Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 11:43:27 GMT
From: Steve Wallis <S.Wallis-AT-mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Conservatives win Australian election


Carlos wrote:

>    Marcus:
>    I like your posting on this issue.  I think your appreaciation that
>    the election result is not a swift turn to the right and the need 
>    for a new communist party seemed right on target, IMO.

I largely agree.  There is definitely a need for a new mass workers' party
in Australia.  However, I would suspect that if you are really serious
about incorporating "all genuine marxist tendencies" (to quote Marcus),
never mind building a mass party that can attract thousands (if not
millions) of workers and young people disillusioned with Labour (but most
of whom would also be utterly repelled by Stalinism), then it would be much
better to use the term "socialist" rather than "communist".

I have a question for Australian socialists on this list.  Are there any
signs of a new workers' party emerging - perhaps on the lines of the RC in
Italy, the United Left in Spain and (much nearer to home) the Alliance/New
Labour in New Zealand?  I could also point to similar moves, but at an
earlier stage, in Britain with the socialist alliances/SLP and in the USA
with Labor Party Advocates.  It would seem to me, from what I've heard
about the situation in Australia, that the objective situation in the coming
period will present huge possibilities for the building of such a mass
party/alliance.

Together with the defeat of PSOE in Spain, the last few days illustrate the
complete failure of social democracy.  Ironically, Tony Blair is poised to
take us along the same road here.  The mass movement of workers and students
in France this winter (and big movements in Italy, etc) completely refutes the
idea that an electoral victory for the right necessarily represents a shift to
the right in society or a smashing of the working class.  It is an indication
of the huge movements that will convulse Australia and many other countries of
the world in the next few years...

Steve Wallis,
Militant Labour,
British section of the Committee for a Workers' International,
(our Australian section also produces a paper called "Militant")
Manchester, UK.

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