Friday 6:00 PM
Come along to the opening night panel as we launch Socialism Conference 2024! We'll be hearing from UQ Gaza Solidarity Encampment organisers Ella Gutteridge and Oula Shihan; veteran Sydney socialist and anti-Vietnam War activist Diane Fieldes; and a Bangladeshi student activist who has been involved in the anti-government revolt in Bangladeshi.
Saturday 10:00 AM
The debate about how socialism can be brought about, whether through revolutionary means or reforms, remains one of the most contested issues for leftists. At stake in this debate is not just a matter of different roads to the same goal, but of a fundamental divergence between revolutionaries and reformists about what socialism even means. This session will defend the revolutionary standpoint on questions such as: Can the existing state be reformed, or must it be smashed in a revolution? Can the emancipation of the working class come about via parliamentary reforms or through workers' control from below? Can socialism be brought about without violent struggle from the ruling class?
Chapter 2 in 'Introducing Marxism' by Tom Bramble
Reform or revolution by Rosa Luxemburg
Reform, revolution and the socialist strategy by Mick Armstrong
Digging up fossil fuels and burning them not only produces enormous emissions, but over $1 trillion in profits per year. The whole capitalist system, not just in energy but in industry, transport, logistics and beyond, makes environmentally destructive decisions to suit profitability, not sustainability. Rather than dealing with the consequences of climate change humanely, the rich build bunkers, refugee camps and border walls. This session will unpack the capitalist roots of the unfolding environmental disaster and a socialist strategy for climate justice.
The deepening climate crisis by James Plested
Fuelled by coal: piercing the mirage of a sustainable capitalist Australia by Catarina Da Silva
Marxism and the natural world by Michael Kandelaars
¡Que se vayan todos! All of them must go! This slogan was cried by Argentinian workers in a mass revolt which tore down the unpopular de la Rúa government. Workers and the middle class were angered by the government's sudden decision to restrict the right to withdraw cash from banks -- which triggered a severe economic crisis. The period of resistance, called the Argentinazo, was characterised by factory occupations and street demonstrations. Come learn about the politics of the movement and its limitations.
Workers’ control in an Argentine factory by Tom Sullivan
Argentina: rebellion at the sharp end of the world crisis by Chris Harman
Argentina's revolt by Tom Lewis
Sin Patrón: Stories from Argentina's Worker-Run Factories by Lavaca Collective
Saturday 12:00 PM
Workers make everything run in our society, while the ruling class calls the shots and decides what happens with the wealth our labour produces. Capitalist society makes this state of affairs seem normal. But when workers choose to organise and fight back, we can get a glimpse of the power held by the working class – not just its power to shut down the profit machine and force concessions from the bosses, but its potential to run society in a democratic, collective fashion. This session will look at what this looks like, and why Marxists consider the working class to be the gravediggers of capitalism.
Workers power, what every struggle needs by April Holcombe
Introducing Marxism (2024), Chapter 3.
Fascism confronts us today not just as a dark chapter in twentieth century history, but as an emerging danger in our own times. It demands serious analysis, yet the explanation offered by mainstream thinkers is deeply unsatisfactory. Theorising fascism requires an understanding of the capitalist societies in which it emerges, the crises these societies produce and the class tensions inherent to them.
Dark clouds over Europe: Facing the new far right by Panos Petrou
Neoliberal capitalism implodes: global catastrophe and the far right today by Alex Callinicos
Mussolini's Grandchildren: Fascism in Contemporary Italy by David Broder (book)
As Israel’s brutal war on Gaza has made clear, understanding colonialism, racism and imperialism is vital for understanding our messed up world. Settler colonial theory, initially established by the academic Patrick Wolf, has become increasingly influential in activist and progressive discussions on these issues.
However there have been growing concerns with how useful settler colonial theory actually is in explaining the nature of colonialism, racism and imperialism today. The theory’s insistence that the key division across the world is between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, that oppression is a product of “whiteness” and its lack of an understanding of how capitalism underpins war and racism are key weaknesses.
This talk will outline a Marxist criticism of the limitations of settler colonial theory, drawing attention to how the theory has had a disorienting impact on developing strategies and movements to fight for a better world.
Chapter 3: 'Pitfalls of settler colonial theory' in Indigenous Liberation and Socialism by Jordan Humphreys (book chapter)
The world turned outside in: settler colonial studies and political economy by Jack Davies
Palestine and the classless politics of settler colonial theory by Jordan Humphreys
Saturday 2:30 PM
From Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine to growing US-China tensions threatening conflict between two nuclear-armed superpowers, we are faced with constant reminders that war is in the DNA of capitalism. This session will explain why the capitalist system produces war, and how socialists have historically fought against militarism.
Chapter 6 of Introducing Marxism by Tom Bramble
We need a revolution to put an end to today’s wars by Jasmine Duff
Bukharin's theory of imperialism by Ben Hillier
The 1918 revolution in Germany is perhaps one of history's most underappreciated events. The revolution in November of that year not only ended World War 1, but heralded the internationalisation of the workers' revolution that had begun in Russia in 1917. Soviets, or Räte in German, became the ruling power all across Germany, expressing the hope that millions of workers held in the promise of socialism after so many years of bloody war. Revolutionaries like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht became household names. The tragedy of how this inspiring mass movement in one of the most developed capitalist countries was ultimately defeated, will be the subject of this talk.
The 1918 German Revolution by Luca Tavan
Working-class politics in the German Revolution by Ralf Hoffrage (book)
The Lost Revolution by Chris Harman (book)
The German Revolution, 1917-1923 by Pierre Broue (book)
Saturday 4:30 PM
In the period of industrial capitalism, the nuclear family structure was enforced on working class populations to ensure a stable working class to be exploited. While women’s oppression existed before capitalism, capitalism reshaped it and used new structures to enforce it. Capitalism also created conditions for identities outside of the accepted sexual and gender norms, and oppressed LGBTI people on this basis. Mass movements against oppression and class struggle have helped to improve the conditions of women and LGBTI people. However, gender-based oppression is still baked into capitalism. This session will explore how capitalism constructs gender and sexuality and how we can fight for women and LGBTI liberation.
The system behind sexism by Roz Ward
Marxism and womens' liberation by Louise O'Shea
Marx and Engels on women's and sexual oppression and their legacy by Sandra Bloodworth
The roots of sexual violence by Sandra Bloodworth
The origins of women’s oppression – a defence of Engels and a new departure by Sandra Bloodworth
The 2024 US presidential election is a disgrace. If he wins, Trump threatens to be a “a dictator on day one”, calls refugees “animals”, and leads a radicalizing extreme right on the warpath against women, trans people and immigrants. Harris, as Vice President, has overseen massive attacks on the US working class living conditions, while supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Each electoral cycle, left-wing and progressive people are told to support the “lesser of two evils”, voting for Democrats to stop the Republicans making things worse. The stakes seem higher than ever, but the lesser evil is a trap. This session will explain why voting for the Democratic Party has never advanced the left, never stopped the far right, and sabotages independent, working-class struggles against capitalism and imperialism
US Far Right prepares for power under Trump by Ben Hillier
As Trump prepares for political war, Democrats offer failed status quo by Omar Hassan
In January 1912, twenty thousand Brisbane workers walked off the job in a general strike, sparking one of the most radical moments of working-class struggle in Australian history. Throughout the course of the strike workers brought aspects of the economy and society under the direct control of their Strike Committee, implicitly bringing into question the political rule of capitalist class and putting the fear of revolution into the hearts of the right-wing establishment. This session will tell the inspiring story of the general strike, as well as draw out some of the historical lessons that we can learn from it.
Revolutionary Rehearsal: The 1912 Brisbane General Strike by Matthew Mercer
Chapter in Radical Brisbane: An Unruly History, by Raymond Evans & Carole Ferrier (book)
Sunday 10:00 AM
Capitalism is a brutal system, which since its creation has relied not only on exploitation, but methods of oppression and social control. For example, inequality is not neatly divided between rich and poor. For many people -- immigrants, the racially oppressed — compounded by further structural disadvantages. Unequal access to housing, healthcare, education and employment, and police violence are all manifestations of this. This session is devoted to understanding how and why the capitalist system creates and reinforces particular disadvantages for parts of the population.
Racism - the strange fruit of capitalism by Tess Lee Ack
Chapter 7 in 'Introducing Marxism' by Tom Bramble
Many left-wing people look to the Greens as a progressive alternative to the Labor and Liberal parties. In the 2022 federal election, the Greens won their greatest parliamentary representation yet off the back of a campaign which centred the climate crisis and rising inequality, winning the support of a significant share of young voters alienated with the ALPs conservatism on climate and social issues. Yet as they’ve come closer to power, they’ve often accommodated to the system, abandoning a strategic orientation to protest, propping up the neoliberal Gillard government in 2010, and chasing Liberal votes in inner city seats to try to win office. Can the Greens be a force for radical change? And how should socialists relate to them?
What is the point of the Greens? by Duncan Hart
Into the mainstream: the Australian Greens by Ben Hillier
A Marxist critique of the Australian Greens by Ben Hillier
The Greens, the climate and the politics of compromise by Jamiel Deeb
The 1960s saw millions of young people around the world rise up against the system. Sick of the anti-communist conservatism which dominated the post-WWII years, they fought against the imperialist war in Vietnam, against racism, and against state repression. In the process many began to question capitalism as a whole. Long-time US socialist and participant in the 60s rebellion Joel Geier will join us for this session on how revolutionaries related to the explosion of radicalism – their successes and failures, and what lessons can be drawn out of the experience for socialists trying to rebuild the left today.
Berkeley: The new student revolt by Hal Draper (book)
Radicals and the Berkley Free Speech Movement by Joel Geier
Socialists organised in the 1950s Civil Rights Movement by Joel Geier
Sunday 12:00 PM
No event in human history has stoked as much controversy as the Russian revolution. It’s for good reason. The Russian revolution in 1917 was the first time in history that workers rose up and attempted to supplant capitalist rule with a system based on democratic workers’ councils. It ended the Eastern Front of the First World War, brought independence to national minorities, introduced radical transformations at work and in the home. The revolution electrified the entire European continent, inspiring uprisings in Germany, Italy, Hungary and beyond, as workers fought to join the movement against the system. Subsequently, the real history of the Russian revolution has been buried by both pro-capitalist and Stalinist accounts, which both want to claim that the genuine legacy of the revolution was dictatorship and bureaucratic control of social life. This session will be dedicated to unpacking the radical, democratic history of the revolution, and what socialists can learn from it today.
How workers took power: the 1917 Russian Revolution by Sandra Bloodworth (book)
If working class people had real power, what would society look like? If you go to Sydney, you don’t have to look far to find an answer. If you’ve ever seen the Opera House, you’ve seen a building constructed under workers’ control. If you’ve ever strolled through the Rocks, you’ve walked through a historic area that union militants saved from demolition. And the giant Centennial Park, the lungs of inner Sydney, would have been turned into a gigantic, concrete-covered sports precinct if not for working-class action.
In the early 1970s the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) was the core of an impressive movement that gave us a glimpse of what workers’ power looks like. They used their considerable industrial muscle for the benefit of the working class, the poor and oppressed groups. The famous BLF ‘green bans’ preserved dozens of working class areas and historic buildings, ranging from Aboriginal housing in Redfern to historic National Trust-listed mansions. These green bans became a world-famous example of how workers’ action could preserve the environment.
The politics and militancy of the NSW BLF represent one of the high points of working class struggle in this country. Such high points don’t come out of nowhere. It took years of patient rank-and-file organising, especially by Communist Party and other militants, all through the 1950s, for militants to win control of the previously corrupt union. The BLF had to build from the bottom up, from an itinerant, unskilled workforce initially unfamiliar with even the basics of unionism.
This session will unpack the making of one of the most militant and radical unions in Australian history, and discuss lessons its legacy has for rebuilding workers power today.
The NSW BLF: The battle to tame the concrete jungle by Mick Armstrong by Mick Armstrong
How the Builders Labourers Federation set the benchmark by Liz Ross
When Sydney was touched by workers’ democracy by Jerome Small
Lenin’s most important contribution to the development of Marxist politics was his theory and practice of building a mass revolutionary socialist party to successfully lead the working class in the struggle against capitalism. This talk will look at how Lenin developed his ideas from a combination of the practical experience of building the Bolshevik party in the conditions of Tsarist repression, theoretical study and polemical debates with other currents on the left. An important turning point for Lenin’s outlook was the capitulation of the German Social Democratic Party, which he had previously looked to for inspiration, to pro-war chauvinism at the outbreak of World War I. This led to both important theoretical reflection on his part, a return to Marx and a call for a sharp break with all shades of reformism and equivocation in the socialist movement and the founding of a new revolutionary socialist international.
Marxism and the party by John Molyneux (book, available free on marxists.org)
Lenin's Political Thought: Theory and Practice in the Democratic and Socialist Revolutions by Neil Harding (book)
Sunday 2:30 PM
For almost a century, Joseph Stalin’s dictatorial regime appeared as the long shadow of the Russian revolution. But, contrary to both Stalinist and liberal accounts, he was not the inheritor of 1917. The regime he built represented and executed a complete counter-revolution against the upsurge of radical democracy and popular agency in 1917. This was not due to some internal fault of the revolution, but a product of the defeat of the world revolutionary wave that followed in Russia’s wake. It went about spreading this reactionary role across every continent, restraining workers’ uprisings from Asia to Europe to the Americas over the following decades. Understanding Stalin’s rise is important for recovering the real legacy of 1917, and reclaiming the vision of human liberation at the heart of Marxism.
The struggle against Stalinism by Rob Narai
Chapter 10 in 'Introducing Marxism' by Tom Bramble
Stalinism's long shadow by Thomas Tengely-Evans
The Industrial Workers of the World were one of Australia's earliest revolutionary organisations. Their iconoclastic, rabble rousing approach to organising workers gained them the trust of many thousands. This session looked at the rise and fall of the 'Wobblies' (as they were known.)
The Industrial Workers of the World in Australia by Mick Armstrong
Antipodean Peculiarities: Comparing the Australian IWW with the American by Verity Burgmann
Workers against Warfare: The American and Australian Experiences before and during World War I by Verity Burgmann
"I have a dream." Thus began the most famous speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr, during the United States Civil Rights Movement, envisioning a society free from racism and economic inequality. The civil rights movement began as a challenge to legal segregation in the United States South, but continued after the 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act. As the struggle moved North, it radicalized, in the context of global revolt surrounding the Vietnam War. Martin Luther King Jr himself began questioning capitalism as the economic basis of inequality, and different organizations and figures - from Malcolm X, to the Black Panther Party - emerged as expressions of a new radicalism. This session explores the history and politics of the civil rights movement, and discusses its relevance for activists challenging racism today.
'Roots of the Civil Rights Movement', from Black Liberation and Socialism by Ahmed Shawki (book chapter)
Race, Class and the Civil Rights Movement by Jack Bloom
Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by David J Garrow
Sunday 4:30 PM
Session description coming soon
Chapter 11 from 'Introducing Marxism' by Tom Bramble
From Little Things Big Things Grow by Mick Armstrong (book)
There are sections of the Left that maintain that states such as Russia, China, and Iran are progressive forces in the world as they stand against the might of the USA. This has lead them to defend some of the most hideous regimes today. This talk will argue that socialists need to oppose all imperialism - from Washington to Moscow.
Internationalism, Anti-Imperialism, And the Origins of Campism by Dan La Botz
In 1971, the all-white South African rugby union team, the Springboks, toured Australia. Its composition reflected the racist apartheid regime in operation in South Africa. The six-week-long tour was met with a boycott campaign involving rolling protests, strikes and constant disruption. Tens of thousands of people were involved. This was an important step forward for the international campaign against apartheid as well as boosting the struggle for Aboriginal rights in Australia.
Gary Foley Reflects on the 1971 Springbok Tour” by Sarah Garnham
Pitched Battle: In the Frontline of the 1971 Springbok Tour of Australia by Larry Winter
