Australian Marxists - Rowing their own boat.

Understanding this renewed political, economic and social force - A report from Marxism Conference 2024.

Over Easter I attended Marxism Conference 2024. Held at Melbourne University, it was three days of intense and interesting presentations and discussions with some 1,000 eager Australian Marxists in attendance. I gave you a hint of what was in store in my Substack post in early March: ‘What’s wood got to do with Marxism?’   

In this post (and subsequent ones) I’ll give you some detail of what I learnt from the conference and why Australian Marxism today needs to be treated seriously. This year’s conference consolidated what I gleaned from Marxism Conference 2023.

To give an overview, Australian Marxism is renewed. It’s organised, focused, professional and has clear strategies. It knows the outcomes it wants for Australian society. It has pretty much thrown off the destructive internal divisions that have caused failure in the past for the hard Left. It’s tired of losing and wants to win. The people running the Australian Marxist agenda are impressive operators.

In explaining what’s going on with Australian Marxism, I’ll offer perspectives on how it can and must be defeated. There are internal contradictions in the Marxist arguments that are the seeds of its own downfall—if they can be utilised.       

A key lesson from this year is that, even though Marxism is an international movement, Australian Marxists have decided to very much organise and ‘row their own boat’.

Here are some quick facts taken from some of the conference in-house presentations.

The organisation: Socialist Alternative

The Marxism Conferences are organised by Socialist Alternative an Australia-wide organisation with just over 500 members. The conferences are its big yearly membership drive targeted primarily at university students but also upper secondary students. In 2023 it says it had around 1,300 attendees, a number I’d believe. This year the numbers seemed to be down a bit to me, but I’d guess they were still close to 1,000. Nevertheless, it’s an impressive attendance number.

In addition to the annual conferences, Socialist Alternative is a key behind-the-scenes organiser of many of the street demonstrations, pickets and other disruptive activities that make for colourful media coverage. Many presentations at the conferences discussed these agitation activities. That is, if there’s an LGBTIQA+, union picket, Free Palestine, ban nuclear, save the forests, anti-racism or any other such themed demonstrations, it’s probable that Socialist Alternative is deeply involved in the organisation, direction and style of the demonstration. It will be there, in the demonstration crowd, whipping up a storm.    

In 2018 Socialist Alternative started The Victorian Socialist Party. At the 2022 Victorian state election it stood candidates in some 21 of the 88 lower house seats. Even though its first preference overall vote was around 1.35 per cent, in 11 of the seats where they stood, they averaged about 8 per cent of the vote. Their voter support was higher than that of One Nation, the Democratic Labour Party, Liberal Democrats and Shooters Party. And much of the support was in outer suburban seats rather than the inner-city seats. They fielded a candidate in the March 2024 Dunkley Federal by-election and achieved a 1.7 per cent first preference vote.

In conference presentations where these issues were discussed, Socialist Alternative leaders explained that their organisation is focused on steady regular growth. Don’t think that these are wild, crazy irrational people. They are in fact nice, polite, articulate, certainly earnest and very genuine and engaging people on an interpersonal level. They are highly professional. Their commitment is no put-on. They believe in the cause. The passion is real. But so too are the cool, analytical, organisational capacity, strategies and focus. This is no amateur outfit.

Different from the recent past

What I detect in Socialist Alternative is a resurgence of Australian Marxism after arguably what was its near-death experiences during the 1990s. The collapse of the Berlin Wall with the breakup of the USSR, China’s seeming embrace of capitalism and the dominance of the pro-market Hawke/Keating ALP governments all contributed to a withering of support for, and influence of, Marxism.

Not now, I believe. There’s a visible change in the Marxist guard, with a new and revitalised generation of members. You can readily mix with them at Marxism conferences and/or join in their demonstrations. But there is a difference, I think, from the past.

After the two World Wars, Marxists emerged from a genuine ‘on the ground’, ‘in the factory’ working class. They had dirt under their fingernails. These ‘new’ Marxists I’ve observed are more intellectual in their ‘class’ background. But they know how to spread their message.

Australian Marxists represent the extreme end of socialist (Left) views in Australia. But, as was openly discussed at both the 2023 and 2024 conferences, the Marxists from Socialist Alternative are deeply embedded in Australian unions, the Greens and the Australian Labor Party.

They were and are openly highly critical of each of these organisations for not being ‘pure’ enough in their socialism. But they work both within and without to push each institution towards the purity of Marxism. This, then, is a core reason for taking the Australian Marxism of today quite seriously. It has a level of focused, organisational capacity and it uses this capacity to push unions, The Greens and the ALP in the Marxist direction.

But more than traditional political influence, the revamped and re-marketed Marxist ideas have gained currency in many government and corporate institutions. This level of influence is not overtly Marxist but exists in a multiplicity of sub-themes all of which have become highly familiar. 

Their core Marxist message and strategy

Marxism as explained at these conferences (2023, 2024) has one central message. Capitalism is the cause of all the bad things that happen to individuals, societies and nations. The message is as simple and plain as that.

The solution to all these bad things is to destroy capitalism.

It doesn’t matter what the issue is: race, gender, sexuality, the boiling planet, housing crisis, domestic violence, Palestine and on and on. To the Marxists, every single problem is a direct consequence of the existence of capitalism.

The solution is to destroy capitalism. Its destruction occurs through revolution by ‘the workers’, now defined by Marxists to embrace everyone who is not a ‘boss’, however the term ‘boss’ is defined.

There is nothing particularly ‘new’ about this argument, capitalism is bad—destroy it. In fact it’s the very old proposition of Karl Marx (1818 to 1883). But Australian Marxists through Socialist Alternative have re-birthed this message to create new appeal.

It’s interesting to sit in on the conference sessions and observe how the ‘capitalism is bad—destroy it’ message is delivered. No matter what the topic, an academic presentation will be given. The presentation will include an historical explanation of events with (to my understanding) a combination of fact and falsehood, with rapid delivery always identifying (or alluding to) an oppressed class. Question time and discussion are skilfully ‘managed’. Should anyone raise a point which might suggest that the narrative is flawed, the response always steers discussion away from the suggested flaw back to the central theme: ‘capitalism is bad—destroy it.’

The object is one of engendering anger that ‘someone’, or a group, or ‘me/I’ is the object of oppression caused by capitalism.

Again, this technique of creating the anger against capitalism and ‘the bosses’ is nothing new. It was Karl Marx’s invention. But what is new is the framing of this in themes relevant to today—for example, choice of sexual orientation.

Perhaps what is also ‘new’ is how this theme resonates in a society with changed attitudes. For example, one presentation referenced the greed of supermarkets with the refrain that ‘we should all be able to walk in, take what we want, and walk out!’ This was greeted with cheers. There were other examples of this.

Perhaps what could be observed is a twist on John F. Kennedy’s refrain, “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” Instead what could be observed was “Ask not what your country can do for you, but demand what your country must do for you.” In other words, the entitlement culture is without doubt highly receptive to the Marxist message.

An overview

What I’ve tried to do in this post is to provide a summary of what I observed, experienced and heard at the Marxism Conference and to give you a flavour of its Australian renewal. In future posts I’ll try to dissect it further and simplify some of the complex messaging involved. But, further, I’ll give an analysis of how Australian Marxism can and must be defeated.

The reality is that libertarian or free market movements, however defined or branded, ignore Marxism at their great peril. Let’s be clear about what’s at stake.

There’s a renewed global battle centred around a straightforward but grand question: how do humans organise themselves to maximise wealth creation but, just as importantly, how to maximise the distribution of wealth so that poverty is not tolerated? 

Those of a libertarian, free market persuasion would perhaps argue that at least the principles of how that question can be successfully addressed are already well established. That is, that libertarian, free market principles give the best opportunity for wealth creation and wide wealth distribution.

In opposition, Marxists say, ‘smash the system’.

Photo by Giu Vicente on Unsplash