Comrade John Percy died ten years ago this week. One of Australia’s greatest socialists, he was politically active even in his final days.
The timing of his death coincided with a four-day wild-cat strike at my workplace in Melbourne – MLDC, a large distribution centre, with hundreds of workers on strike and picketing the huge site. The strike was led by socialists and I messaged John, through his partner Eva, about the size and vitality of the strike – which was victorious. On his death bed John took inspiration from this and the critical role that his comrades were playing in it.
Given the size and importance of the strike, and my own (less important) role in it, I judged that I needed to stay in Melbourne to continue organising on the site. So I could not attend John’s Funeral in Sydney. That was a misjudgement that I regret.
Still, there is a lot more that I learned from John while he was alive than could have been said at the funeral. I worked together in the same organisations as John at every stage of my political life until his death. That is 21 years: from 1994-2015. We were together in the Democratic Socialist Party, together in founding the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and then again when the RSP fused, briefly, with Socialist Alternative from 2013-15. Today in Red Spark, we still use basic party building texts that he and other DSP leaders developed – like this one, on building a revolutionary party – for our required membership education classes.
There is no doubt, were he alive today, that John would argue for the need to rebuild a Marxist party in Australia along lines broadly similar to the old DSP. That was his life’s work and the need for such a party has only become more urgent over the last ten years. As John would say, “now more than ever” is the time to become active, to seize the day, to take bold initiative, to wage a serious fight.
One of the slogans from the DSP period that needs reviving today is “we have a world to win”. This slogan came out of The Communist Manifesto. It resonated with the bold optimism of 1960s youth radicalism – John’s generation – and lasted in the DSP into the 1990s or early 2000s. The slogan says the world is ours – but we must take it, which means fighting for it.
John would agree today that we need a new generation of radical youth to organise bold steps against the injustice and destruction of imperialism in its current form. However, a major problem in this country (and in most countries) is that we face the disconnectedness between the historical revolutionary tradition from current popular struggles. Radicalising youth today are not connected with any revolutionary tradition and are exposed to the Marxist tradition only online. Most often this happens in eclectic forms since the Marxist ideas are not being espoused by a major organised force that attempts to apply and implement them. As a result, the new radicals often express eclectic, not yet collectivist, consciousness. This outlook or consciousness is difficult to organise and therefore has difficulty developing into something more adequate.
The importance, in this context, of the 1960-70s generation radicals, like John, can’t be overstated. That radicalisation was profound and had long-lasting impacts – the DSP organisation was one of them. The oversized role of quite old social democratic or radical figures like Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders is another. No comparable radicalisation has occurred since, even though later radical events or groups have been important. The historical sense of all post-1991 generations is weak. And sense of the past is a requisite for sense of the future. The eclectic learning needs to be brought into a collective project that includes connections to tradition. Otherwise, key lessons will need to be re-learned from scratch – and it’s not clear we have time to allow that process to run its course unassisted. The newly active Palestine Solidarity Generation of today will prove crucial in shaping what is possible over the next few years. However, this generation too is weakened by its lack of organisation and link with the past.
In this context of the frayed and tenuous linkages with the radical and Marxist tradition, John’s rather early death is tragic. Sixty-nine years seems young for someone who took such good care of their health. John would have turned 80 next year. However, it is not only John’s direct participation that is needed – obviously that can’t happen anymore.
John (and his brother Jim) left a very large footprint. They made personal contributions, but they also built a party – a team of people with various strengths. Many other important figures and contributors on the Australian left were developed in that framework – hundreds of people, almost all of them younger than John. We would dearly love to have John here today to help with all the important work, as he would no doubt wish to do. Now it is for us younger comrades and, more than anything, for the new generation to shoulder the weight of building an organisation that is better than the past. It is our experience over the last few years that the special and complimentary role of the older generation is, speaking frankly, completely indispensable.
The DSP was itself derived from the legacy of the early Comintern period under Lenin and from the Bolshevik experience more broadly. When I joined it had become the dominant Australian current on the far left (though not the only current, reflected in the attempt to merge with the SPA in the late 1980s and early 1990s). Perhaps it is due to the historical growth, ambition and seriousness of the DSP tradition that its documents are such a gold mine for assisting us going about practical party building work today.
Many of these historical cadres or supporters of the DSP are still around, though dispersed. Many that support the rebuilding of a revolutionary party in the Bolshevik tradition are not linked together in any framework to do that. Only a very small number have returned to political activity since its decline in the 2000s.
A glaring contradiction is that the proud history, bold dynamism and theoretical richness of the Australian SWP/DSP tradition that John led appears to contradict the rather paltry number of us who remain active in any similar framework. Most young radicals have never even heard of the DSP. Wikipedia essentially is silent on its historical influence and, so far at least, nobody has corrected this. Today, we pass to new members of Red Spark John’s A History of the DSP and Resistance – members that had not heard of the DSP prior to joining. Red Spark can never be a reproduction of the DSP but we will continue to build on its tradition. That is only one aspect of the weak historical sense of the new generation.
The historical contributions of the DSP belong, of course, not just to John but also to the organisation’s cadre. They represent the potential link between the newly radicalising generation and the radical legacy of the 1960s of which John was one outstanding leader. The central importance of the few ex-DSP already engaged in the new re-building work today shows how crucial it is that other unorganised DSP comrades do the same. The roles of these experienced comrades, mostly themselves quite old now, remain crucial in a dynamic learning and working relationship with inexperienced, newer comrades.
John, if he were still alive, would encourage the older comrades to step forward once again, in whatever ways possible, and help in the re-building project of today. John was always completely open, in his own quiet yet firm way, about asking people to join the party, to become a “friend of” the party, to support events, contribute money – whatever is possible in different circumstances.
It is, of course, with profound sadness and weakness that we miss the contribution that John, Jim, Doug Lorimer (1953-2013) and many others would make today to our understanding of the turbulent changes of the imperialist system. What we can do, to best counteract that pain and to honour their memory, is contribute to rebuilding working people’s power under the new conditions. We may be very weak – for the moment at least – but so is the bourgeoisie. Times of turbulence and radicalisation are not times for passivity.
As John would say, “we have a world to win”, “now more than ever”. Let’s get organised once again to win it before it is too late.
John Percy Presente!
Comrades can view photos and memories of John on the John Percy memorial Facebook page here.
John Percy Memorial Lecture
Anti-Imperialist Solidarity Campaigns in Australia: Indonesia, Vietnam, Timor Leste and Palestine today
Wednesday, 20 August, 6pm – 8pm AEST
Kathleen Syme Library and Community Centre, Carlton VIC and online
A special, memorial lecture by Max Lane will be held in memory of John Percy in Melbourne on August 20, the tenth anniversary of his death. Percy (1945 – August 19, 2015) was a socialist, activist, and founding member of the Socialist Workers Party (later renamed the Democratic Socialist Party – DSP) in 1972. Among the important figures on the Australian socialist left in the later part of the Twentieth Century Percy remained a Marxist revolutionary leader throughout his life.
The DSP and Percy held international solidarity as central to developing the revolutionary movement in Australia and played leading roles in solidarity campaigns against the Vietnam war and for East Timor. The memorial lecture by Dr Max Lane, held on the tenth anniversary of Percy’s passing, will outline the history of important post-war international solidarity campaigns – not only those supported or led by the DSP but also the Communist Party of Australia and others.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83481092208?pwd=WjSbytF6BWYDx2Dl8DTLAQnIFGtXuH.1
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