The following are excerpts from Environment, Capitalism and Socialism, drafted for the  Democratic Socialist Party of Australia by Dick Nichols,and  published by Resistance Books in 1999. The book can be purchased from Resistance Books' website. The extensive footnotes are only available in the hard copy. (The DSP merged with the Socialist Alliance in January 2010.) Despite its age and inevitable flaws, this book was ahead of its time in many respects and was among the first serious attempts by a revolutionary party to apply a Marxist analysis to the environment question. It remains an essential document for socialists and ecologists alike.

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February 22, 2011 -- Solidarity rally in Sydney with the Libyan people in their struggle for democracy. Photo by Pip Hinman. See an article about this action here: http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/46782

[For more coverage of Libya, click HERE.]

By Nick Fredman

March 16, 2011 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Most interested observers of the public statements and activity of the Australian organisations Socialist Alternative (SAlt) and Socialist Alliance in regard to Libya would surely conclude that the two groups are in concord: a similar analysis of the pro-imperialist nature of the regime and enthusiastic support for the struggle of the workers and oppressed against dictatorship. Which makes it quite disappointing that Corey Oakley of SAlt has launched a swingeing polemic against Socialist Alliance about Libya[1]. [See Appendix 1 below]

One of the despairs of our time is a corporate media that speaks for authority and power, rarely for its readers and viewers. One of the excitements of our time is the means by which we can now circumvent the old gatekeepers. WikiLeaks is a new creation, but Green Left Weekly has been a pathfinder for 20 years, no less. Congratulations!

— John Pilger, renowned journalist and filmmaker.

Over the course of the past 20 years, Green Left Weekly has emerged as a focal point of the world green left movement, its leading weekly guide to theory and practice. Long may its flag fly!

— John Bellamy Foster, editor, Monthly Review.

What better birthday present could Green Left Weekly have asked for than the Egyptian people’s taste of freedom? Congratulations to all at GLW. Onward!

— Raj Patel, independent journalist, author and activist.

More Greetings to Green Left Weekly from around Australia.

October 20, 2010 -- In the early hours of October 20, 2010, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal passed an historic milestone -- its 1,000,000th visitor (since statistics began being kept on April 4, 2008). The unknown visitor entered site at Renfrey Clarke's essential article, "The new climate-change denialism: Who promotes it, and how to answer it".

Those 1 million visitors have collectively read more than 1.33 million articles since April 2008.

Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal's mission has been to promote the revival of a democratic, ecological, thinking, activist socialism, and to encourage and publicise the activities and views of active socialists around the world who are rebuilding the socialist and radical alternative in deed as well as word.

September 11, 2010 -- Ten years ago, thousands of Australian activists joined forces to blockade a meeting of the powerful World Economic Forum in Melbourne for three days, beginning September 11, 2000. Despite a massive show of police force and violence, the unity of the protesters prevailed. The atmosphere of the protest was one of of determination and festivity. There were puppets, humour, banners and placards, songs, wandering drummers and minstrels. The crowd was diverse with trade unionists, socialists, anarchists, environmentalists, social justice activists, high school students, children, pensioners: a strong diversity of people united in opposition to an undemocratic and powerful elite.

[This is the slightly edited text of a talk presented to the Democratic Socialist Perspective and Resistance educational conference in Sydney in January 2002. Dave Holmes is now a leader of the Socialist Alliance in Melbourne. This and other writings are also available at Dave Holmes' blog, Arguing for Socialism.]

By Dave Holmes

I'd like to begin with a juxtaposition of two events — one which took place relatively recently and the other a long time before.

[This first appeared as the introduction to Building the Revolutionary Party: Jim Percy Selected Writings 1980-87 (Resistance Books: Chippendale, 2008). Dave Holmes is now a leader of the Socialist Alliance in Melbourne. This and other writings are also available at Dave Holmes' blog, Arguing for Socialism.]

By Dave Holmes

This is the second volume of writings and speeches by Jim Percy, one of the founders of Australia's Democratic Socialist Perspective and its longtime central leader until his death in 1992. These seven items — reports given by Jim to conferences and leadership gatherings of the DSP (or SWP, Socialist Workers Party, as it was known in this period) — span the years 1980 to 1987.

[This the introduction to Building the Revolutionary Party: An Introduction to James P. Cannon (Resistance Books: Chippendale, 1997). Dave Holmes is now a leader of the Socialist Alliance in Melbourne. This and other writings are also available at Dave Holmes' blog, Arguing for Socialism.]

By Dave Holmes

James P. Cannon was a pioneer of the Communist Party of the United States and one of its central leaders in the 1920s. Breaking with the Stalinised CP in 1928 he founded the US Trotskyist movement and played the decisive role in building it for over three decades.

Lenin: "In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation".

By Dave Holmes

Today humanity faces a global crisis stemming from the incredible rapacity of the capitalist system. In the first place, there is catastrophic climate change which threatens to end life on our planet, then there is endemic war and conflict, mass poverty in the Third World and neoliberalism's ever more ruthless assault on working people everywhere.

Capitalism will destroy the human race. It is absolutely clear that the bourgeoisie will continue to put the drive for corporate profit ahead of everything, even our own future as a species. It is incapable of changing. Even when it recognises the danger it cannot stop doing what it does. If capitalism is not overthrown, humanity is most likely doomed.

The only way out is the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by socialism. And the only means to do this is anti-imperialist revolutions in the Third World and proletarian socialist revolutions in the advanced capitalist countries.

January 9, 2010 -- Sydney -- The Socialist Alliance conference -- held January 2-5, 2010 -- was attended by representatives of a number of parties and organisations overseas, who presented verbal greetings to the conference. These were:

Abelardo Curbelo Padron, ambassador to Australia for the Republic of Cuba;

Sivaranjani Manickam, Socialist Party of Malaysia;

Reihana Mohideen, Party of the Labouring Masses, Philippines;

Peter Hughes, Socialist Worker New Zealand; and

Mike Treen, Unite, New Zealand.

The greetings below were sent by organisations and activists unable to attend the conference.

[Just prior to the Socialist Alliance conference, the Democratic Socialist Perspective voted to merge with the Socialist Alliance to strengthen left unity in Australia. For reports see HERE and HERE.]

[This report, presented by Peter Boyle on behalf of the Australian Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) national executive was adopted, by the 24th DSP congress on January 2, 2010. See also ``Australia: New era of left unity as DSP votes to merge with the Socialist Alliance''.]

We are proposing to take an important step forward in our party building effort, an effort that has now spanned some four decades. We propose, at this 24th congress, to merge the Democratic Socialist Perspective into the Socialist Alliance, to take everything we have learned and built over these years of political struggle (organised through the DSP) into a broader political organisation, an organisation which has a majority of members who don't come from the DSP.

Made with Slideshow Embed Tool

[The following speech, to the opening rally of the seventh national conference of the Socialist Alliance on January 2, 2010, was delivered by Peter Boyle, former national secretary of the Democratic Socialist Perspective.]

Comrades,

My job tonight is to make the unusual – if not unexpected – announcement that the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) decided today at its 24th congress to effectively dissolve into the Socialist Alliance and to transfer all that it has built up, over some four decades of its existence, to the Socialist Alliance.

Socialist Alliance 7th national conference, January 2-5, Women’s College, University of Sydney

In the face of global environmental, economic and social crises that threaten billions of lives, if not the very survival of humanity, the need for fundamental social change is urgent. The world can’t wait, and the question of how to construct sufficiently strong social movements, fighting trade unions and alternative political organisations that can stop the capitalist parties’ neo-liberal rampage, warmongering and greenwashing confronts us all.

Answering this question will be the focus of discussions at the Socialist Alliance’s 7th national conference, sponsored by Green Left Weekly. The conference agenda (read the final version here) includes educational workshops, and panel presentations and discussions to plan the Socialist Alliance’s policies and campaign activities for 2010.

By Jim McIlroy

November 23, 2009 -- How do you build socialism in the First World countries right now? Of course, we are part of a world movement for socialism, including the Third World. We can learn a lot from recent and current experiences in left regroupment and party building that are happening around the world at present -- with all proportions guarded, and realising that there is no direct transposition of one historical, national experience onto another.

When we talk about left regroupment and reconstruction, unlike some of the other overseas examples that I will refer to, Socialist Alliance in Australia is not at this stage a broad left party or a regroupment organisation in quite the same way as some of the other international experiences. But it is a vehicle for constructing one and it is a nucleus for building a broad-based socialist party in the future.

At around 8pm on November 25, 2009, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal received its 500,000th visit since records began being kept on April 4, 2008. Almost 676,000 articles were read by those visitors in that period.

The lucky visitor came from Norway, entered site at the fascinating article about the historic plan put forward by the Lucas Aerospace workers in the 1970s for socially responsible jobs, and exited after reading about the Australian socialist newspaper Green Left Weekly's new Spanish-language supplement, Foro Social Latinamericano.

Don't YOU miss an article, subscribe at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373  or follow Links at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism. You can also join the Links Facebook group.

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Oleh John Nebauer, anggota Partai Sosialis Demokratik Australia (DSP)

Ulasan dari buku Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution: A Leninist critique, by Doug Lorimer, Resistance Books, Sydney, 1998.

Setelah Lenin, Trotsky adalah pemimpin utama Revolusi Rusia. Kontribusinya terhadap gerakan sosialis internasional dan Marxisme sangatlah besar. Kepemimpinan Trotsky dalam Komite Revolusioner Militer pada November 1917 berperan menjamin kemenangan pemberontakan Bolshevik. Karya klasiknya History of the Russian Revolution masih merupakan pemaparan terbaik tentang rangkaian peristiwa menjelang dan sesudah kehancuran dinasti Romanov. Sebagai pendiri Tentara Merah, Trotsky memainkan peran vital dalam mempertahankan revolusi dari kekuatan reaksi. Di kemudian hari, ia memimpin oposisi terhadap degenerasi Stalinis dan memberikan analisis Marxis terhadap rejim birokratis tersebut.

October 18, 2009 -- Newly elected local municipal councillor Sam Wainwright summarised what he saw as the significance of his election to the Fremantle Council, in the state of Western Australia (WA): “It’s a victory for all those like me who believe that the council can and should play an active role in involving people in decision making, protecting the environment, campaigning for workers' rights and making a place in the community for people who are too often left out, such as Indigenous Australians and people with disabilities.”

Wainwright is a co-convenor of Socialist Alliance in Western Australia and an activist in the Maritime Union of Australia. He said, “I’m the first socialist elected to public office in WA for a long time, if not ever. Most candidates for council try to appeal to the middle ground and keep their political affiliations quiet. I don’t believe in that approach. I think it’s better to be upfront about your beliefs. Throughout the campaign I emphasised that I was a staunch socialist, unionist and environmentalist.”