"Unite against racism" rally to challenge far-right

April 9, 2010 - for immediate release

An emergency "Unite against racism" rally has been called for 2pm this Sunday, April 11, outside Villawood Detention Centre. The rally has been organized by a coalition of anti-racism groups, in response to the far-right Australian Protectionist Party who are rallying at the same place to attack refugee rights.

"The Protectionist Party are anti-refugee, anti-immigrant and racist," rally organiser Paul Benedek said. "They letterbox leaflets that scapegoat Africans, Muslims and immigrants for crime, unemployment and other social problems. They are big fans of Pauline Hanson and the British National Party, and target 'non-white' immigration, trying to whip up racial hatred."

"Yet the major parties are also to blame. They have given a green light to racism, by also demonizing refugees & using migrants as scapegoats."

"Racism kills. While the APP cowardly taunt refugees who are locked behind razor wire, with tacit support from Liberal and Labor, refugees face deportation to their deaths. Racist attacks on international students and immigrants are increasing."

"This rally will be a peaceful show of support for refugee rights, for equality and justice. We stand with those desperate asylum seekers who have fled war and persecution – not cowardly blaming them for the problems in this country. We will let all racists know their message of hate is not welcome."

Endorsements for the anti-racism rally include: Refugee Action Coalition, Latin American Social Forum, Sudanese Australian Human Rights Association, Social Justice Group, Socialist Alliance, Solidarity, Socialist Alternative, and Resistance.

Full details for the rally are:

"Unite against racism – refugees are welcome, racism is not!"
Rally 2pm, Sunday April 11,
Outside Villawood Detention Centre, 15 Birmingham Ave, Villawood.

More details can be found on facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=109582062406674

The APP's anti-refugee rally is scheduled for the same place at 3pm. To get a sense of the APP’s racist views, just take a look at their website.

For more information or interviews about the anti-racism rally, contact Paul Benedek 0410 629 088 or James Supple 0438 718 348.

Left Unity in Australia: two steps forward...

There is truly no rest for the wicked.

The wombats are still tired from the extraordinary events of the weekend - in particular, the Socialist Alliance's 7th National Conference, held in Sydney for the first time. But we are obliged to dive head-first back into the battle for social justice and sustainability.

For those who missed it, the Bureau of Meteorology (one of my favourite outfits, truth be told) has released its Annual Australian Climate Statement 2009, which does nothing to calm our fears about climate change, and indicates that 2009 was the second hottest year in Australia on record (and the 5th hottest year world-wide).

Also worth noting is the impending court decision against Chevron Texico in Ecuador, for causing near-apocalyptic pollution-related harm to that country's rainforest. Chevron is facing over US$23 billion in damages. The "Amazonian Chernobyl" continues to unfold, and Chevron seems poised to appeal any decision against it. Readers should head on over to Chevron Toxico for background, sign the sign-on letter/ petition demanding action and watch the new film "Crude".

But the big news of the week (well, not really, the REALLY big news is that we're all going to die in a supernova as the nearby binary stars of T Pyxidis reach the Chandrasekhar Limit in mass and go "bing badda boom", bathing us all in a deadly Gamma ray burst in a couple of millennia. Maybe.) came out of the Socialist Alliance conference.

After several years of a tentative fox-trot with other affiliates who opposed any such move, the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) has formally dissolved/ merged itself into the Socialist Alliance.

Now, to many on the "left" (by which we mean to include all those self-described "vanguards" of circa three people, as well as the more genuine outfits and individuals), this is either:

1) irrelevant, because the DSP already controls the Socialist Alliance;
2) irrelevant, because the DSP had already dissolved into the Socialist Alliance;
3) irrelevant, because both groups are counter-revolutionary/ Pabloite/ class-collaborationist/ Stalinist/ reformist/ {insert random unsubstantiable insult here}/ etc;
4) irrelevant, because the best vehicle for achieving socialist change is via the Greens/ ALP;
5) irrelevant because {insert name of your grouplet here} is the one true revolutionary organisation.

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. None of the above is, of course, true. These views largely serve the sole purpose of quarantining existing groups from engaging with the reality of the Socialist Alliance, the class struggle in Australia, and the need for a new, broad, socialist working class party.

Negative views (and very genuine imperfections) aside, the decision on the weekend could actually be a (another) very interesting and beneficial development, both for the Socialist Alliance, and for the left in Australia more generally. Amongst other things, it removes the DSP from the picture, handing over that group's assets to the larger Socialist Alliance and providing more human resources by removing the need for DSP members to build a parallel organisation.

While individual DSP members will no doubt maintain their political views, and put them forward in the Alliance, in can also be hoped that the death of the DSP may encourage those with paranoiac ideas of a "DSP takeover strategy" to (re)affiliate to the Socialist Alliance. A more successful Socialist Alliance, which welcomes the affiliation of other left groups and individuals, can only strengthen the socialist left in Australia, providing a unified-yet-pluralist and coherent alternative to the disaster which is capitalism.

Of course, there are those who will decry this move by DSP members a retreat from the "leninist" model of party-building, and even from Marxism. I disagree, and perhaps in a further post, I'll return to that claim in order to refute it. But suffice to say that the "Leninist Party" model being constructed by most little left groups today has extraordinarily little to do with what Lenin did in Russia (whatever your views on his successes and flaws).

One of the many (somewhere well over 200) members and delegates who attended the energetic and exciting conference, Ben Courtice, has put together a couple of (somewhat contrarian) analyses of the changes (here and here), not all glowing of course, but interesting reading nonetheless.

The new, improved, Socialist Alliance now has the opportunity to revivify the fragmented left. In one sense, the ball is firmly in the court of other left groups to meet the challenge of creating a genuine socialist alternative in Australia. If Solidarity, Socialist Alternative, the Socialist Party, or anyone else, wants to affiliate, the door remains open, and we will welcome them.

However the Socialist Alliance is not going to be held hostage to the nightmare of the past - a viable, non-sectarian and pluralist socialist alternative must be built, regardless of the involvement of historical divisions. The potential for socialists to present that alternative is greater - and more important - now that ever.

As Olivier Besancenot, the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste's "Red Postie", pointed out recently: "It’s in these times of economic crisis that we will have to show just how useful we really are."

Socialist Party - "Greens: Open letter to Solidarity"

With good reason - given our advocacy of greater left unity in Australia - the wombats tend to keep a close eye on the (often small) far-left groups that are around, and what moves they make in the right (or wrong) direction.

The latest such example is the open letter (republished below) from the Socialist Party (a small, Melbourne-based organisation with the curious honour of having Australia's only elected socialist - Yarra councillor Steve Jolly) to the group now known as Solidarity (formed after the reunification of 3 of Australia's 4 IST groups - Solidarity, the International Socialist Organisation, and Socialist Action Group).

There is nothing new about the SP's approach (the wombats have covered it - and related news -before - here, here, here, and here - and Socialist Alliance has written similar letters), but it provides a good example of what's wrong with Solidarity's (and Socialist Alternative's for that matter) approach. In place of building a dignified and potentially quite robust socialist space on the left of Australian politics, both groups substitute riding on the coat-tails of the Greens (to be fair to SAlt, they are so dismissive of electoral politics as to be almost anarchoid, and the "coat-tails" reference probably doesn't explain their approach at all).

Of course, the SP might have more weight to their arguments if they were part of a larger left, that wasn't focused to such an excessive degree on Yarra and Jolly's re-election. The Socialist Alliance and Socialist Party collaborated to a very limited, but fruitful, degree in the elections last year. Although this was not much more than keeping off each other's "turf", it oughtto be a hint to the SP that they can, and should, think strongly about greater left collaboration.

The wombats rather doubt that CWI/ IST collaboration in Australia is going to take place anytime soon without a rather large unity project in-between, and the only one of those with any legs at the moment is the Socialist Alliance.

The original of this letter can be found here.

******************************************************************************************

Dear Solidarity comrades,
During last years federal election campaign the Socialist Party challenged the Australian section of the International Socialist Tendency (IST), then called the International Socialist Organisation (ISO), to a debate around the topic of ‘How should socialists relate to the Greens?’

The ISO declined to debate us and proceeded to support the Greens in the election. Their support was not limited to cheer leading from the columns of their newspaper but included handing out ‘how to vote’ cards for the Greens in the seat of Melbourne where SP stood a candidate!

Since then the ISO has merged with Solidarity and the Socialist Action Group and has been renamed Solidarity. From all reports Solidarity is now the official section of the IST in Australia.

We understand that both the Socialist Action Group and Solidarity also supported the Greens in the 2007 federal election campaign and that part of the political foundation of the merger that took place was ongoing support for the Greens in elections.

It was somewhat surprising then for us when we read the following article in the paper of Solidarity’s sister organisation in Britain called Socialist Worker. The article actually echoes many of the points that we made to the ISO during last years election campaign. Read it for yourself.

Can the Greens be a radical alternative to the mainstream?
By Anindya Bhattacharyya
Taken from the online version of Socialist Worker issue 2097 dated 19 April 2008

Many people are frustrated with the three mainstream political parties and would like to see a left wing alternative to their pro-business agenda. The Green Party is widely touted as an organisation that could fill this role.

It is certainly true that the Green Party includes many individual activists on the left. The Green MEP Caroline Lucas, for instance, has played a solid role in the anti-war movement.

Yet despite this, the Greens do not present themselves as a left wing party, nor do they as an organisation play any kind of systematic role in left wing movements against war, racism and neoliberalism.

This distancing is quite deliberate. “If we positioned ourselves as explicitly left it would be dangerous, with no guarantee of success,” says Chris Rose, the Green Party’s national election agent.

And however “left” they may appear on paper, in power the Greens can act very differently. Jenny Jones, a Green member of the London assembly, strongly backed Metropolitan police chief Ian Blair over the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.

Sian Berry, the Green candidate for London mayor, echoes the mainstream parties in calling for more police officers (albeit of the “community” variety).

In Leeds the Greens even went into coalition with the Tories and the Liberal Democrats on the city’s council for two years.

This was justified by Chris Rose as follows: “We say none of the mainstream parties are worth anything. So, if the situation demands it, it doesn’t really matter which one we work with, just what the outcome is.”

Elsewhere in Europe, where Green parties are more established, their record is similarly chequered. In France the Green Party lined up with the establishment in supporting the neoliberal European Union constitution.

In Germany, Green MPs have given unstinting support to the war in Afghanistan – despite a party congress decision to oppose German troops being sent to join Nato forces there.

The tendency of Green parties to drift to the right and their penchant for remaining aloof from mass movements have a common foundation.

They reflect the fact that the Greens are essentially a middle class party with some left wing opinions, rather than being a political organisation rooted in the working class.
This means that while Greens may hold “progressive” views on many issues, they have little to say about the class struggle between the majority of people who work for a living and the minority that rules the world.

It means that the Greens look to individualist solutions to issues such as climate change and world poverty, such as adopting a “green lifestyle” or promoting “ethical consumerism”.

Ultimately it means that while individual Greens can play a left wing role on certain issues, the party as a whole will never become a serious working class alternative to the pro-business parties.

They cannot connect with the swathes of ordinary people who are hit by low pay, poor housing and cuts to public services – and who want to fight back.

That radical political alternative must be built from below, by activists who campaign in trade unions and the mass movements against privatisation and war – and who look to the power of workers to transform society.

Read the article online here

The question we would have for the Solidarity comrades is if you are in fact maintaining your electoral support for the Greens what is the difference between the Greens in Britain and the Greens in Australia? Are they so different that a different approach to them is required? Is the situation in Britain so vastly different to that in Australia?

You told us last year that “Unfortunately, we found some of your characterisations of the Greens as sectarian and wrong”. Does this mean the characterisations that your British comrades have of the Greens are also sectarian and wrong?

You said “We support the Greens because they represent a very important layer of people that firmly rejects the Labor Party’s political sell-outs. Most Greens supporters reject Labor’s capitulation to neo-liberalism and support the kind of social democratic policies that were once expected from the Labor Party. But you don’t seem to have recognised this significant point.” It seems your British comrades have also failed ‘to recognise this significant point’!

The truth is that, leaving aside our difference with the British IST over tactics in the upcoming elections, we think the analysis put by the British IST comrades in relation to the Greens is far more in tune with reality than the oppurtunistic position that you have put here in Australia.

If we are wrong and you have in fact changed your position we would welcome that shift. But if you are in fact planning on supporting the Greens in the upcoming council elections in Victoria we would like to renew our challenge for you to debate us on the question of ‘How should socialists relate to the Greens’.

It is not the case that the socialist vote in these council elections will be negligible. In fact we will be defending our position on Yarra Council. We would be interested to know if the comrades from Solidarity will be supporting fellow socialists or if they will again be campaigning against us in support (as your British comrades put it) of the middle class Greens? We look forward to your reply.

Comradely

Anthony Main
On behalf of the Socialist Party

SAlt and the Socialist Party find a common cause in disunity.

The Australian satellite of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), the largely Melbourne-based Socialist Party (SP), held it's Socialism 2008 conference on March 14 and 15, in Melbourne's Trades Hall. By their own accounts it was a "great success", with just over 50 people over the course of the whole weekend!

Now, the wombats do not want to appear to niggle or snipe (the left in Australia can do without more of that, and the colour of the kettle often resembles that of the pot). Perhaps 50 (including international guests) is a laudable acheivement for the SP. But for an organisation with pretensions of being a vanguard for the working class, that continuously makes calls for a "New Workers' Party", and which is almost entirely limited in spread to Melbourne, fifty people is not a lot.

Of course, noone that is familiar with the SP would have expected a massive turnout, even in this post-WorkChoices climate. But, as scientific socialists (both the wombats and the SP, and, we presume, some of our readers) we must look at this closely, and in context.

The exact membership of the SP is not widely known, but it wouldn't be above the same number - 50 - if that, but probably not all members whould have been able to make it. By comparison, an organisation with a sectarian outlook on the world (and of course the rest of the left) - Socialist Alternative (SAlt) - has around 200 members, and got an estimated 250-300 to their Marxism 2008 conference, also held in Melbourne. So perhaps the ratio of members to conference turnout is the same. Or perhaps not.

What's more important, however, is what they do with their time (and members). Alone amongst the left, the SP has managed to get one their members elected - Steve Jolly on Yarra Council - and expends a fair bit of effort in that area alone, while also orienting fairly firmly towards workers. SAlt, on the other hand, doesn't run in elections, and has a rather bizarre approach to recruitment, preferring students to workers (they actually have a rationale for this, printed in their handbook, which fits nicely with their fixation on propaganda), a factor which no doubt explains a fair bit of their size, as well as the high turnover they experience.

Politically, however, they come from quite different strands of "Trotskyism", the SP of the more orthodox kind of the CWI, while SAlt's politics are of the IST "State Capitalist" flavour.

So, it might seem somewhat surprising to discover that the two organisations recently had a "debate" on the topic of "strategies for building revolutionary organsiations" - which also attracted 50 people. But the content of the SP report on the evening explains a lot more than it thinks.

While the SP's Anthony Main was right in criticising the isolationist propagandising of SAlt (as captured in the recently-published and pretty theoretically distorted book by leading SAlt member Mick Armstrong, From Little Things, Big Things Grow), the impression you get (both from up here in Sydney, as well as from reports that the wombats have had from people who were at the meeting) is that the whole thing was an excercise in rhetoricising.

Both groups took comfort from the fact that neither was really challenging the other - SAlt don't run in elections (although I don't know how many of them hang out in Yarra) and have no pretensions to any "new workers' party" bar themselves - one day; and the SP (while they do try to recruit some students) is too small to really worry SAlt, so they can carry on recruiting students until the cows come home.

Amazingly they found that they agreed on most things! Socialists. Agreeing.

Unfortunately, however, one of the things that united them was a common enemy - the Socialist Alliance. Nothing like sectarianism to bring some groups together. The SP - the supposed "champion" of a new workers' party, continues to ignore anyone who takes the first steps towards building it. In his address, Main criticised the Socialist Alliance because it began (and in his mind still is) merely an alliance of left groups. Aside from being a mischaracterisation, one wonders how Main imagines convincing the unions, community groups and perhaps the left of the ALP to split and join with socialists in the struggle for a "new workers' party" unless you've already got some credibility, and political weight, under your belt. And how you're going to get that unless you start building the kernel of that new party.

At the Socialist Alliance-initiated Trade Union Fightback conference in Melbourne in 2005, the SP's Steve Jolly got up and repeated the call for a "new workers' party". Craig Johnston, Socialist Alliance member, and former Victorian AMWU state secretary, responded that he agreed with the idea, and "that's why I joined the Socialist Alliance".

Of course, noone but the most delusional thinks that the Socialist Alliance is a new mass workers' party, however. Around a thousand members isn't a "mass" anything. But it's a start, and a start which doesn't fit the SP's schema. And they've put so much energy into deriding it and attacking it, that they couldn't possibly think it mught be a good idea. Could they?

As for Socialist Alternative, well, Socialist Alliance does threaten them. One affiliate of the Socialist Alliance, Resistance, the socialist youth organisation closely linked to the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP), recruits, as you might tell from the name, young people, especially on campuses. The DSP itself, a revolutionary marxist affiliate of the Socialist Alliance, is bigger than SAlt, and produces Australia's main left-wing newspaper, Green Left Weekly.

Add to this several hundred non-alligned members, in various campaigns, and unions, with branches in places many SAlt has never even been, and Socialist Alliance looks like a pretty viable option, if the rest of the already organised left wanted to get (back) involved.

The problem is that they apparently don't. Even the sudden burst of unity amongst the other 3 IST groups in Australia, fusing in February to form Solidarity (website still under construction), doesn't appear to extend to the idea of a broader left (no matter how excited they get over Die Linke or other, successful, broad left projects).

Compared to the votes that the Greens get (over a million), and the members they have (around 8,000), this all seems like small bikkies, but socialists have an ability to punch well above our weight, whereas the Greens are a bit all over the place most of the time, not to mention the lack of anything resembling a proper analysis of both society, or the causes of the problems facing the planet. Could (would?) the Greens pull off something like this, for example?

It is because of what socialists can acheive - even when we are so ridiculously disunited - that we need to honestly, and very, very, quickly, return to the table of unity. There are more opportunities for socialist ideas now than there have been for a very long time (in some ways, more than in the anti-capitalist globalisation struggle, if of a different tone), and the need for a coherent alternative that can prevent runaway global warming demands that those who claim to see the long view of history through a clear window pane, turn their gaze to the future with a similar urgency.

"No ideologically pure propaganda groups on a dead planet!" is one tongue-in-cheek slogan that springs to mind.

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.

Socialists, the Greens and building a working class alternative

With the Federal Election just around the corner (will it be 6 weeks, or 16?), the usual speculation, horse-trading and hand-wringing has begun to hot up, with psephologists often found perspiring in a dazed or manic state in bus shelters, inner-city bars and going through the garbage outside polling companies to quadruple check last weeks pollings on Howard vs Howard-lite.

Unfortunately, coming off the back of the very successful anti-Bush protests at APEC, some of the far-left has started playing little games of recrimination, trying to prove who's the most R-R-Revolutionary (the Russian revolutionary VI Lenin once wrote a lovely little pamphlet about the infantilism of trying too hard to do exciting little things with few people to make up for not doing less exciting big things with more people). The wombats are un-impressed. The protest was successful because it focussed on Bush, and then on the right to protest, and because it was resolutely peaceful in the face of government, police and media hype. A large part of the discussion can be found here.

Unfortunately, on top of this, the irrational behaviour of some left groups is finding new ways to express itself. In the face of an existing socialist organisation with national reach, some groups, particularly the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) and Socialist Alternative (SAlt), have migrated to the land of the blind, and are calling for a vote for the Greens, while others have been living there for some time.

In traditional sectarian fashion SAlt appear simply to ignore the existence of the rest of the left, and call for a vote for the Greens in order to send a message to Labor over IR and other issues. This , it must be admitted, is in itself an improvement for SAlt, for as far as the wombats are aware, they have previously clung to calling for a vote to the ALP.

The ISO, more ambivalently, appear from their newspaper coverage, as well as discussions and interventions made by ISO members, to be advocating a Green vote, also (understandably) in order to hold Labor to account on a number of issues, not least WorkChoices. In doing so however, the ISO continue on the path they took earlier this year when they formalised their exit from the Socialist Alliance (although they had been inactive for a couple of years before that, and some members had already been handing out for the Greens at polling booths).

The Socialist Party (who are more or less limited to Melbourne with a small handful of members in Newcastle and Sydney) has written a letter to the ISO, calling for them to support an explicitly socialist project (particularly, the Socialist Party) in the elections, rather than calling for a vote directly to the Greens, and challenging them to a debate on "How should socialists relate to the Greens?". The arguments are plain enough, even without reading the SP letter, and much the same argument has been made by the Socialist Alliance. A further trump in the SP hand is that they have, unlike the rest of the far left, had some success in elections, getting Stephen Jolley elected to Yarra Council.

It is obvious that the left in Australia needs to work out how to relate to the Greens, who are rapidly emerging as the electoral third force around the country, and to develop a coherent approach and critique. Even the ALP, and what remains of the left in that party, is taking up the issue. For socialists, this is particularly important, as the Greens take up most of the electoral space, and a lot of the political space, on the left, making it harder, in many circumstances, to get a hearing for a socialist perspective. Socialist Alliance, like the Socialist Party, directs its preferences to the Greens before Labor, but there still remains the need for an explicitly socialist alternative to all the major parties (Greens included) to be posed - both at election time, and in-between.

This all raises another, more important, point. Despite the SP's piece of electoral success, they have a limited scope of activity - mostly Melbourne. Neither the ISO nor SAlt (nor the other, smaller groups outside the Alliance) run in elections, and their membership is limited to a smal number of capital cities.

By contrast, the Socialist Alliance has multiple branches in capital cities across the country, as well as branches in places like Newcastle, Geelong, Wollongong, Armidale, Cairns, Lismore, Taree, and so on (as well as at-large members dotted across the country-side where there are no branches - yet), giving it the broadest reach of any of the socialist organisations, and the greatest opportunity to profile alternative politics.

Nor is it an homogenous organisation, with a set-in-stone program, despite the inactivity of many affiliates, and the leading role played by the Democratic Socialist Perspective. It remains open to individual socialists and activists (who make up a majority of its membership) and other socialist organisations to join and play a role in organising and building the a united socialist voice. And these factors in turn have brought Socialist Alliance more notoriety in the media and elsewhere. Lesson? The more united we are, the more people listen.

Both the SP and SAlt were initially invited to join the Socialist Alliance, but declined and continue to organise in parallel, despite the advantages that socialist unity might bring. Furthermore, like SAlt and the ISO above, the SP also neglects in its paper to mention that there is any other socialist organisation running in the elections. By contrast, the Socialist Alliance has traditionally avoided running in the same seats as other socialist candidates in order to create good will (and avoid confrontation) pursuant of building a larger socialist alliance, and Green Left Weekly makes a point of profiling all socialist candidates running, not only those in the Socialist Alliance.

The Socialist Alliance remains as the only socialist organisation with national scope, and, in contradistinction to the aforementioned groups, is indeed an "alliance" of people and groups, which all of those above are invited to join, and play a part in building a united, effective socialist voice in this country as an alternative to all the capitalist dross and terra-cide of the major parties and the political ambivalence of the Greens.

Workers in Australia need a party of their own, not a dozen toy revolutionary outfits, all with the perfect program. Despite it's relative electoral weakness compared to the Greens, the Socialist Alliance is at least trying to lay the foundations for such a party.

The wombats appeal to all the groups on the socialist left (and individuals, at that) to get over your petty differences (you have more in common than not), and unite in a single socialist alliance that will be worthy of the name, and can take socialism back from the fringe into the mainstream, into the unions, into the parliaments and streets, and into the 21st Century and beyond. As a wise old bearded German once said: "Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains."

* In addendum, we understand that the organisation Solidarity, a composite of splits from the ISO and SAlt, as well as some newer student activists, is calling simply for a vote for the ALP, while in a wonderful piece of sheltered hypocrisy, the Communist Party is trying to set up a new "Communist Alliance" for the elections - as if there were no socialist options open already...

APEC: Why the Stop Bush protest was such a victory

The wombats have been asked to post this contribution to a discussion taking place in the aftermath of the successful 10,000-15,000 strong anti-APEC "Stop Bush" protests held in Sydney last week, from Socialist Alliance members Pip Hinman and Alex Bainbridge, both of whom were involved in the Stop Bush Coalition which planned the protest. The detail of the debate is in the piece below, and so needs no repeating, but other groups' reports of the rally can be found here, and here.

Why the Stop Bush/ Make Howard History protest was a success

By Pip Hinman and Alex Bainbridge

Socialist Alliance

Why the Stop Bush/Make Howard History protest was a success
By Pip Hinman and Alex Bainbridge
Socialist Alliance

The success of the Stop Bush protest on September 8 during APEC was not only a victory for the progressive movements, it revealed that the mass action tactics being advanced by the DSP/Resistance and the Socialist Alliance and others throughout the debates among the Stop Bush Coalition over how to organise this particular protest proved correct.

From the outset, since the Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference in 2005, we argued that the visit of George Bush to Sydney for APEC would be the key mobilising draw card given the US-led role in Iraq and Afghanistan. We argued that despite how hated John Howard is, he would not pull the same attention.

Given that it was apparent for about a year that APEC would be close to an election, most people (rightly or wrongly) would be more interested in just voting him out.

We also argued that focusing on APEC as a summit protest would not work not only because APEC is not a significant trade organisation, even for the capitalists, but also because the post-Seattle anti-globalisation movement had, in all significant respects, become the anti-war movement in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and beyond.

Focus on Bush

The focus on Bush was disputed among the left: Solidarity and the International Socialist Organisation (caucusing with each other) were unconvinced, as was Socialist Alternative at the outset.

A Solidarity position paper sent to the Stop the War Coalition organising list on May 4 stated: "The biggest possible protest will be achieved by politically building our actions as an opportunity to mobilise against the Howard government's agenda (including its neo-liberal agenda for the region) to help kick them from office and build stronger movements in the process."

However, most were convinced that having a focus on APEC would not be a strong drawcard.

Solidarity, along with the ISO, until the last minute, argued that Howard had to be the protest's main focus.

Their reasoning was that: as Australia was hosting APEC; as Australian imperialism is increasing its militarisation of the Asia Pacific region; and as it cements an even closer alliance with US, having a focus on Howard would help build a movement to throw the Coalition out of office. While we agreed with the political critique of Australia's imperialist role in the region, we disagreed that the sentiment against Australia's role in the region, and the more abstract question of its alliance with the US, was enough to bring people out into the streets during APEC.

While the organised section of the anti-war movement has dwindled in Australia since 2004, with the invasion anniversary events shrinking to some 800 people in Sydney this year, we judged that the anti-war sentiment could be mobilised onto the streets when Bush was in Sydney. This was confirmed when US vice-president Dick Cheney made a surprise visit to Sydney in February. We had just two weeks to organise a response, and more than 500 people turned up to one protest, defying the police crack down, and about 150 to another the next day.

The following paragraphs are Solidarity's position (largely supported by the ISO throughout the debates) from their May position paper, a position its members were arguing right up until the protest on September 8.

"Within Stop Bush 07 committee, there has been a perspective that focussing on Bush, 'world's number one terrorist', and doing promotional work for this demonstration will bring large numbers of people and re-invigorate the anti war movement. This is demonstrative of a tendency [they mean Socialist Alliance] that has held back Stop the War Coalition since the February 2003 rallies - the idea that there is a big antiwar 'sentiment' in society that can be brought into action simply by promoting some particular rally."

But this is exactly what happened on September 8, and Solidarity is not honest enough to admit that they were wrong.

Solidarity continued:

"By itself Bush being here won't build big demonstrations. It will of course be a particularly significant focus and give poignancy to any demonstration such as we saw when Cheney was in town."

"But for the movement to be built and bigger numbers won to the importance of street demonstrations, Stop the War cannot fold into logistics for "stopping Bush", but must redouble its efforts to creating domestic political issues out of the international situation - linking the war to prominent local concerns of the day such as Workchoices ..."

Civil rights attacks

The 10,000-15,000 peaceful protest in Sydney proved Solidarity's perspective wrong. But rather than let facts get in the way, they are now arguing that it was their focus on the excluded persons' list that brought the massive crowd onto the streets. That despicable fear campaign by the state would have helped make people angry about the security overkill, but it did not bring people into the streets.

If anything, the lightening rod that made people decide to come out was the extreme lengths to which the state was prepared to go to keep people away, and to stop people from entering certain parts of the city - the security overkill - which the Chasers' stunt so well sent up. When the barricades went up, the water cannons, the snipers, the mobile police units, and the excluded people list came out, people were rightly enraged.

But being angry doesn't necessarily mean that will take action. The Stop Bush Coalition's emphasis on the need for these protests to be peaceful to draw in the largest numbers of people, and to show up the violence of Bush and Howard and the police state - put largely by DSP member Alex Bainbridge, media spokesperson for the Coalition - had a huge impact on people deciding to come out on the day. We know that because so many people, not members, have told us.

Relating to the unions

Solidarity agreed, rightly, that it was important to involve more groups - in particular climate change groups and the unions. But they were only prepared to work with those who shared their overall political perspective.

They paid lip service, at best, to wanting to work with the unions: the fact that the couple of unions which did decide to support the Stop Bush protests, the Maritime Union of Australia and the Fire Brigades Employees Union, stressed that they would only do so if the rally was peaceful was lost on Solidarity. And it was largely us, and ISO member Jim Casey from the Fire Brigades Employees Union, who did most of the work to get union support.

UnionsNSW had, early on this year, met and decided not to allow its union affiliates to support the Stop Bush Coalition protest, on the pretext that it did not want union flags to be mixed up with "protestor violence" as that would jeopardise Labor's chances of being reelected. This was how the left union, the CFMEU, explained it to one of the protest organisers. When it looked like the protest was growing, AFTINET decided to organise a stationary "protest" in Hyde Park, on the Friday, an opportunity for unions to be seen to be doing something about APEC.

While it was always clear that the Labor state government was preparing for a huge security operation for APEC, just how big that was to be was revealed with the new police powers laws being leaked to the media, and then all the equipment and numbers of police being assigned.

The militarisation of Sydney for APEC was clearly going to scare a lot of people away from joining the protest. But Solidarity, along with the ISO and some anarchists, were opposed to the Stop Bush Coalition declaring that the protest would be peaceful from the start. For them, this had pacifist connotations, and would send the wrong signal that the protestors were not defiant, or militant, enough!

While they continued with this ultra-left posturing right up until the very last minute, it did not receive majority support from non-aligned activists in the Stop Bush Coalition meetings.

Ultra left posturing

Solidarity and their anarchist friends scored a pyrrhic victory at the 500-strong convergence meeting the night before the protest when Ian Rintoul (a leader of Solidarity) put a counter motion to the first part of a motion being moved by the majority of the tactical committee about the march route.

This first part of the tactical committee's motion (moved in the name of Alex Bainbridge (Socialist Alliance), Anna Samson (Stop the War Coalition), Damien Lawson (Greens), Diane Fields (Socialist Alternative), Paddy Gibson (Solidarity) and Paul Garrett (MUA) was:

"That we confirm the planned march route for tomorrow's rally will be from Town Hall, down Park Street to Hyde Park North".

Solidarity's counter motion was: "That we reject the prohibition of demonstrations in the declared zone and declare that we will march to the police lines to assert our right to protest and our opposition to APEC, to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to their nuclear agenda and to Workchoices and the attack on workers rights."

Solidarity's motion won 273 to 221, largely with the help of the Socialist Party, Workers Power, ISO, Alliance for Civil Disobedience Coordination, Latin America Solidarity Network - from Melbourne. From Sydney, Mutiny, Flare in the Void, and some others also supported it.

Ian Rintoul, at the time, admitted his motion would not actually change the march route. He knew that the Stop Bush Coalition had been informed by the NSW police that they would be lining the march route and that given the huge mobilisation of police, there would no chance of breaking through police lines. But he, and others, insisted that it was the "attitude" of the motion that was different.

Solidarity's motion was a posture, designed to make out that they were the "militants". This is despite their consistent refusal to take any serious responsibility for the overall organisation of the protest, a product of their lack of political confidence in the overall shape of the protest as supported by a majority at every Stop Bush Coalition meeting.

(Solidarity's lack of confidence in the rally and its political focus was confirmed again on the Saturday afternoon when two of their members admitted that they'd only expected 3000 people to show up. The Stop Bush Coalition had been publicly saying it had expected 5000 or more.)

The rest of the tactical committee's motion, which was unanimously adopted, was:

"That we plan a sit-down (or die-in) in the middle of the march

"That we endorse the list of planned speakers (overleaf)

"That we all on all groups and individuals to respect the unity and diversity of the Stop Bush/Make Howard History protest."

The tactical committee's motion had been discussed and moved by a majority of the tactical committee, although a member of Solidarity had implied on the Stop Bush organising list that the sit-down motion was his idea.

Having lost the overall political debate about tactics, Solidarity, and others, are now trying to scandalise the DSP, in particular, for not respecting a "democratic decision" of the convergence meeting to sit-down at the police lines.

This is untrue. As already mentioned, a lot of people did sit down, some many times, and a lot didn't (some because the ground was wet).

The biggest sin, apparently, was that Alex didn't announce that there would be sit-in from the platform!

After the first bracket of speakers, Alex went to the corner of George and Park Streets to organise to get a mobile sound system there for the sit-down and the middle bracket of speakers. But getting any sound to that point was difficult given the police obstruction and size of the march. In any case, the unions led the march off, and everyone starting moving, although a section at the back of the march remained at that corner.

The MUA and others organised a longish sit-down at the front of the march. Others organised their own - to make a statement that the city belonged to us, not the cops. The inadequate sound system meant that a lot of people with megaphones, including Alex, and Paul and Warren from the MUA, and the union secretary from Geelong (also a Socialist Alliance member), urged people to sit down.

The criticism that the motion's "politics of defiance" and our rejection of the exclusion zone was not put from the platform is also absurd. The Stop Bush Coalition, from the beginning, has stressed that it did not accept the special police powers and the exclusion zone (organising public meetings around this very theme, and constantly putting this line through its media work). This political line was not only put at the rally by the co-chairs, it was also put by most, if not all, of the speakers.

The criticism that the motion was to march to the police lines and this didn't happen is bizarre. The rally was already at police lines before the march had even started to move!

Paul (MUA), Paddy (Solidarity) and Alex were at the corner of Park and George Streets and agreed that a sit-down would happen when the front of the march reached the second set of lights. Paddy agreed with this course of action. Alex announced it over the megaphone as the rally marched off down Park Street.

We were at the police lines - we couldn't have gone any closer without trying to bust through them. But is this what Solidarity wanted to do?

The questions that Solidarity (and the ISO) should be asked include:

Why did they want a clash with the police?

How would that have advanced the confidence of the movement?

If they had decided to have a clash, it would have only have fed into the police operation, and it certainly would have helped John Howard in his much hoped-for post-APEC electoral boost.

The fact that the majority who came to the protest denied Howard his much-needed APEC electoral boost with our determination to carry out a peaceful protest in the face of huge provocation.

This shows that the mass action approach which the DSP, Resistance and Socialist Alliance had argued for in the Stop Bush Coalition for almost a year, was correct. It allowed the Coalition to win a section of the union movement, the Greens and other non-aligned movement activists to play a big role in making this protest a success. This is also in a context in which the Sydney anti-war movement coalition, Walk Against War, had been split by the ALP after the Iraq invasion.

Mass action approach

The feeling on the streets on September 8 was electric and defiant - but apparently not enough for Solidarity and a section of the anarchists whose long faces stood out from the crowd.

They argued that their motion was different because it conveyed "the politics of defiance"! They seemed to completely miss the fact that people who came to the rally were very consciously being defiant.

Solidarity's argument is the argument of those who wish to separate themselves out - the so-called "militant minority" - from other working people.

They believe, wrongly, that they have to show everyone else how to think and behave politically, and that this is "leadership". In fact, the real leadership was shown by those who took up the challenges of organising a protest in difficult circumstances, who did the work instead of only turning up to meetings to criticise and point score, and who were prepared to discuss with people who did not always share their opinions the often tricky tactical decisions. Real leadership was shown by those who knew the movement would gain confidence from having pulled off a huge rally.

Trying to scandalise the DSP, now, for the success of the protests back fires badly on Solidarity (and the ISO).

The success of the Stop Bush protest was that it managed, under very difficult circumstances, to bring out a slice of that pre-war rally in February 2003.

The strategy followed by the DSP/Resistance and Socialist Alliance was one of mass action: that is, to build a broad united front around concrete demands. It is a general strategy, there is no rule book to follow, and certain political realities dictate certain choices.

This is a vastly more effective strategy than trying to separate out a "militant" minority from the rest of us.

The mass action approach derives from our understanding of how change comes about, through the self consciousness and self-organisation of the working class. Our tactics should be geared to drawing in the mass of workers into active struggle and not tactics that drive those workers out of struggle and help the ruling class strengthen its ideological influence in the working class.

.

40 years since Che Guevara, the lesson still stands...

On December 11, 1964, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, gave Imperialism a good smack about the face at the United Nations. Not only Imperialism, but that pathetic cop-out that characterised the Moscow camp, "peaceful coexistence". The video below is footage of that speech.



Perhaps one of the most relevant parts is this:

We want to build socialism; we have declared ourselves partisans of those who strive for peace; we have declared ourselves as falling within the group of non-aligned countries, although we are Marxist-Leninists, because the non-aligned countries, like ourselves, fight imperialism. We want peace; we want to build a better life for our people, and that is why we avoid answering, so far as possible, the planned provocations of the Yankee. But we know the mentality of United States rulers; they want to make us pay a very high price for that peace. We reply that price cannot go beyond the bounds of dignity.

And Cuba reaffirms once again the right to maintain on its territory the weapons it wishes and its refusal to recognize the right of any power on earth -- no matter how powerful -- to violate our soil, our territorial waters, or our airspace.

Click here for the full speech.

Why do the Wombats bring this up at this point? Well, as many readers will know, Latin america is again in the throes of revolution, as millions of people rebel against the poverty, oppression and inhumanity that has been wrought on them.

And this year is 40 years since Che was killed in the jungles on Bolivia.

So we are adding to the chorus of advertisements for the LATIN AMERICA & ASIA PACIFIC SOLIDARITY FORUM 2007, to be held on October 11-14 in Melbourne. Details are below, or check out VenezuelaSolidarity.org.

Oct 11-14, 2007 - Melbourne, Australia - Fighting and organising globally against neoliberalism! - A global call for participation

We call on all activists, organisations and communities who are committed to building a better world to join together at the Latin American and Asia Pacific International Solidarity Forum to be held in October 2007, in Melbourne Australia.

The forum has been initiated by the organisers of several successful conferences and gatherings in solidarity with Latin America and the Asia Pacific, the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network (AVSN), Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference (APISC) and the Latin American Solidarity Network (LASNET). With this call we would like to invite you to participate in this international forum.

A time of resistance, progress and struggle

Today, cracks are beginning to appear in the neo-liberal capitalist ruling system. In the Asia-Pacific there is a growing crisis of legitimacy for neo-liberal governments and mass movements of resistance are on the rise. In Latin American a people's rebellion is growing across the continent. An echo of the massive independence struggles against colonialism and imperialism can again be heard.

Old ideas are being re-examined and new ways experimented with. Discussion and debate have been revived among whole communities - on issues such as workers' control and management; indigenous autonomy and self-determination; building trade unions and social movements; electoral campaigning and counter-power strategies. These discussions have given birth to some of the most dynamic and successful social movements and political organisations in recent decades.

There is great diversity among these movements. Some are working to achieve power, while others, such as the Zapatistas, aim to completely re-define and recreate the notion of power. Some have formed links with political parties and are constantly adjusting how they relate to the government of the day.

Popular governments have won elections with the support of social movements, and in countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador we are seeing progressive and radical changes. The Venezuelan idea of socialism for the 21st century is giving renewed hope and energy to other liberation processes.

Many of these movements and political organisations are winning. They are strengthening people's participation, strengthening their communities, developing people's power and inspiring a new generation of political activists.

Another world can only be realised if people like you and me also commit to this emerging project of struggle against neoliberalism.

The main aims of the conference are:

* To facilitate the sharing of ideas and experiences and generate political discussions between Latin American, Asia-Pacific and Australian social movements, political organisations and individual activists, thereby helping to create spaces for global coordination and campaigning, as well as strengthening mutual ties.

* To build support for and solidarity with grass-roots movements and political organisations fighting neoliberalism and resisting the plunder of natural resources by capitalist transnationals and governments.

Major forum themes include:

* The histories and experiences of struggles and movements of resistance
* Campaigning and organising strategies
* Anti-capitalist and revolutionary theory and practice
* Emerging alternatives to neo-liberalism
* Saving our planet from ecological collapse
* Indigenous struggles and resistance
* Cultural action and liberation

International guests and participants
The Forum would like to see the broadest possible participation from the Asia-Pacific and Latin American regions, and also encourages activists from all parts of the world to participate.

The Forum will likely include featured guests from:
Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Cuba, Chile, Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines, East Timor, Pakistan, Fiji, West Papua, India, Mauritius, Bangladesh, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and New Zealand.

Workshops/papers
The Forum encourages campaign organisations, trade unions, NGOs, progressive political parties, social movements, academics and all activists to submit proposals for workshops and papers. In order to maximise participation and inclusiveness, the conference will have an open door policy on workshops---space permitting. We will attempt to accommodate all workshop proposals that fall within the broad scope of the conference.

To register for the forum, sponsor it, submit a workshop proposal or be added to the forum email list to receive updates please contact us.

We hope that this Forum will be a contribution to popular global resistance and struggle against neoliberalism, war and injustice. We hope for a continued renewal of the solidarity movement around the world and for projects such as these to become more than isolated events.

Only organisation and struggle will make us free!

Latin American-Asia Pacific International Solidarity Forum
Organising Committee, Australia

Further Information:
Email solidarityforum2007@yahoo.com or phone

Solidarity Forum steering committee contacts
Australia Asia Worker Links Tel: 03 9663 7277
Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network - Jody Betzien 0425 887 078
Bolivarian Circle - Jorge Jorquera 0431 720 787
Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference - Lisa Macdonald 0413 031 108
LasNet - Lucho Riquelme 0402 754 818