Formation The DSP started as the orthodox
Trotskyist Socialist Workers League (SWL), founded in 1972 by members of the radical
Socialist Youth Alliance (previously, and also currently, called Resistance) which grew out of the student radicalisation surrounding
Australian involvement in the Vietnam War. Separate to this, the Labor Action Group formed in
Brisbane. Led by John and Sue McCarthy (who had recently returned after working with the International Marxist Group in England) and Di and Larry Zetlin, it fused with the SWL at the SWL founding conference in January 1972. The SWL affiliated to the
reunified Fourth International, under the influence of the American section, the
Socialist Workers Party. It was also undoubtedly due to this influence that the SWL itself took the name Socialist Workers Party (SWP). The unity between the former Labor Action Group members and their supporters in other states (generally seen as supporters of the European-based International Majority Tendency of the Fourth International) within the SWL and the majority of the SWL, which supported the positions of the minority faction within the Fourth International, known as the Leninist Trotskyist Faction, was short-lived. A minority of SWL/Socialist Youth Alliance members split in August 1972 and went on to form the Communist League as a national organisation. The Communist League in Australia was co-founded by Queensland doctor John McCarthy (1948–2008), who later played a major role in integrating the CL and the SWP. Author
Peter Robb was the second main driving force, and helped to produce its newspaper,
Militant. McCarthy broke away from the SWP (then Socialist Workers League) to create CL, and then, along with Robb and Langton, rejoined the SWP four years later, in November 1976. Both the Socialist Workers League and the Communist League were recognised as sympathising organisations of the Fourth International in Australia, a situation which remained until the two groups re-united as the Socialist Workers Party in January 1978.
Abandonment of Trotskyism In 1986 the
American SWP broke with
orthodox Trotskyism and disaffiliated from the Fourth International. While maintaining
Leon Trotsky's critique of the
USSR, the party replaced Trotsky's theory of
permanent revolution with the view that socialist revolution in
Third World countries (countries in which, according to Marxist theory, the development of
capitalism has been distorted by
colonialism and
imperialism) will take place in
two connected stages. The SWL followed suit. In the early 1990s it was renamed the Democratic Socialist Party. It contested the
1998 federal election as part of the
Democratic Socialist Electoral League. The Democratic Socialist Electoral League espoused a
left-wing position on most issues, including
privatisation, the environment,
immigration and
civil rights. The party also had a comprehensive preferencing arrangement, supporting the
Greens and some other left-wing groups. It differentiated itself from the Greens by claiming that the latter had no clear economic policy.
Socialist Alliance In 2001, the DSP, along with several other socialist parties including the
International Socialist Organisation, formed the
Socialist Alliance, initially an electoral vehicle. In 2002 the DSP championed the idea of turning Socialist Alliance into more of a party formation, although at first it had to withdraw this proposal as the ISO's opposition threatened to destroy the alliance. In 2003 the DSP became the first (and so far only) Socialist Alliance affiliate to become an internal
tendency within the Alliance, changing its name to the Democratic Socialist Perspective, in line with its view that SA should become a "Multi-Tendency Socialist Party", a view that the May 2003 National Conference of the Socialist Alliance subsequently adopted. Each of these changes of name and tactics has been accompanied, like in many far-left groups, with a turnover of members. While the SWP and DSP recruited many activists from the radical student movement of the 1970s and from various social movements since, it failed to retain most of them for long as the sixties and seventies radicalisation wave has receded. Nonetheless, the DSP has retained a core membership drawn from each upsurge of political struggle, some of whom are founding members of the party back in 1972. The SWP, and then DSP, was led by
Jim Percy as National Secretary from 1972 until his death in 1992. The Socialist Alliance had been created in alliance with other forces in the hopes of using joint electoral work amongst Australian socialists to increase trust and collaboration between socialists, and in the process making socialist organisation a more attractive option to the left. But although it contested the
2001 federal election and the
2004 federal election, as well as several state elections, it has failed to attract significant support. The Socialist Alliance has had two electoral successes, electing Sam Wainwright to Fremantle City Council in 2009 and Sue Bolton to Moreland City Council in 2012. A debate broke out in the DSP in 2005 about its Socialist Alliance orientation but the minority viewpoint that opposed continuing with the Alliance orientation was soundly defeated at the DSP's January 2008 congress. This caused a split, after the opposition was expelled subsequently forming a new organisation the same year, the
Revolutionary Socialist Party. In October 2009, the DSP National Committee proposed that the organisation merge itself into the Socialist Alliance. At the DSP National Congress in January 2010, the membership voted to go ahead with the merger. ==Notable members==