Australia
A history of the Australian Labor Party, 1890-1967
Conrick's History of the Australian Labor Party originally appeared in Direct Action, newspaper of the Socialist Workers League of Australia, between December 21, 1972, and June 14, 1973, and was published as a pamphlet by the Socialist Workers Party in 1979. The SWP is now the Democratic Socialist Perspective. This digital version was created by Ozleft.
1. Origins of the Labor Party
There is no set date for the emergence of the Australian Labor Party. Its formal appearance in the early 1890s coincided with an upsurge in working class militancy, but it was by no means a product of that upsurge.
The Australian Labor Party was the product of an evolutionary process in trade unionism that began in the 1880s and culminated in the spread of mass unions to important sections of the working class such as miners and bush workers. The corresponding growth of elementary forms of class consciousness was expressed in the collectivist ethos of these new bush unions.
Socialist Alternative gets the balance wrong on propaganda and action
Reviewed by Ben Courtice
From Little Things Big Things Grow: strategies for building revolutionary socialist organisations, by Mick Armstrong, Socialist Alternative, 2007.
As official politics
continues to move to the right, a growing gulf is opening up between the hopes
and aspirations of millions of working people and the agenda of the ruling
capitalist establishment and its parties… Much of the time that disenchantment
and discontent finds no outlet, but then it explodes in massive mobilisations
like those against the outbreak of the Iraq war in 2003, or the repeated giant
rallies against Howard’s WorkChoices.[i]
Forests and climate change – examining the spin
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By Susan Austin
Tasmania, Australia -- It’s easy to get confused about the issue of forests and climate change. Climate scientists say that preserving our forests is a quick, easy and cheap way to prevent further global warming, and Australia’s previous federal government allocated A$200 million towards preserving forests in South-East Asia. Yet both the federal government and the Tasmanian state government are overseeing the continuing destruction of Tasmania’s old-growth forests to feed a profitable wood-chip export industry and a soon-to-be-built pulp mill. And what’s more, they say that the industry is carbon-positive and sustainable. What’s really going on?
Pope's immoral stance a death sentence; protest the unholy father
By Tony Iltis
July 12, 2008 -- The visit to Sydney for World Youth Day (WYD), July 15-20, by Pope Benedict XVI and 300,000 Catholic pilgrims is set to become the scene for protests. Ironically, the protests are being fuelled by the clumsy efforts of the NSW state Labor Party government to suppress them — passing laws making it illegal to “annoy” pilgrims and defining “annoy” broadly enough to include having signs, or even wearing t-shirts, with messages that the doctrinally rigid pope or his followers disapprove of.
* * *
No to Pope Rallies, July 19, 2008
The DSP and the Fourth International
Introduction
On August 17, 1985 the National Committee of the Democratic Socialist Perpective (then named the Socialist Workers Party) voted to end the party’s affiliation to the Fourth International, the international organisation founded in 1938 by the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and his supporters around the world.
Nationalise big oil, enemy of the planet and its people
By Dick Nichols
June 17, 2008 -- The latest surge in the spot price of crude oil (to US$139 a barrel—87.4 cents a litre) dramatises the urgent need for society to wean itself off “black gold”. The longer we remain hooked the greater the devastation both to our environment and to the living standards of billions, especially the poorest peoples of the planet.
The challenge is huge. The response must combine defence against the threat to livelihoods from price rises with a plan to restructure economies and ways of living so that oil-intensive production and transport becomes a thing of the past.
BHP-Billiton: a corporation founded on apartheid plunder

BY NORM DIXON
In late March, newspaper headlines hailed the announcement that giant Australian-owned mining, oil and steel corporation BHP and the huge Anglo-South African mining and base metals conglomerate Billiton had agreed to merge, forming the world's largest mining and second-largest resources corporation. The new monolith is worth A$57 billion at current stock market prices.
None of the capitalist “market analysts” who have churned out thousands of words on the merger thought it necessary to point out that Billiton's accumulated capital is the product of decades of collaboration with the racist apartheid system in South Africa.
Billiton's parent company Gencor formally came into being with the amalgamation of two companies formed in the late 19th century, the General Mining and Finance Corporation (later known as Genmin) and the Union Corporation.
Resolutions adopted at the Latin America & Asia Pacific International Solidarity Forum in Melbourne, October 11-14, 2007
International Solidarity Forum resolution: Statement of Solidarity
http://solidarityforum2007.org/?q=node/32
We came and met together from many different countries.
We came because we are some of those who have to struggle.
We have to fight the capitalists. We have to fight and win.
To fight we need to meet, and talk about our problems.
The ways we get defeated, the ways in which we are winning.
We have to talk together about our common struggle:
The issues that unite us, and where we don’t agree.
We need to make a plan that is a clear way forward.
The world is really ours. But capitalists have stolen it.
Climate action now! Socialist Climate Change Charter
Climate action now! Socialist Climate Change Charter
It happens to be an emergency...Climate action now!
SUMMARY:Warnings that can’t be ignoredClimate scientists have been warning us about global warming for Oppose the US war plans for Colombia and VenezuelaStatement by the Australia Venezuela Solidarity Network DSP Congress reaffirms commitment to broad left regroupmentBy Peter Boyle The Congress noted that a new political terrain was opening up with the Australia: Conference builds left alliances and international solidarityTwo articles reporting the October 11-14, 2007, Latin America and Asia Pacific International Solidarity Forum, held in Melbourne. The first written by Lisa Macdonald from Australia's Green Left Weekly and the second by Roger Annis from Canada's Socialist Voice. *********** Conference builds left alliances and international solidarity By Lisa Macdonald The labour aristocracy and opportunism in the history of Australian working-class politicsBy Jonathan Strauss The theory of the labour aristocracy argues that opportunism in the working class has a material basis. Such class-collaborationist politics express the interests of a relatively privileged stratum of workers who receive benefits supported by monopoly superprofits. Karl Marx and, especially, Frederick Engels, first developed this theory. It is most closely associated with V.I. Lenin, however, for whom it became “the pivot of the tactics in the labour movement that are dictated by the objective conditions of the imperialist era”.[1] The Democratic Socialist Perspective and the Socialist AllianceThe following resolution was adopted by the DSP's 22nd Congress in Sydney, January 5-8, 2006, following extensive internal discussion about the experience as a leading force within the Socialist Alliance since its formation in 2001. *** Work Choices: a huge challenge for organised labour in AustraliaBy Graham Matthews Work Choices is the Orwellian name given by the Australian federal Liberal-National (conservative) Coalition government to its second wave of industrial relations legislation, passed through parliament on December 2, 2005, and proclaimed as law on March 27. Socialists in the Australian women's liberation movement
By Margaret Allan
IntroductionTo understand the development of feminism in Australia, it is useful to briefly recap the political situation that gave rise not only to the women's liberation movement, but to the whole range of social movements that sprang up in the late 1960s and early 1970s. During the Second World War, women were drawn into many non-traditional areas of work, such as making ammunition and ships. These were much higher paid jobs than women were used to, and many women who did not previously work for pay experienced life as working mothers for the first time. There was some public child-care provision, and the ideology that women were incapable of metal work and similar trades conveniently disappeared as everyone was urged to “do their bit for the war effort and the boys at the front”. When men began returning from the war in large numbers in 1945, women were forced to give up these jobs. It was the start of the “baby boom”: women were encouraged to have babies to repopulate. This was also the start of the economic boom of the 1950s. Conference reaffirms Marxism in the 21st century
By Margaret Allum
"In the world, the tendency today is to bury Marxism and communism. The equation is simple: the collapse of the European socialist bloc is the end of the ideology and the theory that inspired their existence. But Marxist and communist ideas have today, perhaps more than ever, the possibility of demonstrating their viability.” With these words Maria Luisa Fernandez, the Cuban consul-general, opened the Marxism 2000 conference in Richmond, just outside of Sydney, from January 5 to 9. Her speech followed a welcome by Colin Giles, a representative of the local Darug Aboriginal people. Marxism 2000, initiated and organised by the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), was the second Asia Pacific Solidarity Conference; the first was held in April 1998, also in Sydney. Unfinished business: the struggle for abortion rights
By Kamala Emanuel
Why abortion rights? What is the importance of this issue? For us, it may be obvious, but it's necessary to reiterate the importance of the right to abortion because of the attacks it continues to face, and because in Australia and elsewhere a generation of women have now grown up with relatively straightforward access to abortion, who may not appreciate the significance of this right. The role of Australian imperialism in the Asia-Pacific regionDemocratic Socialist Party This is the text of a resolution adopted by the 19th Congress of the Australian Democratic Socialist Party, held January 3-7, 2001. Except where specified otherwise, dollars in this article are Australian dollars. At the time of writing, A$1 was approximately US$0.55 Resolution on work in the Socialist Alliancefrom the Democratic Socialist Party This resolution was adopted by the Twentieth Congress of the Australian Democratic Socialist Party [DSP], held in Sydney from December 28, 2002 to January 1, 2003. For an explanation of its background, see Peter Boyle's article in this issue. This Twentieth Congress of the Democratic Socialist Party: Australia: Letter to Socialist Alliance National ExecutiveSeptember 3, 2002
Dear comrades, I am writing to you on behalf of the National Executive of the Democratic Socialist Party to advise you that we have initiated a discussion in our party about making a radically bigger commitment towards left unity within the Socialist Alliance. Steps toward greater left unity in AustraliaBy Peter Boyle
In September 2, 2002, the Democratic Socialist Party [DSP] national executive adopted the perspective of making the Socialist Alliance the party its members build by transforming the DSP into an internal tendency within the Socialist Alliance. The sole purpose of the Democratic Socialist tendency (DST), as it was to be called, would be to complete the process of left regroupment while preserving for the Socialist Alliance our main political gains (such as a popular weekly newspaper, our nationwide network of activist centres, and a politically educated cadre). Apart from carrying out this transition, the DST would not seek to be a permanent political tendency. Australian Socialist Alliance takes a new step for left unityBy Peter Boyle and Sue Bolton Peter Boyle is a member of the incoming Socialist Alliance national executive and a member of the DSP national executive. Sue Bolton is a member of the national trade union committee of the Socialist Alliance and a member of the DSP national executive. Conference documents are available from <http://www.socialist-alliance.org>. CONTENTS Engels and the theory of the labour aristocracyBy Jonathan Strauss I. The theory of the labour aristocracy II. Marx and Engels on the labour aristocracy in 19th century England The theory of the labour aristocracy argues that opportunism in the working class has a material basis. The superprofits of monopoly capital support the benefits of a stratum of relatively privileged workers, whose interests in this are expressed by class-collaborationist politics. Marx and, especially, Engels, first developed this theory. It is most closely associated with Lenin, however, for whom it became "the pivot of the tactics in the labour movement that are dictated by the objective conditions of the imperialist era".1 |


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