In the wake of the publication of the platforms that are to be voted on at next week's Democratic Socialist Perspective congress a debate has broken out on the Marxmail list primarily about the DSP itself.
An interesting and thoughtful contribution by Joaquin Bustelo criticisng the "narrow party" perspectives of Socialist Alternative was part of this thread.
Here is a response from DSP National Secretary, Perter Boyle in way of asserting some facts. It locates the DSP within the context of its Socialist Alliance experience
by Peter Boyle
Tom O'Lincoln wrote on Marxmail:"the minority's description of an "aging and depleted" DSP cadre is,sadly, very likely correct."Don't be too sad, Tom. The DSP’s membership (excluding provisional members, on a three-month) between 1992 and 2000 was on average 244 (between 1981 and 1987, it had grown from 133 to 202). It currently is 268. It rose above 300 between 2001-2003, at the height anti-corporate movement was at its highpoint but fell after. In December 2003, the DSP was renamed “Democratic Socialist Perspective” (changed from “Party).
In 2004, DSP members focussed on recruiting to the Socialist Alliance rather than the DSP and DSP membership fell to about 250. Some 700 people who were not members of the DSP or the other small revolutionary socialist groups that affiliated were members of the Socialist Alliance in 2004. Since 2005, this dropped to about 500, at last count (around May 2007).
In May 2005 the DSP decided that its attempt to take over its organisational and political resources to Socialist Alliance had to be abandoned because the objective conditions were not creating sufficient new activist and leadership resources in the Socialist Alliance to allow such a transition to be carried out. Basically we pulled back to regroup and rebuild the DSP cadre.
If we can muster sufficient unity in the DSP to make a slightly bigger push in the Socialist Alliance, I suspect (and I don’t mean “hope”) that the Socialist Alliance membership could quickly return to its previous highpoint and move beyond. I am convinced that there is a broader left there that is still willing to be part of this political formation. I think this is possible while still growing an organised revolutionary core through the DSP, but that is something yet to be tested out.
The average age of DSP members at our last (January 2006) congress was 36. This may have been slightly higher than in previous congresses and can be attributed to the DSP having more members in their 40s, 50s and 60s than before. The average age of DSP leadership bodies is not much older (and is probably set to get younger). Compared with most other small left groups in imperialist countries the DSP has a younger membership. Maybe the ISO in the US has a similar age profile?
A dragged out political debate with a section of former Resistance leaders who wanted to adapt to the autonomist/anarchist youth currents that briefly flourished around the anti-globalisation movement and the massive retreat of the student movement on campuses seriously weakened Resistance in the early 2000s but it has recovered slowly over the last two years. Over the last two years, 44% of the DSP’s recruits have come from Resistance (39% – on the average older -- were recruited from the Socialist Alliance), the socialist youth organisation.
Over the last two years, the DSP has retained about 64% of its recruits from Resistance. This has been about the general rate of retention of youth recruits (over a two year period). As they get older, new pressures come on and different life choices are more sharply posed. Nothing new here. We have kept a smaller proportion of the youth recruits at other times. On the whole, considering that there is no radical youth culture today on the scale of that spawned by the 1960s-70s radicalisation, we are doing quite well.
By comparision, the retention rate of DSP members recruited from the Socialist Alliance over the last two years is 84%.
The activity levels of most DSP members remains high compared to other similar organisations in advanced capitalist countries, though there has been a steady reduction in hours spent distributing the newspaper, Green Left Weekly. Some of this may reflect a lower level of political activity but it also reflects other shifts. Some members are doing a lot more work in the trade union movement and as unemployment has been reduced (and most university students forced to get part-time jobs!) , a reserve of virtual full-time activists has all but disappeared.
I have studied, in close detail, the DSP membership patterns since 1994 and I do not detect any evidence that it is significantly “ageing and depleted”. The North American comrades on this list who have visited Australia and attended conferences and other events the DSP has organised would have impressions that support this conclusion.
The real discussion is not about going backwards but about how to go forwards. And the basic “Leninist” truth here is that there is no road to serious accumulation of revolutionary cadre without serious and organised engagement with the class struggle alongside serious study, development and propagation of revolutionary theory. Anything else is sectarian clowning and the left has too much of that already!
