Spiros: the SLL became the SEP, and operates the wsws.org website.

This is a question that has always puzzled me. On the one hand the socialist groups do manage to do a lot of damage to the reputation of the left in various ways, and chew through good people - either turning them into mindless automatons or burning them out horribly.

On the other hand, they do work very hard and provide the backbone of quite a few campaigns. One wonders whether many of their members aren’t attracted in part to the cult-like aspects, and might actually not be politically or socially active at all if they weren’t in these groups. I’d rather good activists were being involved in this way (misled as I think they are) than sitting at home watching TV.

It’s also true that a small minority of members (more in Socialist Alternative than in the DSP, Solidarity, Socialist Alliance etc) are naturally quite scary, and there is an arguement that these groups keep them out of the Greens and some other places where they might prove highly destructive.

“I was once told that at a DSP conference in either the 80’s or early 90’s everyone was chanting “Gorby! Gorby!”.”

In the late 1980s the DSP (in its incarnation as the SWP) was very keen on glasnost and perestroika as it believed that, if the Soviet Union could be successfully reformed into a true socialist democracy, this would lead to a huge boost in the popularity of socialism in Western countries. This view was not confined to the SWP; some members of the CPA who were opposed to attempts to replace it with a New Left Party did so on the grounds that a reformed Soviet Union would renovate the reputation of Western communist parties and obviate the need for a new party.

Such a position could only be sustained if those holding to it neglected to read the more frank and cutting-edge articles in the glasnost press, which made clear both how bad things were in the USSR, and therefore how huge and difficult would be the necessary reforms, indeed transformations, of the system to bring about a tolerable society. And we hardly need reminding of the historical fact that the actual course of events in the USSR and its satellites put the kybosh on hopes that a Moscow Spring would usher in a Summer of Love for the Western left (hopes cherished in wider circles than those of the communist and trotskyist parties).

Now any snapshot such as this should include the SPA imho. They are mainly clustered in the South and East and includes figures like Stephen Jolly, David Kerin and Anthony Main. The net can distort peoples prescence but I would have ranked them at least as high ( or low) as the Socialist Alternative.
The small numbers of any of these red-fascist groupsucles should not fool us as to the potential danger they still represent. The Neocons in the GOP - now ‘ moving left’ ( Bill Kristol) the Platformists in the anarchist movement and even individuals like Michael Costa show just how dangerous recombinant malarial Marxism is. Good political hygiene praxis by all enlightened democratic and libertarian socialists is necessary - washing yr hands after butt sects for example.

Socialist Alliance: Joined for Lenin, stayed for Butt Sects

The conclusion to be drawn from this, and from a reading of the hundreds of tortured pages of documents on the DSP’s purge of the LPF, is that a number of basically well-meaning and talented people are squandering vast amounts of energy on a political praxis of utterly minimal relevance to the millions of working class people, women, queers, migrants, Aborigines, refugees, environmental and peace activists, etc., on whose behalf such parties endeavour to speak - and in the process doing themselves and each other a good deal of psychic damage, as the DSP/LPF purge/split documents attest.

Distress sounds like the wrong word. People are distressed when someone gets hurt, or something else really bad happens.

Nevertheless, Paul Burns is one of the true gentleman of this blog community, and if he’s unhappy about this comments thread, I, for one, apologise.

The ISO amalgamated earlier this year with Solidarity (a part of the ISO that left in 2003 and soon became bigger than its parent by the process of watching its parent shrink) and the Brisbane-only Socialist Action Group (which split from Socialist Alternative in 2004). Socialist Worker, to my understanding, is now no more; the new fused group AND magazine are both called Solidarity. Hmm, guess that faction fight has been resolved retrospectively.

And it’s been a loooong time since the ISO was competing with the DSP for the far left crown. Socialist Alternative is the hungry contender (although they’ve reached that danger mark of 200 members, which is traditionally when disagreements become faction fights and the leadership decides to expel the ‘minority’ faction, whereupon everything collapses in short order). But they’re almost entirely on the campuses. Which is probably fortunate as it lessens the damage.

And as some one on the inside who is not deluded, I hate to tell you this, but for a small left wing party Socialist Alliance is doing okay, thank you.Enough

Would you kindly explain what ‘doing okay’ entails? Enquiring minds wanna know.