HOW CAN THE LEFT COHERE?
What Should Its Targets Be?
LAURIE AARONS is National Secretary of the Communist Party of Australia
This paper was given to the Conference for Left Action in Sydney on April 5th, 1969
A STRATEGY FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
The central issue facing the left today is: what should be our overall strategy for bringing about the radical social change in which all left organisations and people passionately believe ?
What is meant by "strategy"? I will try to answer this question by talking about the following :
(1) The goal we are seeking, a socialist Australia.
(2) The social forces which exist or are forming within the real, concrete society we are seeking to change, i.e., this Australia, monopoly capitalist in its economic and social organisation, authoritarian in its power structure within a representative-democratic form which is largely a sham and a fraud.
(3) The types of issues which this society places before its citizens than can push them into action for change, not as automatons blindly impelled by social forces they don't understand, but as conscious actors in a real historical drama whose script they can write as well as act out.
(4) The possible crises which may provide the conditions for social revolution.
(5) The main targets against which this action will have to be directed, the impersonal system and the people, groups and structures which operate the system for their own ends and values.
(6) Methods of action which can be adopted by the left movement, and how different concepts may interact, be discussed as theories and tested in practice, proved or disproved, changed and fitted into a synthesis of a socialist strategy which can merge the diverse social forces whose material and moral values and aims are repressed and thwarted by the system.
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The system under which we live today is in essence monopoly-capitalist, entering into a deep revolutionary crisis. First, the scientific and technological revolution, which the existing system of social relations and power structures cannot direct towards truly human goals. Second, a revolutionary world in which the human aspirations of thousands of millions of people are fighting an international power structure that deliberately perpetuates hunger, misery and domination as the condition for accumulation of wealth undreamed of and exercise of huge power by a minority class in a minority of countries. Third, a world that has gone through a revolution in destructive military power that obviously places in a few hands the ability to destroy humanity, by a combination of thermonuclear, biological and chemical warfare
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This system must be ended, or the world will, at worst, be torn to pieces, at best, will go through a series of dreadful crises with an endless waste of human resources and a continued mushrooming of human suffering, misery and frustration.
What to put in its place? A society which overturns the whole social structure, within each nation and between all the nations in the world system. These main characteristics of the new society are suggested :
• The purpose and aim of all productive activity - industrial, scientific and cultural - must be to serve human needs, seen as a unity of material and spiritual needs that opens up new horizons of life and liberty. The present stage of human knowledge and technology is one of decisive breakthrough. For the first time in history, humanity has reached the capacity to meet all human needs, without deprivation of the many to provide luxury for an elite of owners, controllers and administrators who run the society. Truly human relations between men in production are now possible, replacing old relationships of exploitation, authoritarian management and imposed disciplines. Indeed, the deepest social significance of the scientific and technological revolution is this: only such human relations can use the new productive forces; the societies which retain the old relations must fall behind. Humanist relations between nations are now possible, not just peace in the negative absence of war, but an ecumenical human brotherhood that shares out knowledge and technology in a mutual relationship of co-operation to bring the world's peoples to a common level of civilisation.
• Human needs, and production to meet these needs, will be met and organised in relations of co-operation and self-management, not imposed from on top by an authoritarian structure which distorts human relationships into owners and toilers, rich and poor, governors and governed, manipulators, and manipulated, educated and uneducated, white and coloured.
• Freedom for all, in place of freedom for the few and oppression for the many. Built upon material freedom — from poverty, from class or social in.equality, from worry about the future — we can develop a freedom that goes much further into positive liberties — access to education, to new cultural horizons, to unrestricted access to information and knowledge, to discuss and debate every idea without the artificial taboos imposed by class interests and governments, or even the tyranny of majority mass opinion artificially fostered by the press.
• The structure of this new society can only be worked out by its creators, necessarily influenced by the conditions of its creation. For example, if it comes as an aftermath of war, or through civil war and intervention, it will face special problems and serious difficulties.
Certain broad outlines can still be suggested: social ownership of the means of production in place of individual, private or class ownership. Social equality of individuals — ownership and wealth no longer give privileges in possessions, status and education that perpetuate given conditions of inequality, even creating dynamism that widens inequalities through the inbuilt interaction of wealth with poverty, power with weakness, high education for a minority with social limitations on mass education. Direct control over decision-making in conditions of maximum self-management within institutions (factories, offices, departments, schools and universities, or in suburbs, towns and cities). A new balance of central planning and local initiative, hitherto unrealised and perhaps unrealisable, dictated by objective limitations imposed upon both capitalist and socialist societies, though for different reasons.
• Flowing from this new equality and democratic control, this new balance of centralised authority and mass participation, the new society can limit and abolish the second form of imposed authority, the bureaucratic state structure which is common to all existing societies, even if its aims, purposes and class nature are vastly different and even quite opposite. The old concept of the socialist state requiring a complete and constantly growing power and authority, until it commences to wither away at the pinnacle of its might, is a distortion of socialist theory. This concept was also, of course, 3. result of specific national and historical conditions, which still more disqualifies it as the model in today's conditions. In present conditions, it should be possible to begin at the very beginning the process of building a democratic state, rather than creating a centralised authority with a complex bureaucracy that proves exceedingly difficult to dismantle. The salient features of a democratic state structure would be : direct election of representatives in conditions of competition — possibly between parties, certainly between individuals and ideas, accompanied by the right of recall; the abolition of censorship; free access to mass media and unrestricted rights of propaganda for ideas; democratic control over decision-making by all workers in enterprises in the framework, of centralised planning which lays down targets and priorities: genuine discussion of national targets and priorities to decide all policies through conviction. rather than by imposition.
• This type of democratic state, which aims from the very beginning to wither away, would create the conditions for an end to democratic rule, for by definition all "rule" means domination and control, even if this is domination by majority over minority, instead of the reverse.
These are some suggested main features of the goal we aim at, the Australian socialist society of the future.
An immediate and inevitable question must be faced, squarely and frankly. Since this type of socialist society does not exist anywhere as yet, is it possible of achievement? This question is asked alike by the inveterate enemies of socialism and by many of its friends. There are very few thinkers who completely defend monopoly capitalism, but many who question the possibility of a new society of the socialist type without "loss of freedom", even though the present freedom is recognised as being at best quite limited, at worst completely illusory and fraudulent.
The answer why, lies in a complex interrelation of conditions of historical inevitability and historical accident, the ways that socialist revolutions occurred (world war, civil war, a bitter conflict of two systems, the Cold War), and the policies adopted to meet these conditions, often apparently forced, or interpreted as being forced, upon the socialist states. These conditions made possible, though not inevitable, the Stalinist system of repression and the rigidly dogmatic ideological system of ideas which buttressed it, whose survivals continue to obstruct socialist development.
A general cause, that may explain such different systems as Stalinism, the elevation of Mao Tse-tung as "great helmsman, great commander, the reddest, reddest sun . . ." the intervention in Czechoslovakia and other extremely negative features in socialist development, is that these arise from the tremendous problems posed by the essential and urgent task of rapid industrialisation of economically backward nations, when only extensive industrialisation was possible, massively complicated by bitter hostility from world imperialism. This also stresses the very great achievements made in rapidly transforming backward societies and changing the balance of forces in the world. This explanation is not intended as any absolute answer, still less an excuse for terrible mistakes, excesses and crimes. Yet it has a deep validity, with parallel in the industrialised capitalist countries in the same period (exploitation and repression of the working class in the capitalist countries, colonial exploitation and world war).
The qualitatively new feature of world development is the scientific and technological revolution, the crystallisation of what some call the "post-industrial society". This new feature will increasingly determine the course of social development, although it is as yet confined to a minority of nations, which are both capitalist and socialist.
Even in this minority there are many variations in scope, tempo and level of change, which complicates the whole process of development.
We can nevertheless conclude :
1. This process will determine the world-wide struggle for social change, directly in capitalist countries and also in the evolution of socialist societies (Czechoslovakia is direct evidence, while different developments discernible in other socialist countries are an opposite effect of the same 'cause'. It will produce new and intolerable tensions between imperialist powers and the "Third World" countries.
2. The scientific and technological revolution produces two important conditions within the industrialised capitalist countries. First, new social tensions are created between the powerful minority which owns, controls and manipulates the society, and the majority which is the object of this control and manipulation.
Second, the unlimited potential of the scientific and technological revolution — which generates continuous self-acceleration as human knowledge doubles about each decade — provides a new basis of abundance on which the new society can be constructed far more easily, with far fewer sacrifices and suffering, in a more civilised and democratic manner.
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Differing theories seek to explain the impact of the scientific and technological revolution, and project its development and results. One is the "convergence" theory, which suggests an evolution within capitalist and socialist countries which will bring them closer together. The capitalist countries will adopt "socialist" elements (government planning and intervention in the economy, the Welfare State); the socialist countries will adopt "capitalist" measures (economic reforms, democratisation on capitalist lines).
If this is true — and some at least of the facts have a semblance of truth — revolutionary or even radical action in capitalist societies is no longer relevant, or at least not essential. We only need to drift with the tide of social evolution; the impersonal and remote force of things and processes will themselves create a truly human society without the pangs and sacrifices of social revolution. This has strange echoes of mystification, a new deus ex machina or a new economic determinism according to philosophical taste.
Experience of recent history, and all observable trends in capitalist social development, contradict this alluring picture. The real tendency is in the opposite direction; state intervention and planning are not directed towards humanising capitalism and the goals of productive activity, but rather to maximising monopoly capital's material aims — profit and power. Further, the monopolies are growing into supranational corporations which influence policies not just of one nation but of many — corporations in which the economic might of United States capital gives it a decisive and dominant role. The Welfare State leaves so much to be desired that it everywhere maintains "pockets of poverty" that are so big as to weigh down the whole garment and turn these into centres of infection of the system (violence and crime in the United States), and potential centres of revolt. The observable trend in all major capitalist countries is towards increased repression at home (notably the escalation of official and police violence in the United States) and towards domination abroad, through economic and political pressure, violence and wars. The ultimate expression of this trend is the continued escalation of militarism which voraciously gulps great {page 8} chunks of national wealth, human talents and energies, diverting society from human aims to the ultimate inhuman aim of mass murder in most horrible forms. Reaching its most massive dimensions in the U.S., militarism spreads like a cancer all over the world, the more effectively where U.S. imperialism establishes its economic, political and cultural influences, as in Australia.
It is an illusion to expect that the human society will develop through convergence, determined by good will of controllers of capitalist society (or indeed even by their enlightened self-interest). Instead, their control must be smashed. The element of truth in the convergence theory lies in the fact that the scientific and technological revolution creates an objective need for revolutionary reconstitution of society. This is expressed in awareness of the intolerable tensions created by the clash between the potential of these powers and the actual structure of society. It is revealed by creation of new material and moral needs by this very potential, in sharpened perception of the moral issues posed by world economic and political structure, and the policies that are used to oppose any change that can threaten domination by a few wealthy nations. which stop at nothing to keep their dominance.
These issues point to the targets for left action. These are: the system itself; in terms of people, to which all systems are reducible, it mean those who control the system; finally, the whole network of ideas, and the media that spreads them that provide ideological legitimation of the system and its controllers.
The system is much more complex than ever before. Old concepts of class control, while still useful for analysis and understanding, need to reflect the social division of labour in the top layers of society as well as in the whole. If the working class is to be seen as a collective labourer, which includes all the productive elements of scientist, technological production planner, tradesmen and process worker, the ruling class [Note 2023 - the assumption of one single ruling class conceals Jews, who do not consider themselves as the same class as 'goyim' -RW] also has to be seen as collective owner and administrator. (This adds the "managerial" grouping — the "organisation men" — to the collective capitalists who own pieces of one or many enterprises.) The ruling class must also include the top government bureaucrat, the ruling politician, the owners and administrators of the mass media, the judiciary and police chiefs, the war planners and military caste, the dignitaries of church, university and other components of the power system. These make up the ruling class, the target of the social forces which seek radical change, which should be clearly identified in its centres of power and their ramifications.
The power of this ruling class, and the stability of the system itself, are ensured and buttressed by a subtle and sophisticated complex of ownership, power and control of mass opinion and thinking. The more that ownership and control depend upon open use of power by force, the more unstable the system. The system is more stable when its ideas are able to influence the majority into accepting the system as the best possible, or by convincing people that it is so powerful as to be invincible. Therefore, the best thing to do is to accept it and pursue individual satisfactions, whatever criticisms one feels of the nature and aims of the society. A further extension of this ideological power is the sophisticated methods that are used to adapt and contain the movements which represent the social forces opposed to monopoly capitalism, whether wholly or partially. These include the trade union movement whose basic purpose is to wage a constant struggle over the price, duration and conditions of labour power; a reformist political party which criticises capitalism and professes a socialist aim: also radical and revolutionary movements which seek a head-on confrontation with the system.
The trade unions are encircled by class-peace and co-operation theories: arbitrationism diverts and consumes much of the energies and drives even of those unions and unionists rejecting the system. A reformist political party like the A.L.P. can be so entrapped in the illusions of parliamentary democracy, gradualism and respectability that it pursues perennially the illusion of office without power. When it gains office it does not even seek power, preferring administration of the system and seeking at most some social reforms which do not attack the essential power structures of private enterprise and the political system. More subtly, radical and revolutionary movements can sometimes be encouraged to confine their radicalism to generalised criticisms and actions which do not reflect the real issues that concern the majority, so radicalism can be contained, isolated, and separated from the social forces whose positive action alone can shake the system.
This ideological power, which creates a powerful consensus of opinion or political apathy and moral indifference, has to be assaulted incessantly and skilfully with the conscious aim of destroying its hold. The most obvious task is exposure of and action against the manipulators of the mass media, who consciously consider to enslave the mass mind. At another and deeper level, the task is to confront and shake the whole capitalist ethic with its myths of affluence, social equity, impartial justice, democratic freedom, preservation of peace and defence of liberty all over the world; to expose the greed, rapacity; lust for power lurking behind these myths, the hypocrisies and lies that are woven into their very fabric.
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The realities of ownership and control of the sources of power in a bourgeois democracy like Australia have this objective trend that they must widen the gap, and can sharpen the conflict, between the ruling power structure and the mass of citizens. The political significance of social changes in Australian society as the scientific and technological revolution gets under way has been widely discussed and interpreted in different ways.
Any serious analysis of left strategy must proceed from such analysis. The following propositions are advanced :
• The trend is towards aggregation of economic power in relatively few mighty corporations, which centralise ownership of productive capacity, finance and trade in a capitalist grouping of a few hundred thousand people, increasingly associated with foreign capitalist corporations, a few hundred thousand politicians, administrators and bureaucrats run the political state machine in close association with the corporate controllers.
• The majority of Australians are employees of big business and big government, which buy their labour power (whether this is skilled, semi-skilled or intellectually trained). At all levels of the work force, this produces an actual or potential divergence of material interests, aspirations and concepts of social goals and structures between the ruling authorities and those who work for them. This is expressed in a constant conflict over living standards and conditions, social priorities and who is to control; the irrationality of the system is increasingly perceived and question by the new social strata whose social function is essential to the new technology, as well as by the traditional working class questioning of the system.
• Conversely, the decline of the small and middle property owner, in primary and secondary industry, and trade, is eroding the social basis of conservatism.
• The education explosion, dictated by social needs and forced upon the system by these needs, necessarily trains young people to think rationally and scientifically and in sceptical and critical way, with the unwanted end-product of successive student generations which' subject the system itself to rigorous criticism. Thus the deep-going crisis of capitalism finds a new expression in the moral questioning and revolt among sections of the very social strata the new capitalism must depend upon for its thinkers, scientists, teachers and administrators. While the critical section is yet a minority of this social stratum, and the system has considerable manoeuvrability in buying off and adapting many, it still poses a serious threat as the crisis deepens.
The growth and diversification of the work force thus adds new social strata to the traditional working class, itself changing and potentially more powerful in its ability to intervene in solution of the issues thrown up by the development of the system. Growth of the white collar and professional groupings of the work force, not so long ago welcomed by conservatism as widening the social base for capitalism, now develops a deep foreboding as to the real social consequences. If this is as yet reflected only in a turn to militant white collar unionism, some stirrings of demands for worker control, and a beginning of radical action and demands by the student movement, its long range effects already shape up as a menace to the system.
If we add to this a new upsurge in industrial unionism, the trend to assert more far reaching industrial demands and the new shoots of workers' control over industrial decisions, deeper questioning and challenge to the arbitration system, the perspective of the left challenge becomes much more powerful.
Should we agree that this is the general tendency of social change within the system, then the concept of the strategic forces for social change widens to include industrial and white collar workers, a considerable and growing group of students and intellectuals, in fact a growing majority of society dissatisfied with the system and issuing many challenges to its controllers.
Something should be said about a theory that sees the traditional working class as bought over and/or absorbed by the system. Conservative apologists approach this in one way; there are no longer real issues of poverty, exploitation or class struggle. This merits further examination later, but it is refuted in the persistence and growth of class struggle at the economic-industrial level. Certain left thinkers approach this question from the opposite direction, while using the same springboard of satisfaction of the most urgent demands; they also extend this to thorough going criticism and rejection of the traditional left. This is not a topic requiring an angry blanket defence of either the class or the traditional left. Rather, every grouping on the left needs a clear-eyed estimate of the industrial workers, free of either semi-mystical glorification of the proletariat, or new-radical elitism. No-one can elaborate a realistic strategy for social revolution without the working class, unless it be one imported from abroad. This is the major lesson of the French events of May-June last year, which require deep analysis and understanding by the left in every developed capitalist society.
The conclusion is, I believe, that the left must {page 10} elaborate a strategy for involving all potentially revolutionary social groups. The working class, the biggest of these, is engaged in constant struggles to which the whole left must combine to infuse a wider vision and deeper challenge. This has been, and remains, the constant aim of the Communist Party, however its theory or its practice is estimated.
It would be advantageous if the left set out seriously to discuss and debate all theoretical solutions for this central strategic question. Still better were these actually tested in practical action and struggle, from which theories and policies can be best developed.
An important issue for left strategy is the interaction of militant workers and radical intellectuals, and how these major groupings can assist and co-operate. A major thesis of this paper is the growing convergence of interests and action of these two forces, impelled by social changes wrought by the scientific and technological revolution. Yet it is not enough to expect this impulse to work automatically. Rather, it requires active promotion of joint discussions and study, exchange of ideas and experiences, and co-operation in practical actions and struggles. The working class movement has much to gain from the intellectuals. Marx, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh and Castro are only some notable illustrations. The Australian working class movement with its own particular not always positive experiences, needs to seek out the new and growing body of ideas and activism to be found among radical students and intellectuals. Students and intellectuals should recognise the decisive part that the workers' movement can and must play in any socialist revolution, and indeed already plays in righting the system. The new possibilities in this field can be rapidly developed if mutual suspicions and doubts are put aside, and ideological attitudes of proletarian snobbery and enlightening elitism overcome. There are different ways to co-operation : uniting revolutionary workers and intellectuals in the one organisation or party; co-operation in action for common demands and against common restrictions (against conscription, the Vietnam war, the Crimes Act); mutual support for each other's actions (student support for strikes, workers' support for student demonstrations); permanent co-operation within a loose organisational form. Each of these has a part to play, and most have begun, even though on an elementary and small scale.
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To turn now to the type of issues Australian society raises before the social forces to which we look for the reconstitution of society, these are suggested :
Bull; The new human potentials locked in the scientific and technological revolution suggest radical qualitative alterations in the demands the left and working class movement should raise and fight for. These embrace industrial and political issues ; I do not say moral issues only because these seem to me to be the essential content of these demands. Two examples may illustrate this idea. The trade unions should demand a minimum living wage, based on the moral demand that everyone should receive a wage that can meet the needs of a full and civilised life, that goes far beyond food, clothing and shelter, or even accumulation of cars, washing machines and other gadgets of the consumer society. This differs as much from the old basic wage concept of "frugal comfort" as it does from the minimum wage determined by "capacity to pay", a total fraud already decided by the system. The living wage demand is based upon the real potential of the productive forces. It challenges the whole basis of arbitrationism. It would unite all workers, and bring into full play the enormous reserves of the vast numbers of low-paid workers and the immigrants who are a large proportion of these workers. And it will project new issues deeply felt by this grouping, who are most exploited and whose wider aspirations for human rights are most repressed. If the minimum wage is related to equal pay for women, and the larger issues of full equality of women with men, another new and powerful reserve for social advance is freed from relative apathy.
• Another radical general demand is an increase of leisure, either through reduction of weekly hours or shortening the working year, or both. This again is technically possible, even essential to meet capitalist automation's threat to jobs, as well as to provide the opportunities for retraining and education so the talents of all are developed for the new production processes. While shorter hours and more leisure are technically possible, even the 40-hour week is inadequate for modern needs. These examples could be expanded into a whole programme; this certainly needs doing.
• Well-founded cynicism about democracy is widespread today, precisely because people are conscious that the democratic right to vote usually changes nothing fundamental. People increasingly feel they have no effective control over decisions that affect them, as citizens and workers. Remoteness and impersonality characterise the huge factory, office and institution in which most work. Foremen or supervisor, who themselves carry out orders, is the closest most ever get to the decision makers, the men of real power who sit in airconditioned boardrooms in the towering skyscrapers of Melbourne and Sydney or, even more remotely, on Wall Street or the Ginza. These insiders of power make decisions about whole communities of flesh and blood {Page 11} people who are only figures on pieces of paper churned out by computers.
This consciousness brings to the fore the demand for democratic control; workers' control in the factory: student-teacher control in university and school; people's control over their environment in the suburbs, when industrialisers and developers move in. Only just beginning, this demand is one of the most important social results of technological change in conditions of monopoly control. All forces on the left should help to develop this trend, which can develop into a national demand for social control. This development requires ability to discern and express elementary forms of this demand; e.g. the rights denied B.H.P. and A.I.S. steelworkers even to hold meetings on the jobs, the rights of workers to elect shop and job committees to represent them, rights of jobs and union organisation to exert control over decisions affecting work — e.g., miners over mining methods, auto workers over production-line speed. In trade union actions for wages, the demand for opening of the company's books and a true picture of profits is another form of workers' control. The demand for price control carries the same implication of social inspection of inner processes of monopoly price fixation. The continual exposure of the rotten class bias of taxation and fiscal policy, and campaigning for a new system, is another. The demand for direct control is an assertion of a real content in democracy and the rights of the individual; it also has a profound social content, since the new science and technology demands an informed, educated work force which voluntarily plays an active role in planning and operating the production process. From this viewpoint, the demand for control is preparation for the new social system, and the guarantee of its democratic nature.
Then there are the urgent social issues — education, health and social services, town-planning, roads and road safety. These issues, particularly education, are potentially explosive because they affect millions of people yet are decided by the govern-bent-bureaucracy structure in accordance with the elitist ideology of monopoly-capitalism.
These are industrial, social and political issues which concern the production and distribution of wealth and national priorities in its use. In this sense they are material-economic, but they really go to the heart of the morality of the system, its ideas and values.
This interweaving of economic, political and moral issues, which should always motivate the left — and certainly moved Marx and other great figures of the great international issues of our time. These are already, and will increasingly become, central and even decisive in the Australian political struggle. Vietnam has already proven this beyond doubt, with its stimulation to the entry of new social forces into action against this aggressive and brutal war. Further, it has raised even more fundamental questions of the nature of western capitalist societies which inevitably become imperialist and aggressive because of the dynamics of export of capital and the global interrelation of economic, political and military interests of the imperialist system. Vietnam has revealed the deep political and moral crisis of this imperialism. In Australia, it has exposed the shameful hypocrisy and intellectual bankruptcy of ruling class conservatism, which has thrown Australian youth into a brutal war for ignoble considerations of U.S. "protection," capital export and the hysterical racialist fear of Asia which is the psychological buttress of its so called foreign and defence policies.
These policies, already in disarray and facing defeat in Vietnam, will certainly not be abandoned. Rather, it will be more of the same; more involvement is Asia, more police wars against national liberation revolutions, more conscription, more militarism, more diversion of resources and harnessing of society's efforts to this militarism.
Australia is placed in the midst of an explosive, decisive and irreversible historical process, the revolutions for national liberation in three continents, Asia, Africa and Latin America. This historic-geographic fact will increasingly influence and finally determine the course of struggle for social change. Not that the issue will be decided for us from outside, but because it must pose a great issue — either for victory of monopolist-militarist authoritarian issues for war, or action for a decisive turn in policy and the very structure of society. This choice gathers together many issues — the great and growing technological gap between the industrialised societies and the Third World, world hunger and famine; neocolonialism or co-operation for global development. It bears directly upon the fight for Aboriginal rights to self-determination, the growing demand for New Guinea independence and the fight against the White Australia policy.
The Australian left has to face these issues, developing an integrated policy within the framework of increasing action to challenge the official policies. This policy would need to consider :
• An anti-imperialist struggle within Australia and all capitalist countries for economic and technical aid and trade policies, opposite to the present policies which perpetuate and worsen international exploitation and class division and fasten the chains of neo-imperialist domination upon formally independent nations. {page 12}
• Support for early and complete independence for New Guinea, going beyond abstract moral support to concrete aid for the developing liberation movement and its demands and forms of action.
• Uncompromising opposition to the "U.S. Alliance" and all its consequences in foreign policy, military aggressions and increasing foreign economic control and dependency.
• Co-operation with the anti-imperialist movement in Asia, including Australian co-operation with the massive opposition within Japan to the U.S. Japanese monopoly plans for a new Japanese imperialist resurgence.
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Issues, and enough already exist, and are emerging that bear upon a left strategy. The type of solutions and policies have been suggested; there remains the vital question of methods of action. Stereotyped blueprints or preconceived dogmas are no help; the movement itself will develop and try out many different forms, old and new. Strikes, demonstrations, civil disobedience, defiance of unjust laws, propaganda and explanation, parliamentary elections, local movements . . . the variety is inexhaustible.
Essence of left methods of campaigning and action is mass participation, the left-democratic concept of popular control and confrontation of the system. The aim of all left action, unless influenced by elitism, is always to draw the mass of people into confrontation and struggle, and should therefore combine advanced and mass actions. Action for changes and reforms within the system are in fact necessary and basic to genuine mass participation. The left usually pioneers and initiates the demands and advances the militant methods of action. It should always try to inject into every action those demands which crystallise the essentially anti-capitalist moods which lie beneath action for reforms. In industrial actions, with its forms of strike, negotiations and arbitration, the left should always expose arbitrationism and advocate its abolition. In actions for civil liberties it should both propose immediate demands (repeal or alteration of laws) and also the need for far-reaching political changes.
A left strategy always puts mass action in first place, but it should not exclude other methods. Theoretical and ideological work, which assails the ruling theories and spreads socialist ideas, is tremendously significant.
Nor should a left strategy exclude the struggle for reforms within the system, nor rule out participation in parliamentary action. This year's Federal election is a specific case. All sections of the left should participate most actively — to advance their own ideas and policies, to mobilise public opinion against reactionary conservatism and to support election of a Labour Government. Many on the left would not regard the latter as any final solution. Yet we should surely regard defeat of the Liberal-Country Party Government as an advance, posing new tasks and issues to carry on the struggle for a genuine left solution.
Indeed, the left should campaign for a democratic reform in the electoral system, to put it on the more direct basis of proportional representation which would transcend the present framework of a struggle between "Ins" and "Outs", a travesty of real political choice.
Parliamentary gradualism is unsatisfactory as a strategy, not because it allots a place to parliamentary action but because it subordinates everything else to this. It elevates reforms and gradualism to an absolute, and regards the parliamentary system as the sole or decisive arena for change. (An illustration of this is the reformist argument on penal clauses against strike action. Since only legislation can repeal these clauses, it is said the unions should not take industrial action against the law. Yet only a sustained high level of industrial and political action outside Parliament could force its repeal — whether Liberal or Labour is in office). Parliamentarism and gradualism miss or evade the essential reality that parliament does not and cannot really control a system where power is exerted from other centres — corporate ownership and control, the government bureaucracy, the judiciary, police and army, either specifically exempted from parliamentary control or independent from it in practice. The contradiction, even the crisis, in the evolutionary parliamentist strategy is revealed in its historical failure to make a decisive change anywhere, most of all in the Wilson Government's practice in Britain. And the gap between theory and practice is contained within the theory itself, since it gives the main emphasis to the parliamentary form and not to the socialist content.
Gradualist-parliamentary strategies influence sections of the left, and those the left has to win. The revolutionary left cannot dismiss all who accept these strategies as hopeless; if this were so then our task is also hopeless. And it is also wrong to regard everyone who sponsors this theory as a traitor to socialism.
Rather, those on the left who reject this theory should develop their theoretical criticism more convincingly, precisely to convince those who accept it. More important still, they should advance practical proposals which can prove in action the effectiveness of the revolutionary strategy.
Two arguments in defence of the gradualist strategy merit examination. First, that the supremacy {page 13} of the socialist aim does not justify the use of violence with its implication of authoritarian suppression (even if temporary — or so intended). Any view that the present system is not inherently violent is an unreal ostrich-picture — jails are filling with objectors and protesters who scarcely threaten society's foundations. In 1946, when Chifley announced bank nationalisation, prominent upholders of law and order threatened bloodshed, fighting in the streets and civil war (including Sir Earl Page and Sir Raymond Connolly). Unless one adopts an absolutely pacifist position, as some do, meeting conservative violence with radical violence is the only answer, if the goal of social change is to be seriously pursued. But can we envisage socialisms without a bloody civil war? If we mean just revolution by ballot, this is certainly unreal; any serious structural reform, let alone a fundamental social change, can only be pushed through by a mass movement outside parliament (this was one reason why the bank nationalisation was defeated). The New Guard was only beaten by workers' counter to fascist violence. The aim of socialist revolution without civil war can only be realised through creating an overwhelming balance of mass opinion backed up by a mighty mass movement of strikes, demonstrations, occupations of decisive factories and institutions by so dividing the men who make up the coercive power of the State as to intimidate the controllers and rulers of the system. This obviously is impossible without mass action and struggle, confrontation and defeat of reactionary violence, intimidating and paralysing those who would prefer civil war rather than a revolutionary social change that destroys their power and privilege.
The second argument advanced for gradualism in Australia is that this society is unlikely to experience the type of crises that call for revolutionary solutions, that there is no mass mood for fundamental change. This influences some left groups, which turn to ideas of selfless action by minorities as the only hope, in face of apparent mass apathy or conformism.
It is true that all revolutionary social changes have only arisen in times of crisis, when the majority can no longer live, and the ruling minority can no longer rule, in the old ways. And it is likely to remain true for the future.
If, then, a revolutionary change is to be feasible, we must answer the question : can such crises arise in Australian society? This paper suggests that the answer is YES. Not in the old, outdated or narrow concept of an economic crisis like the 1930's, which influenced the left for years. Nor is it fruitful to search for some analogies elsewhere, pointlessly seeking to squeeze Australian social reality into a Procrustean bed of foreign experience — whether it be Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Czech or French. Rather the left must search for and discern in Australian society's internal contradictions and external relations the processes leading to possibilities for revolutionary change, gearing its strategy to these potentialities. These broad general possibilities are suggested :
• The explosive possibilities in the scientific and technological revolution which cannot be resolved or contained within the confines of a system orientated to profitmaking, authoritarian minority control and a system of values denying the deepest human potentials and needs.
• The welling up of radical social demands from many social classes and groups which are resisted by the system and its controllers, leading to a mass upsurge that demands a radical change (here the French experience of May- June 1968 is highly relevant).
• The possibility that the ruling class will discard democratic forms as the climax of the world-wide trend to authoritarianism and suppression, already evident in the increasing use of repressive laws in this country.
• Social and political impact of militarism, wars of intervention in Asia and threat of world nuclear war as the consequence of Australia's attachment to U.S. imperialist policies, and Australian policies towards New Guinea and the Pacific.
These are some possibilities inherent in present world and national development which could precipitate serious crises requiring radical social change.
Whatever the course of political development may turn out to be, the revolutionary character of this epoch is already clear to all thinking people : It places certain demands upon all who regard themselves as left. These include : the requirement of continued search for radical action that is able to express the deepest aspirations of human beings for control of their own destiny and the creations of human knowledge and skill, for co-operation and brotherhood of man, for freedom to live as whole men and women and pursue human goals of self-development in a human society ; action that is based upon real political and psychological consciousness of ordinary people and yet projects the larger aims.
The left needs to overcome mutual suspicions and distrusts which divide and threaten to fragment it, whatever their origins and justifications, and to seek means of combining, co-operating and merging the increasingly diverse social groupings and political movements turning to the left. Its co-operation in actions against social injustices, iniquitous policies and the hypocrisies justifying them will provide the best conditions to continue its analysis, development and {Page 14} debate about theories of social change. This indispensable process should not, as it sometimes tends to do, divert attention from realising the full potential of action against the system and its rulers.
Much more serious effort needs to be given, by every section of the left, to theoretical analysis and confrontation of ideas, theories and myths of the system. There are encouraging signs in the establishment of Marxist and Socialist research foundations, trade union education and research bodies, publication of theoretical journals and books, and diverse efforts to develop socialist programs, strategies and methods of action.
Debate and discussion within the left is certainly inevitable, necessary and fruitful. This would be most useful if its direction was always turned outwards, against the targets of left action, particularly against the powerful ideas that the system uses to maintain its ideological superiority, to perpetuate conformism, consensus and acceptance.
One powerful factor favouring the left today is the ideological crisis of imperialism exposed in the glaring contrast between the ideas professed and the reality of capitalist societies and their policies. If this is grasped, it can place the left in the position of a conscious and consistent offensive against the system.
Further development of left co-operation in theoretical and practical work might be assisted by an exchange of information, mutual help between all left publications, a register of all left and radical organisations which publishes the aims, policies, acti.vities and particulars of all organisations wishing to supply the information.
Creating democratic structures and processes within the left organisations and movements is another important issue. This goes to the whole left's ability to intervene decisively in Australian political and social life. It provides better conditions for co-operation in action between different movements. And it foreshadows the structures and processes of the new socialist society, helping to prove the validity of the aim we all pursue. This process may be re-examination by established movements or an independent search by new ones. The movement I belong to is making such a re-examination and change, to reach a new level of democracy. This is not an end in itself, but the way of heightening its capacity for militant action in co-operation with other left movements and forces, reaching for conviction through free discussion, debate and a deeper democratic process.
The left needs a thoroughly realistic appraisal of its policies and its strength. This surely demonstrates two things:
1. We have many weaknesses and a long way to go.
2. But the left is growing, it has new social reserves and it is imbued with a human purpose and an optimistic vision of transforming society which contrasts sharply with the present system's dehumanised purpose, lack of human goals and an essentially pessimistic vision of the future.
It is the second feature which will be decisive in changing our situation, if we all apply ourselves to co-operation in working out a left strategy and advancing our goals. Strengthening the left in all its parts and as a whole is a decisive step to changing the political situation in Australia and towards the transformation of society.
Provided the left is able to integrate its revolutionary perspective with actual social developments and the real issues which move the potentially revolutionary social forces, it can strengthen its mass position so it presents a real and immediate challenge. The capitalist citadel is no Jericho, nor should the left see itself as a Joshua whose mighty trumpet call will suffice to bring down the walls. Rather, the left has to mount an assault on these walls, carefully preparing its forces in many campaigns on every social and political front.