bringing tens of thousands of anglers onto the country’s rivers and streams. Of course, Lumpen is engaged in little more than petty sectarian trolling, with this comment. I suppose being a self-declared “anarchist” relieves you of any need to actually attempt to catch your own fish, just shitcan those that do.

    Kersal Massive.

    Respec’.
35. grumpy cat says:

    November 27, 2007 at 12:38 pm

    Hi all,
    Lumpen: does that mean the ALP and/or Liberal platform is working?

    rebel love
    dave
36. Just a Random Punk says:

    November 27, 2007 at 12:38 pm

    Uhhh, Norm, clear this up for me? How is it sectarian for us Anarchists to want nothing and never have had nuffin’ to do with fucking Marxist-Leninoid zombies? Who are responsible for endless amounts of suffering around the world in shitty places like China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, former USSR and Africa? Not to mention their shitty wigger rap songs?

    Pardon me if I don’t want to sell Green Left Weaklys, cringe in embarrassment as my Comrades scream and rant on megaphones, sit in boring five hour meetings on my Saturday afternoons and listen to overweight heroes of the proletariat trying to convince us that the organisation is still even vaguely relevant, while he sips at Coca-Cola (a product Resistance always makes sure its fridges are well stocked with) before surrendering the last of this week’s drinking money to the donation box and heading down to the Comrade’s house to smoke some cones and drink lots of goon and drunkenly discuss which revolutionary hero everyone’s got a crush on (James P. Cannon was surprisingly popular!). Because that about sums up my three years in Resistance.
37. @ndy says:

    November 27, 2007 at 12:54 pm

    Hey RP,

    You was a member of Resistance for three years? And now you’re an Anarchist who wants nothing to do with them? To be honest, cobbling together some money, heading over to a mate’s house, smoking cones, drinking booze, and drunkenly discussing which film/rock ‘n’ roll star (‘revolutionary hero’) everyone’s got a crush on sounds like a not atypical teenage experience…
38. @ndy says:

    November 27, 2007 at 1:40 pm

    Oh yeah…

    Saturday, December 15, 2007 at 9pm : G20 Arrestees Benefit Gig @ Arthouse. $10.

    ABC Weapons, Combat Wombat, Doc Fruit & Kron Fusion of Dhopec plus Purple Duck, Sentinel…

    Obscuring the violence inherent in the system
    Green left Weekly
    Tony Iltis, Mebourne
    24 November 2006

    More than three thousand people had a somewhat surreal experience on November 18. They attended a rally, called by the Melbourne Stop the War Coalition and Stop G20, to oppose the genocide by poverty being promoted by the finance ministers’ meeting, and the warfare that makes the corporate plunder of the Third World possible.

    They listened to speakers from the Koori and Muslim communities and the trade union and anti-war movements, all of whom passionately and militantly opposed what the G20 stood for, and demanded change not charity. They then took their message to the streets in a loud and vibrant march that ended at the barricades erected by police near the Grand Hyatt Hotel where a street carnival was held.

    What made the experience surreal was turning on the evening news, or opening the next day’s papers, to see what coverage the protest had received. They were confronted by scenes quite different from anything they’d witnessed at the rally, involving people in strange white outfits and masks battling it out with police.

    These people, who carried flags identifying themselves as the “Arterial Block”, had made a cameo appearance at the rally, and had reappeared at the street carnival calling on protesters to join them in trying to get closer to the Grand Hyatt.

    Reaching another barricade they launched a rather ineffectual assault on the assembled riot police, arming themselves with empty plastic milk crates and garbage. A couple of hundred protesters had followed them: some cheered them on, others complained that they were detracting from the protest, while most just bemusedly watched the spectacle.

    Failing to break the police line, the Arterial Block charged off in the other direction, presumably to try and reach the back of the hotel. They failed to do this, but did succeed in smashing the windows of a police truck.

    These events, which were somewhat peripheral to the protest, dominated the media coverage.

    That a large, peaceful protest had happened received just one sentence in the Sunday Age, and no mention in the Sunday Herald-Sun, which instead devoted five pages to hysteria about protester violence. The media thus not only avoided mentioning any of the issues raised, they used the opportunity to launch a witch-hunt about the threat posed by protesters. Scenes of the police truck windows being smashed were repeated endlessly. One TV station played a short clip of Stop the War speaker and Socialist Alliance candidate in the Victorian elections Margarita Windisch urging protesters to take their message to the streets, then cut to scenes of the Arterial Block clashing with police. Media pundits demanded that police be given more powers, with the Herald-Sun’s resident reactionary Andrew Bolt complaining that the cops had become “girly”!

    More sinister was the campaign launched by the Herald-Sun and the commercial TV channels demanding that the protesters be identified. The Herald-Sun did this with a photomontage of Arterial Block people clashing with cops, and other protesters just chanting or standing around. Given those who weren’t involved in the clashes were not wearing masks, they are in more danger of being dobbed in.

    For those who have witnessed police horse and baton charges for such “riotous” behaviour as sitting in the road or standing with linked arms, the initial response, or lack of it, from the police was surprising.

    However, once the media disappeared this changed and police violence continued throughout the weekend. A concert was attacked on the evening of November 18 and an attempted occupation of the Melbourne Museum, which G20 delegates were visiting, was baton charged the next day. Un-uniformed and unidentified police grabbed people at random in the vicinity of counter-G20 meetings at RMIT. Monash University student Akin Sari, who police accuse of smashing the cop truck windows, was remanded in custody until his trial next February.

    On the scale of violent behaviour, throwing milk crates and garbage and smashing a couple of windows is minimal, particularly compared to the violence being promoted at the G20 summit. To take just one example: 9 million children die each year through lack of access to clean water and medical services as a direct result of debt relief programs that demand privatisation of utilities and slashing of health budgets. Representing the IMF at G20 was Paul Wolfowitz, an architect of the war on Iraq in which more than 650,000 Iraqis have been killed so far.

    However, this does not alter the fact that the behaviour of the Arterial Block was extremely problematic. While the corporate media will always downplay the message of political protests, the Arterial Block’s apolitical rampage played right into their hands. Their actions were elitist in that they showed total contempt towards thousands of protesters, simply using the protest, which they played no role in building, as a platform from which to “fuck things up”.

    In the lead-up to next year’s APEC summit when George Bush will be in Sydney, the question of the right to protest and police violence at political actions needs to be taken seriously. Pelting cops with garbage when they were not attacking anyone obscures the violence of the police. Furthermore, it plays directly into the hands of those wishing to increase police powers and stifle dissent. Already there have been proposals to arm Victorian police with Taser stun-guns and Glock semiautomatics.

    The Arterial Block members might identify with those who fought back against police in Redfern, Palm Island, Macquarie Fields or Paris. However, all of those were spontaneous mass uprisings resulting from people dying at the hands of police. A small hard-core group, dressed in a way to suggest that they are looking for trouble, and substituting themselves for the masses, is quite different.

    From police violence against working class and minority youth, to the ongoing genocide against Indigenous peoples, from the brutal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the silent genocide-by-poverty of neo-liberal globalisation, the capitalist system is based on violence. The media’s role is to cover this up.

    There are “anti-poverty campaigners” who knowingly assist in this, such as multi-millionaire rock star Bono, with his praise of rich country governments alternating with groveling pleas for them to be a little more charitable.

    Those in the Arterial Block, however, say they wish to challenge the system. Unfortunately their apolitical and narcissistic fetshisation of being “hard core”, and the consequent disdain for other protesters, means they end up assisting the media and politicians in obscuring the real causes of violence.
39. grumpy cat says:

    November 27, 2007 at 1:42 pm

    Hi all,
    Andy I think my comments on social democracy were far too general, as are all my little snippets on your blog.
    Perhaps we can make a distinction between social democratic politics and real existing social democracy; with the latter actually being a mode or period of capitalist governance and rule. It would be typified by a deal struck between capital and labour: more wages for more productivity, the involvement of labour’s official representatives in planning, the welfare state, public infrastructure and so on. Its more radical version would also suggest a democratization of the state and greater participation. Its Australian variant would also include multi-culturalism. This was the playing field across which capital and labour (in the broadest broadest sense) confronted each other – till labour decided to break the rules (WOOHOO!) and capital responded by abolishing the pitch (BOOHISS!).
    Social democratic politics both preceded and exist after this period – indeed it was social democrats who abolished social democracy in Australia in the 1980s.

    rebel love
    dave
40. Lumpen says:

    November 27, 2007 at 2:04 pm

    Dave asked: “Does that mean the ALP and/or Liberal platform is working?”

    Depends on what you mean by “working”, but…yes. That doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.
41. Don says:

    November 27, 2007 at 2:33 pm

    Good little article posted on Sydney and Perth indy from an old student of mine, “The task ahead”. Not sure I agree with all of it, but it basically articulates the key point.

    Regardless of the activist bona fides of anyone running, who got in, or didn’t, the key work is ACTIVISM. You want it, go get it. Labor ain’t gunna just give it.
42. @ndy says:

    November 27, 2007 at 2:58 pm

    As I see it, the main shifts in government policy will be the (potential) removal of some of the key aspects of WorkChoices (and the retention of others) and the signing of the Kyoto Protocol — in reality, a fundamentally flawed, hopelessly inadequate, protocol. In terms of environmental policy, the Government, notably, supports Gunn’s and its pulp mill and the expansion of the uranium mining industry. I honestly look forward to Peter Garrett’s elaboration on these themes. More generally, the Government supports the maintenance of the system of mandatory detention of ‘illegal non-citizens’, participation in imperialist adventures and the commission of war crimes under the sponsorship of the US state, and all the key features of the Hawke-Keating era, including neo-liberal reforms to economy and society…

    Business as usual.

    Vive la résistance!
43. Adam says:

    November 27, 2007 at 11:20 pm

    HOLD UP I’M CONFUSED. i was a member of resistance and a provisional dsp member (yeah i know i know) when the whole dsp changed to the Democratic (ha) Socialist (ha x2) Tendency (you can have that one)… and the way that dissolving into the alliance was explained to me and other comrades by the organizer and other “higher-ups” was that the alliance was just a marketing tool to get people interested in socialism and had sweet fuck all to-do with the elections themselves. it was just intended as an intervention in another arena like going to/holding rallies for palestine or whatever. and since the dsp doesn’t take it that seriously, how the fuck am i “doing nothing” cause i don’t go to that one little stupid thing when there are a whole bunch of better things i can and do do with my time. would i be doing something if i attended every dsp endorsed function/rally yet didn’t actually change anything in my life (as i was hassled to do when in res about the issue of me not wanting to drink coke that was sold by the branch… which to my knowledge has been sold even despite dsp “support” for the boycott) cause to me that would be doing nothing. to just consume and die, but bang on about marx to fucking uni students to try and get them to attend dumb arse meetings to discuss marx, then to get other people to… you get the idea. oh and norm and whoever else from the dsp is readin’, can i get an answer on how we can take you seriously when you talk to us [and at the same time] belong to an organization that tells its members not to speak their minds but instead to uphold the party line (oh sorry i mean a democratic centralist organization), because if you continue to do “something” by being in the dsp, don’t you have to lie to me and anyone else about issues like the alliance being a bad fucking joke?
44. vents says:

    November 28, 2007 at 12:32 am

    I will take this opportunity to say I am addicted to Coke and Jolt and anything else that rots your teeth out of your head.
45. vents says:

    November 28, 2007 at 1:40 am

    …and Rudd is a churchie that is pushing the marriage = man/woman, gay = hell, thing

    (Addendum to Andy’s last post)
46. ComeInSpinner says:

    November 30, 2007 at 8:36 am

    “We explained that Rudd Labor in no way represented a “lesser evil” to Howard and that it would rapidly emerge as even more ruthless in prosecuting the interests of corporate Australia at the direct expense of the working class.”
    What’s your opinion on this statement, given that we now have people such as Greg Combet, Bill Shorten, Julia Gillard etc in government? Surely the above text is a bit off the mark?
47. @ndy says:

    November 30, 2007 at 3:43 pm

    Well… the fact that Combet, Shorten and Gillard are now in Government, in and of itself, means relatively little. Patrick O’Connor’s argument is that the Labor Government will continue to do as HoWARd did. In support of this, he quotes The Australian:

    Having backed a Rudd victory, the Murdoch-owned Australian made its expectations clear in its editorial today [November 26], entitled “Rudd should stay on track”. The national newspaper warned that Labor had to stick to its promises and “deliver more of the same economic management strategies the previous government gave us”. It explicitly warned Rudd against any attempt to satisfy the expectations of those who had voted against Howard’s industrial relations and welfare measures, particularly working people who were “not especially affluent or interested in radical social reform but are fearful that the bounty of the boom is passing them by”.

    Rudd has made crystal clear that he intends to press ahead with his right-wing agenda. His victory speech on Saturday night featured a fulsome tribute to Howard and his “service to public life”. The next day, Rudd revealed he had already spoken with US President Bush and reaffirmed his full commitment to the Australian alliance with US imperialism.

    What Rudd does in relation to both industrial relations and welfare measures remains to be seen, but I think it reasonable to expect him to roll back at least some of WorkChoices, if not all. As for welfare, I think even less can be expected. I agree with O’Connor that Rudd Labor will be ruthless — how ruthless though, I’m not sure.

    What do you think?
48. THE SOVIET says:

    November 30, 2007 at 4:08 pm

    Kevin Rudd is a class traitor who is the enemy of the proletariat. Marxism-Leninism is the only way out of this problem.
49. grumpy cat says:

    December 1, 2007 at 2:46 pm

    Hi all,
    I think what will change is the feeling of the implementation of neo-liberalism. Broadly the same results will be aimed for but the process (a la the Accord) will be far more consultative and will aim at creating a social consensus and social peace.
    Radical arguments against participation and representation – and perhaps even the notion of democracy – will have to be pulled out of the tool box and resharpened.
    rebel love,
    Dave
50. @ndy says:

    December 1, 2007 at 6:17 pm

    Yo.

    Dunno.

    Afaik, the Accord was, in fact, consultative, as well as being aimed at creating a social consensus. In this it largely succeeded. Those elements of the trade union movement that resisted — eg, Australian Federation of Air Pilots (1989) and BLF (1986) — were isolated and crushed. The position of the trade unions now is very similar, if weaker, with a decline in representation generally, but a few key industries — construction in particular — still remaining highly unionised. As such, it’s no surprise that Rudd’s Government remains committed to the ABCC. Outside of the unions and the labour movement — still dominated by the ALP — social movements remain very weak, and unlikely to challenge government rule in the short-term. Possibly, a break within the labour movement may occur, with more ‘radical’ elements helping to crystallise a broader movement in opposition to further neo-liberal impositions…

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