Socialist Alternative (Australia)


Socialist Alternative is a Trotskyist organisation in Australia. Founded in 1995 after its founding members were expelled from the former International Socialist Organisation. The organisation has branches across Australia, their membership operates within the trade union and student union movements, as well as grass roots campaigns.
The party participates within the Victorian Socialists electoral alliance in Victoria. On an international level, the Socialist Alternative is an observer of the Fourth International. They publish a fortnightly newspaper, Red Flag.

History

Socialist Alternative was established in 1995 by ex-members of the former International Socialist Organisation in Melbourne. Following debates over the orientation of the ISO to the Australian political situation, the members were expelled for arguing the ISO held "overblown" expectations of the 1990s combined with "a super-inflated estimation" of their own capabilities. This was part of the debate internationally within the International Socialist Tendency over the nature of the contemporary political situation and how socialists should respond, with the leading organisation in the Tendency, the British Socialist Workers Party arguing, the 1990s were like "the 1930s in slow motion". Like in Australia, splits occurred within the IST in other countries, including New Zealand, Greece, Germany, Canada, South Africa and France. In addition to splits, the International Socialist Organization in the United States were expelled from the IST.
Socialist Alternative has links with a number of other groups which were previously part of the IST, such as the ISO in America, the Internationalist Workers' Left in Greece, Socialisme International in France, and both Socialist Aotearoa and the International Socialist Organisation in New Zealand. Since 2013, Socialist Alternative has maintained permanent observer status within the International Committee meeting of the Fourth International, a worldwide organisation of revolutionary Marxists.
Until 2003, Socialist Alternative was based primarily in Melbourne, until the organisation began to establish branches in other Australian cities following a surge of growth out of the S11 protests against the 2000 World Economic Forum meeting in Melbourne. Socialist Alternative now claims to have the largest active membership of any far-left organisation in the country.
Socialist Alternative was invited to join the Socialist Alliance in 2001. The Alliance grouped together the Democratic Socialist Perspective, the ISO, and other Australian far-left groups and individuals. Socialist Alternative eventually declined to join due to the Socialist Alliance's strong emphasis on running in parliamentary elections. This parliamentary emphasis in the flat political climate was seen by Socialist Alternative as a restriction to building activism on the ground and representing a turn towards reformist politics. Socialist Alternative entered into unity discussions with the Revolutionary Socialist Party, who had split from the DSP, in 2012, which prompted the Socialist Alliance to reopen unity discussions with Socialist Alternative.
In March 2013, Socialist Alternative merged with the Revolutionary Socialist Party, a small organisation which were expelled from the Democratic Socialist Perspective in 2008. Notable members of the RSP include Van Thanh Rudd.
In 2018, the Socialist Alternative Victorian branch helped to establish the Victorian Socialists. Socialist Alternative initially represented the largest grouping within the Victorian Socialists.

Campaigns

With a presence within most broad-left campaigns, Socialist Alternative has participated in protests against what they perceive as attacks by the Australian Government on industrial relations, student unions and higher education, Aboriginal rights, refugee rights, women's' rights, LGBTI rights the environment and free speech. They have been involved in anti-war, anti-racism, anti-Zionism, anti-capitalism, anti-corporate greed and anti-uranium mining demonstrations. Socialist Alternative members are identifiable during street marches with the red flags carried in their contingent or red bloc.
Socialist Alternative has been involved in organising within anti-war campaign groups such as the Stop the War Coalition and has participated in demonstrations across the country, including the protests against the 2011 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, the 2008–2009 war on Gaza, the 2007 APEC Conference, the 2006 G20 Summit, the 2006 war on Lebanon, the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan and have been involved in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign and solidarity actions with the Arab Spring.
Since 2004, the Socialist Alternative has participated in the Equal Love campaign – the main campaign group that advocates marriage equality in the country. Many Socialist Alternative members have been elected as National Union of Students Queer Officers and have used this position to promote Equal Love and attack the Rudd-Gillard Government for not repealing John Howard's ban on same-sex marriage. Several Socialist Alternative members are notable for their same-sex marriage activism. Member and Victorian Equal Love Convenor Ali Hogg, was voted the most influential LGBTI Australian by Samesame.com.au and the sixth most influential Melburnian by The Age for her activism in gay and lesbian rights in 2011. Member Roz Ward was the co-founder of the Safe Schools Coalition Australia, the organisation which organised Safe Schools Program.
Since early 2009, Socialist Alternative has been involved in building Students for Palestine, and campus activity, including the protests against the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid and helping fundraise for the Viva Palestina 5. In 2011, Socialist Alternative members were among 19 arrested in a Melbourne demonstration targeting Israeli-owned chocolate chain Max Brenner as part of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against the state of Israel. The organisation has been criticised as being anti-Semitic by the Australasian Union of Jewish Students. Socialist Alternative maintains that Israel does not represent Jews, but simply claims to do so. The organisation insists that they "take a firm stand against all forms of racism". Socialist Alternative claims that they have "supported innumerable protests against anti-Semitic bigots such as the Holocaust denier David Irving" and believes that Israel's most strident critics are often Jewish themselves, citing Jewish Marxists Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg in their opposition to Zionism, who saw it as an imperialist ideology.
Socialist Alternative is active within broad campaign groups formed under the Howard government to mobilise opposition to mandatory detention and offshore processing. They have participated in protests against detention centres such as Woomera and Baxter, including the breaking out of refugees in 2001. Socialist Alternative is opposed to the entirety of mandatory detention as a policy and supports open borders. Since the election of the Rudd-Gillard Labor government in 2007, they have continued to organise and campaign around the issue.

Membership routine

Branches

The organisation has branches in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth and Adelaide. In Melbourne, Socialist Alternative are based at Victorian Trades Hall. Branches hold meetings to discuss current political developments and Marxist history and theory. Socialist Alternative advertise public meetings through leafleting on street stalls, campuses, at demonstrations and through bill posters.

Student activism

Socialist Alternative participates in campus student union elections and in the National Union of Students – in an attempt to win positions to influence student politics – as a faction, of which it claims to be the largest to the left of the National Labor Students. They are known for their hostility towards both the Liberal and Labor parties. Despite their presence in many social movements, Socialist Alternative activists have often come under criticism for having a "counter-productive" attitude towards movement work, prioritising recruiting new members over sustainable activism. They are also known for their use of megaphones to drown out political debate and avoid the possibility of actual engagement in reasoned debate over any issue they disagree with through the loud, repetitive chanting of slogans. They have come under attack from a range of factions in student politics, including Liberal students, both Left and Right Labor students and claim to have been slandered by the Australasian Union of Jewish Students, for their strong opposition to the state of Israel.
Students and student union activists form a large composition of Socialist Alternative's membership and their political work often emphasises university-based campaigns. According to National Executive member Mick Armstrong, Socialist Alternative's focus on student work is part of a perspective that the organisation has adopted for the political period, due to what they see as their limited size and influence in the working class movement and the lack of any substantial radicalisation in society. Socialist Alternative's political orientation to students mirrors the development of the British Socialist Workers Party during the 1980s.
Socialist Alternative members are active in student unions in universities such as Queensland University, Swinburne University of Technology, La Trobe University, University of Melbourne, RMIT, University of Western Sydney, University of Sydney, Charles Sturt University, Curtin University of Technology, University of New South Wales, and Victorian College of the Arts. The membership of the organisation also includes secondary school students, active in their schools.
Socialist Alternative was deregistered as a club at Monash University in September 2014. Matthew Lesh, Political Affairs Director of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students, claimed that members of the organisation refused entry to a group of Jewish students on the basis of their religion and assumed political beliefs. The Socialist Alternative denied this claim. Socialist Alternative is threatened with no longer receiving funds from the university and not being able to book university venues.

Trade unionism

Members of Socialist Alternative who are employed are politically active within the trade union appropriate for their industry. Socialist Alternative's members are active in trade unions including the National Tertiary Education Union, in which lecturer and Socialist Alternative member Liam Ward was elected to the RMIT University Branch Committee as part of a left-wing oppositional ticket that replaced the previously established union leadership in 2010.
Socialist Alternative reject the practice of forming separate 'red unions' arguing that such projects isolate socialists from the organised working class and are premised on a top-down method of artificially substituting a radical union leadership for the rank and file, instead arguing for activists to rebuild rank and file organisation within existing unions irrespective of their conservative leadership. In 2010, Socialist Alternative member and Queensland Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association delegate Duncan Hart organised supporters of same-sex marriage within the union in a rank and file challenge against the socially conservative SDA leader Joe de Bruyn.

Theory

Though one of Socialist Alternative's stated aims is to contribute towards building a revolutionary party that can intervene in – and lead – mass working-class struggles, they do not consider themselves a political party at their current size and influence. Originating in the political tradition of the International Socialist Tendency, Socialist Alternative defend the position that a socialist revolution can only come about through "workers taking control of their workplaces, dismantling existing state institutions and replacing them with an entirely new state based on genuinely democratic control by the working class". Describing itself as a "propaganda group" at its current size, Socialist Alternative attempts to relate to its audience primarily on the level of ideas, rather than seeing itself as a party that can be capable of leading mass struggles. While Socialist Alternative supports existing trade unions as essential components of workers' struggles, they believe that capitalism can only be successfully overthrown if a revolutionary party is built to challenge the hold of the ALP and the trade union bureaucracy over the working class, in conjunction with similar parties internationally.
Socialist Alternative has over the years tried to establish unity talks with both Solidarity and its predecessor organisation, the International Socialist Organisation, yet have remained unsuccessful. This could be in part to do with Socialist Alternative's perspective of currently identifying as a propaganda group, which has been controversial within the Australian far left in general.
In 2012 the Police Federation of Australia demanded that the Victorian Trades Hall Council cancel a Socialist Alternative public forum on "police racism and violence", as Trades Hall was where the meeting was to take place. The Council complied with the Police Federation's request however the meeting went ahead after a number of people turned up for the meeting and occupied the Trades Hall foyer, causing the Police Federation to split from the Council.
Socialist Alternative sees the October 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia as a genuine socialist revolution but assert the following "imperialist" attack on the country and the failure of the revolution to spread to Western Europe led to its ultimate defeat by Stalin's "counter-revolution".

Australian parties

SA are hostile to the conservative Liberal Party and are highly critical of the Labor Party for its perceived rightward shift and acceptance of neo-liberalism. SA classifies the ALP as a "capitalist workers' party" – seeing it qualitatively different from the Liberal Party due to its organisational relationship with the trade union bureaucracy – that still governs in the interests of the capitalist class. Socialist Alternative are critical of the ALP's Fair Work Australia, which they see as a similar version of the Liberal's WorkChoices, alongside its maintenance of the Australian Building and Construction Commission.
Socialist Alternative moreover hold that the Greens are not a left alternative to Labor, and consider it a middle-class party equally committed to the maintenance of Australian capitalism as the two major parties and accuse them of "populist left nationalism". Socialist Alternative reject reformism outright and defend Rosa Luxemburg's position in her work Social Reform or Revolution that reformism is "not the realisation of socialism, but the reform of capitalism".

Elections

Socialist Alternative maintain the position that parliamentary elections are not the key to social change. However, they do not reject voting in elections outright and see elections reflecting the state of mass political consciousness. Therefore, the organisation promotes who they vote for and who they believe the left should support during election periods, for example calling for the left to unite around SYRIZA in the 2012 Greek legislative election. They have also run members as candidates and supported Stephen Jolly for the Victorian Socialists political party in Victorian elections.
In the 2018 Victorian state and 2019 federal elections Socialist Alternative campaigned alongside the Socialist Alliance to support the newly founded left-wing political party, the Victorian Socialists.

Publications

From 2009 to 2011, members of the organisation edited the annual online theoretical journal, Marxist Interventions. The overall aim of MI was to make Australian Marxist writings more readily accessible to audiences.
In 2010, the organisation launched a biannual theoretical journal, Marxist Left Review, edited by Sandra Bloodworth. The journal aims to "engage with theoretical and political debates on the Australian and international left".
Socialist Alternative also hosts an annual far-left political conference named Marxism, which is the largest conference of its kind in Australia.