Reporting from the Marxist Front Line – Melbourne Australia -Easter
This Easter Australian Marxists are conducting their big shindig Marxism Conference 2023 at Melbourne University.I’m attending and will provide you reports on the event.
It’s important to understand what the Left are arguing. They are without doubt in the political ascendancy in Australia. Look at some simple facts;
Victorian Premier Dan Andrews is from the Socialist Left of the Labor Party.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is also from the Socialist Left of the Labor Party.
The Greens, who hold now a major deciding voting bloc in the Senate can fairly be described as eco-socialist. They are certainly anti-capitalist.
No so long ago socialism was considered an outlier political movement, constrained somewhat to the fringe of politics and contained by the ‘common sense’ of free-market rationalism. But consider this.
In the November 2022 Victorian State Election the Victorian Socialist Party stood candidates in 10 of the 88 lower house seats. Their banner is ‘People before Profit.’ Across those 10 seats they averaged just on 7 percent of the vote. That is just under 49,000 people in those 10 seats voted for a political party with the name ‘Socialist’. That points to a sizable political shift. Up until recently voters knowledge of who were socialist required an understanding of the internal factions with Labor and other parties. Now ‘socialism’ has come out and no longer hides.
This is significant. Melbourne has long been the heartbeat beat of radical, left, intellectual activism in Australia. So it’s no surprise that this shift in the positioning of the left is being revealed most in Melbourne. Yes it’s only an indicator but it’s a strong one and one that can be detected across much of Australia primarily in the capital cities.
Australian politics has moved in a substantial way. It’s important to understand what Marxists are saying.
Below is the program for the conference.
Looking at the topics themselves says a lot about what Marxists think. There seem to be general themes that;
Society is in crisis
There’s an enemy attacking ‘us’
It’s necessary to be angry
Activism is essential.
I’ll sit in sessions and report on what’s being presented. Two topics that do intrigue me is the apparent views that (a) the Communist Party of China under Xi Jinping is pursuing capitalism. (Sunday 11.45am) and (b) Chip technology is a new imperialism (Saturday 11.45am). Ummm! Intriguing !!!!
Program link
Opening night Panel Thursday 6 April
Fight back against rasicm, the far right, war and the bosses offensive
Friday 7 April 10am
The Climate Crisis and Capitalism
Lessons from the global fight for abortion rights
The Fatal Shore. Why did the British colonise Australia?
Mark Fishers Capitalist Realism: A revolutionary critique
The Global Far Right
From apostles to terrorists: the early revolutionary movement in Russia
Stalinism and literature
Friday 11.45am
Gender oppression and capitalism today
Crisis: The global economy today
Big Brother at work and & the surveillance state: how can workers rebel?
The United Front
How radical is mutual aid?
Marx, Ireland and the colonial world
Crisis and Resistance in Latin America
Fred Maynard and the early indigenous struggle for civil rights
Friday 2.15pm
Lessons from the Black Power Movement with Dr Gary Foley
Why are workers the revolutionary class?
Percy Brookfield: Australia’s rebel parliamentarian.
The far rights’ crusade against women and trans people
Protest and repression in Australia today
Working class environmentalism: from the campaign against uranium to opposing toxic waste dumps
Deadly subs, war games and the U Alliance: Australia’s role in the new cold war.
Marx’s early journalistic writings.
Friday 4.14pm
The Russian Revolution: The real story
Let them in and Let them Stay: Refugee Rights in Australia today
Never say there’s only death for you: Jewish resistance in World War Two.
Pan-Africanism, Marxism and Walter Rodney.
Environmental NGOs: getting paid to preserve the system
Strategies for party building: the experience of Anticapitalistas within Podemos
Eyewitness report from occupied Palestine
Shop Committees, Bureaucracies and radical workers in the flood tide 1968-75
Friday 7.15pm Panel: The International Struggle for Socialism
Saturday 8 April 10am
Can capitalism exist without war
A short history of American Trotskyism
Love and Money: The commercialisation of sex
A world with Marvel? A Marxist critique of the film industry
Abolitionism
Clashing powers: the USA versus China today
Eyewitness to Free Derry 1969-1972
Women, life, freedom: Rebellion in Iran
Saturday 11.45am
Understanding Stalinism and its impact
Debates in the Comintern: Fascism
Paradise on strike: class struggle in the Pacific
The marketisation of our identities: capitalism, individualism and the rise of identity politics.
Chip wars: the cutting edge of imperialism.
Wobblies: The Australian Industrial Workers of the World.
Marxism, nature and the current ecological crisis
Years of rage: Social Conflicts in the Fraser Era
Saturday 2.15pm
Why do we need socialism to end oppression
The Theory of the Offensive
The unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism: Socialist feminism debates
The future of socialist electoral campaigns in Victoria: politics and strategy
Engels after Marx: A revolutionary intervention into Social Democracy
Symbolism vs Liberation: a Critique of the Voice to Parliament
Pogroms and protest: A socialist analysis of Palestine and Israel today
The USA today
Saturday 4:15pm
Why do socialist need to be organised?
Is it too late to save the planet?
Gandhi, the left and Indian independence
100 years of Georg Lukacs ‘History and Class Consciousness’
Struggles in Putin’s Russia
Bolsheviks, elections and party building
Theories of fascism: Tim Mason. Nazism and the primacy of politics
Strikes: Britains winter of discontent.
Saturday 7pm
AGITKI: a journey through Russian revolutionary cinema
Back to the barricades: French workers revolt
After the wall fell: debates on the European left since 1989
Radical folk songs from the Australian class struggle
The Poly Tech Occupation in Hong Kong
Sunday 10 April 10am
How do ideas change
Trotskyist vs Stalinist anti-fascism: scenes from America 1930s-1950s
Direct Action
Socialist in the history of the battle for birth control
Unions, the ALP and the ebb tide 1983-1996
Revolutionaries and the colonial world: The 1920 Baku People’s world” The 1920 Baku People’s Congress of the East
The climate crisis in the global south
Are the Australian Greens a genuine radical alternative?
Sunday 11.45am
What would a workers revolution look like?
Marx’s Political Interventions: The Gotha Program
Greenwashing: Why the market can’t solve the climate crisis
Glasnost, perestroika and State Capitalism crisis. Observations on the last years of the USSR
Broad parties and revolutionary independence: summing up the debates
What is Xi Jinping’s Political Project to Save Chinese Capitalism
Rank and file organising in Australian unions today
Indigenous Liberation and Socialism
Sunday 2.15pm
Q and A with Socialists Alternative
Allyship vs Solidarity
Under the paving stones: May 1968 and the French Trotskyists
The 1967 Referendum for Indigenous Rights: Lessons for today
Nadezhda Krupskaya: Russian revolutionary
Julian Assange and the free press
Hard boiled: Marxism and crime fiction
The National Question
Sunday 4.15pm
Radical History Tour of Melbourne Uni
Marxism and the holocaust
Australian healthcare: History and reality today
Students and revolution: The Italian Hot Autumn
The Ukraine war and world imperialism
Eyewitness to the overthrow of an Egyptian dictator tahrir Square
Joh Brown: Abolitionist firebrand
Sounding the French Revolution: A Marxist tour of Classical Music
7.15pm
Paul.
I think that with the fall of the Berlin Wall, there's been an assumption that market economics etc has 'won' the day. But as time marched on there's been a failure to re-argue market economics & liberal democracy in language that's relevant to 'todays' generation. The fact is however that such ideas must be re-asserted for and by each generation in language to which each generation relates. That's the challenge. And the first step in this process is to properly understand the arguments of 'the other side'. Hence my immersion in the 3 day Marxist conference. I'll admit that the conference was a wake-up call. I released the extent to which I was not relating to these earnest and well intentioned folk. Lessons must be learned.
Thanks, Ken, for monitoring Marxists. Dirty job but someone has to do it, right? I ask myself why, after well documented Marxist experiments resulted in mountains of human bodies and rivers of human blood, Marxist die-hards are again trumpeting the hollow promises of socialism. What use is an education system, especially such a well funded one, if it fails to inculcate the grim lessons of political history? As Western civilisation turns on itself and totalitarian regimes are touted by some among our political class as trustworthy partners in trade and culture, we are failing to teach the superior virtues of market economics and liberal democracy.