This is part of an ongoing discussion among Workers Party comrades and doesn’t necessarily reflect an agreed position.

“Of course, even among the workers who had at one time risen to the first ranks, there are not a few tired and disillusioned ones. They will remain, at least for the next period as bystanders. When a program or an organisation wears out, the generation which carried it on its shoulders wears out with it. The movement is revitalised by the youth who are free of responsibility for the past.”

-Trotsky, The Transitional Program

The resignation of four senior WP comrades on the eve of our January 2011 Retreat probably came as a shock to most of the Party. Those comrades announced that they would abandon any claim to the Party in favour of setting up a theoretical and international solidarity focused blog. Ian Anderson’s discussion bulletin “On the Party Question” did a good job of analysing their collective statement of resignation. In this bulletin, I intend to further probe the reasons behind the split.

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Marika Pratley, Wellington branch of Workers Party

Workers Power 2011, the national conference of Workers Party was held over Queen’s Birthday weekend (June 3-6) at Hamilton’s Trade Union Centre. Over 45 people registered for what was the first socialist conference to be held in Hamilton for some decades. The conference featured a wide range of presentations delivered by speakers belonging to the Workers Party, by members of other left organizations, and by others who have participated in substantial struggles against the state and the injustices of capitalism.

Clockwise from top left: Guest speakers Annette Sykes, Bernie Hornfeck, David Neilson, Mike Treen.

Friday
The opening night featured a debate between Jared Phillips (WP) and Sue Moroney (Labour Party MP). Phillips’ case defined Labour as no longer even claiming the centre-left, quoting EPMU and leading LP figure Andrew Little’s reference to Labour and National “managing the centre”. He listed examples of active attacks that Labour has carried out against the working class and progressive forces including Operation 8 and restricting the right to strike. He outlined reasons as to why ‘lesser evilism’ was not a justifiable reason to support Labour. Moroney embraced the term ‘lesser evilism’ and said she would rather have ‘small pragmatic changes’ than a ‘glorious defeat’ by National. In reality, the speakers were clearly talking at cross-purposes.

This was followed by a presentation and lengthy discussion led by Marxist academic David Neilson who has been published in Capital and Class and Journal of Radical Economics. In summary, he outlined the need for a deeper appreciation of the shift of emphasis from the reserve army of labour to the relative population that is surplus to the requirements of capitalism. He related this to the burgeoning slum-dwelling class in under-developed countries as well as to the second tier of peripheral workers which is ever-increasing in proportion to core workers in advanced capitalist countries. In summary, he argued that this led to the current ‘workers of the world compete’ scenario rather than a ‘workers of the world unite’ scenario, and that the left had to take this into account in attempts to redefine a strategy.

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