PARTISAN!

Max J, Newcastle

In an op-ed for the CPA’s The Guardian (Guardian #2145, Nothing to celebrate about ALP win), Newcastle CPA’s Aidan Young makes what is essentially a critique against the RCO, the Spartacists, and others in the communist movement. This in itself is not much to write about. We should instead look to the content of Young’s op-ed and how it reflects on the CPA’s politics.

Firstly, Young claims that “some socialists” consider the ALP’s election win a “victory for working Australians”. It would be beneficial if Young could point to a single socialist who claims this. Young uses Lenin’s 1913 writing on Australia to justify her stance on calling Labor a bourgeois party (something we would not disagree with her on). She quotes Lenin as writing: “The Australian Labour Party does not even call itself a socialist party. Actually it is a liberal-bourgeois party, while the so-called Liberals in Australia are really Conservatives.”

This is correct. In fact, Lenin’s position was that the Labor Party was a bourgeois workers party. This is the position that the RCO, the Spartacists, etc, uphold (but maybe not to the letter). And this is a position that, strangely, Young is arguing against. Young continues by listing all the bad things the Labor Party has done. Few in the communist movement would deny this. Fewer still would defend it. Both the RCO and the Spartacists have been openly against the administration forced upon the CFMEU, with the Spartacists openly agitating against it to Labor members.

“Evidently, the ‘Labor’ party is only a party of the unions and working class in name, and a party of the liberal bourgeois in deeds.” We don’t disagree here. Young continues: “Some socialists concede this point, but still find a way to support it through hackneyed justifications that ‘it has a large working-class base,’ which has led to it being termed a “bourgeois liberal workers party,” a contradictory title and gross perversion of Lenin’s words.” Far from being a “gross perversion” of Lenin’s words – it is Lenin’s words.

Lenin writes: “The leaders of the Australian Labour Party are trade union officials, everywhere the most moderate and “capital serving” element, and in Australia, altogether peaceable, purely liberal”. Earlier in this article, he refers to Labor as “the workers’ representatives” – clearly, this means Lenin viewed the Labor Party as a workers party, but one with a liberal leadership. Ergo, a “liberal workers party”.

We hold Lenin’s position while tempering it with the last 100 years of political developments in Australia. Labor has changed as a party since Lenin was writing. We do not cite Lenin as gospel to justify our politics. Young continues: “This nonsensical title is then used to justify opposition to The Greens and even ‘entryism’ into the Labor party (ie socialists joining the ALP and trying to make it socialist from within, by taking leading positions).”

No one in the RCO supports or endorses entryism into the Labor Party. Perhaps Young has encountered RCO members who have espoused this viewpoint – however, if she has, she fails to name or reference them. You would be hard pressed to find a member of the RCO who believes that socialists should join the Labor Party to “make it socialist”. On the contrary – we believe that communists must fight for socialist politics in all avenues of the struggle, whether amongst the rank-and-file membership of the Labor Party, in the unions, in the social movements, or on the campuses.

We oppose the Greens on the same grounds that we would oppose any other leftish reformist party: they are not armed with a program capable to leading the working class to emancipation. Her position here also goes against the official positions of the CPA itself. Which is not a problem in itself, however, given the framing of this piece, it is rather strange. Per the CPA’s program: “The CPA will fight for a government of people’s unity […] It would be made up of the political representatives of all the progressive, democratic and patriotic forces, from socialist and labour parties, trade unions and progressive community organisations of all kinds, small working farmers, professional and middle class circles.” Such a government, as outlined on Page 47 of the CPA’s Program (Amended 2017), would presumably include the Labor Party, or at least sections of it.

Overall, Young fails to make a convincing argument that “some socialists” are wrong to advocate for “Labor entryism”. This is especially true when you realise that the CPA are more or less jockeys for the Greens. We saw recently that the CPA fell in behind the Greens, supporting the Greens holding “balance of power in the senate” (Guardian #2142, Page 3). While they also called for a vote for “progressives” and socialists, that they primarily called for a Green vote says enough about the CPA’s electoral stances. As opposed to putting forward communist candidates, they instead want someone else’s party to win. Anna Pha and Marcus Browning of the CPA write: “The Greens were the only ones putting forward policies that actually address many of the issues facing the working class […] Their policies provide a genuine alternative to the Lib/Lab failure to govern in the interests of the people, but in this election the media made sure almost none of them saw the light of day.” (Guardian #2144, Labor has no mandate). What about Socialist Alliance? What about the Victorian Socialists?

So, the CPA tails liberalism in the form of tailing the Greens, but other socialists are to be attacked for suggesting that the Labor Party is a bourgeois workers party. The Spartacists, for example, aim to fight for socialist politics within the Labor Party. This, in the minds of Young and the CPA, is “bad”. They don’t explain why this is bad, beyond pearl clutching about how bad and evil the Labor Party is. But, it seems, entryism into and tailing the Greens is fine and good. Only one word can describe this trend: ultraleftism.

The inability to name who is being critiqued shows a startling lack of confidence, in that they do not directly point out who they are critiquing, whether this is because they can’t defend their critique, or they can’t direct it at any specific force in the communist movement. The CPA-ML acted similarly when they replied to a letter published in Partisan about the imperialist defence policy of the Greens – which, much like Young’s piece, kicked up a big fuss about nothing in particular.

We invite dialogue with the CPA – but the CPA needs to be willing to engage seriously with the politics of others, instead of picking fights with people who don’t exist.