It’s an organisation that struggles to get 1 per cent of the vote in elections and the only remaining organisational affiliate is the DSP. Any potential it had to be more than an extension of the DSP was squandered long ago.

http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/SDsocal.html Ken Davis’s account of a turning point for the Socialist Alliance, the DSP’s decision to proceed with its organisational project against the wishes of most other affiliated organisations and many individual members of the Socialist Alliance. Ken Davis has been active on the Australian left for about 30 years.

http://ozleft.wordpress.com/2005/10/15/sallianceresignationgadler/ Greg Adler’s resignation from the Socialist Alliance. Greg Adler has been a left activist and socialist for 30-odd years.

http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/Mthomson.html Resignation of Michael Thompson from Socialist Alliance. Michael is a longtime left activist.

http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/dlockwood.html David’s resignation from the Socialist Alliance. David also has been active on the left for many years.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenLeft_discussion/message/28757 Workers Power leaves the Socialist Alliance.

http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/mschem.html Michael Schembri leaves the Socialist Alliance. Michael is another experienced and well known left activist.

http://marxsite.com/iso.html International Socialist Organisation resigns from Socialist Alliance. The ISO was the second largest organisational affiliate after the DSP.

http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/Lookingclass.html Ian Rintoul’s discussion of the Socialist Alliance at a certain point, making suggestions that were largely ignored by the DSP.

As to the role of the LTTE, its war has been not only against the Sinhalese government, but against the traditional Tamil leadership (now all but destroyed) and its detractors among the Tamil population (now largely silenced). The LTTE began with a couple of dozen cadres. Through shrewd use of the cycle of violence, they very astutely engineered a conflict that APPEARS to be about Tamil grievances against the Sinhalese– just as on the Sinhalese side, it APPEARS to be about the Tamil insurgency. Neither view is accurate: in both cases, the conflict is as much internal as inter-ethnic, and serves the leaders of both sides well with respect to their ethnic constituencies.

My argument is NOT that a minority hasn’t the right to resort to violence when it fails to gain redress through nonviolent means– though these days some extremists jump to violence far too easily. Rather, my argument is that the majority has a responsibility to the minority to redress its grievances in order to prevent violence. Let me say it again: DEMOCRACY HAS FAILED. The view that a majority makes the rules is both contrary to democratic theory and unreasonable in practice. It does not result in a peaceful society.

At the same time, a splinter group like the LTTE or JVP, which has no hope of gaining power through democratic means, can use the cycle of violence to exert power far beyond its original numbers. Thus the splintering effect among organizations, combined with the failure of democracy, promotes conflicts that NEED NOT HAPPEN. Once again using Sri Lanka as an example, both Sinhala and Tamil commentators have observed that BOTH SIDES have failed to make peace at every step. Both leaderships gain, but the civilians on BOTH SIDES lose.

Gandhi, of course, supported the First World War and Budhism can be a great excuse for a do nothing life style when it is transported to Western Culture. The history of Buddhism in the long story of Vietnam is nonetheless very interesting –as engaged Buddhism is in Burma — such that the tactical nuances adopted by that ‘horrid’ Leninist , Ho Chi Minh, in regard to it are very instructive.

Nonetheless, I’ve always thought the John Lennon brief penchant for “Zen Marxism” had its merits — but to advocate “non violence” as an overriding political principle is simply ahistorical. In effect it doesn’t play out that often in our own countries as politics tends to proceed by “non violent” means assuming you think that dispossession,wage slavery, economic repression and alienation have nothing to do with violence.

The peace movement may protest all it likes against the war in Iraq but Uncle Sam nonetheless still slaughters. So “non violence” per se isn’t necessarily an overriding tactic that is sure to prevail. I’m not advocating violence — I’m saying that force, has a role in history especially as a means for the oppressed to defend themselves and advance their agenda (as The Vietnamese did).

If you want to say that’s not allowed — then say it.

But Marxism is a method dedicated to the lessons of history and while the LTTE aint Marxist, there is a historical logic in play in regard to their struggle for self determination, that despite any number of incidences you may think are “violent” doesn’t destroy the justness of the Tamil cause.

Look at the massive scale of the slaughter in East Timor. Does that massive level of death and suffering cheapen the core aspirations for national self determination? Or the millions who died in Vietnam? Who did all that killing?

Do you want to then blame the NLF and say, comrades, you should have taken another route?

It applies to Iraq too — if you want to insist that the Iraqis have no business what so ever in opposing the occupation with bombs and mortar.

Do you want to lecture them and say, ” the occupying forces should be spat upon rather than shot at?”

(I am no admirer of the LTTE, but it is worth noting that during the years of the Cease-Fire Agreement, the organization made moves toward becoming a civil (rather than militant) organization. Naturally, as the fighting resumed, these moves reversed.)

This failure of democracy increasingly can be seen around the world, and while there is indeed nothing new under the sun, trends do change, and the current trend is toward more violence rather than less. IMO, this trend has at its root the assumption that the majority has no obligation toward minorities beyond their ability to represent themselves in the democratic (winner take all) system– and this assumption is erroneous. As long as the post-modern concept of winner-take-all democracy persists, violence will remain the one recourse for minority groups (political, religious, and ethnic) to increase their relevance and power.

The alternative lies in a return to and enhancement of the concept of one citizen’s responsibility to all others, as can be found not only in early American thought but in Gandhian, radical Christian, and engaged Buddhist political movements (among others). Whether Marx, Engles, and Lenin have anything to offer in this regard I am not qualified to say, though my limited exposure would not suggest so.

But just to follow up on this point — the FDR/FMLN of El Salvador warrants studying as the comrades there had to make the transition from the Civil War of the eighties to the “peace” (a “peace” that is now being undermined by the return of the Death Squads). (Similarly among ex Naxalites in India).

But here Lenin has a lot to offer — as does a pamphlet we use here a lot — Liberalism, Ultraleftism or Mass Action by….Peter Camejo! And later Camejo’s template he promoted was the FDR/FMLN.

[Short version here:http://www.geocities.com/acpollack2/LUoMA.htm ]

My point is that what pans out as the sort of violence DJ alludes to (and I’m not agreeing at all with all his likely examples as I think there are “hundred of cases” where the population (and its parties) have the right to defend themselves and go on a military offensive such as in Vietnam 1947-1975) is a product of perspectives that are more complex than a penchant for sectarianism.

This was the main theme in Lenin’s essay — Left Wing Communism from which I dragged the quote. Lenin wasn’t about deploying short cuts.

My point is that there’s nothing new under the sun and sectarianism is a different historical phenomenon in its genesis than ultraleftism and an indulgent militarisation of your politics.

For instance the Chavez process in Venezuela basically lays to rest the continent wide penchant for a guerillarist strategy (as the peace negotiations with the FARC seem to indicate this week although Colombia aint so keen on that as that country is offering war.) But then the 21st century prospects in LA has come about after decades of brutal military regimes. So tactics and approaches always have context and openings that make them feasible such that their utility can be proven in practice..

So it is a mistake to equate these tactical questions with the omnipresent threat of sectarianism that bears down on cadre groups.

Nevertheless, they are one of hundreds of examples of organizations that have exerted political power far beyond their numbers through the use of violence. In that sense, they have transcended sectarianism.

I find their methods abhorrent. I remain committed to democracy. But I also see that in practical application, violence is one means of side-stepping the need for majority support. That remains the danger of sectarianism: many prefer violence to irrelevance (regardless of who they blame it on).

An outfit like the JVP is a left face of Sinhalese chauvinism. In Australia the Laborist left wing in the 19th century grew up dedicated to a white Australia as one of its founding principles that infected the Australian working class like an Apartheid disease..

But I think there is a tendency here — in this exchange — to fetishize the issue of sectarianism. While I don’t want to pooh pooh it as an unimportant topic, the real issue is making political gains and “sectarianism” is a product of a failure to thrive — not something inherent in the Marxian body politick. It is, in effect, a product of capitalism.

It’s not a far left genetic.

Camejo describes the symptoms and those symptoms are a problem because they are embraced as political comfort food. That’s the irony. that’s the tragedy. It’s a lack of political hygiene..and a poor diet!

I think it’s worth while grabbing Lenin’s original argumentation that Bob alluded to second hand as a way to explore the living context:

The first questions to arise are: how is the discipline of the proletariat’s revolutionary party maintained? How is it tested? How is it reinforced? First, by the class-consciousness of the proletarian vanguard and by its devotion to the revolution, by its tenacity, self-sacrifice and heroism. Second, by its ability to link up, maintain the closest contact, and—if you wish—merge, in certain measure, with the broadest masses of the working people—primarily with the proletariat, but also with the non-proletarian masses of working people. Third, by the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy and tactics, provided the broad masses have seen, from their own experience, that they are correct. Without these conditions, discipline in a revolutionary party really capable of being the party of the advanced class, whose mission it is to overthrow the bourgeoisie and transform the whole of society, cannot be achieved. Without these conditions, all attempts to establish discipline inevitably fall flat and end up in phrasemongering and clowning. On the other hand, these conditions cannot emerge at once. They are created only by prolonged effort and hard-won experience. Their creation is facilitated by a correct revolutionary theory, which, in its turn, is not a dogma, but assumes final shape only in close connection with the practical activity of a truly mass and truly revolutionary movement.”
–An Essential Condition of the Bolsheviks’ Success: Chap 2, Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder

There is a lot of rich experience in NZ that warrants studying. Experience we can draw on. But it does indicate that doing the ‘broad party’ thing simply as ‘a good idea at the time’ is thwart with problems & frustrations as the Kiwis have had almost 20 years of break up and realignment on the left, often without sustainable left gain. (And that includes the Green Party there!)

So there are ways of doing this that are not self evident ways of proceeding and the debate is still being had out in practice.

So I guess I’m saying that an “all in” philosophy isn’t an easy or maybe preferable route. That there are nuances and variations that have to be tactically considered in each political context. I guess I’m talking about manoevres as other forces occupy the same territory and you try to decide how broad and narrow you should meet.

Well, there can be a fourth way. Retreat into sectarianism, blaming your ineffectiveness on a brainwashed public and / or evil machinations by Them.

Since the goal of virtually all political organizations is political power, and since violence substitutes for democratic means for obtaining that power, sectarianism would therefore quite naturally promote violence. There are only three choices: mass organization, violence, or irrelevance.