PARTISAN!

The Red Anti-Imperialist Collective (Red Ant) delivers this communique to Partisan, signalling their decision to formally withdraw from the Communist Caucus of The Socialists.

The Communist Caucus was launched by the Revolutionary Communist Organisation (RCO) in swift response to the announcement that the Victorian Socialists (VS) would be expanding nationally earlier this year. The Caucus was pitched to Red Ant, in somewhat vague terms, as an opportunity to “democratise” VS and make its existing program more “Marxist”. We were invited to attend the Caucus launch where its “Draft Points of Unity”, assembled by the RCO, would be calcified as the basis for membership. The Communist Party of Australia (CPA) also attended this meeting. However, after several attempts to interrogate the purposes of the Caucus and what was tangibly implied by its Points of Unity, the CPA was overruled by the RCO. Claiming to have never even seen the Points of Unity prior to the meeting, and in the absence of sufficient discussion of them, the CPA was not prepared to endorse their content without a period of review. Luckily for us, an individual member of Red Ant received a printed paper copy of the Points of Unity before the launch. It seems the CPA were not similarly approached.

Not long after the Caucus was launched, the CPA chose to disaffiliate, citing the RCO’s “undemocratic” conduct, stating that they could not participate in a caucus that “misrepresents its purpose” and “prioritises the RCO’s agenda over left-unity”. These issues raise two important points. First, how was the Caucus’s purpose represented? Its purpose, as represented to Red Ant, was to endeavour collaboratively with other socialist organisations towards democratising VS and amending the existing program in favour of more revolutionary Marxist demands. These tasks were more-or-less implicit in the Points of Unity, even where the document remained quite broad in scope. However, this purpose and these tasks are at tremendous distance from the strategic approach taken by the Caucus at the VS member’s conference in June. The approach at conference was coordinated by the RCO, with a flurry of amendments and countermotions submitted to almost every agenda item. Provided with generous speaking time proportional to their membership size, the Caucus presented a series of combative arguments, admonishing VS, antagonising the leadership, and perturbing the majority of VS members who dual card with Socialist Alternative. Despite a guaranteed endorsement from VS-kingmaker Daniel López, the Caucus declined to run one candidate for leadership on the grounds of minority representation, opting instead to run a full slate, winning no one from the Caucus to the leadership body. Nothing at all about their approach at the member’s conference would lead an outsider to believe the Caucus had any commitment to a positive purpose, or any desire to collaborate with the extra-RCO left. And despite ample opportunity, nothing was done to advance either of their purported aims, of “democratising” VS or amending its program to reflect more “Marxist” politics. To the rest of us, this appeared as little more than a chance for the RCO to polemicise against “SAlt”.

From this we can conclude one of two things; the RCO represented their intended purpose in good faith but failed to advance said purpose, adopted a misguided strategy and failed to heed any guidance provided by anyone outside their circles. Or, the RCO did in fact misrepresent the purpose of the Caucus and formed it as a way to surreptitiously intervene into VS on the basis of their own political commitments. This conundrum is easily resolved with reference to the RCO’s post-hoc elaboration of the Caucus, released after the VS members conference; the “Communist” Caucus is a partyist caucus with a partyist strategic direction. It was implicit even at the launch that the RCO was committed, above all else, to their own “partyist” strategy. The CPA had attempted to interrogate the purpose of the Caucus and the Points of Unity, concerned that endorsing this document without clarity over what it implied would leave them at the whim of the RCO. One of our members, in a bid to resolve these tensions, proposed an amendment that would allow participants to abstain from activities if a decision conflicted with their existing organisational commitments. This motion was affirmed by every other group present, but was shot down by the RCO, with their interstate members present on zoom tipping the vote in their favour. The caucus idea had generated interest from many different organisations, with members representing the CPA, Red Ant, the Spartacist League, the Platypus Society and even Socialist Alternative at the launch. But these different groups, all of whom were at some level interested in the idea and prepared to hear out a pitch, were brought together in one place only for the RCO to demonstrate that maintaining their mandate over the Caucus was their immediate priority.

This brings us to the CPA’s second issue, that the Caucus seemed to “prioritise the RCO’s agenda over left-unity”. This was a problem at the launch and it reached its apogee at the conference; the RCO’s unwavering “partyist” agenda has repeatedly undermined their ability to advance a unity project. The RCO seems to understand itself as somehow unique in recognising the fractured and sectarian condition of the modern left, and seems to believe its strategy, the “partyist” strategy, is the only way to resolve such fracture. They ecclesiastically proselytise to the rest of the sectarian left, such that all the sects may finally bask in the glorious light of the partyist gospel. But the political hindrance posed by the “sect form” and the necessity for its sublimation are not uniquely “partyist” conclusions, nor is the “partyist” strategy the only way to achieve such a sublimation. Other sects might identify that the grounds for unity emerge in practice. And while the RCO theoretically recognises that it does not exist above or beyond the “sect form”, an outsider may surmise that there is seemingly little impetus on their part to sublimate their own sectarian practices. As they engage with other sects, the RCO are quick to fall back on polemicism, and their interventions are often pervaded by a certain air of haughtiness. This style of intervention can seem quite conceited, and risks alienating the RCO from the very sects they endeavour to court. Such a disposition towards the rest of the left, such an unwillingness to budge on the sacred gospel of partyism, in a word, such sectarianism, all stand in stark contrast with their fidelity to the project of left-unity.

So, whatever the precise dimensions of its formation and purpose may have been, we are left with a Caucus which belongs to the RCO and which functions in advance of their politics. There are agreeable aspects to the RCO’s politics, such as their principled commitment to unity and their formalistic understanding of how it can be achieved. But unity isn’t just made on paper, it is something to be struggled for, to be practiced, to be made in practice. Perhaps a real unity could have been forged in practice with the way the Caucus was pitched to us, as a means for existing sects to unite behind shared aims and a shared strategy. But this would require the RCO to surrender their sectarian commitment to partyist politics and engage the existing intellectual life of the broader left. The Points of Unity may not have simply been an anachronistic transposition of transhistorical political demands, but might have instead been equally couched in the immediacy of our conjunctural tasks. There may have even been room to cooperate with Socialist Alternative and the VS leadership in marrying today’s exoteric political stakes to the proletariat’s esoteric historic role, arriving at a set of minimal and maximal demands. It may have meant committing our efforts to raising intellectual life within VS, or even looking outward to the class itself. The sacrosanct form of the party is nothing more than an instrument of revolutionary class action, the crystallisation of the political will of the class. It is not enough to draft programs or even unite the sects; the party, irrespective of its form, is devoid of content in the absence of the class.

For these reasons, Red Ant has decided to withdraw from the Communist Caucus. But this should not be thought of as the cessation of all possibility for collaboration between the RCO and ourselves at Red Ant. At this moment, it simply does not make sense for us to participate in a partyist caucus when we are not committed to the doctrine of partyism. Nevertheless, we invite the RCO to take this as an opportunity to broaden and deepen the existing dialogue between our organisations, to work together to build our fraternity, and perhaps, given enough time and enough revolutionary patience, we can reach a shared basis for formal unity.

Red Ant is also interested in building our relationships and fraternity with the broader landscape of the Australian left. We are still interested in the VS project and in engaging with its variegated pool of members, including Socialist Alternative. But above all, we are interested in finding a common ground upon which ourselves and the rest of the fractured “sectarian” left can converge on the basis of our shared political commitments, instead of continuing to split hairs over our minutiae of disagreement.