Communism and Australia + /aus/

SAlt's more like a third of that, and SAll's books are overflowing with paper members - I'd be surprised if they had more than 150 active members nationwide.
Both orgs are similar in that the elderly socdem leadership has snivelling, authoritarian, former Young Labor lieutenants as seconds-in-command. In a revolutionary situation (as fucking if), the socdems would get purged. The orgs would either go full neoliberal or else they'd combine the paranoia of an aging Stalin with the governance abilities of an aging Mao.

That's if the tendency of both orgs' leaderships toward harem-building doesn't #MeToo them into the ground first.

Source: A youth wasted on activism instead of binge drinking and banging uni students.

Jeez, how hard could it be to fight against Turnbull when Labor is so bad too. Hey, what about the Australian section of the Socialist Equality Party? Please tell me they're not too shit
sep.org.au/website/

The SEP is what happens when you use the Judean People's Front sketch as an organisational blueprint. SAlt and SAll are the only groups with any sort of membership in Australia, and as I said above they're both so tiny as to be irrelevant. Beyond those two it's just ultra-minisule grouplets flinging shit isotropically. I'm probably pissing into the wind trying to tell you that though, since you apparently couldn't figure it out after reading the sectarian trot screeds that pass for articles on the WSWS.

Don't be fooled by the outward trappings of high organisation like a well-maintained website or official meeting space. These things aren't funded by an active member base. The Australian Far Left is funded mainly from 1) the estates of dead 70's-era 'activists' who moved on to well-paid posts in academia or the union bureaucracy, and 2) proceeds from selling off the meeting spaces they bought for a song in the 70's. Seriously, the million $ sale of one of SAll's old meeting spaces is pretty much the only thing keeping the Green Left Weekly afloat.

Except for SAlt, which gets it cash from the parents of the petit-bourg first-year arts students that make up the bulk of its membership.

OP here - can you share some more of your experiences it all seems so opaque to me.

Also what is this?

This is kind of disappointing I though things would be a little bit better here than the US

I could do that - is there anything specific you want to know? Note that I'm going to be very careful not to go into detail. The Australian far left is tiny - it wouldn't take much to identify me.

Most of your time in an org is spent on the street trying to recruit people. We'd go to various public places like the campus or the local market, set up a table, and yell like carnival barkers trying to get people to sign a petition or buy a paper. That stuff's just a pretense to get people in a conversation so you can find out if they're a commie, though. The petitions may as well be fake. One thing I still like about orgs is that it they make protests not a complete waste of time. As we all saw with Iraq, mass protests are beyond useless for actually achieving change. What they are good for is attracting potential recruits. On campus you might sell 10 papers and get one person who shares some of your politics to leave their contact details. For the self-selecting group of folks at a protest, you might get 2 or 3 interested folks for the same number of paper sales.

Once you've got them on the hook, you reel them in by holding public seminars or beginner's reading groups in your meeting space. Isolation is the point of those events. The idea is to fill the room with commies so the only opinion the prospective recruit hears is ours. We'd be explicitly instructed to separate groups of non-members, for example - we'd try to make sure there were two members talking to every potential recruit, with the rest of the members running interference by keeping other non-members out of those convos.

SAlt has a yearly conference which is basically the above paragraph on steroids. Instead of a couple of hours spent stuck in a room with them, it'd be three days surrounded by people trying to convince you of SAlt's politics. As every cult and MLM pyramid scheme knows, it works a fuckin' treat. Because it works so well, all the way up to Easter they put an absurd amount of effort into shilling it. Still, plenty of people tell horror stories of getting approached by 20 different trots giving the same all asking the exact same questions ("Do you consider yourself left wing?" "Was there a particular session that interested you?" "Have you got your subscription?", etc.)

The idea is basically to keep getting prospects to as many of these events as we can manage until they either join up or tell us to fuck off. And by that I mean we would not stop until we were explicitly told to fuck off. SAlt is famous for barraging people with phonecalls.

Once a person's joined up they can start going to weekly member's meetings, which are divided between political education/discussion and organisational matters (ie, how to get more recruits). The political education/discussion part basically involves the leadership telling everyone what their opinion should be on the topic at hand, and everyone getting some practice repeating that line out loud. There are also separate reading groups.

Aside from that stuff, the other thing they do is fuck around with the National Union of Students. Normally the whole NUS is just job training for the Young Labor/Liberal students. The national offices are paid positions though, and come with extra funding on top for campaigns. Young Labor basically bribes the far left groups to vote them into the presidency by handing over some lower positions like Queer or Environment Officer or whatever. Young Liberals are there to dismantle the whole thing to stop money getting to communists. At some point, everyone yells at everyone else about Palestine. Occasionally, a Young Labor fuckstick will jump ship over to the far left - likely because they realised they wouldn't hack it in the grown-up Labor Party. They inevitably rise up the ranks super quickly in SAlt, to the point where a sizeable portion of their national-level leadership is former Young Labor.

(cont.)
For various reasons, these orgs recruit almost exclusively on uni campuses. This has been SAlt's explicit strategy since the 90's, and SAll adopted it in the last 5 or so years to try to stave off their decline. Because of this, their orgs are characterised by a huge member turnover rate. In a year, the org might sign up ~30 first-years nationwide, but during the same period they'll lose 15 of them, plus 10 of last year's recruits, and 4 longer-term members. Net yearly increase: 1 member.

With that kind of membership flow, you end up with a two-tier org - a huge number of impressionable 17-18 year old first-years with a low level of political education, and a much smaller leadership cadre of 5-10+ year veterans. That massive gulf in experience and authority between the two tiers is the perfect environment to foster the development of cliques - where a charismatic older member brings a bunch of younger members under their personal influence. In the worst case, of course, it leads to sexual exploitation (look up Gerry Healy). Luckily I was variously too ugly, male, and antisocial to get sucked into that shit, but I saw it happen to good comrades.

Fuck getting into labour labor to drive it left.
Why don't we get into the CPA and actually try turn it into a proper vanguard?

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Just to start off thank you for taking the time to respond in such detail.
With this fully in mind how does a person help the leftwing cause if the two main parties are broken in this way (I assume SAll has some similar issues), + how serious are the consequences for leaving?

What kind of demands does SAlt make of your time and money?

Any idea on what caused such an anti revolutionary change and why its being kept that way?

That harem stuff is pretty scary

There's an interesting article out there about "political cults" that's mostly about British trots. It elaborates on the kind of stuff this poster is describing. The organizational model they use fosters burnout, factionalism, top-down control, and abuse.

Thanks, it felt good to write it all out like that. I'm glad you appreciated it.

I've been trying to figure that out ever since I left. I'm still a communist. I'm one of the unlucky ones - most people who drop out of an org burn out and leave politics behind entirely. They spend the rest of their lives in blissful ignorance of history, politics, economics.

I've spent a great deal of my free time devouring every bit of literature I can get my hands on, theory, history, math; Marx, Lenin, Cockshott, hell even Dupont and Tiqqun in a fit of pique one week. I talk politics with everyone I know. I'm fucking insufferable irl. I've got a really clear picture of what doesn't work. What can we do to get from here to communism, though? I still haven't the fucking foggiest, and it's monumentally frustrating.

Sometimes I even want to go back. I think that maybe this time, if I just diligently do wherever the branch committee tells me, by some strange alchemy it'll bring us closer to communism. But they have no idea how to help the left-wing cause. They're running on a combination of stale tradition and manipulative pragmatism. I think a little part of me always knew they didn't know how to further the cause.

Shit, this came out way more emotional than I thought it would. I had almost forgotten how big a part of my life that group was.

They're not going to burn you at the stake as an apostate or anything. You'd almost certainly have to change your number, though. I wasn't joking about the phonecall barrage thing. They can and will get interstate comrades to call you to get around you screening your calls. For most people, one of the hardest things about leaving an org like SAlt is the sudden precipitous drop in social contact. Between stalls, protests, meetings, reading groups, and poster runs you spend a fuckton of time with those people. With that kind of imbalance, most people end up drifting away from their non-political friends - and the org itself tacitly encourages it. Lots of people find themselves suddenly very alone after they leave. I was lucky there - as I said before, I'm pretty antisocial. Being part of a group was the exception in my life, so leaving and being alone was more of a return to normal than it is for other people.

I'm not going to quote numbers on money front (I've got lots of problems with SAlt but I'm not gonna go violating OPSEC over it). Direct payments are regular dues, plus a yearly pledge (and they'll badger you to fundraise among relatives and remaining friends for that). Indirectly, there's more. There's the stuff that'll get you reproach from on high if you don't shell out for, like a subscription to the paper, tickets to the conference, and a steady supply of texts for reading groups (from the organisation's bookshop, naturally). On top of that there's passive social pressure to buy merch (T-shirts with and badges to wear on the stalls).

The demands they make on your time can be huge. If you're not careful, you can find most of your spare time and even some of your non-spare time taken up with political 'activity'. It seems like there's always something you could be doing - a meeting, a protest, putting up posters for the previous two, a paper sale, a reading group, calling contacts, reading groups, preparing remarks for an upcoming discussion, educationals (members-only lectures outside of normal meeting times to reinforce a political line the national leadership thinks is going astray), banner making, etc, etc, etc.

I'd say it's two things. First is a fundamental flaw in their political perspective. A flaw so deeply rooted they couldn't possibly get it out. Namely - nobody has any idea how to actually achieve their organisation's stated goals. It's not limited to trot orgs, of course - it's a disease that's been running unchecked on the Marxist Left since 1991.

The other part of the problem is the pragmatic measures developed in response to the first problem. These orgs have had to find a way to sustain themselves in the absence of a way forward. To survive in such circumstances, an org has to get lean and mean. Their problem is attrition - without a purpose, the org is constantly bleeding members as they come realise they're wasting their time. So the org needs a constant supply of new people to make up for that, and it needs to stem the bleeding as much as it can. The best way to recruit is aggressively, and the best way to retain members is to keep them isolated from the real world and too busy to think about anything else. Thus, the political cult is born.

As someone familiar with SAlt this post absolutely hits the nail on the head. If you want some further reading about them here is an article which made waves a few years ago:

honisoit.com/2016/03/my-salty-summer/

SAlt have hurt the left more than they've ever helped it.

When I say we're fucked by the way I should've specified that I was referring to the far-left. There is still plenty of space in the room for center-left politics in Australia going forward.

Eh, not sure I'd go that far. The Australian left's been dead for longer than SAlt's even existed. You can't hurt what's already dead. That Honi Soit article's kind of emblematic, really. The 'harm' that's come to 'the left' boils down to one group of private-school-educated uni twats annoying other groups of private-school-educated uni twats. It's a good reminder that the real movement will have nothing to do with the 'Official Far Left' when it comes.

non-Aussie here, I think the discussion here is very illuminating.

from what the other posters say about SAlt, it seems not having a line for everything with that everyone is expected to agree with is a good thing.

thinking everyone should agree with everything seems like the definition of sectarianism to me. and it will alienate people who'd otherwise make good comrades.

the main goal is coming closer to achieve collective ownership of the means of production, EVERYTHING ELSE, whether you like or dislike foreign power X, or many other matters, should NOT be something everyone needs to agree to.

Citing marx here: "Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie."

Even though I havent been part of a center left group I get those pangs with regards to the mainstream "progressive" groups. For me its just that strong desire to believe in the visions and plans because the alternative is so ugly.

Is this stuff reasonable or is it like a tithe on your income kind of a thing?

Thanks for this stuff again I was on the fence about SAlt.

Are there any interesting groups/groups worth joining?

North Queensland fag here, Katter is fucking based, a fucking top bloke

Yeah, that's exactly it. Knowing exactly what the goal is but having no idea how to get it is fucking painful.

Actually it works out to a little bit more than a tithe. You're expected to pledge around 5% of your yearly income (not including what you can scare up from family and friends), and your weekly dues are roughly 0.1% of your yearly income, which over 52 weeks adds up to 5.2%. So you end up giving 10.2% of your yearly income to them. Huh. I never sat down and worked that one out before. Of course, they don't tell you it's a tithe, the analogy they draw to convince you is union dues.

You could have summed it up that those orgs are burg college kids that have no real ties to proletariat consciousness or struggle

Just to clarify, you're talking about Socialist Alternative? Is that related to Socialist Alternative in the US?

Reminder, If any of you faggots participated in that shitty protest against Southern and Molyneux, you are part of the bourgeois and therefor are a part of the problem.

Reminder that these two idiots are now regularly invited on right wing AUS tv (Sky news) to spew their shit to millions
Reminder that your laid back attitude caused that

Not that user but given they are part of different Internationals I doubt they are connected outside of their name and respect of ⛏️rotsky

Housing stress, wage stagnation, unemployment/underemployment etc

Are you in Melb OP?

Thanks bordiga.

Damn. I'm new to the org, and this mirrors my experience almost exactly. I'm really not liking what I'm seeing now that I'm on the inside. How the fuck do I get out?

Like said. Aussie SAlt is descended from the British SWP. The most related US org is the ISO - SAlt usually has at least one ISO member come to speak at their yearly conference. The US Socialist Alternative is descended from the British Militant org - their Australian descendents are the Socialist Party.

In summary: Socialist politics was a mistake.

Honestly? Just avoid them. Change your number if you can, block known numbers and screen your calls hard if you can't, don't go to known stall spots, get out of conversations quickly if you run into members, etc.

You could prepare a formal resignation, but frankly that'll just provide them an opportunity to browbeat you into staying. Lord knows I've seen that happen. Even if you formally quit they'd still hit you up to pledge, go to the conferences, and attend fundraisers as a supporter. Easier to just sever contact.

Unfortunately in Australia we don't really have very many options when it comes to serious far-left options, Labor at this point is the party of Bureaucrats, and would sooner sell out the working class then defend it.

The only quasi-leftist party i've be able to find that is actually well read and not just a bunch of people that like punk aesthetic is the Citizens Electoral Council, They are founded on the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche which made me initially skeptical of them, but there website is a genuine bounty of rich information, and after attending one of their meetings it was a pleasant feeling to be the idiot in the room for once since everyone else was so well read. Long and short of their policy, stricter control over the banks, introduce a national bank, and join China's Belt and Road initiative so as to keep us on edge. Outside of that, think global warming is a myth, and in favor of more research into fission energy, and big fans of Eurocentric thinking without the attached white nationalism.

But they are a tiny micro party, if they aren't running in your electorate, your safest choice is to just elect the most right wing authoritarian candidate you can find and hope accelerationists were right, either that or right in bob katter, your choice both good options

how did you even find this board

We have more options than the far-right do, but that's likely due to the left being significantly more in control than the right is here
In fact i would say that most of our government is already left leaning as it is, even more than the US
I mean unless you want to consider the AFP a serious party (which it isn't) and even then when compared to American parties, its not even far-right leaning, its at most center right
The problem in our country is that we have an overwhelming amount of idiots who pick a side of politics in much of the same manner as picking a team in a football match
They do not take into account the desires these parties have or what they want to acquire/achieve, but have no qualms offering their total support like they're part of that "team" and staying loyal to them.
And the only time they ever change is when we have shitty single topic elections, like the NBN, which saddly enought completely leaves out all the other stuff our government doesn't want particularly public, like the TPP, the marriage referral ect…
This is why i never vote liberal labour or greens and make sure that none of my votes get given to them, they're trashy oligarchical elitists that have no qualms being utterly disgusting human beings to get money
Like remember that time she got all that money off that guy suffering from dementia (or was it Alzheimers) and claimed it was a gift despite him having no memory of doing it?
I can't find the article for it and I'm too tired to look for it now

Can he please just go away?
He dosent seem to get that this Trumpian shit dosent work here?

i got this one youtube.com/watch?v=uudA8cz0_84
i still can't believe it's fucking real

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I think clives "party" is really just an excuse to make Facebook boomer tier shitposts about people he dosent like tbh…

Anyone ever have a family member (Boomers) send you a link to one of this Human catheter's Video's

hooktube.com/user/IDFTraining

I wasnt pissed at first cuz i thought this guy was just some Hasbara funded shill getting a few thousand views once in a blue moon with comments all being in fucking hebrew

Related to this are right wing parties to be aware of? I currently the only ones with significance are One Nation which mainly seems to be a Queensland thing and that meme group Antipodean resistance who just put up stickers

Nationalists can be pretty dam comical.

Stop trying to shit up my country. Communism is gay.

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The only other real "Right-Wing" groups that exist asides from O.N are
AKA the ChristCom Gang
Split from Labor cuz they were Muh commies somehow
Used to have a senate seat but the Senator went independent and cucked them out of it
Insane EvangeloCon Prot party in Victoria owns one council seat which is just the founder of the party's hometown iirc
Real meme that one
He believes floods and storms are god crying cuz we legalised gay marriage and bushfires are gods vengance for abortion
The party of that Israeli i was talking about
Basically exists solely to harass Muslims
From what I've seen really only exists online though apparently its planning to run in the next election
All these other groups were "I sleep" while this is "Real sheit"
This is basically a "Alt-Right" Neo-Fash protest group who skips the whole Muh Muslims and Muh Sudan phase and have gone straight for Ethno-fash
Luckily dead as fuck and only really exists when they hold a rally

...

lol

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Katters gonna send all you Metropolitans to the cane fields during the great Australian cultural revolution and you can't do shit to stop it

Wow commies BTFO epic style

It's a shithole anyway, couldn't be worse

Well its at least good to see that the same Australian apathy that plauges the left has also hit the right.

Is One Nation likely to end when Pauline Hanson retires for good? Any idea on whether the United Patriots were the people behind reclaim australia?

Yes it will
It's literally named after her
After she retires / dies it will be nothing

Yes I do believe so
They use the exact same methods and are probably led by the same people…

Check out Slackbastard he has details on all those guys.

Thank you and that is actually is something I should have asked earlier what are some good blogs/newsites to keep up to date on the Left and news in general?

Im currently a BBC, Murdoch paper, Redflag person which is probably not the best set up

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Because they're a bunch of stagnant old cunts. True, they help the homeless, but I doubt seeing them make any significant gains.

Im involved in socialist alternative, even tho i dont agree with 100% of the party line its pretty obvious to me they are the party most dedicated to political revolution and marx. Socialist alliance is a democratic socialist party that is on its last legs tbh, they have been in serious decline for years. Key issues for students is the disarm universities campaign, and for workers the general change the rules campaign is important, of course not including the ones you listed.

...

I wonder how long it will be until they create a pokemon go clone for it.

Can't wait till the coles fighting game comes out where you get a new character to fight the woolies demons from Neptune or whatever because you bought the Coles store brand chess or some shit…

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Fix

There is also the SEP who are a bit formal and stiff, but they do leave the house sometimes. The CPA seem to have some strong roots in the CFMEU so thats good. Some of them turned out to bash the fash in QLD, on a whim. KAP is not socialist. But i once refused to serve Rob, i told him it was because he was too drunk (im a pussy, it was because he voted for the lockout laws) he accepted it without kicking up a fuss so he's not entirely shit as a person.

There are IWW chapters around, and i saw ancom flags flying this labor day but i didnt say hi.

On top of housing, emphasize debt, cost of living and explain just how many advantages the wealthy have and how their accumulation is accelerating. Emphasize automation and about how even if you are doing well its no proof you will continue to do well in the future.

The point is not to convince people that communism is right. The way forwards is to incite people. Get them angry. Sow Discord. Once the revolution starts you and your organisation take advantage of the situation and offer people a solution to the chaos. Thats how 1917 went.

Good a victory for the Proletariat

And no im not celebrating this cuz this owns dem Green voting LibTARDS epic style or some shit
Its more to do with a fact that it was Literally doing nothing to deal with the Issue and was basically just taxing Proles for Problems Porky is causing

Is there any organisation you do this with/through?

So is the shit about Ex-Trot's / RadLibs loving rape basically a self fulfilling prophecy at this point?

It's not a political priority or anything, rape springs up in any organisation with a large internal power disparity. Trots are just really good at building organisations with that feature. American collegiate sports, Hollywood and the Catholic Church are equally rape-happy for the same structural reason.

Probably a lot to do with left wing groups having disproportionate amounts of women and young women.

I wouldnt call the Greens "Left" tbh
Their Literally "We need more Female drone pilots" tier people

I tend to agree but with people including people like Katter here I figured the greens would be covered.

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Bazed Kiwis

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"Cladenstine" in western commie circles 99% of the time means it basically solely exists as a website and holding occasional protests

I don't get the anti-greens sentiment. They're proposing many socialist reforms such as UBI and public banking.
What's the problem?

Literally Lolberg shit
Even if they actually intended to they will literally have enough power to do it

Probably by virtue of being the main social democrat party in Australia.

hope you like immigrants because your new workmates are Patel, Chin and Sanjeet

Anyone here about that Queensland senator who called for a 'final solution' on Muslim immigrants?

bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-45191315

who, Pauline Hanson?

Welp into the trash Katter goes…

Nah Fraser Anning. Apparently Pauline Hanson called him out. You know your fucked when your too racist for the evil ranga.

Yeah it was fucking disgusting.

Nah, Fraser Anning and Bob Katter backs him.

theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/aug/15/australian-party-leader-hails-speech-calling-for-final-solution-on-muslim-migration

You never would have thought.

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We live in strange times, man.

Make Videos about Aus Politics instead of shitposts Batko
"New-Right" Counter Culture Hipsters own the online discussion here

Been meaning to. Question is a manner of how to adress them. So far the interests I've been invested in have been going to the occaisonal protest and fighting for equal travel concessions for international students.

Speaking of which, Dutton seems to be falling for "muh violent sudanese gangs" meme.

Don't you think they are real?

he's been posessed by Jim Saleam

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Obviously they exist to some capacity but the Right is way overblowing the issue IMO
Its basically just a big issue in Melbourne and even there Right-Wingers inflate the Numbers to make that "Loony LIBTARD city of New Khartoum XD" look bad

There's a slight element of truth, but tbh it's a bunch of overblown nonsense, especially considering most violent crime comitted by """"gangs""""" come from Australia born residents.

theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jan/03/is-melbourne-in-the-grip-of-african-gangs-the-facts-behind-the-lurid-headlines

It's fear stoked by your typical right wing loons, who knowing them, are probably going to start shrieking "Sudanese people are inherently violent" etc. despite the fact that gangs of white nationalists are willing to attack migrant communities much like they did when Milo Yiannopolous came to Aus.

This. There's way more bogan cunts running around glassing people and shit.

Not to mention our fucked domestic violence rates.

True.

Speaking of Neo-Nazis, what's Blair Cottrel up to?

Got a Interview on the Rupert Murdoch news network

On sky news right? I heard some people resigned because of it.

I love how far right-wingers go "oh, all the commies work for the deepstate globalists" but they get to have TV appearances hosted by Rupert fucking Murdoch, who sits atop the one of the biggest media empires in the world. He literally is the deepstate.