The Australian Socialist Party: A project to transform the left

In June last year a unanimous decision was made by the Victorian Socialists’ conference to establish a nationwide organisation known as the Socialist Party. The enthusiastic welcome that this new party has received has exceeded many expectations, with over 5,500 dues-paying members after just six months, making it easily the largest socialist organisation in Australia for some decades.

We are well overdue for such a party. Economic inequality is at its highest point in 20 years as billionaires are still expanding their wealth at breakneck speeds and corporations enjoy unchecked power. All recent efforts to patch up the gaping holes in the social safety net involve greater handouts to businesses – be they developers, energy companies, privatised care providers, and more. These subsidies and tax breaks have led to soaring profits for the bosses and worse outcomes for working-class people, as demonstrated by the rolling crises in childcare and aged care facilities. Meanwhile real wages are falling or stagnating and standards of living are drastically falling. A shocking 99.3 percent of rentals are unaffordable for people on a minimum wage, while the cost of basic shelter keeps rising and rising. The right-wing Labor government has overseen all of this, with the increasingly Trumpified Coalition – not to mention Hanson’s insurgent One Nation Party – baying for even more attacks. If this wasn’t bad enough, Albanese’s decision to back Israel’s genocide in Gaza and Trump’s imperial aggression in Venezuela has made it clear that there are no red lines in the Australian ruling class’s support for US empire and AUKUS.

This article will explore the context, rationale and basis for this new party, from the perspective of its largest constituent part, Socialist Alternative.

Growing space for a new left

The decision to launch a federal party arose partly in response to the promising electoral results achieved by Victorian Socialists (VS) in the most recent federal elections. Kath Larkin achieved the standout result in the progressive inner-north seat of Cooper, winning 9,000 votes at 8.4 percent of the total. Similarly, Sue Bolton, who ran on the Socialist Alliance ticket but was endorsed and campaigned-for heavily by VS, won a similarly impressive 8 percent. Both candidates more than doubled their previous results. In a similar seat in the West, VS achieved a solid 6.2 percent. This was only up slightly from the previous election due to a strong campaign by a relatively progressive and well-known Greens candidate. VS has always prided itself on seriously contesting in working-class outer suburbs as well as more traditional left areas, a decision that was yet again vindicated when we doubled our previous result and received 6,227 first preference votes, at 6.4 percent, in the multicultural working-class seat of Scullin. Indeed, it was in this seat where VS won its strongest results at the booth level, with booths in Campbellfield and Epping returning 20 and 17 percent respectively.

The party has developed a unique style of campaigning, which seeks to bypass the traditional limits placed on left parties, namely the deliberate disinterest of the corporate media and political elite. Instead we seek to mobilise and activate our sizeable member and volunteer base, through doorknocking drives, mobilisations at polling booths, community forums and other such means. While over a thousand people participated in these activities in the four electorates we campaigned in, much of it relies on the activist core of the party, to which I will return later. VS was also boosted by running Jordan van den Lamb for the Senate. Jordan is an activist who has made a name for himself by producing witty anti-capitalist videos, particularly about the housing crisis. But beyond these factors, VS campaigners in all three seats reported increasing numbers of voters explaining that they “always vote socialist”. It is immensely uplifting to hear people in their mid-20s saying, as many did, that they’ve “voted socialist their whole life”. This reflects the cumulative impact of efforts over many years, both during election times but also as part of street and union campaigns. In particular, VS has been centrally involved in the Palestine movement, with many of our key candidates playing leading roles.

The other immediate trigger was the poor election result achieved by the Greens. While their overall vote held up, the party lost three of its four lower house seats, leading to a crisis in confidence. To understand this situation it’s important to look at the party’s broad strategy for electoral success. Since its foundation the Greens have poured resources into wealthy inner-city and regional seats, ignoring working-class voters in the middle and outer ring suburbs. This was premised on an electoral coalition that combined younger and more left-wing voters with the upwardly mobile progressive intelligentsia, including educated professionals, and other white-collar workers, academics, managers, retirees, and bohemian types. While the former are prepared to be more radical on both economic and social questions, the latter tend to be far more moderate and are mainly focused on social issues such as climate.

The Greens clearly shifted to the left under former leader Adam Bandt, and some of their more left-wing MPs consistently supported mobilisations against the Gaza genocide. This increased their support among younger and more left-wing voters, as well as working-class migrant communities, as measured in an increase in their primary vote in a range of more working-class areas. At the same time, it alienated parts of their more moderate base, who swung back to Labor as the “sensible” middle ground between Dutton’s Trumpism and the “radical” and “disruptive” Greens. This was partly achieved by a relentless media campaign against the party for its “extremist” stance on Gaza and parliamentary negotiations. The party was also squeezed from the right by Teals and Independents, and bled votes to its left to VS. Although its solid statewide results meant its representation in the Senate remained strong, the loss of three-quarters of its lower house seats allowed the media to crow about the dangers of radicalism.

These contradictory dynamics have led to much soul-searching and debate among Greens figures, and the future direction of the party is unclear. For the moment the party has bent back towards a more moderate position under the leadership of Larissa Waters, and recently voted with the government on a package of regressive environment laws with only the most token effort made to improve them. Rather than passively watch these contradictions play out, we should recognise that there is a space and a responsibility to try and win working-class and left-wing organisers and voters to shift their allegiance from a bourgeois-liberal party to a clear socialist one.

These conjunctural issues have allowed the Socialist Party to gain a hearing in wider parts of the left than might have been thought possible. But the real reason to go national is that the capitalist system has badly failed working-class people across Australia, not just in Victoria. Millions of workers have broken with the ALP in response to a long-term evolution to the right on both economic and social issues, as evidenced by its primary vote being at historic lows. Living standards have stagnated and in some cases fallen, while anti-migrant scapegoating is on the rise. This is not a purely Australian phenomenon, but is a broader trend towards the collapse of the institutions that have governed Western capitalism for nearly a century. Globally, there is an insurgent far right that is now backed by substantial sections of capital, and here we have a new reality of a relatively insurgent Hanson-Joyce-Reinhart alliance.

There is therefore both an urgent need and a clear political space for a nationwide alternative to major parties. And unlike the ALP and the Greens, whose organisations are entirely electoralist and overwhelmingly made up of inner-city technocrats, the Socialist Party believes that this alternative needs to be built among and led by socialists and working-class people, a party that actively intervenes into class struggle in all its forms.

Evolution of a political experiment

Given the Socialist Party has emerged from the success of the Victorian branch, it’s worth briefly recapitulating our history. Far from being born fully formed, the Victorian Socialist project has been evolving constantly. It began as a tentative proposal from socialist councillor Steven Jolly, who hoped to unite the two biggest socialist organisations in Australia, Socialist Alternative and the Socialist Alliance, behind a push to elect Jolly to Victoria’s upper house. While Socialist Alternative had formally been open to electoral interventions prior to this, in practice the majority of members had a fairly dismissive and ultra-left attitude. After much discussion and debate, but eventually the decision was made to throw the group’s efforts behind the attempt to bring socialist politics into the political mainstream.

As it turned out, despite winning decent results in the 2018 state election, the coalition behind VS lasted less than a year, with Jolly resigning rather than engage with a grievance procedure resulting from an accusation of sexist misconduct. In 2020 the Socialist Alliance also walked out, preferring to build their own brand.

Thus by June 2020, less than two years after its creation, the party was at a fundamental turning point. The founding premise for the organisation was that a socialist party could only win strong results and real credibility on the back of unity between the state’s key socialist activists, including figures with some existing profile. We also argued that the project was only viable on the basis that it had an imminent prospect of getting a parliamentarian elected, which was no longer immediately on the cards. It was not clear if the party could survive in the new scenario. But it was quickly decided that those who remained had both the responsibility and ability to keep pushing forward with this socialist experiment. Indeed, there would be some benefits to being free from the shackles of the initially quite bureaucratic party structure, which were heavily premised on factional negotiations between the three founding elements of the party. As well, despite failing to get a candidate elected in 2022, the party emerged stronger than ever, winning solid votes across a number of electorates and substantially building the active membership and supporter base of VS.

VS has therefore continued to slowly but steadily expand its reach, profile and membership. It has built its presence in a range of left-wing campaigns, most notably by initiating a protest of 15,000 in defence of abortion rights in 2022, by heavily mobilising for various pickets around Melbourne, and campaigning in defence of public housing. The Palestine movement has recently become a focus, with members throwing themselves into local council groups, student strikes, pickets of weapons factories and the organising of the main city demonstrations. VS members were key to organising the only two political strikes for Palestine in Australia so far, as part of the ASU for Palestine union grouping. We were also proud to run Reem Yunis, a long-term Palestinian socialist, in a federal by-election to try to bring Palestine into the otherwise mundane political conversation between the major parties. All of this shows that a socialist party can intervene at both the electoral and extra-parliamentary levels to strengthen working-class and left-wing politics, and has helped attract a range of serious figures to the organisation.

At the same time, the avenues for members to participate in the life of the party continue to grow and develop. The organisation gradually evolved towards a structure that allowed for genuine membership participation and control. This was not some smooth process. Indeed, we in Socialist Alternative were initially quite sceptical of creating a parallel, more moderate organisation that would repeat the failed experience of broad left party experiments internationally. But as growing numbers of serious independent socialists put their hands up to propose initiatives and activities, the contradiction between wanting such people to be involved yet limiting their opportunities to do so became clear. So Socialist Alternative has gradually changed our thinking on this issue.

In Victoria we have substantially expanded the structures for member participation on the already established basis of one member, one vote. Local branches and districts have since been meeting regularly, and are now electing their own candidates and establishing various local structures and committees. The Socialist Workers’ Caucus has been established as a focal point for socialist trade union organising. Local branches have thrown themselves into campaigns to prevent cuts to community services, against the far right, and will continue to do so as issues arise. All of this is most advanced in Melbourne where the party is most developed and well organised, largely due to the size of Socialist Alternative. But the hope is that this broad model – adjusted for local conditions – can be expanded elsewhere over time as both SA and the SP grow.

A new take on old debates

When VS was first being established, there were many critics, both inside and outside Socialist Alternative, who pointed to the disastrous outcome of other broad left electoral formations, including parties like the Scottish Socialist Party, Communist Refoundation in Italy, Respect in Britain, and so on. No disagreements there. Even the New Anticapitalist Party in France, which started off more positively, has ended up being a terrible setback, as the party collapsed in bitter acrimony, with long-term militants lost to the radical left.

Like these organisations, VS does not require one to be an explicit revolutionary Marxist in order to be a member. It is a party for people who want to overthrow capitalism and achieve socialism, but it does not specify the exact means of doing so, nor the exact vision of socialism being ultimately fought for. Of course, these are far from secondary issues. To win a better world, we will need a mass socialist party that is crystal clear on the need to abolish the capitalist state and replace it with a radical, working-class democracy. And if we are to put an end to imperialist wars and adapt to climate change in a humane manner, we will need to do this at a global scale. So it would obviously be a problem if SA’s involvement in VS led to a watering down of our revolutionary politics and program to the lowest common denominator. But for now, there are no signs of this happening.

This reflects that there are some important differences between VS and the many instances of new left or broad left parties created in the last few decades. When the Fourth International consciously adopted its broad party perspective, it was merely the organisational reflex of a broader ideological shift to the right. This saw the organisation begin to abandon Marxism and adapt to neoliberal identity and “movement” politics following the collapse of Stalinism. Much of the rest of the left, while not as consciously liquidationist, was similarly shaken by these events. For socialists with illusions in Stalinism, the fall of the USSR compounded the isolation and weakness generated by decades of one-sided class war by the rich, otherwise known as neoliberalism.

For this part of the left, creating parties that were not revolutionary was an alternative to clear Marxist organisation. The tactic of uniting a broader swathe of the left in a single organisation – which can be appropriate at certain times – was raised almost to the level of principle. Those who insisted on the need to build revolutionary organisations and maintain clear Marxist politics were dismissed as sectarians. Most of these so-called “broad left” parties collapsed fairly quickly, while those that survive have politically and organisationally degenerated beyond recognition. The “successes” of Syriza and the Workers’ Party of Brazil represent one possible form of this degeneration; the other, far more common, are exemplified by the disintegration and rightward shift of the majority of the old Revolutionary Communist League in France and the Democratic Socialist Party/Socialist Alliance in Australia.

For Socialist Alternative, the process of launching VS has been quite different. As previously referenced, the initiative to create the party was not ours. Rather, we responded to a new and important proposal – socialist unity around a real and practical project – with enthusiasm. Far from seeking to give up on revolutionary politics, there was a lot of apprehension about running in bourgeois elections and the cumulative impact of working with forces to our right.

After many discussions and debates, and the experience of the first campaign itself, the organisation has emerged clearer and stronger. We discovered that electoral work was not fundamentally different from other political interventions into student and trade unions, single-issue campaigns, and so on. Each form of struggle and activity has its own rhythms and challenges, and requires a specific set of tactics and strategies. But the basic task remains the same: to assess the possibilities and then fight for a program that can maximise the radical potential of a given moment or campaign, while simultaneously doing our best to bring a periphery closer to a broader Marxist worldview.

Importantly, Socialist Alternative also proved capable of recruiting radical workers and students to revolutionary politics through the various VS campaigns. This is premised on an insistence that there will always be a need for a clear revolutionary organisation based on Marxist principles, regardless of the other coalitions and collaborations such an organisation may participate in. Thus, far from electoral work being a path away from revolutionary politics, VS was actually becoming a possible entry point to it. In turn, the growing strength of revolutionary organisation increases the socialist left’s capacity to intervene into and shape the politics of broader society, be it in trade unions, on university campuses, in social movements or in parliamentary elections. As it stands, despite the growth of the Socialist Party nationally, the capacity of the state branches to carry out initiatives remains fairly closely correlated with the number of Socialist Alternative members present on the ground. Which is yet another example of the general truism that building a revolutionary organisation strengthens every struggle.

A fighting socialist program

VS has been able to win a hearing due to our capacity to raise radical but concrete slogans and demands. These connect with people’s anger at some aspect of capitalism and simultaneously point to a more general socialist perspective. For instance our call for a rent freeze directly answers the needs of millions of working-class renters facing the current housing crisis, while also pointing to the need to take housing, a basic need, out of the hands of the market. Our calls to dramatically expand public housing construction, as opposed to the Greens’ more ambiguous calls that include “social housing” (privately owned and managed), builds on this, further emphasising the need to decommodify essential services. The same can be said about our approach to revitalising public health and education, the nationalisation of key sectors of the economy, challenging the systematic oppression of women and other groups, and our anti-imperialist foreign policy.

Having said that, in the context of socialist electoral campaigns historically, VS policies are far from the most maximal. This reflects our assessment that slogans we raise should connect to the most radical edge of really-existing left sentiment, rather than pretending we stand before a more politicised working class of earlier generations. It is a conscious concession to the reality of a greatly weakened workers’ movement and the dramatically lowered expectations produced by years of right-wing attacks and limited defensive struggles.

Yet there is no sense in which this concrete program of action is a reformist program that aims to prop up capitalism. VS does not raise slogans which encourage faith in reactionary institutions such as arbitration courts, the police or the military. We do not advocate an independent foreign policy, but to end the US alliance and sanction Israel. We do not call for “fair” wage rises but for wages to grow faster than inflation. Our goal is not to push for tiny changes through coalition with Labor or the Greens, but to be a voice for working-class and anti-capitalist resistance, both inside the parliament and on the streets. As well, we always insist that our solutions are radical, and refrain from hiding or underplaying their anti-capitalist spirit in any way.

At the same time, as the party grows and evolves, it is increasingly clear that our politics cannot be confined to the immediate slogans of election campaigns. For one thing, the party will need to be flexible, responding to new developments, shifting political terrain and new issues. Israel’s slaughter in Gaza is a case in point, requiring urgent new slogans to be raised and integrated with the more timeless earlier statements on the rights of Palestinians to full liberation. So too the rise of the new far right, which will require the party to think through how it responds and what it demands of the state.

Inevitably there will also be deeper discussion of strategy and politics that arise as part of the normal life of the organisation. While the organisation should not become a left debating club but remain focused on activities that build its roots among the class, it is important that there be room for serious political discussions at conferences, branch meetings, and so on. At the most recent conference, for instance, there was a useful debate about the nature of imperialism, which the vast majority agreed was a feature of capitalism, and not a synonym for Western domination. And Socialist Alternative remains extremely hostile to authoritarian capitalist regimes that cloak themselves in Marxist language, the most important being China and the former USSR. We are proposing that the party explicitly rejects this monstrous distortion of socialism which has discredited the left and polluted our organisations with anti-working class theories and practices.

It’s not hard to imagine other future debates; the limits of parliamentary road to socialism, strategies for challenging union bureaucracies, and so on. One of the most important of these – a question that led to disaster in so many left parties in Europe and Latin America – is that of refusing to participate in bourgeois governments. Socialist Alternative has and will continue to put forward revolutionary answers to these questions and we will continue to try and convince others of these views. Other individuals, tendencies and organisations within VS also have this right. If the party is to succeed it will have to develop a culture of collaboration on the basis of open discussion and debate, where the majority views are respected. The rights of minorities are already enshrined in the constitution of the state-based parties, which should be reflected nationally as well.

All members of VS will have to continue to think through how all this plays out over time, and approach such discussions in good spirit. It would be naive to pretend that this process will be all sunshine and rainbows. There will undoubtedly be serious debates. Every organisation and individual will rightly have their own red lines, but there is no reason that splits or expulsions should result from every disagreement. As well, the sort of party that emerges from this process is far from certain in advance. Our hope is that over time this process can result in a growing membership that increasingly understands the tasks and challenges of overthrowing capitalism by revolutionary class struggle; one that can challenge the right-wing union leaders, and replace the ALP and the Greens as the party of the Australian working class, youth and left. It may also fall apart in bitter acrimony. But that is true of any political project. And regardless, the strength and experience of revolutionary socialism will hopefully have expanded through the process.

A party of active members

The construction of a nationwide socialist party of around 6,500 people in less than a year is a real achievement. But it comes on the back of seven years of painstaking work that was only possible because of the committed cadres and youth brought to the party by Socialist Alternative. This has given the party a network of educated and experienced activists who are prepared to invest enormous amounts of time and energy into the project. Indeed it’s impossible to imagine the party existing in its current form without the steady growth and development of Socialist Alternative over the years. The most obvious reason is the capacity for endless door-knocking, letter-boxing and so on of our highly committed membership. But it goes beyond this, with the organisation providing key political leadership from a local to a national level, driving many branch and state-wide initiatives, and engaging in longer-term strategic thinking.

This core has then provided a scaffold around which the Socialist Party has grown to incorporate people with a wide range of experiences, skills and knowledge. The only requirement is that comrades be sincere fighters for the party and for socialism, an important caveat given that the organisation can attract sectarians whose contributions are entirely destructive.

An example of this process at work was the establishment of the workers’ caucus to coordinate the trade union work of VS members. This was initiated by comrades outside Socialist Alternative, and fairly quickly won broad support as it proved capable of attracting some serious activists from a range of industries. Since then fractions have been established in a number of unions, including education, health care, public service, the community sector and more. The teachers’ group, Socialists in Schools, has already had some success in becoming a small pole of attraction for radical teachers and school staff, while the healthcare workers have helped lead a partially successful, though still ongoing, campaign to defend public health clinics in inner Melbourne. By fighting to organise and recruit leftists and militants to the party, and by popularising socialist politics in the union movement more broadly, these efforts can lay the foundations for rebuilding a working-class left worthy of the name. And if these groups can grow their numbers and deepen their interventions, their activities can begin to demonstrate the kind of working-class power we ultimately need to challenge the bosses and their system.

Looking forward

The global capitalist system is in a period of profound stress and strain. After decades where the rich aggressively redistributed wealth from the bottom of society to the top, there is now a fundamental disconnect between those who rule and those who are governed and exploited. The old order is facing a crisis of legitimacy and control. Institutions of both the centre left and centre right are breaking down as frustrated populations search for new parties and politics to give voice to their anger.

This is also true in Australia. Despite the last federal and state elections registering big wins for Labor in two-party preferred percentages and parliamentary seats won, their primary vote remains near historic lows. The Liberals are being torn apart, their moderate wing now largely an external faction (the Teals), freeing up the party’s rabid right wing to shift closer towards Trumpism. Meanwhile, mass support for independent and non-major party candidates continues to grow.

In this moment of flux, the far right has a project around which to unite the most reactionary sections of society. With its bold fascistic message it is achieving terrifying success in a range of countries and contexts, from India and Hungary to France and the US. Here in Australia Pauline Hanson has finally managed to do the same, reacting violently to the Palestine movement, the elevated levels of migration of recent years, and the radicalisation of a sector of the right. One Nation, along with similar parties elsewhere, do not simply reflect a section of mass consciousness but actively shape it in their image. They have built complex political ecosystems to propagate their bigoted program, skilfully using the full capacities of the internet, along with decades of grassroots organising and institution building. One Nation is still catching up on this aspect, but is being assisted by recent converts in Barnaby Joyce (former Deputy Prime Minister) and Gina Rinehart (Australia’s richest person).

It’s time that socialists invested the same effort to popularise our messages and our brand of politics. Instead of scapegoating migrants, “dole-bludgers”, trans people and women, our message is that it is the rich who are to blame and that capitalism is the root cause of all of our problems. We will fight to re-centre working class people and their grievances in a world that couldn’t care less, and to aim their fire at the rich and their political mouthpieces.

We know that we speak the truth, but we will not win simply because we are right. Rather, there is an urgent need to build a network of activists and organisers to fight for this world view. Elections have been the first focus of the party, but we will need an organisation that can take the fight well beyond elections, which in reality decide very little about the fate of the class struggle. Ultimately, to seriously challenge capitalism, we need a revolutionary mass party rooted in radicals at schools, universities and workplaces across the country.

The transformation of VS into a nationwide party can hopefully be a step towards the construction of this kind of organisation, either through the evolution of the SP itself or simply because building the Socialist Party alongside Socialist Alternative helps convince people of the need for revolutionary politics and organisation.

But for now, our goal is to bring unashamedly radical politics into the mainstream, to give working-class people a socialist voice in parliament, in our unions, and in every sphere of society. We in Socialist Alternative do not pretend to have a full scheme for how things will play out in the long run, though we are determined to fight for revolutionary politics at every turn. Building the socialist movement is never easy, and we will be blocked and slandered at every turn by the establishment and its hired guns in the capitalist media. But there is clearly an audience for socialist ideas and a growing minority prepared to actively fight for them. It’s time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

Omar Hassan is an editor of Marxist Left Review. He is a long-term activist in anti-fascist and Palestine solidarity work and has written extensively on the Middle East.