Annoying to some, irrelevant to others, David Lockwood1 argues we need to take splits seriously if we want to build a workers’ movement capable of winning socialism.
It is strange that the two groups on the Australian Marxist left that are most hostile to each other, Socialist Alternative and Solidarity, have the same political origins – and, in the case of very senior members, an early career in the same organisation.
Both originate from the International Socialists (IS), set up in 1975, based on the ideas of the IS in Britain and the US. The influence of the Americans faded over time and the International Socialists came to be strongly identified with the British group (which changed its name to the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) in 1976) and its overarching leader and theorist, Tony Cliff.
The Australian IS had two big ideas, essentially cribbed from Cliff. The first was an analysis of the Soviet Union as a state capitalist economy, presided over by a dictatorial ruling class (the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) which could only be removed by a workers’ revolution. The same went for the rest of the Soviet bloc and also China, Cuba and so on. The second was the centrality of the working class in socialist revolution, influenced more by the ideas of Rosa Luxemburg than Vladimir Lenin. Once the student upsurge in Australia (1965-75) had spent itself, the early IS oriented heavily towards workers’ struggles.
Both groups would claim adherence to the same ideas today. And yet, they are not only organisationally divided – they hate each other. This, naturally, gives rise to some grim joviality among the rest of the left – ‘your worst enemy is the one closest to you’. But for the prospects for the Marxist left in Australia, it is a serious problem.
Socialist Alternative is the larger group, with some hundreds of members and more hundreds of supporters in the Victorian Socialists and their state equivalents. Solidarity, though much smaller, punches above its weight due to its consistent activism in broader groups – the Refugee Action Coalition being the most prominent example. So both groups are influential among the tiny ranks of the non-Labor Marxist left. But their blanket refusal to work with each other and the negative effect of two groups with virtually identical politics spitting venom at each other has a dispiriting effect in many areas of left activity.
In Palestine solidarity work, both organisations set up rival ‘united fronts’. The same has happened in anti-fascist work in recent weeks, pathetically dividing activists between competing campaigns.
Keep active, avoid thinking
How did they come to this? Fear not, I will not drag you through the twists and turns of IS policy and the internal disputes to which they gave rise (some serious, some bizarre). You can read the accounts of Mick Armstrong (Socialist Alternative) and Ian Rintoul (Solidarity) for that. But the thing that might strike you as odd is that the disputes were overwhelmingly about tactics – about what the group should be doing, not doctrinal disputes or points of analysis.
As Armstrong puts it, “Socialists must be able to answer the central question in politics – what to do next.” For Marxists and serious partisans of the working class, tactical disputes should be easily contained within the same disciplined organisation, but this seems not possible in the general Cliffite milieu.
There were a number of reasons for this concentration on day-to-day tactical questions. Firstly, the IS had no political program. In terms of theory, the group was based on the two Big Ideas outlined above. Tony Cliff in London always urging comrades to look for the ‘next link in the chain’.
In practice this meant activity was based on whatever scheme the leadership had come up with to recruit new members. This was linked to the second reason which was that the group’s main function was to recruit new members, whose main function was to recruit new members . . . and so on.
Thirdly, ‘what to do next’ was closely connected to the leadership’s mortal fear of the group’s members being idle and therefore losing enthusiasm, or worse, thinking for themselves. Demonstrations, campaigns, petitions and paper sales were vital in keeping the members occupied.
So, with politics pushed aside, internal debate (and there was a lot of it) circled around what activities would produce recruits and what they would do once recruited. Workers struggles or student work? Intervention or isolation? Routine activity or hyper-activism? Tactical differences generated over-heated disputes and produced resignations, purges and splits.
Without a program, tactics become all
If the group had had an agreed-upon program, discussions on strategy and tactics could have assumed their proper place and not become the centrepiece of the group’s internal life. Discussions on strategy or tactics do not necessarily end in splits, but perhaps on an agreement to differ – within the bounds of the program. And there was a belief in the IS that only one strategy could be carried out at a time. Dissent was treachery.
The last internal bust-up started in 1993. By this time, the British SWP had decided that a revolutionary period was imminent and that everyone (in Britain and elsewhere) had better drop everything, get out and do something about it. The period was described as being “like the 1930s” – except “in slow motion”. The Australian leadership dutifully took this up and a predictable round of frenzied activity and increasingly hysterical injunctions to “Build!” followed.
But in the middle of 1993, the leadership fell apart. Two of its leading members, Sandra Bloodworth and Mick Armstrong, were summarily purged from the National Committee for reasons that were never properly explained. The move had the full backing of the British organisation so perhaps it was because the two were not implementing the “1930s” madness properly.
In any case, the lack of any political reasoning behind the purge was illustrated by the fact that Armstrong and Bloodworth, having been strong supporters of the “1930s” nonsense, now discovered that they opposed it – and framed their 18-month campaign of trench-warfare against the remaining leadership in these terms.
After further expulsions and resignations, Socialist Alternative was formed in 1995. The rump International Socialist Organisation eventually became Solidarity. The ISO and Solidarity continued its outward focus, with Socialist Alternative retreating more to student work. In the medium term, sheltering during a period of low class activity has reaped some rewards for the now larger group.
Faction fights, purges and splits produce a fair amount of unpleasantness. The leaders of the contending groups that stagger out of the wreckage are not likely to be best friends, even when the dust settles. That is certainly one reason why the leaderships of the two groups hate each other so viscerally. Another is that they represent two sides of the original IS coin. The mothership SWP under Tony Cliff and epigones is renowned for this flip-flopping between isolationism and broad-frontism.
Solidarity embodies an earlier version, devoted to activism in broad committees and fronts. Socialist Alternative maintains elements of IS brashness and self-sufficiency (which some regard as sectarian).
Many in the labour movement no doubt shrug and dismiss this split as irrelevant, however division between them becomes a problem (for those on the outside) when the two organise against each other in political terrains that matter. For example, they attempt to carry out trade union work for Palestine through separate (and competing) committees. In Melbourne on 26 September, the Solidarity-aligned Refugee Action Collective organised its ‘Unite Against Racism’ Rally – while in a few weeks the SA-aligned ‘Campaign Against Racism and Fascism’ is organising its own.
The existence of the two groups stamping the same ground does not help the Marxist left. At the very least they should come back together on the basis of their common political positions. Further, Socialist Alternative should extend an invitation to Solidarity to join the Victorian Socialists and their state equivalents. And Solidarity should do so.
1 There are a number of accounts of IS history available, the best being Tom O’Lincoln’s Marching Down Marx Street. This article draws on the two most recent: Mick Armstrong, ‘The Origins of Socialist Alternative,’ Marxist Left Review, Number 1, Spring 2010; and Ian Rintoul, ‘Whither the Propaganda Perspective?’ Solidarity, 20 July 20210. Neither is completely accurate. In the interests of full disclosure, as a member of the IS (and subsequent iterations), I was a full participant in the internal frolics from 1975 to 1999.