The Red Wombat Hole: DSP

Showing posts with label DSP. Show all posts

Friday, 8 January 2010

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."

Wednesday, 6 January 2010

Australia: New era of left unity as DSP votes to merge with the Socialist Alliance

Made with Slideshow Embed Tool

[The following speech, to the opening rally of the seventh national conference of the Socialist Alliance on January 2, 2010, was delivered by Peter Boyle, former national secretary of the Democratic Socialist Perspective.]

Comrades,

My job tonight is to make the unusual – if not unexpected – announcement that the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) decided today at its 24th congress to effectively dissolve into the Socialist Alliance and to transfer all that it has built up, over some four decades of its existence, to the Socialist Alliance.

Sadly, it is an unusual and rare thing for socialist groups, like the DSP, to break from the idea that they are the “true” party of socialism, with the sole correct political program, and seriously embrace left unity.

I say this not to boast but more by way of an apology and excuse for the DSP taking so long to take this step. After all, the Socialist Alliance was launched in 2001 and now it is 2010! I want to thank Comrades Bea Bleile, Dave Kerin, Sam Watson, Pat Eatock, and our many other partners in the Socialist Alliance for their patience and encouragement.

We may have taken a long time to take this step, but at least we can say that when the decision was taken by the DSP today, it had overwhelming support from the DSP members. And this support was also so enthusiastic that we can anticipate that this enthusiasm will be felt in the seventh national conference of the Socialist Alliance over the next three days.

Energy

There's a lot of energy unleashed by this historic decision of the DSP – energy that will give the Socialist Alliance a big boost in the year ahead.

This was the right thing for the DSP to do.

The Socialist Alliance presents an historic opening for the left in Australia because it is an opportunity to unite in a new socialist party socialists from different political traditions, some from pre-existing socialist groups and others who are not members of those groups. And, among those proud members of the Socialist Alliance are some important leaders of the working class and other oppressed groups: people like Comrade Craig Johnston, who went to jail for fighting for workers' rights; and veteran Indigenous activists like Comrade Sam Watson and Pat Eatock ...

Indeed, in the Socialist Alliance today, thanks to our Indigenous comrades, we have an historic opportunity to restore the powerful collaboration between the socialist and the Aboriginal movement, a collaboration that made its mark on the history of Australia, through epic struggles like the Pilbara Aboriginal stock workers strike in the 1940s and the Gurindji walk-offs in the 1960s.

Campaign to link up with working-class leaders

If socialism is not just to be a good idea then it has to become a movement of the working class and other oppressed groups. And it flows from this that to build the socialist movement we have to wage a permanent campaign to link up with the activists and leaders of the working class and oppressed groups who are fighting capitalist oppression.

Of course socialist groups can and do link up with other activists in movement campaigns, in various “united fronts” around specific issues, such as the campaigns against “Work Choices” or Work Choices Lite, or for Aboriginal people's rights. But when the activists and leaders of such movements want to join us in the broader and ongoing struggle against the capitalist system itself then what is our duty? Surely it is to unite with them in a party to wage such a struggle, a socialist party.

To build such a socialist party we must be prepared to look for agreement before disagreement. That's just commonsense. And if we find – as we have in the Socialist Alliance – that we have 80-90% political agreement, then, it is a “no-brainer”: we need to be in a common political party!

But what about those outstanding differences among socialists? What about the 10% (or perhaps even less) that we don't agree on? Surely, the sensible thing is to not let this stand in the way of us working in a common party for real change. Surely, we have a better chance of resolving the differences that need to be resolved after we have gone through a period of collective struggle to advance what we agree on. Surely, in the process of that struggle we'll draw some lessons collectively that will deepen our political unity.

Blind Freddy can see that there is still a lot of work ahead of us before we unite the notoriously fractious left. If you roll up to any protest action in any major city, you will still be confronted with a smorgasbord of socialist groups, each harbouring the illusion that it is the true party of socialism with the correct socialist political program. What a sad sight!

DSP decision to merge

However, we've made a start in uniting more of the left in the Socialist Alliance. And today, another significant step towards unifying the left has been made with the decision of the DSP to merge into the Socialist Alliance.

In the wake of this decision, we can anticipate that more more people will join the Socialist Alliance or step up their commitment to the project. As Comrade Dave Kerin said tonight, the DSP's decision opens the way for others like him to take a further step in commitment to the Socialist Alliance.

Earlier today, the members of the DSP ended a stage in our political organisation and embarked on a new stage. This was both a break from our past as well as a change that grew out of our collective political experience. We said good bye to a party to which we have devoted a tremendous amount of loyalty, energy, sacrifice and indeed the life-long commitment of many comrades over many years. However, we are not mourning this end. Rather we are celebrating. We are celebrating our transfer of that same commitment and energy to the Socialist Alliance.

In his greetings to the DSP congress, Comrade Abelardo Cueda, the ambassador of revolutionary Cuba to Australia, summed up the broad political situation today in one poetic sentence: “Today the capitalists cannot sleep and they cannot dream ...” But we, he added, have a dream of a radically different world.

We embrace that profound reality. We have a dream of a radically different world, a world based on solidarity and sustainability. And at this seventh national conference of the Socialist Alliance, we have greater means to plan and organise the struggle to advance the transformation of that dream into a reality.

Long live the Socialist Alliance! Long live left unity! Long live the power of the people!

Monday, 24 August 2009

New book: "Facing the Musharraf Dictatorship" (with free download)

Farooq Tariq (centre) with members of the DSP.

Below is Labour Party Pakistan spokesperson Farooq Tariq's introduction to his new book, Facing the Musharraf Dictatorship: An Activist's Narrative, republished from Links. Following Tariq's piece on Links is the book's preface by Peter Boyle, national secretary of the Democratic Socialist Perspective of Australia. Facing the Musharraf Dictatorship is available from Good Books Lahore. Email goodbooks_1 [at] yahoo.com to order a hard copy. You can also download the entire 300-page PDF file by following the links at the end of the two articles or by going here.

* * *

Introduction

By Farooq Tariq

It was October 12, 1999. As usual, I was at the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) secretariat in Lahore. Around 6pm, Farooq Sulehria called me to break the news that Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif had removed the army chief General Pervez Musharraf who was flying back to Pakistan from a visit to Sri Lanka. Sulehria asked me to issue a press statement to explain the LPP's point of view. "Wait and see the response of the army", I told him.

A journalist by profession, Farooq Sulehria was at home and his television was on. He called me again after an hour to tell me that the television transmission had stopped and the TV screen was blank.

"This is army taking over", I told him. "How do you know"?, he asked. "I have lived through two [periods of] army rule and this could be the third", I replied. I had faced the military dictatorships of General Ayub Khan (1958-1969), General Yahya (1969-1971) and General Zia ul-Haq (1977-1988). As student activists, we had raised slogans against Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan. But it was the military rule of General Zia ul-Haq which we fought energetically for all the 11 years of his dictatorship.

By 8pm it was clear that army had taken over. But there was no formal reaction from any political group. Pakistan Television (PTV) started broadcasting war songs. I went out on my motorbike to observe the state of affairs. The LPP office was just opposite the PTV building in Lahore. I saw army troops there. I went to Governor House on the main Mall Road of Lahore. Army trucks were there too.

Around 8pm, I went to the office of Nawabzada Nasrulah Khan, the head of People's Democratic Alliance (PDA), which the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was part of. There were jubilations. The PPP activists were happy that Nawaz Sharif was gone. I asked Nawabzada Nasarullah Khan why was he happy with the military takeover? Although smiling, he said, let's wait for the general's speech and his priorities. Meanwhile one PPP supporter brought in some Benazir Qulfa, a popular local flavour of ice-cream to distribute among those present. I was getting irritated by this behaviour.

I decided to go back to my office. I hurriedly collected the records of the LPP membership and other important documents to put them in a safe place. Army rule could mean the seizing of political parties' offices. We had a short meeting of leading comrades and decided to oppose military rule. Although, we had been opposing Nawaz Sharif's government since 1997, we could not welcome the military takeover under justification.

I went back home around 10pm and waited for the speech of General Musharraf. It was full of same old excuses of democracy not functioning. The general was claiming that his plane had been hijacked and it had not been allowed to land.

I immediately wrote a press release opposing military rule and went out to deliver it to the Daily Jang and other newspapers. Army trucks were everywhere but not many people were on the roads. I was very afraid of being stopped by military personnel and caught red handed with the press release, opposing their rule. It was around 11.30pm when I arrived at the front desk of the Daily Jang.

The next day the Daily Jang printed only a few lines of the LPP statement. But we were satisfied as we knew that every word that appeared in the newspapers would be read that day. The LPP was one of the very few political parties that opposed military rule from the day one. On October 13, I wrote a lengthy article explaining the reasons for the military takeover and it must be opposed. The article was perhaps the first explanation of the developmets available on the internet.

The next week, the office of our weekly paper Mazdoor Jeddojuhd (Workers' Struggle) was raided and the army took away all the copies of the newspaper. The cover headline was "No to army rule!". The paper started in 1980 from Amsterdam, by our small group of Pakistani comrades in exile due to the military dictatorship of General Zia ul-Haq. So, it was not new for us. We had received such treatment several times before, not only at the hands of the military rulers during the 1980s, but also by the civilian government of Mian Nawaz Sharif during 1992.

This was the beginning of our struggle against the military rule of General Musharraf. I was arrested atleast nine times during the nine years of Musharraf's military rule. Numerous police cases were registered against me and other activists of the LPP. My house and party office were raided many times by police seeking to arrest me. Sometimes they were able to catch me, other times the police raids ended in failure as I managed to hoodwink them.

During this period I often used to receive threatening telephone calls, not only from the police officers but also from army officers and sometimes from the intelligence agencies. LPP activists were also threatened by religious fundamentalists several times. All this was due to the LPP's staunch opposition to military rule and its relentless efforts to building an alternative to the politics of the rich and feudal.

This book is not a narration of Musharraf's nine-year army rule, rather it is a saga of our resistance to it. This is a story of the decisive last 18 months of Musharraf rule. Some of the articles and diaries I wrote during those 18 months are included in this book. Written at the thick of the activities, it is more like a running commentary of a cricket match.

[Farooq Tariq is spokesperson for Labour Party Pakistan.]

Monday, 8 June 2009

Uniting the Socialist Left: the Australian Experience

An interview with Peter Boyle. Peter Boyle (pictured right) is National Secretary of the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP), a Marxist tendency in the Socialist Alliance in Australia. He was interviewed by Socialist Voice co-editor Roger Annis.

SV: The Australian left founded a project of left unity and activism in 2001. Can you describe the early years of that project and what it achieved?

PB: The Socialist Alliance was formed in 2001 on the back of great optimism about the prospects for left revival in the wake of the rise of a movement at that time against capitalist globalization. Some 20,000 people had participated in a three-day long blockade of a summit of the World Economic Forum in Melbourne the previous year. That was Australia’s “Seattle” [1] and it was followed up on May 1, 2001 with mass blockades of the stock exchanges in all the capital cities of the country.

The formation of the Socialist Alliance was just one of a number of initiatives at the time to take this political momentum forward. While it has not had a smooth road since then, the Socialist Alliance is the only one of these initiatives surviving today in Australia. Regroupment projects inspired by anarchist ideology and attempts to create local social forums all proved short-lived.

The Socialist Alliance experience has been shaped by the ebbs and flows of the social movements. It became clear after the forward momentum of the post-Seattle anti-capitalist movement was cut off - after the failure of the global mass movements to stop the 2003 invasion of Iraq - that we were overoptimistic in 2001. We have seen movement retreats since then. But there have been some advances, too.

We should also see the connections between the global wave of anti-capitalist sentiment a decade ago and the new rise of anti-capitalist sentiment today: one builds on the other.

SV: What political forces initiated Socialist Alliance, and what new forces have been won to it?

Read the rest of the interview at Socialist Voice.

Wednesday, 6 May 2009

Support democracy in Nepal ! Support the Nepalese people!

Democratic Socialist Perspective
May 5, 2009
www.dsp.org.au

All supporters of democracy and social justice have reason to be concerned by the recent events in the republic of Nepal .

The military high command, backed by right-wing parties tied to the country’s elite, has openly defied the authority of the elected civilian government, led by the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M).

In response, the government sought to remove army chief of staff General Katawal, via legal and constitutional means. Katawal refused to accept his removal and the government’s decision was illegally overturned by President Ram Baran Yadav from the conservative Nepalese Congress party, whose position under the interim constitution is largely ceremonial.

With their coalition partners in government refusing to support the UCPN-M, Nepal ’s prime minister and UCPN-M leader Prachanda announced on May 3 that the Maoists had no choice but to resign and leave government.

The removal of the Maoists from government is nothing less than a coup. It reveals the real situation in Nepal — that despite its democratic mandate for change, the Maoist-led government is being prevented by the old elite from implementing such change.

The Maoists are working to mobilise their large base of support among the poor majority for street demonstrations against this coup.

The peace accords signed by various parties in 2006, on the back of a mass pro-democracy uprising, ended a decade-long armed struggle between the monarch’s army and the Maoist-led People’s Liberation Army. The accords allowed for the April 2008 constituent assembly elections in which — against expectations — the Maoists won the most seats, receiving over 1 million votes more than their nearest competitor.

Seeking the widest possible consensus, the Maoists established a broad coalition government. However, the UCPN-M’s proposals for a peaceful and democratic pro-poor transformation of Nepal that were endorsed at the ballot box have been frustrated by opposition within the parliament, the state and even the coalition government.

It is taken for granted all around the world that if the military is above the elected government and can act as it wishes, there is no democracy.

The Nepalese Army is infamous for its human rights abuses, including murder, torture and rape. It has also been responsible for coups against civilian governments, and the top ranks of the army recently admitted to planning a fresh coup against the current elected government!

The Maoists have simply been attempting to implement the peace accords, under which the PLA fighters could be integrated into the army to create a new, unified military. The army chiefs have refused to do this and instead recruited thousands of new, non-Maoist fighters, in violation of the accords. The right-wing elite know that if the peace agreements are implemented, the army may stop being a weapon they can use to prevent social progress.

In recent years, the Nepalese people, among the world’s poorest, have achieved giant strides forward. A centuries-old feudal monarchy has been overturned and a republic declared. The Nepalese people have voted for a transformation of their nation to one based on equality and pro-people development that ends poverty.

There is nothing more terrifying to the ruling classes globally than the sight of a people winning power. The right-wing forces in Nepal are counting on the support of foreign powers, especially the United States and India .

Nepal’s poor majority need our solidarity. All those who believe in the principles of democracy and social justice, who believe that people should not be condemned to backbreaking poverty simply because the powerful have carved the world up among themselves, need to support the people of Nepal and insist that:

the Nepalese people must be allowed to determine their future, foreign intervention must end;
the peace accords must be upheld; and
democracy must be respected and the people’s will implemented.

The DSP is a Marxist tendency in the Australia’s Socialist Alliance

Tuesday, 24 March 2009

Reminder: World At A Crossroads conference this Easter

World At A Crossroads: Fighting for socialism in the 21st Century
Easter 2009, April 10-12, Sydney
Venue: Sydney Girls High School

World At A Crossroads is a conference that brings together hundreds of socialists, progressive activists and Marxist thinkers from around Australia, Latin America, Asia-Pacific and North America in dozens of panel presentations and workshops dealing with the urgent questions that confront us all: war, imperialism, food security, racism, workers' rights, sexism, the media and culture. Feature sessions and streams will include:

* The capitalist economic crisis: Putting people and planet before corporate profits
* Stopping global warming: Social change, not climate change
* Emerging alternatives to capitalism and war: The Venezuelan revolution and anti-imperialist rebellion in Latin America
* Organising to fight for a better world: Building mass movements, alliances and left parties

Most of all, however, this conference will be about creating solutions. The rising revolutionary movements in Latin America, which are posing the most serious challenge to global capitalist destruction for decades, are full of inspiration and lessons for people fighting for justice everywhere. Those struggles, and the alternative social systems they are creating, will be a big feature of this conference with the participation of guest speakers from Latin America.

The many struggles of the people in the Asia-Pacific region against imperialist exploitation and state repression, and for genuine democracy and social justice will be addressed by guest speakers from left parties, trade unions and social movements in the Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan, India, Indonesia and Timor Leste, amongst others.

For more info, email dsp@dsp.org.au or sydney.resistance@gmail.com, or phone (02) 9690 1230. Alternatively, you can just sign up now!

Organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective and Resistance.

Saturday, 28 February 2009

`Let us rediscover Marx' -- Two talks on Michael Lebowitz's `Beyond Capital: Marx’s Political Economy of the Working Class'

From Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal, two articles on 21st Century Socialism, Marx, and the need for rebuilding working class consciousness.

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By Michael A. Lebowitz

Michael Lebowitz will be a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 10-12, 2009, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, Resistance and Green Left Weekly. Visit http://www.worldATACrossroads.org for full agenda and to book your tickets.

February 16, 2009 -- It is well known that when Karl Marx heard what people calling themselves Marxists were saying, he commented, ``all I know is that I am not a Marxist’’. It is not as well known, however, that Marx had little respect for disciples in general. A theory disintegrates, he said, when disciples try to ``explain away’’ problems in the theory -- when they engage in ``crass empiricism’’, use ``phrases in a scholastic way’’, and employ ``cunning argument’’ to support the theory. A theory disintegrates, he said, when the point of departure of the disciples is ``no longer reality’’ but the theory that the master produced.

Although Marx had in mind what had happened to the theories of Hegel and Ricardo at the hands of their disciples, the problem he detected applies to his own theory. Marx has had too many disciples -- too many people who simply repeat the theory, too many people who argue endlessly that it is correct in the form that Marx left it. These are people whose mantra is the ``two whatevers’’ -- whatever is in Capital is right, whatever is not in Capital is wrong. With a dialectical perspective, however, we recognise that what is outside Capital is essential to understand what is inside it.

I began to wonder about what was not in Capital when I was reading the Grundrisse, Marx's notebooks from 1857-8. Among other things, those rich notebooks are filled with a discussion of needs. And, indeed, Marx noted there that the contemporary power of capital is based upon the creation of new needs for workers. (Can we deny the significance of the constant generation of needs by capital, of the power that consumerism gives capital?) But, where was the discussion of the needs of workers in Capital? Further, Marx explained that he would assume that the standard of necessity of workers was given for a given time and place, but that this assumption would be removed in the book on wage labour. What book on wage labour? In the Grundrisse, Marx indicated that the book on wage labour would be one of his six books (of which Capital was only the first).

And so I began to explore the question of what happens if we remove the assumption that Marx intended to remove? What happens if we allow the standard of needs of workers, that set of needs which underlies the value of labour power, to vary? Let me tell you that it was like pulling on a loose thread. The more I pulled on this thread, the greater the implications that were revealed (and continue to be revealed). Except this is really not a good analogy. Because the theory did not unravel. On the contrary, the theory in Capital became so much more consistent with the bulk of Marx's work on politics and struggle. In short, it was more like a chemical experiment -- adding an element and producing exciting results.

Let me tell you about a few of those results in the time available to me today.

We need to recognise, for example, that Marx's Capital is a critique of the political economy of capital -- that it is an inner examination and critique of the way things look like from the perspective of capital. That book looks at things from the side of capital and not from the side of the working class. It articulates and develops the goal and impulse of capital, its drive for surplus value, but it does not articulate and develop the alternative goal, what Marx called the worker's own need for development.

Thus, we can see that there is a whole set of alternative categories which are not developed which we need to think about. The concept of productive labour introduced, for example, is productive labour for capital -- labour which produces surplus value. What is not explored is productive labour for the worker -- labour which supports the education, health and the nurturing of human beings, and which aids in the development of human capacities. The concept of wealth introduced is wealth from the perspective of capital -- an accumulation of commodities, an accumulation of money. What is not considered, though, is wealth from the perspective of workers -- the full development of their capacities, the creation of what Marx called rich human beings.

However, we do get little glimpses of that alternative political economy of which Marx spoke -- the political economy of the working class, the political economy which points to a society in which people are able to develop all their capacities. In that society, ``all means for the development of production’’ do not cripple workers and turn them into fragments of human beings, ``alienated from the intellectual potentialities of the labour process’’. That is a society in which productive forces are not infected by capital's need to divide workers; that is a society in which ``the original sources of wealth’’, human beings and nature, are not destroyed because they are only means to capital's goal.

Marx refers repeatedly to capitalism and capitalist relations as an inversion, an inversion of this alternative society. Nowhere, though, does he describe that society; rather, it is his premise. In this respect, Marx's Capital is not neutral science. Rather, Capital is filled with indignation, hatred of the system that exploits and, even worse, destroys human beings. How can we read Capital without recognising that his condemnation of capitalism is from the perspective of that inverse situation in which means of production are used to satisfy ``the worker's own need for development’’? When you recognise Marx’s understanding of real wealth as the development of human capacities, you understand the horror implied in the opening sentence of Capital, where he describes a society in which wealth appears as ``an immense collection of commodities’’.

Indeed, one of the most important findings flowing from this particular intellectual experiment is the recognition that Marx's focus upon human development and the development of human capacities is present in Capital as a spectre haunting the political economy of capital. The importance of human development is essential there just as it is in his other works. Of course, Marx does not think of human development as falling from the sky, as coming as a gift from above, or as a present for those who have been good enough to develop productive forces. Always central to his conception is that people produce themselves through their activity -- in other words, that ``simultaneous changing of circumstances and human activity or self-change’’, which he defined as ``revolutionary practice’’.

Here, then, is what I call the key link -- human development and practice. People transform themselves through their activity. The particular kind of activity in which people function within capitalism produces a particular kind of person: when you work under capital's direction for capital's goal, you are capital's product. Understand this key link, and you recognise that the full development of human capacities cannot occur without producers functioning as collective subjects under their own direction with their own goals. This concept of the key link of human development and practice, which is Marx's concept of revolutionary practice, thus points to the importance for the development of socialist human beings of democratic practices and protagonism at the level of neighbourhoods, communities, workplaces and society as a whole. It points to the necessity for the simultaneous development of socialist productive forces and socialist human beings -- that concept of which Che Guevara spoke.

Can we have the full development of human capacities without protagonism? Without democracy from below? I suggest that Karl Marx speaks to us today and that he is very relevant to the reality we face -- the task of going beyond capital and building socialism for the 21st century.

Several years ago, one of the finest Marxist theorists, Istvan Meszaros, presented a paper here in Cuba with the title, ``Marx, Our Contemporary’’. I share that idea of the contemporary relevance of Marx. Let us rediscover Marx -- not as disciples who disintegrate a theory but as followers who continue along the path that he opened.

[This was a presentation on the Cuban edition of Beyond Capital: Marx’s Political Economy of the Working Class, which was delivered at the Havana Book Fair, February 16, 2009.]

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Ernesto Molina: `Workers have to learn to construct a more universal space in its struggle against capital'

By Professor Ernesto Molina, translated by Federico Fuentes for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal. Presentation on the book, Beyond Capital: Marx’s political economy of the working class by Michael A. Lebowitz, at the 2009 Havana Book Fair.

February 16, 2009 -- The author of this book is a professor emeritus of Marxist economy and socialism at Simon Fraser University in British Colombia, Canada, where he gave classes for a little over 30 years. Currently, he is the director of the program, “Transformational practice and human development”, at the Centro Internacional Miranda, Caracas. As well as his works on Marx, methodology and theory of the crisis, he has written widely on the theory of socialist economy. He received, precisely for the book that we are presenting today, the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Prize for the best and most innovative work in the Marxist tradition.

In Michael Lebowitz’s book, we can identify a creative focus on the analysis of those aspects that Marx left incomplete as part of his grand plan to write six works that he was unable to finish due to the adversities of life. He was only able to partially prepare the first work – Capital – because, as is known, the final draft of volumes II and III were done by Frederick Engels.

Marx fundamentally conceived of Capital as a way to expose the enemy of the working class: capital. The merit of Michael Lebowitz resides, precisely, in his identification of another pole of analysis necessary to carry out: the struggle of the working class against capital, for which Marx proposed to write “Wage labour”.

The more capital divides workers, the more it can exploit them. Workers want time to themselves, they want to still be able to do things after work, reduce the work day and increase real salaries: that is, reduce the level of exploitation. Capitalists push in a contrary direction. That is why they introduce new technologies: to increase the level of exploitation. Technology is an instrument of class struggle. Technology is not neutral: it can be put at the service of capital or at the service of the working class.

When workers compete among themselves, it strengthens capital. If capital acts as one in the face of many unions, it is strong. If the trade union demands a lot, capital moves to another country. When unions in the North are very united, capital emigrates to the South and the situation of the workers in the North worsen, unemployment increases and salaries deteriorate. But unions in the North frequently convert themselves into complices of capital, against the unions in the South.

The greater the level of division among workers is, the lower real wages are. In Capital, Marx assumes a constant wage. He knew that the struggle meant it was not constant. The necessities of the workers grow, and that is where the power of capital resides. This idea of the role played by the necessities of workers as an arm of domination by capital is fundamental in Michael Lebowitz’s conception.

The working class has to have a strategy to raise the level of satisfaction of its growing necessities. The study of the working class, of ourselves, demands that we know how people produce themselves through their activity, through the struggle. Workers that don’t struggle belong to capital; they are faithful slaves, immoral instruments of capital, apathetic beings, non-thinking.

The struggle is also a process of production of people, of historic subjects. Capitalist productive forces are created to divide the workers.

From the theoretical-methodological point of view, Beyond Capital constitutes well what the author has used as a subtitle for the work: ``Marx’s political economy of the working class’’. It makes us think of a political economy of the working class before and after the socialist revolution.

Because the workers have to learn to construct a more universal space in its struggle against capital, when today it is assuming a character more global with new instruments of domination. This demands the bringing together of a large diversity of legitimate interests of the peoples, cultures, struggles and proposals of the social organisations in opposition to capital and all its forms of domination.

This work is of special interest for Latin America and Cuba. The social and political situation in Latin America has been defining itself further to the “left” via the resistance of the peoples through established democratic means. The Bolivarian Revolution has been pushing forward bit by bit and with great flexibility the idea of ALBA [Bolivarian Alternative for Our Americas], which is converting itself into a process of legitimate integration adapted to the particular conditions of each situation, locality and country.

Not all the governments in Latin America that have taken a position in defence of national interests in the face of North American imperialism are promoting truly radical projects in defence of the grand majorities. But these alliances are possible in the face of the colossal of the North. While Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez Frias is promoting the idea of socialism of the 21st century, reformists, non-neoliberal, or better still neostructuralist ideas, that in some way or another are also counterposing themselves to North American imperialism, are attempting to attract the efforts of the peoples to favourable changes towards a better world in the region.

Is it possible and necessary to establish alliances between revolutionary and reformist movements? Under what conditions?

Venezuela has converted itself into a very rich and diverse scenario for demonstrating:

the human value of inclusive social policies;
the protagonist role and participation of the popular sectors in testing out new development models;
the differences between accumulation of electoral forces and accumulation of social, citizen and political forces, and
also demonstrating to what point a better world is possible despite all the aggressions and mainstream media campaigns at the service of transnationals.

There is a certain relationship between the emphasis that Lebowitz gives to the importance of the subjectivity of the working class, and in general the workers, and the conception of Ernesto Che Guevara, who in the spirit of Marx’s ideas, recognised that it was not enough to just increase (productivism) the object on which socialist property rests, but also, and with more reason, it was necessary to develop the personality of the subject that exercises that property.

I’m not interested in the economic socialism without a communist moral. We fight against misery, but at the same time, we fight against alienation. One of the main objectives of Marxism is to make disappear the interest, the individual interest factor and profit factor, from psychological motivations. Marx was interested in the economic facts but also on their repercussions on people’s mind and the definitive result of this repercussion. He called it a `fact of conscience’. If the communism neglects the facts of conscience, it converts itself into a distribution method, but it will never be a revolutionary moral. [1]

It is better to build the new by building from our own strengths, and not from our weaknesses, inherited from the old regime. The new socialist moral cannot come into being if we only rely on the “old” capitalist moral, that while old, continues persisting when we initiate the transition to the new society.

Evidently, Adam Smith faithfully reflected the moral inherent to capitalist society when he wrote in The Wealth of Nations in favour of not putting trust in human solidarity, but rather in the egotistically and personal interests of each one, given that, in order to get what we want out of others, we have to demonstrate to them how much it will benefit them to do so:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages [2]

It is as if conscious cooperation without coercion between people was impossible, and effectively, this is the norm under capitalism, that is why it is so important to create, step by step, this cooperation, with the protagonism and initiative of all free and associated producers, in the community, the country, the region, with the consensus of all; starting off, with a certain level of economic coercion by the socialist state, and education, until public opinion sees as the norm that no producer (worker, peasant) escapes from work.

Capital imposes economic and extra-economic coercion on labour. Social property will progressively eliminate all types of coercion as general norms. The workers themselves within each factory and within society will each time be more capable of cooperating in a conscious manner.

But for this it is necessary to create the required favourable conditions. It would be very interesting to hear from Michael Lebowitz himself about his experiences in Venezuela at the community scale and of those factories under workers’ control that are developing there, not without some opposition and incomprehension from within the revolutionary process itself.

Lenin spoke of socialism as a society of cultured cooperativists. When we consciously cooperate, we develop relations based on solidarity, we are democratic, we accustom ourselves to listening to others, to developing initiatives, we educate ourselves and others and we self-educate ourselves, we develop our capacities, we learn to struggle in an organised manner.

And when a democratic and popular government, such as the one in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, gains access to some quotas of power, internal and external obstacles are raised by reactionary forces, so that the wealth in the hands of the state (oil) are not put at the service of the people and to avoid the ever more conscious protagonism of the workers in all spheres of society. But above all, so that the socialist project does not advance and serve as a example for the people of the region and the world

When for many it appeared that “The end of history” had arrived, that the Marxist utopia had been an impossible dream, the Cuban Revolution persisted. Latin America is assuming new colours. We are still far from having conquered all, but we continue to move forward. We salute with affection and respect this work of Michael Lebowitz, who we consider a revolutionary of ideas and action.

[Ernesto Molina Molina was a professor of economics at the University of Havana for 38 years. Since 2001, he has been professor at the Superior Institute of International Relations at the Ministry of Foreign Relations, MINREX. He is president of the Society of Economic Thought of the National Association of Cuban Economists, ANEC, and member of the Academy of Science of Cuba’s commission on social sciences. His books include The General Theory of Keynes, a critique of bourgeois economic theory, and most recently, Economic Thought in the Cuban Nation (2007).]

[1] Un reportaje al Che en Argelia. Entrevista con Jean Daniel titulada “La profecía del Che”, citado en Ernesto Che Guevara: La Economía Socialista: debate .Editorial Nova Terra, Tamarit 191, Barcelona 11, p. 46 – 47.

[2] Adam Smith, La Riqueza de las Naciones, Barcelona, Editorial Bosch, 1983. Reproducida por la UACA, San José, 1986, Libro IV, Cap. II, Sección I, Tomo II, pag. 54.

Wednesday, 25 February 2009

Forum: Fighting for Socialism in the 21st Century

World At a Cross Roads - Fighting for Socialism in the 21st Century.
2pm Sat Feb 28th @ the Resistance Centre 23 Abercrombie St, Chippendale.

A lead up forum to the international socialism conference. In the context of the global economic crisis, new alternatives to capitalism are emerging in Latin America spearheaded by the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. This has sparked an international debate about the idea of "Socialism in the 21st Century" as an alternative to the capitalist crisis of war, exploitation and environmental destruction that is destroying our planet. Come and hear more about this growing movement.

Special Guest Speakers:
• Kiraz Janicke- Recently returned from 12 months in Venezuela, where she worked as a journalist for www.venezuelanalysis.com.

• Tim Anderson - Senior Lecturer of the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney.

• Peter Boyle national secretary of the Democratic Socialist Perspective.

Presented by the Democratic Socialist Perspective and Resistance - affiliates of the Socialist Alliance

World at a Crossroads - Final Agenda

Fighting for Socialism in the 21st Century Easter 2009, April 10-13 Venue: Sydney Girls High School, Sydney
REGISTER NOW AT www.worldatacrossroads.org/register

FULL CONFERENCE AGENDA
The full conference agenda is inserted below, or visit the following links to view the various topic streams: * Global economic crisis * Climate change & environmental crisis * Latin American revolution: alternatives to capitalism * Resisting imperialism & war * Struggles in Asia and Africa * Australian radical history & politics * Left unity: alliances, movement building & revolutionary organisation * Marxist fundamentals

Hosted by Green Left Weekly. Organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective & Resistance For more info, email dsp@dsp.org.au or sydney.resistance@gmail.com, or phone 02 9690 1230
FULL AGENDA FRIDAY, APRIL 10

9.30am FEATURE SESSION: World at a crossroads — socialism or barbarism

* Reihana Mohideen, feminist and labour activist in the Philippines, leader of the newly formed Party of Labouring Masses
* David Spratt, co-author of Climate Code Red
* Michael Lebowitz, Centro Internacional Miranda in Venezuela, and author of Build it now: Socialism for the 21st century

11am – WORKSHOPS:

Sexism and the system: A rebel’s guide to women's oppression - Reihana Mohideen, feminist activist from the Philippines; Kavita Krishnan, national secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association; and Jay Fletcher, Resistance activist

Challenges of building a climate change movement - David Spratt, co-author of Climate Code Red; Simon Butler, Green Left Weekly journalist on environmental issues and People for a Safe Climate activist

South Korea: A view from the left – South Korean socialist Yongsu Won

Iraq and Afghanistan: The US's unwinnable wars for oil – Alex Bainbridge, DSP; and anti-war activist from the Labour Party Pakistan

Working-class responses to the economic crisis - Jody Betzien, activist in the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union; Roger Annis, activist in the International Association of Machinists in Vancouver, Canada, and delegate to the 2008 Canadian Labour Congress convention

Marx, Engels and Darwin: Evolution and historical materialism - Ian Angus, author of forthcoming book on Darwin and materialism

Understanding Marxist economic theory – Graham Matthews, DSP national executive member and Green Left Weekly journalist on economic issues

1pm – LUNCH

2pm – FEATURE SESSION: Obama, US imperialism and the “war on terror”

* Salim Vally, spokesperson for Palestine Solidarity Committee (South Africa)
* Labour Party Pakistan anti-war activist
* Rob Stary, civil liberties lawyer
* Hosted by Pip Hinman, DSP national executive member and activist in Stop the War Coalition

3.30pm – WORKSHOPS:

Public ownership and workers’ control – Dave Kerin, heading up initiative to establish worker-run cooperatives to build solar panels; and Michael Lebowitz on the experiences and lessons of self-management in Yugoslavia and Venezuela

Evo Morales and Bolivia's Indigenous revolution – Federico Fuentes, editor of Bolivia Rising and co-author of MAS-IPSP: A political instrument which emerged from the social movements

Boycott Israel campaign – Discussion hosted by Salim Vally, involved in the recent actions by South African dockworkers to boycott Israeli ships and involving activists in the BDS campaign against Israel

Political struggle in Timor Leste: The global, regional and local context – Tomas Freitas, socialist activist involved in Timor’s clandestine movement against Indonesian occupation and a founding member of Luta Hamutuk (Fight Together), a research and advocacy institute focussing on economic issues

The politics of Che Guevara – Duncan Meerding, Resistance

Understanding the economic crisis A - Jamie Doughney, senior researcher at the Work and Economic Policy Research Unit at Victoria University of Technology

Why be a Marxist today? Introduction to Resistance and the DSP – Resistance activist Mel Barnes and Brianna Pike, DSP Sydney organiser

5.30pm – FEATURE SESSION: Confronting the climate change crisis: An ecosocialist perspective

* Ian Angus, founder of the Ecosocialist International Network, editor of Climate and Capitalism and associate editor of Socialist Voice (Canada)
* Dick Nichols, author of Environment, Capitalism and Socialism, Socialist Alliance national co-convenor
* Hosted by Stuart Rosewarne, co-editor of Capitalism, Nature, Socialism

7.30pm Dinner with music, poetry and film footage from struggles around the world

SATURDAY, APRIL 11
9.30am FEATURE SESSION: The spectre of 21st century socialism

* Michael Lebowitz, Centro Internacional Miranda, Caracas, author of Build it Now: Socialism For the 21st Century and Beyond Capital: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class, winner of the Isaac Deutscher memorial prize (2004)

11am – WORKSHOPS:
Marxism, Islam and national liberation – anti-war activist from the Labour Party Pakistan,
M. Saraswathy, founding member and deputy chairperson of the Socialist Party of Malaysia; and Tony Iltis, DSP activist

Climate refugees and the “overpopulation” debate – Kamala Emanuel, DSP national committee member

Philippines: Developments on the left – Reihana Mohideen, long-term activist in the women's and labour movements in the Philippines, involved in the recent formation of the Party of the Labouring Masses, and formerly vice-chair for international affairs at the socialist labour centre Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (Solidarity of Filipino Workers)

Haiti today: Five years of UN military occupation – Roger Annis, Canada Haiti Action Network, visited Haiti on a human rights fact-finding mission in 2007

Production and consumption as a source of global warming: Beyond capitalism and toward a democratic ecosocialism - Hans Baer, Development Studies Program and Centre for Health and Society at the University of Melbourne, author of Global Warming and the Political Economy of Health

Understanding the economic crisis B – Dick Bryan, Department of Political Economy, University of Sydney

1pm – LUNCH

2pm – FEATURE SESSION: Building a worker-green-community alliance for sustainability

* Tim Gooden, secretary of Geelong and Regions Trades and Labour Council
* Dave Kerin, convenor of Union Solidarity and heading up initiative to establish worker-run cooperatives to build solar panels
* Mel Barnes, Resistance activist in the Stop the Pull Mill campaign in Tasmania

3.30pm – WORKSHOPS:

Indigenous resistance from invasion to intervention – Sam Watson, Aboriginal leader from Brisbane and Socialist Alliance national spokesperson on Indigenous rights; and an activist from the Northern Territory Rollback Intervention Working Group

The struggle for same-sex marriage rights – Simon Margan, Greens gay and lesbian rights activist; Farida Iqbal, DSP activist and campaigner for same-sex marriage rights in the ACT; and an activist from Community Action Against Homophobia, Sydney

The left in Malaysia – M. Saraswathy, founding member and deputy chairperson of the Socialist Party of Malaysia, and long-term organiser of plantation workers, urban settlers and women workers in Malaysia

Crisis and resistance in Africa – Salim Vally, long time anti-apartheid campaigner in South Africa; and Soubhi Iskander, Sudanese Communist Party

Experiences of left unity: The New Anti-capitalist Party in France and Socialist Alliance in Australia – Sam Wainwright, international observer at the NPA founding congress; and Sue Bolton, Victorian Socialist Alliance and DSP Melbourne secretary.

El Salvador after the elections: Where next for the FMLN? – Activists from the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front in Australia

History of Resistance and the DSP – Resistance activist Mel Barnes and Stuart Munckton, DSP national executive

5.30pm – FEATURE SESSION: Latin America: Revolt, revolution and socialism in the 21st century

* Abelardo Curbelo, veteran of the Cuban revolution, central committee member of the Cuban Communist Party, currently Cuban ambassador to Australia
* Nelson Davila, founding member of Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement (MBR-200), currently head of Venezuela's diplomatic mission to Australia
* Luis Bilbao, long-time socialist activist on the Latin American left, participant in the construction of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and in the formation of the Union of South American Nations

7.30 pm CONFERENCE DINNER & FIESTA
Celebrating revolution: 50 years of Cuban Revolution, 10 years of Venezuelan Revolution. With toasts by Cuba’s ambassador to Australia, Abelardo Curbelo, and Venezuela’s charge d’affaires, Nelson Davila

SUNDAY, APRIL 12
9.30am FEATURE SESSION: Neoliberalism and resistance in Asia

* Kavita Krishnan, Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist), editor of Liberation, the CPI-ML’s magazine in English, and national secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association
* Yongsu Won, socialist activist from South Korea

11am – WORKSHOPS:

Cultural dissent - The politics of art and resistance - Ian Angus on Racism, resistance and the blues; Jill Hickson from Actively Radical TV; and Phil Monsour, progressive folk singer

Capitalism, agribusiness and sustainable agriculture – DSP members Trish Corcoran, Kate Stockdale and Nick Soudakoff

Has racism always existed? – Resistance activist Dom Hale

Australia’s hidden radical tradition – DSP national executive member Dave Holmes

Understanding the economic crisis C – Dick Nichols, Socialist Alliance national co-convenor

The Cuban economy and Latin American integration – Tim Anderson, lecturer in political economy at Sydney University just returned from Cuba, and producer/director of The Doctors of Tomorrow

1pm – LUNCH

2pm – FEATURE SESSION: Revolution in Venezuela - Communal councils, the workers’ movement and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela

* Luis Bilbao, participant in the construction of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and in the formation of the Union of South American Nations, founding editor of the Latin America-wide monthly magazine América XXI, and author of 16 books, most recently Venezuela in Revolution: the Rebirth of Socialism

3.30pm – WORKSHOPS:

Young socialists fighting back – Kavita Krishnan, former president of the All India Students' Association (1999-2006); Resistance national co-organiser Jess Moore and high-school activist Felix Donovan

Sustainable cities: The transition to public transport, accessible housing and liveability – Ben Courtice, DSP environment movement activist; and John Rice, Adelaide Ecosocialist Network

Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah and the right of Palestine to exist – Issac Shuisha, Israeli-born Palestine solidarity activist; and DSP member Rupen Savoulian

Argentina: The key to the region - Luis Bilbao, Union of Militants for Socialism, Argentina, author of recently published Argentina as the key to the region

Imperialism, nationalism and financial collapse: The Canadian experience – Roger Annis, associate editor of Socialist Voice, Canada

The Tamil struggle for self-determination - Brian Senewiratne, Sinhalese activist involved for more than four decades in exposing the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Sri Lankan government and Sinhalese militias; author of various books on the Tamil struggle that have been banned in Sri Lanka

Building a revolutionary alternative in Australia today – Resistance activist Mel Barnes and Ruth Ratcliffe, DSP Adelaide organiser

5.30pm – FEATURE SESSION: Revolutionary organising and internationalism in the 21st century

* Peter Boyle, Democratic Socialist Perspective national secretary
* M. Saraswathy, deputy chairperson of the Socialist Party of Malaysia
* Daphne Lawless, Socialist Worker-New Zealand central committee member and editor of Unity journal

7pm Resistance gig with funky tunes from Dhopec and others

* Some session times and speakers listed in this agenda may change.

Please visit www.WorldAtACrossroads.org for the most up to date agenda.

The Red Wombat Hole