Socialist unity in Oz? Two steps forward...?

Well, it's been a while in coming, but the bad running joke of the Australian Left - the existence of not just two, or even three, but FOUR Cliffite groups (that is, groups with politics originating in the International Socialist Tendency) - is over. There's only two now.

On February 2-3, the International Socialist Organisation (ISO), Solidarity, and the Brisbane-based Socialist Action Group (SAG) held a unity conference in Sydney and decided that maybe being in different organisations was a tad silly. After all, they have the same politics (not least a fondness for the nonsense which is State Capitalism), and have been working together (including pre-caucusing before movement meetings) in various campaigns for a while now. This collaboration has been accompanied by a series of joint internal discussion bulletins which, if a wee bit light on the theory, were are least genuinely oriented towards some kind of unity.

The final outcome is a new organisation under the name of "Solidarity", which reflects, if anything, the relative strength of that organisation compared to the other two, particularly in movement work. SAG members apparently argued for a name including the word "socialist", but clearly didn't win. There is likely to be a monthly newspaper, and while the Wombats haven't heard the new paper's name yet, we hope that one of the options floated, "Liberty", gets quickly stymied. Sounds thoroughly daft, in our opinion.

The background to the various splits in the Australian IST would be too formidable a task to go into, except to say that Solidarity left the ISO when it was in the Socialist Alliance, while SAG managed to extricate themselves from the pretty undemocratic propagandist sect-ism of Socialist Alternative (the fourth member of the Cliffite menagerie in Oz). A small group of SAlt members in Sydney left around the same time, joining Solidarity (although two of them soon decided to join the Greens).

The Solidarity split, led by Ian Rintoul, was fiercely anti-Socialist Alliance, so when the ISO finally gave the formal imprimatur to their withdrawal from the Socialist Alliance (a left-unity project, mind you, and one which is ongoing), the biggest barrier to "unity" was overcome. One of the other key features of the new organisation is it's decision to support the Greens in elections, rather than calling for a socialist vote where possible.

This is so despite the nation-wide presence of the Socialist Alliance, and the presence in Melbourne of the Socialist Party, both of which compete in elections; and despite the fact that the internal joint discussion highlighted the inability of the three united groups to have little, if any, impact on the Greens or Greens members during the election campaign. As the Wombats have pointed out here and here, both the Socialist Alliance and the SP approached the ISO last year asking for socialist solidarity around the elections, to no avail.

Socialists do indeed have to work out the best way to work with the Greens, especially those in the amorphous 'left' of the Greens, and there are no "perfect" formulae that are especially better than any others. So the basic idea of Solidarity is hardly flawed in that respect. But ignoring the existence of the rest of the left won't help much when it comes to winning over people caught up in the biggest left-of-Labor political party in history. We need the most unified and vibrant approach possible, and, while the step towards unity is to be welcomed, if it - as seems likely - aims to become yet another competing force on the left, it's unlikely to assist that process.

[One interesting way forward on the Greens question is the ecosocialist reading circle that has been set up in Adelaide, containing members of the Greens, as well as Socialist Alliance, DSP, Communist Party, and others. Dave Riley is preparing an educational series on Climate and Capitalism which could well be used by this group, or by any others for that matter, in conjunction with various forms of socialist/ Green collaboration.]

So, while Bob Gould might think this unification is the best thing since sliced bread, it is still fundamentally limited by what is - if past practice is anything to go by - likely to end up with a certain amount of tail-ending of the Greens, and a sectarianism towards the rest of the organised left - especially the Socialist Alliance. It is perhaps telling that one of the sole voices in the ISO to point out that they might have made mistakes themselves in the early period of the Socialist Alliance (as opposed to blaming everything on the DSP) is in an extreme minority.

The recent unification is still a largely healthy development, however, and we will chart it's development over time.

As if this wasn't enough for one weekend, the Melbourne-based Socialist Party (of the Committee for a Workers' International), has put up on it's website a pamphlet it produced two years ago calling for a "New Workers' Party", and then attempting again to explain why it's simultaneously not actually trying to build one. It's a bit of a read, but for a small group operating only out of Melbourne (even if they do have the country's only elected socialist in Steve Jolley on Yarra council), the tone is all a bit rich, really.

It will be interesting to see, however, whether and how the question of left unity can find new ways forward under the new right-wing Rudd Labor government. There are already plenty of opportunities opening up. The test is, as always, whether we can muster the subjective resources necessary to make use of them. The energy privatisation campaign would be a particularly good one to start with, one would think.