En Passant

Socialist Alternative is now a home for crude Stalinist hacks like James Crafti. It has no space for people like me. I think that perfectly captures its degeneration.

This re-post of an article from Red Flag comes in at number six on my top ten most read articles for 2013. It is kind of ironic given that one of the reasons I resigned from Socialist Alternative is its de-politicisation, represented by F**k Tony Abbott T-shirts. On the other hand the crackdown on people wearing these T-shirts is much more dangerous.

If I thought that I could have raised these many issues in a calm and relaxed atmosphere within Socialist Alternative I would have. But the hothouse that is the organisation and its one-sided cadre development means I can’t and couldn’t without expecting a barrage of abuse and fake debate on positions I don’t hold.

I still regard building a revolutionary party around key principles like the self-emancipation of the working class and deep democracy both within the organisation and within society as essential.

At this juncture that space doesn’t exist for me in Socialist Alternative.

For me, joining Socialist Alternative (SA) has been a slow process, often hindered by the criticisms (or lies) about SA that I have inevitably been told as a member of the Grassroots Left at Sydney University writes Eleanor Morley in Socialist Alternative.

After more than a year of leadership discussions … and various joint activities it has become apparent that unity … is not a viable prospect … The overall political projects of both organisations are not sufficiently similar to carry through a sustained and productive unity …

A shit sandwich is still a shit sandwich no matter whether it is Gillard or Rudd trying to sell it to us. Of course Abbott is not pointing out the obvious – that he too is offering us a shit sandwich. It is just that his shit sandwich is horse shit, not cow poo.

If you like Red Flag, if you want to fight back against capitalism and all its rotten ideas and outcomes, then you should not just read this new paper of the revolutionary left in Australia, you should sell it. If you want to smash the system then join with hundreds of other committed revolutionaries fighting for a better world. Join Socialist Alternative.

We are faced with a fast food political choice on 14 September – between a Maccas Labor Party and a KFC opposition. We won’t be able to survive long on either diet, and sometime soon after 14 September they’ll be force feeding us austerity. There will be no foie gras, just dead ducks all over the place.

There is an alternative to this battle of the fast food political behemoths. It is the revolutionary left, small, isolated from the class, but building gradually and gaining a toehold in the debates of society. Socialist Alternative is part of that revolutionary left. Check us out if you want a steady and healthy political diet of debate and discussion, of ideas and action, of making sense of this slaughterhouse world.

Red Flag is a paper of the revolutionary left. Red Flag will do its best to unite socialist ideas with the actual struggles that emerge against the system. Our goal is to be part of building the movement for a classless society that operates according the maxim “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”