Some thoughts I had shared about the results of the Brisbane City Council election held here on March 9th have prompted me to think a bit more about the sort of party package that may suit the present political context.
As I read through material on the Dutch Socialist Party the main game is indeed "getting the package right" rather than simply clubbing one together to place before the punters -- aka "working people" of Australia.
One of the main handicaps with a regroupment agenda is that it can so easily fall hostage to the ready hesitancy of waiting for an 'independent left' to catch up with its dynamic. This in part is what is bearing down on the Socialist Alliance -- it's waiting for passengers before leaving for the next station. It needs a load of movement generated coal to fire up its engine before departing the platform.
In many ways the SA has embraced this paradigm which has been orchestrated for it by others. Seemingly the only momentum the SA is allowed is determined by this constraint -- a template imposed on it by what we so readily referred to as the ( already existing) left: regroup what's already there or die.
While the Alliance has consolidated and has initiated a range of important working partnership within the trade unions, among ethnic groups and with radical sections of the indigenous community -- its future progress depends on generating more of the same by dint of hard work and winning campaign credentials.
THE BCC election
This is why the Brisbane City Council election was so interesting to me. I think the Alliance managed this time around to move into green political ecology in its own right by applying a sort of programatic logic that flowed directly from living potentials rather than from a position formatted so readily by ideology. Some times being keenly programmatic can also mean that you generate your advocacy by the numbers and it can easily become so readily sloganistic.
I pointed out that the ALP lost council through its own corporate toadyism and incompetence. The Greens also suffered at the poll -- recording a result below that in 2004 and historically their poll return was not that much above the results registered in the 1991 Green Alliance Brisbane City Council election campaign*. The 1991 campaign in effect kick started the Greens in Queensland.
The Greens no doubt suffered because there wasn't much extra electoral campaigning to generate political traction that could buoy up an electoral result. There wasn't a bridge issue and precious little activity against tunnels, over traffic. water supplies or soforth.
But if I had been going 17 years and had no elected office (anywhere in QLD) to show for it and my core strategy was winning elections -- I'd be a bit despondent.
THINKS:Of course, the Socialist Alliance isn't constrained by such thoughts! Not us. The SA's poll returns are consistently very low so you'd have to conclude that any pretense to electoral traction would be dreaming...But is that actually the the case....?
That the Greens haven't advanced strongly at the local level in Brisbane relative to sister parties in other capital city centres --although it should be pointed out they did pick up over 8 % of the mayoral vote and almost 26% in one ward while the SA is recording returns of less than 2% -- suggests that patenting a colour and claiming the environmental domain can only get you so far in political life-- even when the mainstream talk these last few years has been so much of global warming and its consequences and fix ups.
Thinking outside the box
This is where I think it is worthwhile to start to think outside the box and begin to ask not so much what you bring to the table but what should be on the menu.
I began to ask myself that question and while I can give you all the gab about the crying need for socialism that's hardly going to be the discourse on everyone's lips. The continuity of the culture of socialism is very shallow in Australia and while it needs to be sustained and enriched we also have to apply that advocacy transitionally to the noggins of Joe and Mary Average and make it relevant to their own everyday personal struggles.
So how are we gonna do that?
That's not a new question of course but you have to ask it over and over again, each time adjusting any answers to suit contemporary options.
So the question isn't so much an ideological requisite but what sort of party you hope to engineer.
The advantage is that the generic form of socialism that the Alliance adheres to is very flexible when you come down to tin tacks.So while a party can be many things to many different people -- locally there's a potential ambit that, I think, warrants addressing.
What horse for the course?
So let's look at the local urban context under an environmental umbrella and consider what sort of party 'suits'. In effect what horse for the course?
- A sustainable transport party. In effect that covers a very wide margin of political options in regard to transport issues but the primary marker is public transport rather than something that is built upon private vehicular transit. But it has to be an advocacy for a total package that considers the problems of the transition -- of how to get millions of commuters out of their cars and into public and carbon reducing means.The SA advocacy for free public transport is a key element in that transition.
- An anti-privatization party. Just as we aren't simply calling for contracts to be divvied out to the local bourgeois to move freight and humanity for profit -- the same approach applies right across the board.The SA is actively engaged in the campaign opposing electricity privatisation in NSW as part of this core position.But that's the core argument: that we advance without recourse to the profit motive.
- A party that says: enough! I'll explore this in later posts but I think the cutting edge advanced by the Dutch Socialist Party of boldly arguing that we've had enough of restructuring and the ideology of neo-liberalist economics is a crucial articulation that can take many forms. In the hands of the Dutch -- many creative forms...
- A permaculture party. Again I'll explore this label in greater detail in later posts but essentially we need an advocacy that articulates the sort of urban and rural ecology and stewardship we need to strive for. I know that a few permaculture trainors have discussed a party option in the past but the fact remains that permaculture is not so much a political as an environment design doctrine. (Check out the "permaculture " label on this site for back ground on this hefty topic.) "Permaculture" encapsulates a lot of the core restructuring principles we need to move quickly towards and has enough content that makes usage of the word preferable to more generic buzz words like "sustainable" or "organic".
- A community empowerment party. Talk is cheap and when advocating "power to the people" you have to get concrete and promote a very clear agenda so that people know what you mean(assuming that you do too). The Dutch SP went way out on a limb I thought on this point and argued a radical, doctrine neutral course:
Instead of telling the electorate to vote SP for a better society – worthy ideals for a distant future – the party chose a more rational and better thought out position: that of radical and effective opposition.“Vote against, vote SP” became the provocative slogan. The message being: if you don't agree with current politics, vote for us. Then we can voice your dissent in Parliament. You don't need a majority for that, even one person would do. The new strategy is symbolized by a tomato. Full of healthy vitamins, but also a feared weapon against bad political theatre.
- A justice party. I'm not sure how to label this -- so "justice" will have to suffice for now --but we need to generate a core and very generic advocacy around such key issues as indigenous rights, racism,access and migration. The SA explored this in its initial federal election advocacy when it called for a "new vision" for Australia.The pitfall was that we did not generate the traction we sought to foster during that particular campaign partly because many comrades didn't quite relate to it as an electoral 'tool'. Issues of justice and rights merge with a plethora of possibilities that engage with housing, opportunities for education and employment, health care, etc.So while mine is a generic term theres' enough flex in it to suit any local application
You then also work on the packaging....
*1991 Green Alliance Brisbane City Council election campaign was a broad coalition comprising the Rainbow Alliance (later the Qld Greens), the Democratic Socialist Perspective (from which the Green Alliance coordinator was drawn), the Democrats, the SPA (later the Communist Party of Australia) and independents which stood a swag of ward candidates and for mayor at the 1991 Brisbane council election.
