back to WL25 front page | further down this page The lever of a small group: aletter by Leon Trotsky, October 2, 1933 to the British Section, Bolshevik-Leninists.
Martin Thomas
Refugees, Labor's trade-union link, and public health care are the three issues most agitating rank and file Australian Labor Party members, to judge from the policy review consultation meeting held with ALP deputy leader Jenny Macklin in Brisbane on 27 July.
About 200 Australian Labor Party (ALP) members turned out for the meeting. It started slowly, with the sort of question that was easily answered by Jenny Macklin with a promise that ALP leaders would "look at options" to deal with this or that social problem, but warmed up a bit after one member, a retired accountant, spoke in favour of reducing trade-union input to the ALP.
Speakers defending trade-union input got strong applause. The best-received speech came from the president of the Rail, Tram and Bus Union, who condemned the ALP leadership as having become almost indistinguishable from the conservative parties over the last 20 years. He joined other members in arguing for Labor to oppose Howard's and Ruddock's shameful record with a more open and democratic policy on refugees..
Long-standing ALP left-winger Tony Reeves spoke of the need for measures to make sure that ALP policy is decided by the membership Ð not just announced by the leadership Ð and, once decided, is implemented by the leadership.
Several speakers argued for cutting or reducing the 30% rebate on private health insurance, and putting the money into a better publicly funded health care system.
Although Jenny Macklin spoke at length in response to some of the "easier" questions, she ducked the trade union question, saying only that the report of the Hawke-Wran investigation of the issue will be published on 9 August and a special national conference of the ALP will then be held on 8 October to debate any consequent rule changes.
The majority at the meeting clearly wanted a more democratic, more responsive, more worker-based ALP. If there had been a coherent left grouping there, with a strong team of activists with weight and standing in the party, it could have rallied that sentiment to put real pressure on Macklin. In the event she left Brisbane with a free hand, committed to nothing more than "looking at options" on issues such as the 30% rebate. The established Queensland Left faction evidently looks more to behind-the-scenes politicking to pursue its aims than to openly rallying the party membership on clearly argued issues.
If the radical left organised in the Socialist Alliance were instead inside the ALP, then it could have done what the Queensland Left failed to do. If such a stance Ð or open on-the-streets campaigning activities Ð led to numbers of radical activists being expelled from the ALP, which probably it would, then the left could combine open agitation outside the ALP with continued organising inside. Play it properly, and every expulsion of a radical by the ALP leadership would stir up another ALP member to join the ranks of the radicals.
For the majority of the radical left to undertake such an orientation to the ALP, however, would require a vast culture-shift, something that will not happen tomorrow or the day after. For Workers' Liberty, at present a minority of the (radical left) minority, our best tactical choice at present is to try to exert leverage within the radical left, rather than attempting directly to find pivots from which to shift the immense inertia of the ALP. In the 1930s Leon Trotsky advised his British comrades to join the Independent Labour Party Ð to develop "the lever of a small group" there, rather than vainly trying to move the British Labour Party directly Ð even though he considered that the ILP had been wrong to split from the Labour Party and should reorient back to it.
The tactical choice, however, should not obscure the broader perspective. No revolutionary party will be built in Australia without a struggle to transform the ALP. We can and must argue immediately for the Socialist Alliance to develop the best relations possible with serious ALP left-wingers; for collaboration and discussion wherever possible. Such work could lay the basis for a serious intervention in the ALP when the time comes Ð as sooner or later it must Ð when its smouldering internal contradictions burst into open flames.
A letter by Leon Trotsky, October 2, 1933 to the British Section, Bolshevik-Leninists
Dear Comrades:
I received the copy of your letter of September 5 and allow myself to express a few additional considerations on the question of entry into the ILP.
1. We do not exaggerate the significance of the ILP. In politics as in the physical world, everything is relative. In comparison with your small group, the ILP is a big organization. Your small lever is insufficient to move the Labour Party but can have a big effect on the ILP.
2. It seems to me that you are inclined to look at the ILP through the eyes of the Stalinist party, that is, to exaggerate the number of petty-bourgeois elements and minimize the proletarian elements of the party. But if we should estimate that the workers make up only 10 percent (an obvious underestimation...) even then you will get one thousand revolutionary-minded workers, and in reality many more.
3. The jump from a thousand to ten thousand is much easier than the jump from forty to one thousand.
4. You speak of the advantages of influencing the ILP from the outside. Taken on a wide historical scale, your arguments are irrefutable, but there are unique, exceptional circumstances that we must know how to make use of by exceptional means. Today the revolutionary workers of the ILP still hold on to their party. The perspective of joining a group of forty, the principles of which are little known to them, can by no means appeal to them. If within the next year they should grow disappointed with the ILP, they will go not to you but to the Stalinists, who will break these workers' necks.
If you enter the ILP to work for the Bolshevik transformation of the party ( that is, of its revolutionary kernel ), the workers will look upon you as upon fellow workers, comrades, and not as upon adversaries who want to split the party from outside.
5. Had it been a question of a formed, homogeneous party with a stable apparatus, entry in it would not only be useless but fatal. But the ILP is altogether in a different state. Its apparatus is not homogeneous and, therefore, permits great freedom to different currents. The revolutionary rank and file of the party eagerly seek solutions. Remaining as an independent group, you represent, in the eyes of the workers, only small competitors to the Stalinists. Inside the party you can much more successfully insulate the workers against Stalinism.
6. I believe ( and this is my personal opinion ) that even if you should give up your special organ you will be able to use to advantage the press of the ILP, The New Leader and the discussion organ. The American Militant as well as the International Bulletin could well supplement your work. 7. Should all the members of your group enter the ILP? This is a purely practical question ( if your members who work inside the Communist Party of Great Britain have a wide field for their activity, they can remain there longer, although I personally believe that the useful effect of their work would be, under the present conditions, a few times greater in the ILP ).
8. Whether you will enter the ILP as a faction or as individuals is a purely formal question. In essence, you will, of course, be a faction that submits to common discipline. Before entering the ILP you make a public declaration: "Our views are known. We base ourselves on the principles of Bolshevism-Leninism and have formed ourselves as a part of the International Left Opposition. Its ideas we consider as the only basis on which the new International can be built. We are entering the ILP to convince the members of that party in daily practical work of the correctness of our ideas and of the necessity of the ILP joining the initiators of the new International."
In what sense could such a declaration lower the prestige of your group? This is not clear to me. Of course, the International Secretariat did not intend to and could not intend to force you by a bare order to enter the ILP. If you yourselves will not be convinced of the usefulness of such a step, your entry will be to no purpose. The step is an exceptionably responsible one; it is necessary to weigh and consider it well. The aim of the present letter, as well as of the foregoing ones, is to help in your discussion.
With best comradely greetings,
L. Trotsky