By Doug Lorimer
Contrary to Graeme Merry and Arnaud Gallios' assertion, Jorge Jorquera's article on the March 26 student demonstration in Melbourne was not based on "hearsay from Sydney", but on reports from people who attended the Melbourne rally.
Equally misplaced is their criticism of Jorquera's statement that the International Socialist Organisation "and other ultraleftists attempted to turn the entire focus of the demonstration against the police".
Jorquera did not claim that the ISO and other ultraleftists initiated the violence at the rally, but merely that they "attempted to turn the entire focus of the demonstration against the police."
It is certainly true that the police initiated the violence (riding horses directly into the protesters, injuring dozens of students), but to claim, as Merry and Gallios do, that there were "no deliberate confrontations by students" with the police is a gross distortion of the facts. Even they admit that "we broke through police lines" and blocked the path of a police van with four arrested students inside, forcing their release.
What are the facts? According to the April issue of the ISO paper The Socialist, "when militants led the charge up the steps of parliament, the demo followed them through police lines". It was after this confrontation, which was initiated by a small group of "militants", that four students were arrested and placed in the police van.
While the majority of students sat on the steps of Parliament House chanting, a small group (100-200) led by anarchists broke away to surround the police van. At this point ISO members, who had been advocating that the demonstration march on the federal Education Department building or the Melbourne Club, joined the anarchists in arguing that everyone join in the blockade of the police van.
When a Resistance member attempted to argue that this would divert the rally from its purpose - to oppose the government's education cutbacks - the microphone was grabbed from him. No further discussion was allowed, with some ISO members and anarchists monopolising the mike to advocate stopping the police van from driving away. That is, as Jorquera pointed out in his article, "the ISO and other ultraleftists attempted to turn the entire focus of the demonstration against the police".
`Leadership'
Merry and Gallios claim that the rally "showed the value of leadership ( setting an example) and militancy (preparedness to fight back) in building a successful education campaign".
However, the "successes" they point to - breaking through police lines, sending "shivers up worse-than-useless parliaments everywhere", " neutralising violent cops" and obtaining the release of four "political prisoners" - had little to do with building a successful campaign to stop the government's education cutbacks. They helped the capitalist mass media to largely ignore the demands of the rally and to focus almost entirely on "student violence", thus giving the Kirner Labor government and the cops a pretext to launch an attack on democratic rights. This attack involves not only the charges against five ISO members, but the authorisation of the police to use riot gear at future demonstrations.
Merry and Gallios ask if Jorge Jorquera "had been present at the storming of the Winter Palace in 1917, would he have denounced Lenin, Trotsky et al as `ultraleftists ... aiding' the tsarist regime, as he accuses us of aiding the ALP?"
The fact that Merry and Gallios can see any analogy between these two events indicates that they do not understand how students can build a successful education campaign; they have fallen victim to the ultraleft view that radical social change, or even reforms within the framework of the existing system, can be brought about by the "militant" actions of a small group.
The "storming of the Winter Palace in 1917", that is, the overthrow of Aleksandr Kerensky's capitalist government in St Petersburg on November 6- 7, 1917, was carried out by some 30,000 armed workers under the political leadership of the Bolshevik Party, which at that time had 240,000 members and the support of the majority of Russia's working people - all of which is reduced, by Merry and Gallios, to "Lenin, Trotsky et al"!
The storming of the Winter Palace was the culmination of one of history's most successful attempts to build a political campaign. At the beginning of 1917 the Bolsheviks were a small, isolated minority. The great majority of Russia's working people supported pro-capitalist reformist "socialists". So how did "Lenin, Trotsky et al" build their campaign to transfer political power from the capitalist Kerensky government to the soviets - the revolutionary councils elected by the Russian workers, peasants and soldiers? Did they do it by leading small groups into deliberate confrontations with the Kerensky government's police force?
Peaceful explanation
Upon his return to Russia from exile in April 1917, Lenin argued that the chief task of the Bolsheviks was to patiently explain their policy to the mass of Russian workers:
"The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers' Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.
"As long as we are in the minority we carry on the work of criticising and exposing errors ..." (April 7)
"Our work must be one of criticism, of explaining the mistakes of the petty-bourgeois Socialist-Revolutionary and Social-Democratic parties ...
"This seems to be `nothing more' than propaganda work, but in reality it is the most practical revolutionary work; for there is no advancing a revolution that has come to a stand-still ... because of the unreasoning trust of the people." (April 10)
"All party propagandists must advocate these views ... by means of peaceful discussion and peaceful demonstrations." (April 22)
"The crisis cannot be overcome by violence practised by individuals against individuals, by the local actions of small groups of armed people, by Blanquist [minority] attempts to `seize power', to `arrest' the Provisional Government, etc.
"Today's task is to explain more precisely, more clearly, more widely the proletariat's policy, its way of terminating the war ... Rally round your Soviets; and within them endeavor to rally behind you a majority by comradely persuasion and by re-election of individual members." (April 23)
By late June, the Bolsheviks had won over a majority of the workers and soldiers to their policies in St Petersburg, but not in the rest of the country. When, in early July, soldiers in St Petersburg initiated an armed demonstration demanding the transfer of power to the soviets, the Bolsheviks warned that such an action, even it involved thousands of participants, could not resolve the political crisis in Russia.
The Kerensky regime responded to the July 3-4 demonstration by launching a wave of repression against the Bolsheviks, accusing them of attempting an armed uprising. But, as Lenin pointed out, "on July 2 the Bolsheviks campaigned against the demonstration (as admitted by the Socialist- Revolutionaries' paper). The article indicates that on July 3 the popular mood exploded into action and the demonstration started against our advice. It shows that on July 4, in a leaflet ... we called for a peaceful and organised demonstration, that on the night of July 4 we passed a decision to call off the demonstration." (July 7)
Win the majority
It was only when the Bolsheviks, as a result of the success of their patient explanation through "peaceful discussion and peaceful demonstrations", had won over a majority of the population to their views, that they launched a deliberate confrontation with the then totally isolated Kerensky government.
Unlike Merry and Gallios, the Bolsheviks' understood that initiating, or being suckered into, physical confrontations with the existing authorities ("preparedness to fight back") when you don't have the support of the majority and the relationship of forces is stacked against you is not an example of leadership or militancy, but of reckless foolishness.
Student activists will not force the government to stop and reverse its cutbacks to tertiary education through leading small groups (of even a few hundred) into physical confrontations with the police. Government officials, rather than being frightened by such actions, will simply use them to isolate and victimise radical activists.
What will force the government to retreat - as the experience of the Vietnam Moratorium campaign of 1970-71 clearly showed - is the building, through peaceful demonstrations, of a mass student movement focused on militant political demands.
