[Marxism] The DSP's fresh approach to applying democratic centralism

[Ozleft]

By Bob Gould

I think Richard Fidler is being just a bit cute. We're both lurkers on 
Marxmail most of the time, but it's worth considering some of the 
questions that interest either or both of us.

In my view, for instance, the central point about many of Joaquin 
Bustello's contributions is the way he seems to challenge the existence 
of a modern working class, or even that a working class for itself has 
ever existed in advanced capitalist countries.

On other matters, such as his lucid description of the actual practice 
of most propaganda groups against perceived rivals, I agree with him in 
part, and in a recent post he has expressed some of the points extremely 
effectively.

Fidler doesn't seem too worried about Bustello's questioning of the 
actual existence of a workers' movement, or at least doesn't come out to 
argue those questions. He does, however, argue with Bustello in defence 
of the current DSP leadership's general political practice.

Fidler has the hide to attack me and Ozleft for allegedly trying to stir 
up trouble in the DSP. The very fact that he poses it that way indicates 
his preference for the political orientation of the current DSP 
leadership. He certainly seems to accept the DSP leadership's Potemkin 
Village rhetoric about their own role.

The current conflict in the DSP obviously wasn't caused by Ozleft, or 
me. It's kind of flattering in a way to become the kind of figure, in a 
tiny context, that Trotsky became to the Stalinists, but it's obviously 
not true.

Most people who read either of our contributions to discussion are 
unlikely to be particularly naive. Certainly I'm not, and I acquit you 
of naivete too, but it's as phoney as Upton Sinclair's brass cheque for 
you to intervene in the debate in the DSP in a public way, obviously on 
the side of the Boyleites, implying that the conflict in the DSP was 
stirred up by Ozleft.

One aspect of Fidler's rhetoric about troublemakers that sticks in my 
throat is the implication that flows from it that the DSP minority is 
some kind of group of indisciplined drongos who are susceptible to 
troublemaking. We both have known some of the personalities in the 
minority for a very long time, and I've had the sharpest conflict with 
some of them.

The idea that Ozleft's contributions are any kind of major factor in the 
DSP minority's political evolution flatters Ozleft but displays contempt 
for the minority, and is not reasonable or warranted on your part.

I draw your attention to two recent contributions on Green Left and 
Marxmail, one by Max Lane today, which is a careful statement of the 
views of the opposition on some of the matters in dispute. I also draw 
your attention to the bizarre, bombastic contribution of Peter Boyle in 
the past couple of days, which requires some careful examination.

Boyle argues, correctly, that the defeat of the Howard government was 
brought about by a working class mobilisation. He then goes on to say in 
a convoluted way that the DSP-Socialist Alliance and its various 
interventions were a supremely important factor in that mobilisation, 
and in passing he rubbishes other people on the far left whose 
interventions, he says, were unimportant.

He says the DSP and its trade union allies, who he doesn't name or 
define, were the major factor leading to a couple of one-day stoppages 
and mass mobilisations in Melbourne, which were supposedly a major 
factor in Labor's electoral victory.

Any rational person in Australia looking at the actual sequence of 
events would conclude that the major factors mobilising working class 
sentiment were the ACTU advertisements, the strikes and mobilisations 
(which also took place outside Victoria) and the trade unions' marginal 
seat campaign, all taken together.

It's also worth noting that no significant trade union force among the 
militant unions took up the DSP's exposure-Labor rhetoric as a primary 
task during the election campaign. If anything, they did the opposite. 
So much for them being political allies of the Boyle bunch.

The largely electoralist trade union marginal seat campaign was 
spectacularly effective. Labor won 18 of the 21 targeted marginal seats. 
In addition to that, Labor won many more seats from the Coalition in NSW 
than it did in Victoria.

The Boyle bunch's retrospective claim to being a major factor in the 
outcome of the elections is obviously self-interested nonsense, and seen 
to be so just about everyone in the workers' movement, including the DSP 
opposition.

As for Ozleft allegedly stirring up trouble in the DSP, I spend a bit of 
time arguing with the Boyleites about their aberrant behaviour because, 
from a Marxist point of view, it's a good way of raising political 
questions. Surely that's what serious public debate on socialist 
strategy should involve.

It irritates me profoundly when an experienced political person like 
Richard intervenes in a public way on one side of a development such as 
the dispute in the DSP and then tries to pass that off as general 
solidarity with the DSP. When you adopt that posture you implicitly 
assume we're all a bunch of mugs.