Gary Foley is a legendary Aboriginal activist, writer, actor, teacher, storyteller and historian. Foley describes his politicisation after arriving in Redfern in 1967 at the age of seventeen: "Getting bashed by the NSW coppers, and reading the biography of Malcolm X; that transformed my thinking". Foley was soon involved in setting up the Aboriginal Legal Service and the Sydney chapter of the Black Power Movement. In 1972, he was one of the founders of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra.

Foley quickly came to the attention of ASIO, and as revealed in SBS series "Persons of Interest", was heavily surveilled for years. He continued to be involved in every major struggle for Aboriginal rights, participating in the 1982 Commonwealth Games protest, the 1988 bicentennial demonstrations, the successful campaign to save Northland Secondary College in Melbourne in the early 1990s, and the protests that stopped the Jabiluka uranium mine later that decade.  Foley has been a keynote speaker at consecutive Invasion day demonstrations in Melbourne as well as #Blacklivesmatter protests, he is also an outspoken supporter of Palestine and refugee rights. 

As well as educating generations of people on the streets, Foley educates his students at Victoria University where he lectures in history. He also has a vast body of written work, from his PhD on the history of Aboriginal organisations and struggles in Redfern in the late 1960s and early 1970s through to his website: www.gooriweb.org. Foley is currently building what will be the biggest ever archive of Aboriginal history. Rather than sitting on dusty shelves, these materials are being compiled as a resource for future generations of radicals. 

Foley has been a regular speaker at Marxism conferences over the years, schooling and entertaining hundreds with his lively stories and research into Aboriginal history. This year Foley will be discussing the high points of Aboriginal resistance to racism and state violence over the course of the 20th century, with a particular focus on the impact of Aboriginal activists in the Communist movement of the 1930s and the radicalisation and emergence of the Black power movement in the late 60s.

Gary Foley: Aboriginal resistance and solidarity in the 20th century

The sexual assault allegations against Liberal Party figures, most notably Atorney General Christian Porter have shone a light, once again, on the endemic sexism within ruling class institutions. This is in keeping with the politics and social training of the elites who occupy them. This begins with schooling. 

Elite private schools cultivate misogyny and anti-humanism. Christian Porter is the epitome of this. From his early school days at the exclusive Perth private school of Hale, through to his time at UWA, he was lauded by his friends for being a misogynistic, overconfident bully whose father had assured he would be prime minister one day. 

He was the golden boy of an education that was less about intellectual attainment than about learning to rule, that is – creating the networks that will serve you in later life and learning to trample on those deemed lesser than you. Also indicative of this kind of education is the closing of ranks behind ruling class individuals when they face accusations from the public.

Jane Kenway is a professor with a research focus on education policy, in the context of wider social and cultural change, focusing particularly on power, politics and inequality. She is the author, alongside Aaron Koh, of 

Elite Schools: Multiple Geographies of Power.

How St Kevin's College obeyed the elites' rules of entitlement

A lattice of self-love: elite private schools and the making of the ruling class

 How elite schools breed misogyny and contempt

Global refugee crisis continues to worsen

World refugee numbers increasing

The refugee 'crisis' symbolises a decaying system

International panel: frontlines of the global refugee crisis

The struggle for Palestinian liberation has become a touchstone for leftists around the world. Palestinian people have spent decades challenging Israel's apartheid laws and social structures. But the ongoing support Israel receives from Western countries - and complicit Arab regimes - poses enormous challenges. This session will explore these issues and discuss the political challenges of the struggle today. 

It will be presented by Noura Mansour. Noura is a Palestinian educator, writer, activist and community organizer, from Akka. She studied Political Science and Education and received masters in International Relations from Haifa University. Fot the last 20 years, Noura has been involved in community development through her activism, career in education and politics, as well as her work with NGOs in Jerusalem, West Bank, Nazareth and Akka. Additionally, she has worked with international NGOs, advocacy groups and solidarity movements in South Korea and here in Australia. Noura will be speaking about the struggle for the liberation of Palestine today.

This session is an important addition to the Marxism conference's "world in struggle" stream. For socialists today, the democratic struggle for a free Palestine demands our unwavering solidarity and active support.

The struggle for justice in Palestine

Most histories of World War Two tell us that Occupied Europe was liberated by Allied forces. But this is wrong. In Italy and Greece, it was the workers and peasants who did most to throw out the fascist armies. They were not prepared to simply await their liberation at the hands of Churchill or Roosevelt but struck, demonstrated and armed themselves into partisan bands. By the time that the Allied armies arrived in the big cities, they often found popular councils in control. The workers and partisans held power in the palms of their hands; they could have smashed the whole pre-war set-up that had led to war and fascism. But the Communist parties who led the Resistance had no intention of leading revolutions. They collaborated with the Allied generals and sold the struggle short. This talk will explain the Resistance in Italy and Greece: how they came to lead, and how they allowed the ruling classes to recover power after coming within inches of losing it completely.

Chapters 3 and 11 in A People’s History of the Second World War

The Italian Resistance: Fascists, Guerrillas and the Allies

A History of Contemporary Italy

The Kapetanios: Partisans and Civil War in Greece, 1943–1949,

Greek Tragedy: The Failure of the Left

Italian and Greek anti-fascist resistance in World War Two

The left has to resist the new liberal authoritarianism

A socialist history of free speech

A massive grassroots movement has won a historic victory for abortion rights in Argentina taking the country's laws from extremely regressive to some of the most liberal in Latin America. Where previously the only allowance for abortion was if the pregnancy was due to rape, or if it posed a serious risk to the mother's health, elective abortions up to the 14th week are now legal. In this session we will hear from Cele Fierro a socialist activist based in Buenos Aires and a leading participant in this campaign and brilliant victory.

The struggle for abortion rights in Argentina

A victory for the movement in the streets: inside Argentina’s abortion win

Inside Argentina's abortion rights victory

Thank you, rioters

Black liberation and Marxism with US socialist Michael Brown

 a West Papuan based in Naarm, a human rights activist and campaigner for #MakeWestPapuaSafe (MWPS), a humanitarian campaign focusing on stopping military brutality and human rights violations in West Papua. He has also performed and co-composed a hip-hop musical called 

The Change: Revolutionary Hip Hop Theatre

. His arts highlight struggles, trauma, culture and tell stories of empowerment and resilience. He powerfully portrays truth telling of the West Papuan struggle in its raw essence through the art. Porobibi’s involvement in advocacy work looks to mobilise communities, exploring the intersection between grassroots community organising and community development.

 a socialist activist who has written about Australian foreign policy for 

 an Indonesian human rights activist and lawyer, known for disseminating information on Papua and West Papua provinces. She was awarded the Sir Ronald Wilson Human Rights Award in October 2019.

The 2019 West Papua Uprising: Protests against racism and for self-determination

The Road: Uprising in West Papua 

MERDEKA! Struggle and survival in West Papua

Indonesian independence and Australian imperialism

West Papua’s struggle for self-determination

In an age of corporate, cop-led Pride marches and a thriving pink economy, the radical history of LGBTI+ people is often obscured and sidelined. But historically, it has always been the Left, the working class, and the socialist movement that has been at the forefront of the struggle for sexual liberation. In the turmoil and radicalisation of the 60s and 70s, militants, radicals and Marxists not only led the Gay Liberation Movement, transforming the lives and ideas of millions of LGBTI+ people around the world, but developed groundbreaking theories to understand their oppression. Socialist, equal marriage activist and organiser of Perth’s anti-Basil Zempilas protest, Jacqueline Blackburn, takes us through the real history of the Gay Liberation Movement in Australia, and the socialists who made it.

Revolution is For Us

A thousand rainbows will shake the sky: the left and gay liberation

The problem with identity politics

Gender and capitalism

Gay liberation and the Left in Australia

Lenin's Electoral Strategy from Marx and Engels Through the Revolution of 1905: The Ballot, the Streets—or Both

Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough

The Marxist Basis of Lenin's Electoral Strategy

The ballot, the streets or both: the Marxist approach to elections, from the Bolsheviks to today

Over the last couple of years, mass movements have broken out across Asia. While arising in very different contexts, these movements has had to confront authoritarian governments and grapple with how to build sustained campaigns for political and social change. There have also been significant signs of cross-border solidarity between some of the movements with the three-finger salute from the popular novel Hunger Games appearing as a mobilising symbol in Hong Kong, Thailand and Myanmar. Meanwhile in the Philippines the left and labor activists face murderous repression from the 

This panel will feature a mixture of on the ground activists and left-wing analysts discussing the history, context and debates surrounding these inspiring examples of popular resistance.

Patchanee Kumnak, Socialist Workers Thailand.

Sonny Melencio, chair of the socialist Partido Lakas ng Masa (PLM or Party of the Labouring Masses, Philippines) and a long-term leader of the Philippine left.

Plus video messages from student activists in Myanmar. 

Myanmar’s spring revolution

Myanmar Workers and Unions on the Front Lines in Fight Against Coup

How Myanmar’s popular uprising aims to topple military rulers

Uglytruth-Thailand Blog

Myanmar, Thailand & the Philippines: mass movements for democracy across Asia

The bitter experience of the catastrophic SYRIZA government put the Greek left on the back foot. But the current hard right government has provoked impressive resistance with its mishandling of the pandemic, attacks on civil liberties and cuts to the living standards of workers and students. This session will assess the significance of this revival of political and social struggle in Greece.

Broad response to the neoliberal authoritarianism of the right-wing government

Resistance returns to Greece: class struggle against a right wing government

There are few places in Latin America where the class struggle has developed to a greater extent or reached greater heights than in Bolivia. In April 1952, the Bolivian working class overthrew a military dictatorship, destroyed the armed forces and swept away the old ruling class. The populist government that was brought into government confronted a situation of dual power, and was reluctantly forced to carry through extensive structural reforms. That the Trotskyists within the working class movement were never able to transform this dual power into workers' power was the great tragedy of the Bolivian Revolution. 

Yet nowhere else in Latin America has a workers' movement achieved so much, carried the struggle for socialism so far forward, and won, by unremitting efforts, so much valuable historical experience. Much of this experience has been neglected and forgotten, overshadowed by the legacy of reformism in Bolivia, but it is experience we cannot afford to neglect.

Rebellion in the Veins: Political Struggle in Bolivia, 1952-1982 (Chapters 1 - 3)

Revolution and Bolivia

Bolivia. The Revolution Derailed? The Crisis of 1952 and the Trotskyist Movement. 

Bolivia's Radical Tradition: Permanent Revolution in the Andes (Chapters 1 - 5)

Rebellion in the veins: Bolivia's revolution in 1952

That's a wrap! Join us for closing comments in the bar

Capitalism is the most violent social system in history. There are constant wars, police brutality, and billions face the structural violence of poverty. Pacifists reject violence in all its forms and argue that political movements should be non-violent to embody the qualities they desire from society. But what do ‘violence’ and ‘peace’ mean in a society divided into classes? Is it possible to confront power through purely peaceful means? This session will critique pacifism from a Marxist perspective, arguing that abstract moral concepts like ‘non-violence’ can’t be universally applied in capitalism, and that a pacifist approach can’t lead the movement necessary to rid the world of violence.

Pacifism and War

Non-violence, social change and revolution

Can we change the world peacefully? The Marxist critique of pacifism

A deadly pandemic, mass poverty, the climate apocolypse - it's pretty easy these days to want to tear the capitalist system down. But being a socialist is about more than hating capitalism, it's about having a strategy that can win a better a world. This session is about getting active, getting organised, and joining the fight for socialism.

CLOSING PANEL: Why you should be a socialist today

Fifty years later, it’s hard to convey the speed at which the events of 1968 followed one another—the way in which that year simultaneously felt like the world could sink down into barbarism or rush forward toward something new. 1968 marked a period when millions resolved to change the world, and hundreds of thousands of them joined or founded socialist organizations. This talk will explore how the events of 1968 gave birth to a new revolutionary left across the globe with a particular focus on France and Italy.

The Fire Last Time

France – the struggle goes on

An Impatient Life 

States of emergency: cultures of revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978

1968 and the birth of a new international left

The Covid-19 pandemic has now killed over 1.5 million people and continues to ravage the world. Itself a result of capitalist agricultural practices, the pandemic has collided with a society that was incapable of a united, rational response that could pool all of our resources and ingenuity to save lives. Instead, the interests of profit and international competition have repeatedly won out. The response of governments has been highly contested, with business continually campaigning for "open" policies that have contributed to the death of millions, while the bulk of the population has supported lockdowns and health measures coming before "the economy". These questions have also been contested on the left, with some failing to distinguish between much-needed extreme health measures and reactionary authoritarian power-grabs, like bans on protests.

The evidence is in: lockdowns work

The Victorian lockdown saved countless lives

Politics of the pandemic

Edward Said (1935 – 2003) was a brave champion of the Palestinian people, a prolific writer and commentator against US imperialism and war, and a widely influential cultural critic and theorist. Almost twenty years after his death his legacy still influences dissenting cultural writing and academic theory. But what are the connections between Said’s work for Palestinian liberation and his contributions as a critic and theorist? What can we learn from Said’s work for struggles today? This talk will place Edward Said in perspective, looking at his work from a Marxist view.

Marxism and Postcolonial Theory

The Edward Said Reader

After Said 

Combined and Uneven Development

A Marxist perspective on Edward Said

From the Paris Commune to the Irish Easter Uprising, from the Bolshevik revolution to Black Lives Matter, Hong Kong and the Sudan, poetry and songs have played an important role in mass movements. This performance will bring inspirational words and music from revolutions and uprisings to you via the team of Santo Cazzati (spoken word), Frances Lewis (voice) and Llanon Davis (guitar), with Janey Stone as MC. We will perform familiar verses and new sounds; you will come away invigorated. Come and join in and be inspired.

And still I rise: revolutionary moments in songs and poetry

'The siege of the Nicholson Street Nazis’ (Melbourne 1971) 

This session features original research by Vashti Fox on anti-fascist organising in Melbourne in the 1970s. In response to attempts by the National Socialist Party of Australia to establish an organising centre in the city a coalition of Maoist radicals and Jewish activists began an often controversial campaign to shut them down. The session will explore the politics of the organisers, debates in and between them and ultimately draw some lessons for challenging far right organisations today.

Everyone Wants To Be Fuehrer

Fighting fascism in Melbourne in the 1970s

In 2010, seven years into America's occupation of Iraq, the world caught a glimpse of the horrors of Western imperialism. Leaked footage showed American soldiers gleefully killing unarmed civilians. Thousands of documents blew the lid on the slaughter in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as America's network of torture camps.

None of the politicians, generals or soldiers responsible for these atrocities have spent a day in prison. The only people who went to jail over these crimes were the people who risked their lives to expose them, Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning.

Ten years on from the first Wikileaks exposures, Assange is still fighting for his freedom, with the entire system arrayed against him. The American government, aided by British courts, is determined to send a message: that ordinary people must be kept in the dark about the brutal realities of imperialism.

Eyewitness to the agony of Julian Assange

Julian Assange must be supported

First, they came for Assange...

Blowing the whistle on empire: Assange, Manning and the battle for justice

Power concedes nothing without struggle, and the ultimate form of struggle against capitalism is revolution. Revolution has always been the cornerstone of Marxism for this reason, it is only through mass movements that challenge the power of capital and the state that socialist demands can be realised.

But what do revolutions look like? And is it possible for them to succeed in modern capitalism? How should we respond to reformist socialists who insist change can come from within? What is the difference between a popular revolution and a workers revolution? These questions and more will be answered in this session.

Socialism can only come through revolution

Revolution, reform and socialist strategy

Is revolution possible and what would it look like?

This book deals with the most central debate in the socialist movement for the last 150 years. Luxemburg argues for revolution, explaining why capitalism cannot be defeated through gradual reforms. She also puts forward one of the earliest and clearest expositions of the Marxist attitude to the fight for reforms, the state, liberal democracy, and the character of the working class revolution. These arguments are presented in opposition to Edward Bernstein's 'evolutionary socialist' theories, which rejected Marxism in favor of trade unionism and parliamentary procedures. Contemporary readers will find his reformist arguments eerily familiar.

Reform or Revolution 

Rosa Luxemburg

Reform vs Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg

The conflict between the US and China is putting pressure on the stability of the global geopolitical order established after the fall of the Soviet Union. This raises important questions for the socialist left. For some China, whatever its faults, is seen as a bulwark against Western imperialism. However this ignores China's own imperialist nature. This talk will explain why the socialist left should oppose both Western and Chinese geopolitical machinations and instead look to international working-class solidarity as the only barrier to another century of imperialism and war.

Stand against the new Cold War

Neither Washington Nor Beijing: Socialists, Inter-Imperial Rivalry, and Hong Kong

The new Cold War between the US and China: how the left should respond

Identity politics is a popular way of understanding the oppressions suffered by so many, but can it win our liberation? 

It is a standpoint which divides the world into identity-based groups, each with separate experiences and interests. Without experiencing a particular oppression, so the argument goes, you are automatically part of the problem. The best that people outside an identity group can do is shut up, check their privilege and be passive, guilt-ridden allies. Identity politics tends to obsess over language and microaggressions between individuals, rather than the power structures that reproduce oppression. 

From "privilege" politics to intersectionality, this session will challenge the core arguments of identity politics and present a Marxist alternative which has the liberation of the oppressed as its aim.

A Marxist critique of the theory of ‘white privilege’

Mistaken identity – or can identity politics liberate the oppressed?

Why identity politics won't liberate the oppressed

The coronavirus has been the overwhelming factor shaping politics, economics and society since it emerged from a market in Wuhan. It is often reported on and discussed in the media as if it were a random and totally unpredictable shock to an otherwise healthy society. The truth is, however, that the virus was predicted, and follows on from a range of similar outbreaks since SARS in 2002. Left-wing epidemiologists such as Rob Wallace and Mike Davis have been warning of th growing emergence of viruses of this kind, linking them to intensive factory farming processes that bring humans, animals and microorganisms into close contact in regions previously shielded from such interaction. This talk will examine these and other connections between capitalism and pandemics.

The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the plagues of capitalism

Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of COVID-19

Big farms make big flu: how capitalism causes deadly viruses

In the early 20th century, syndicalist-led unions and organisations developed in country after country as part of a widespread radicalisation of the working class. Chafing at the timidity and conservatism of official trade unionism and with a deep hostility for parliamentary reformists, syndicalists sought to build a revolutionary workers’ movement that had the power to overthrow capitalism and end wage slavery. 

Direct action, sabotage and above all else, the general strike were their chosen tools. The vehicle for the revolutionary overthrow was to be industrial unions. They emphasised the importance of class unity, eschewing all that divided the working class - from sectionalism to racism and nationalism. Political action and socialist organisation was to be at best subordinate to the class struggle at the point of production. 

While there are lots of important differences between syndicalists, some set up separate syndicalist unions, others fought to transform and lead existing unions while others still formed more cohered political organisations around particular newspapers, what united syndicalist currents was confidence in the revolutionary potential of working class self-activity and a hatred for reformist sell-outs.

Syndicalism in one form or another animated many of the best working class militants at the beginning of the 20th century. In a number of countries, such as France, Spain, Ireland and Argentina was probably the largest current within the working class for a time. In the USA, Chile, Italy, Australia, New Zealand and Britain, syndicalist-led unions and organisations gained serious followings. 

However, by the end of the First World War, most syndicalist movements had been smashed by state repression, others became increasingly reformist. In Spanish Civil War, the anarcho-syndicalist led trade union, the CNT, also failed the task, joining the bourgeois government which was winding back the social revolution. 

Why did syndicalist movements fail to bring workers to power where the Bolsheviks succeeded?

With a focus on the US IWW and the French CGT, this talk will explore both the many strengths of syndicalism, but also the important weakness of their approach to the revolutionary transformation of society.

Radical Unionism: The Rise and Fall of Revolutionary Syndicalism

The Industrial Workers of the World in Australia

The First Shop Stewards Movement 

The revolutionary road to nowhere: revolutionary syndicalism in WWI

The juggernaut of globalisation has come to a screeching stop and now seems to be in retreat in the face of COVID, trade wars and an intensification of imperialist tensions. Central banks and captialist governments around the world have junked their dogmatic commiment to balanced budgets in order to take on historic levels of debt to shore up their system. Even French President Emmanuel Macron, the darling of liberalism, acknowledges that something has to change. Does this mean that neoliberalism is coming to an end? This talk will explore the factors undermining the neoliberal order, those features of neoliberalism that are still enduring and ask what comes next?

If the neoliberal order is over, what comes next?

'Conventional capitalism is dying’: COVID-19, recession and the return of the state

Coronavirus, Crisis and the End of Neoliberalism 

Is the neoliberal order over?

Crisis and rebellion is reshaping Latin America. The last two decades saw impressive social rebellion from below, substantial gains in living standards and the rise of the neoreformist 'pink tide' governments. Now right wing forces are organising to roll back these gains, scoring important victories but also facing significant challenges. 

In the process the weakness of electorally oriented left parties, such as the Workers' Party of Brazil, has been made clear. But at the same time a new generation of radical youth have hit the streets demanding systemic change and making their imprint on the political climate as well. In these sessions revolutionary socialists will unpack this complex situation and discuss the prospects for the left and the workers movement going forward. In this session revolutionary socialists from Argentina, Chile and Brazil will unpack this complex situation and discuss the prospects for the left and the workers movement going forward.

Luis Meiners is a socialist activist and sociologist, and member of the Movimiento Socialista de Trabajadores (MST) in Argentina and the International Socialist League (ISL).

Joaquin Araneda is a part of the leadership of the Movimiento Anticapitalista in Chile.

Alessandro Fernandes who is a teacher and member of the coordination of Alternativa Socialista-PSOL in Brazil

The Ebb of the Pink Tide The Decline of the Left in Latin America

The Last Day of Oppression, and the First Day of the Same

Brazil: how big a defeat?

Learning from disaster: The Workers' Party and the left in Brazil

Brazil Apart 1964–2019

Rebellion and betrayal in Chile

Crisis and rebellion in Latin America today: panel of socialists from Argentina, Chile and Brazil

Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn both tapped into a mood for change in an increasingly unequal 21st century capitalism. Now the political projects they inspired have ended in defeat and accommodation. Sanders loyally backed the neoliberal warmonger Joe Biden in the US elections and Corbyn has been disciplined by his own party under the false accusation of anti-Semitism. The thousands of left-wing activists they inspired are now confused and demoralised by this outcome. 

This session will unpack the failures of the Sanders and Corbyn projects and discuss the important questions about political strategy and the limits of reformist and left liberal politics that it raises.

Daniel Taylor’s forthcoming Marxist Left Review article

Bernie Sanders and the left: what happened?

A balance sheet on new reformism: the rise and fall of Sanders and Corbyn

Mike is a founding member of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM). LGSM was formed to support miners during the 1984-85 miners’ strike – the longest strike in British history. Miners were fighting Thatcher’s plans to close coal pits, leaving tens of thousands of workers on the scrap heap. LGSM went on to raise more money than any other support group, and the solidarity between lesbian, gay, and bisexual people and the striking miners reverberated through British society.

British Socialist Paul Foot wrote about the strike at the time:

"People were changing. In the strength of their collective action, they felt a new confidence in themselves and the people around them. Ideas and prejudices which had been grafted into them like barnacles were suddenly blasted away. "

Four things we can learn from Pride

Veteran activists remember LGBT solidarity with miners

The Real Iron Ladies

Pride and solidarity: interviews with members of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners

Come join other lefties for a deep dive into some key works of Marxism. There will be an introduction on each text providing political context and commentary, followed by discussion where people can debate out their questions and opinions. Reading is required for these sessions. You can also buy nice copies of these texts at 

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

The Communist Manifesto is one of the most famous texts in human history. It has inspired generations of activists and revolutionaries, and remains one of the most perceptive explanations of capitalism. There are many well known pithy lines from the Manifesto but less well understood are the arguments it makes about the historical development and core dynamics of capitalism.  Whether you have never read it or have already read it 10 times, there are always new insights to learn from the Manifesto.

Manifesto of the Communist Party

The Communist Manifesto today

The Adventures of The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx 

Beyond the tipping points to runaway climate change, environmentalists, scientists and most on the left can only envision dystopia. Prominent voices on the environmental left believe social adaptation is not possible for the vast majority of humans. This talk will argue they are premature. Collective struggle seeds new social and scientific possibilities. Even if Earth transitions into a hothouse pathway scenario, social adaptation and geo-engineering under socialism can create a habitable and biodiverse earth system.

Is socialism possible in a hothouse earth?

Marxists support trade unions on principle. Yet they are contradictory organisations which group together workers to fight for their interests against the bosses, but also contain workers’ struggles within capitalism. Trade union officials personify this contradiction. They are a separate social layer to workers – and face pressure by the rank and file on the one hand, and bosses on the other. This leads to a tendency towards compromise and away from industrial action. This theory has informed the strategy of many socialist activists operating in trade unions who look to rank-and-file militancy and class conflict as the way forward.

The theory the trade union bureaucracy and rank and file has come under attack recently, with some describing the theory as crude and reductionist. John McIlroy, for example, argues that “Bureaucracy is inherent in trade unionism under capitalism. It pervades practice differentially but is not the exclusive property of a leading stratum…trade unionism, its reformist practice and the economistic consciousness it generates constitutes the primary barrier to progress…” Is this right? What implications does this have for union activists? This talk explores the theory and these debates, and uses examples from the Pilbara mining region of Western Australia – once a stronghold of militant unionism, now a bosses’ paradise. 

The rank and file and the trade union bureaucracy 

Marxism and the Trade Unions: The Bureaucracy Versus the Rank and File Debate Revisited 

Managers of Discontent

Rank and file rebellion at Robe River

Socialist trade union strategy in the Bolshevik era

The Marxist theory of the trade union bureaucracy and the rank and file

Until his expulsion from France in October 1916, Trotsky spent the First World War exile in Paris. There, he developed lifelong friendships and political ties with the revolutionary opposition to the SFIO’s participation in the imperialist war, of whom the syndicalist Alfred Rosmer was the most well-known. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, at a time when the anti-capitalist possibilities had to be seized across Western Europe, Trotsky developed a concrete revolutionary policy in dialogue with the French Communist Party (PCF) leaders and revolutionary syndicalists, some of whom remained reformists and others who were won to consistent revolutionary politics. Trotsky was key to these early years of the Comintern’s relation to the PCF, though the Stalinist histories of the PCF have largely blocked out Trotsky’s role (as well as those of his supporters who were expelled during the 1920s). Trotsky’s interventions remain relevant to an understanding of revolutionary dynamics in the advanced capitalist countries.

French Communism in the Making, 1914–1924

Lenin's Moscow

Trotsky's role in the founding of the French Communist party

Marx's Shakespeare

The origins of Shakespeare’s drama

Marxism and Shakespeare

Lenin and Bukharin wrote their contributions to the Marxist theory of imperialism on the eve of World War 1. They were attempting to grapple with the economic and political underpinnings of imperialism that would lead to the barbarity of the trenches, including why social democracy supported the bloody slaughter, and why economic integration between the warring parties did not stop conflict. They also argued that the inhuman contradictions of capitalism, the wars that it produced, could lead to revolution across Europe. 

As tensions rise between the established hegemon the US and emerging economic superpower China, do their theories still help us understand the dynamics of capitalist competition, militarism and war? What relevance do their arguments have today? What aspects of the theory need to be updated? And how are the debates on imperialism of last century recreated today?

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