Socialism in the Silly Season

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the class-conscious elements of the proletariat and the various socialist organisations, everyone was furiously chucking in their two cents as the opportunity arose to take a break from the "leg-work", and put more effort into the "head-work" in order to work out the best line of march for the coming year. As Lenin pointed out: “without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement”, and when better to theorise than when immobilized by large amounts of food and drink at Yule-tide?

The Wombats will publish more on some of the matters below when we have access to a *real* computer, but until then:
• Far across the seas, International Viewpoint treats us to Daniel Bensaid on ‘Hegemony and the United Front’, a lovely little piece on 'Elements of Revolutionary Strategy’ by François Sabado from an LCR cadre school, and a more exciting development in Denmark vis-à-vis the FARC and PFLP.

• Also in the “Northern Podeans”, England-based Peter Taafe, of the Committee for a Workers’ International, has produced an argument in defence of broad parties, yet which goes into some of the problems they face, and Vincent Kolo has produced an interesting analysis of the class nature of the Chinese state (and recognises the victory of the counter-revolution). This analysis should be compared with the position of the Democratic Socialist Perspective in 1999

• The Democratic Socialist Perspective itself is holding its decision-making congress in early January, and has published all three platforms being taken into that discussion on their website.

• The voluntary publication of these internal documents (limited though they are) has excited Louis Proyect enough to comment on it at his blog

• After the messy split in RESPECT in the UK, Socialist Alternative in Australia have given us their “wise words” on the matter.

• Some debate on this has opened up at LeftClick and, around the analysis of RESPECT, at the UK Socialist Unity Blog

• At Labor Tribune and Socialist Alliance on the other hand, the focus has been on the practical, responding to the NSW Government’s plans to forcibly privatise the State’s electricity industry, and the subsequent union and public backlash.

• Green Left Weekly leaves us to end the year with a few thought-provoking articles: on Marxism and ecology, the Bali “bluewash” on climate change, and the real “plan of action” of the new Rudd Labor Government.

• The ALP, in case you hadn’t noticed, are happily running the country for the bourgeoisie (we had to mention them, as didn’t want anyone to feel left out), and the Greens are rejoicing in “two tippy-toes forward, one giant backflip”, as Kerry Nettle prepares for her last 6 months in office, at which time she’s out and two notably less ‘left’ Greens senators will take up abode as the latest “unrepresentative swill” (as Keating would have it) in the Senate. Their increased representation gives the Greens “official party status” with five MPs and over 1 million votes.

• Finally, Socialist Alternative have also published a chapter on building revolutionary organizations from the book “From Little Things Big Things Grow”, by Socialist Alternative member Mick Armstrong, which argues against broad party formations, and reinforces Socialist Alternative’s “ideologically homogenous propaganda group” approach.

This piece will be the target of a response promised by a fellow marsupial (but certainly no wombat!) which we will reproduce here in due course, but for now we have contented ourselves with reproducing a response by Joaquin Bustelo which he posted to the Marxmail list. It can be found here.