Democratic Socialist Perspective
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The Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP), is a Marxist political group, which operates as the largest component of a broad Australian socialist formation, the Socialist Alliance.
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[edit] History
[edit] Formation
The DSP started as the orthodox Trotskyist Socialist Workers League, founded in 1972 by members of the radical Socialist Youth Alliance (previously, and also currently, called Resistance) which grew out of the student radicalisation surrounding the Vietnam War. The SWL affiliated to the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, under the influence of the American section, the Socialist Workers Party. It was also undoubtedly due to this influence that the SWL itself took the name Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
[edit] Abandonment of Trotskyism
In 1986 the SWP broke with orthodox Trotskyism and disaffiliated from the Fourth International. While maintaining Leon Trotsky's critique of the USSR, the party replaced Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution with the view that socialist revolution in Third World countries (countries in which, according to Marxist theory, the development of capitalism has been distorted by colonialism and imperialism) will take place in two connected stages. In the early 90s it was renamed the Democratic Socialist Party.
[edit] Socialist Alliance
In 2001, the DSP, along with several other socialist parties, formed the Socialist Alliance. In 2003 the DSP became the first (and so far only) Socialist Alliance affiliate to become an internal tendency within the Alliance, changing its name to the Democratic Socialist Perspective.
Each of these changes of name and tactics has been accompanied by a turnover of members. While the SWP and DSP recruited many activists from the radical student movement of the 1970s and from various social movements since, it failed to retain most of them for long, and the DSP has maintained a membership of no more than a few hundred members, still making it one of the largest far-left groups in Australia. The SWP, and then DSP, was led by Jim Percy as National Secretary from 1972 until his death in 1992.
The SWP and the DSP regularly contested Australian federal elections but seldom polled significant votes. From time to time they practised entryism into the Australian Labor Party, but with little success. They also took part in the Nuclear Disarmament Party project during the 1980s, as well as a number of other left regroupment projects, and were part of the political and activist alliance that led to the formation of the Australian Greens.
More recently, the Socialist Alliance was intended to be a broader and more electorally appealing formation. But although it contested the 2001 federal election and the 2004 federal election, as well as several state elections, it has failed to gain any significant vote. It does, however, continue to attract a significant number of activists and militant unionists, and is increasingly identified as the main vehicle for far-left politics in Australia.
[edit] The DSP today
The Socialist Alliance remains a major area of work for the DSP. While the Alliance does contain members of other Marxist and Trotskyist groups, some of them very small, the extent to which the DSP dominates the Alliance is a matter of dispute. Some see the Alliance as the latest in a long line of SWP-DSP "fronts", while others refer to the large number of members who are members of no affiliate organisation, and the great degree of practical, no-strings attached, support the DSP provides to the Alliance, as signs of the potential of real left regroupment arising out of the project.
The DSP continues with Resistance as its youth wing, and publishes a newspaper called Green Left Weekly, which replaced the earlier SWP publication, Direct Action, in 1991.
The DSP also emphasises international collaboration, maintaining close links with those emerging from the Pathfinder International, is a permanent observer in the reunified Fourth International, has strong ties with a number of revolutionary Latin American organisations (including the Cuban Communist Party and groups in the Venezuelan Government), and organises the yearly "Asia-Pacific International Solidarity Conference".
[edit] External links
- Democratic Socialist Perspective
- Green Left Weekly
- Resistance
- Socialist Alliance
- Green Left eulogy for Jim Percy
[edit] Further reading
Percy, John. Resistance: A History of the Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance: 1965-72. Resistance Books, Australia 2005.
