Now again an answer to tao,s question, first do you read others posts? do you understand I once stood on the ground you now do? as a socialist?
And that it failed me? en,slaved and murdered workers and free thinkers?
Both the ALP and the union movement, the only two groups who ever helped non conservative Australia, have to impress enought voters to gain power.
Power comes only from the most voters trusting you, workers rights never had a defender that did not come from these two groups.
Yet only 25% of Australians are unionists.
I am quite prepared to seperate ,at some time in the future my union membership from my ALP membership.
All who work should feel free to join a union, workplace justice is conservative property too, Howard may not think so, but hungry workers do.
Both parts unions and ALP know the new reforms of Howards workchoices must be so good an end to future goverments need to reform IR can be asured.
Its my view, you know I would have no idea of party policys, that a national system insuring basic rights of leave overtime , a long list not to be broken by anyone would be the safety net and union or private contracts be the choice, union rights of entry in place unchalanged .
Your views are face it just that ,no chance exists that socialism will ever come, comunism is dead, the endless insults to the union movement and Labor leave this question.
Who else cares for the down trooden? who built social wealfare?
Again if 25% of workers are unionists, and 1% in socialist partys from what place would you win votes?
or are you thinking of guns as a way to power?

tao: If you can claim that a sort of corporate feudalism or outright slavery is the inevitability of capitalism, then I can claim that Stalinism is the inevitability of Marxism. Ultimately, I think where Marxism fails is that it doesn't want to accept that not all people have the same vision of utopia. Personally, I don't understand why people are into fashion in music, clothing, etc. They probably don't understand why I'm not. I don't think the two are necessarily able to be reconciled. As such, people either have to live with that or one has to try to dominate the other and obliterate it rather than live with such an affront. The problem with any idealistic system is that ultimately, it believes it has access to "the truth" and all competing systems just need to "be shown the light". As such, ultimately, all prescribe some form of involuntary rehab at some point. If you look at the recent history, and expatriate artistic community -- Milan Kundera would be a good place to start -- of central and eastern Europe, you would see this to be the case. How do the saviours respond when those they are trying to save don't want to be saved or when not everyone shares the same world view?

I read that article you suggested, but I couldn't help thinking of the book "The Dispossessed" by Ursula LeGuin. In short, the protagonist grows up in a utopian anarchistic/collectivistic society that has fled to the moon of its homeworld, a world populated by regimes that represent for example, capitalist America and the Soviet Union. He travels to this other world for scientific contact and doesn't particularly like it, yet he also sees the creeping statism emerging in his own society, even if it's through subtle social pressures, and how one of his friends who is intrinsically different, suffers for it. Ultimately, he realises (perhaps as most scientists, artists, etc. do) that in a way, he has to be apolitical and simply live for his love of science and his partner despite any system. I don't know if LeGuin was trying to say that all utopian societies are doomed to failure (Nietzsche said all revolutions were doomed to fail) and that ultimately, we have to just find the joy regardless of what the rest of humanity is doing, but that's what I took from that and where I'm heading with things.

As to Latin America, I can't say much about them because I don't know a lot about them. However, if history is anything to go by, in ten years' time, we'll see them swing to some crazy right wing governments.

As for Russia, well, I think they're actually quite different from what used to be classed as Middle Europe (based on my short life and travels there), and I think there's something (perhaps borne out of geography/climate, history, religion and the lack of a Reformation and Age of Enlightenment) deep down in their cultural psyche that is actually quite masochistic. I think on a collective level, they're not happy unless they're suffering. I don't hold out much hope for them.

tao,

The fundamental point I was making(http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4452#41771), which applies to just about every purportedly left-wing organisation I can think of is that either:

(1) for the last 50 years of the existence of your organisation, the conditions that would have enabled the growth of the socialist movement did not exist, in which case your members were labouring under a cruel illusion, or

(2) your organisation failed to take advantage of the conditions that did exist.

If you believe (1), then all of the members of your organisation were labouring under a cruel illusion. If, instead, you believe (2), then, you should be able to point to where your organisation made the mistakes which caused it to be even less influential today than it was 50 years ago. In my experience not one left wing organisation in existence is capable of undertaking this necessary critical self-evaluation, and so none are likely, over the next 50 years move our society any closer to socialism than they have over the last 50 years.

I read the article on the 2004 elections at http://www.wsws.org/sections/category/news/au-2004.shtml and did not feel enlightened any further as a result.

The main reason that Labor lost was that Australia's ruling elites did not trust Latham to do their bidding. Accordingly, the Murdoch and Packer media went all out to mislead the Australian people into voting against Labor. In this they were helped by others including 'Labor' Premiers Bracks and Carr and misguided Greens and leftists who refused to acknowledge that anything significant was at stake in the choice between Latham and Howard.

Tao wrote(http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4452#42590): "... workers create all of the wealth in the world with their labour ...".

The only people in the world who create all their wealth with their own labour are hunter gatherers and some third world farmers who do not use artificial fertilisers. Nearly everyone else in the world is engaged in the unsustainable destruction of our natural capital, in particular our fossil fuel reserves, which were created over tens of millions of years but nearly half consumed in just over two hundred short years.

Daggett,

Good to see you back. Good post.

You have touched on a number of important issues which I can’t hope to answer fully a) because of the word and post limitations and b) because I don’t begin to pretend I know all the answers – as I said, I am not a member of the party. Having said that:

You are correct that any political party should be capable of critical self-evaluation. While the complex task of self-examination by the party and its members, and its role in history, is difficult to illustrate in this format, the wsws has many articles on its history here: http://www.wsws.org/sections/category/history/h-icfi.shtml.

Some that might interest you are:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/dec2003/icfi-d23.shtml - a quote: “In reviewing this past 50 years we are in a position to draw certain conclusions and lessons. To the short-sighted observer, or to someone who is impatient with the protracted struggle to construct the revolutionary party, the history of the Fourth International constitutes a series of confusing splits and conflicts. Of course to the pragmatist, eager for immediate “success”, these conflicts have no interest or significance. But for those who are concerned with finding the way forward they are of the most decisive importance.
The history of the Fourth International, and above all the history of the struggle waged by the International Committee over the past 50 years, constitutes a great testing out of opposed political perspectives.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/dec2003/pets-d06.shtml
http://www.wsws.org/polemics/1995/oct1995/mandel1.shtml

Some on socialism and 20th Century history (These may interest you too Shorbe):

http://www.wsws.org/exhibits/trotsky/trlect.htm
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/jan2000/glei-j18.shtml - a quote: "Seen in this way, the twentieth century will be regarded as the first heroic attempt by working people to conquer state power and take their fate into their own hands. This attempt failed, but it contains a wealth of political experiences, which must be made conscious and mastered by broad social layers, forming the basis for a new attempt."

Some articles explaining their differences with other parties:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/oct2000/lett-o30.shtml
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/may2001/soca-m24.shtml

These articles are of course published pieces and do not show the internal self-examination, but you can’t say they are not serious about it.

cont...

continued
Moving on to the rest of your post:

I agree with what you said about the methods employed by the ruling elites against the ALP (except that I disagree with your idea that it is the main reason for their loss). However, what that illustrates is that Labor must make themselves more acceptable to the ruling elite. They must therefore be able to show the ruling class that they can contain workers and reduce working conditions and wages to maximize profits. The fact that Labor premiers undermined Latham and federal Labor illustrates the fact that they were concerned that Latham’s populist policies undermined their own pro-business agenda.

Latham himself has since come out and told us all how completely bankrupt the ALP is. The factional fighting within the ALP, and its obvious electoral impotence, is an illustration of the almost complete decay of a party which used to have as its social base the workers of this country, but which is now far removed from that base in its policies and its make-up. Any talk of going back to “grass roots” is futile because the party has been in the employ of big business for so long that it doesn’t even know what it’s “grass roots” is. And the interests of the grass-roots are irreconcilable with the interests of big business. You talk about critical self-evaluation. The ALP should take as its starting point the impossibility of protecting or improving workers conditions while simultaneously ensuring business maintains or increases profits. I suggest it will never do so, yet you think we should still vote for them.

I said that workers create all of “the” wealth in the world, not all of “their” wealth. By wealth I mean (simplistically) that people take raw materials and transform them into something useful with their labour. The waste of raw materials and resources and destruction of the environment is inevitable under the chaotic capitalist system. More on this later, I’m running out of words.