Red Eureka: An interview with Tom Brennan, Arthur Dent, Tom Griffiths, and David McMullen
Harry H., Ryan M., Duncan P., and Tom P.
Platypus Review 169 | September 2024
On December 7, 2022, Platypus Affiliated Society members Harry H., Ryan M., Duncan P., and Tom P. interviewed former Red Eureka Movement members Tom Brennan, Arthur Dent (also known as Albert Langer; he writes at 21stLeft.com),[1] Tom Griffiths,[2] and David McMullen (simplymarxism.com).[3] An edited transcript follows.
Ryan M.: Where did you learn Marxism? What drew you to Marxism?
Arthur Dent: I object to the question; it reflects an academic disposition. The sharp distinction between us and the remnants of the Marxist intelligentsia that youâre dealing with, is that we had to teach ourselves as part of a mass upheaval movement in the 60s. It required a better understanding of the politics, economics, philosophy, and history necessitated by issues like the Vietnam War and generational cultural change. A lot of people didnât get anything more than being opposed to U.S. imperialism in Vietnam, or being rebellious. But if you were part of the political leadership of that movement, you had to know more. We found ourselves in conflict with other people that claimed to be Marxist, in particular the revisionist party, the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), was our main enemy. We had to learn what they were talking about regarding Vietnam. The three competing lines were: the Australian Labor Party (ALP) Left; the revisionists were pushing âstop the war, negotiateâ; the Trotskyists and the ALP Left were saying, âbring the troops homeâ; and the Maoists were putting forwarding âVictory to the Vietcong.â There wasnât a sharp policy distinction between the Maoists and Trotskyists on Vietnam: the two positions were in the direction of the Vietnamese winning and the Americans losing, and the two were also opposed to the CPA, which the Trotskyists insisted on calling Stalinist.
RM: Were people recruited to Marxism through the ALP, or perhaps on the shop floor?
Tom Griffiths: It was my first day at university. The Labor club was handing out the Communist Manifesto (1848). I read it quickly, and thought, âfuck, this is good.â It was the dynamic spirit in it. From that moment, I knew the direction Iâd be heading in: more and more rebellious. Now, that turned out to be the Maoists. They also had a more radical position in relation to Vietnam, which seemed to make sense to me. âVictory to the National Liberation Front.â There was no pussyfooting around about it.
RM: Did you also learn autodidactically?
AD: In the 70s we would have educational activities and try to have serious discussions about theoretical questions. Later on, when the Red Eureka Movement (REM) was there, when we were desperately trying to get people to become theoreticians, they just didnât want to. Theyâd been involved in a mass movement, they were interested in theory from that practical perspective, but youâre looking at the only three people who had an interest in theory in REM.
David McMullen: I went to Monash, where there was a lot happening about Vietnam and other things. Later I got involved in Workersâ Students Alliance (WSA). The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) (CPA (ML)),[4] had printed lots of cheap stuff, almost anything by Lenin, Marx, or Mao. I used to read a lot, and then unfortunately there was a period of five years where most of my diet was Vanguard, the newspaper of CPA (ML). Marxism became a religion.
TG: Did that diet have a constipating effect?
DM: It did indeed! And the big change was with Red Eureka, where everyone suddenly started thinking, rather than being straitjacketed.
Duncan P.: Did you ever visit China?
AD: As a teenager, I was into shortwave radio and I got bombarded with Peking media. I followed the polemics between the Chinese and the Russians in the 60s. I was following the Cultural Revolution closely, and getting a much broader picture than youâd get from Peking Review, much of which was just incomprehensible Chinglish. And a lot of the Red Guard material was too. But still you got a picture of the different factions fighting, and what they were saying to each other. I was in China in May 67 as a tourist. I remember meeting one of the top Red Guard leaders, Tan Houlan.[5]
DP: Did you identify yourself as a communist to them?
AD. They were treating me as communist royalty: I was made an honorary member of the Chingkangshan commune of the Red Guard. But I stress that I was a tourist not speaking Chinese. I thought, âthese guys are rebels, they have a similar culture to what we do as rebels at Monash,â which is a different experience to reading the Peking Review. They were rebels; they were the opposition in China, they were fighting against the authorities.
RM: Was there anyone from the Old Left â 1920s, 30, 40s â that you talked to about Marxism? Anyone who lived through 1917?
AD: 1917 is misleading. The people that we knew had been around in the 30s and 40s, which is different from 1917. There was an element of continuity. We could see that there was a generation before us that had likewise got the same perspective about capitalism, revolution, communism, etc. It wasnât like what it must feel like today, like youâre completely isolated in time and space and thereâs never been much of a Left that youâve got contact with. Weâre like an alien species that youâre interviewing from a distance. There wouldâve been people of our age now who we wouldâve encountered when we were your age then.
RM: Do you remember them being optimistic, pessimistic, or neutral?
AD: Optimistic.
TG: Agreed.
AD: The ones from the CPA would be pessimistic. There were lots of pessimistic ex-communists. But the ones we were in contact with, the young rebel communists, were optimistic.
Tom P.: How do younger Leftists today, people who are struggling with this lack of a movement, look to you? What would you say to them?
AD: We didnât learn from our elders. It was a matter of being up against the system and looking around for some theory.
Harry H.: How did you experience the transition from Monash student politics of the 60s, into Red Eureka and Discussion Bulletin in the 70s?
DM: I saw the 70s as a flat period. Reading Vanguard every week, hoping that something will happen, or feeling warm and fuzzy about something. I did not feel that I had anything useful to say to people at work or generally. We didnât have a line about anything of any value, and just latched onto nationalism â Australian nationalism, independence.
TG: For example,things like theEureka stockade.[6]
DM: WSA collapsed and then there was nothing. We came back together once the shit hit the fan over China. Thatâs when people were energized by the polemicizing. But we were still isolated. We were never a propaganda circle talking to people out there. We were just polemicizing amongst ourselves.
TG: The Vietnam War conflict took up a lot of time and energy, as it deserved. But things collapsed after that, and there was a good reason for it: we won. In the mid to late 70s in REM, we spoke about this collapse, peopleâs frustration, etc. And again, it was because we won. What else is going to happen? Of course things will divide after that. This exposes simultaneously a profound weakness in what weâd call the Left: there just wasnât a program. There wasnât a serious analysis, nor had there been for some time, of wanting to seize power and therefore have a view of how to use power. That wasnât taken seriously. And you need to take politics, people, and peopleâs needs seriously.
RM: Did you see the task of the reading group or Discussion Bulletin to come up with the program?
DM: It never got beyond simply trashing our opponents.
Tom Brennan: But I thought at the time the idea was to develop a program. But it was a discussion group that never got around to what it was supposed to do.
RM: In Discussion Bulletin 3 you outline that itâs open for dissent.[7] Youâre welcoming dissenting views but also encouraging people to come in and propose ideas. Was anything on the table?
TGr: But we didnât get it off the table. Discussion Bulletin was clearly urging everyone to take this problem seriously. The international communist movement had collapsed, and we had to come up with a program and analysis of the society we were in. It seems bizarre, but promptly, with Mao Tse-tung dying, the Gang of Four being overthrown, a coup dâĂ©tat in China, the Albania line had popped up and announced that the principle contradiction in the world today was between the socialist camp led by the Peopleâs Republic of Albania and the other forces of reaction. Instead of that being treated as odd and bizarre that was happening in some corner, it had a serious disruptive effect. All these people who desperately wanted to be aligned with some line that was clear, suddenly switched over. They were a minority. But that was damaging and that was a split.
TG: I remember Phil Court, who was slightly younger than me, and one of the guys in REM, just one day flippantly but accurately describing secular religious thinking: âfollow me and you need never think again.â And I hardwired that on the spot. Because what Arthur is talking about is the need people have to belong, for leadership, for clarity. âFollow me and weâre rightâ â and it doesnât work.
AD. Heâs now a Presbyterian minister! After the Albanians, you then had Bob Avakian in America of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA (RCPUSA). He was the great leader of the American proletariat. Again it was clear that it was a cult phenomena; we werenât unfamiliar with Leftist cults and things, and at the same time a lot of what the RCPUSA said coincided with views that we held.
RM: Did you communicate with them at all?
AD. Not really. One section. REM split again with people going over towards the RCPUSA, and I can remember writing a polemic against something that was said. In America, Russia took Alaska. And they may have to fight to defend it but theyâd simultaneously be fighting against their own ruling class. And that was translated here as, âyes, we would support national defense, while continuing the war with the bourgeoisie.â I wrote something sarcastic about how we were actually not at war with the bourgeoisie, weâre a discussion circle that hasnât got a platoon.
There was a fantasy world. People who are attracted to revolutionary politics are often also fantasists. Thereâs a distinction between genuine attraction to revolutionary politics and the attraction to fantasy. Definitely RCPUSA did have some serious theoretical work, and at the same time there was something clearly off about them. That was a fairly overwhelming phenomena.
My feeling from the 60s to the 70s was that we had a tremendous wave where things seemed normal. I grew up in that wave. It was normal for peopleâs ideas to be developing as rapidly as they were in the late 60s. And then followed this period of stagnation. It took a while to realize that the stagnation was because the social demands of the mass movement had been met, and it was fairly natural for the mass movement to subside. But we were desperately trying to keep something going.
RM: Did that register in the way you were discussing it?
AD: It registered in retrospect. I remember being one of the earliest ones aware of Vietnam. There wasnât that feeling of âweâve won.â The demonstrations had subsided, the mass movements went away, and the Vietnam War persisted. Because it continued for two years after the Geneva talks. They were withdrawing their troops, the war was ending, but we didnât fully register that. We just saw that we werenât able to mobilize anymore.
RM: What new synthesis did Maoism represent in the development of your theories in the 60s? When you were reflecting on the 70s, how did you relate things going on in China to the United States and Australia?
AD: Maoism was part of the same worldwide revolution. It was interesting that there was a 60s wave that didnât just hit Western Europe and the U.S., while it hit China and the national liberation movements around the world. Maoâs synthesis of it was succinct. To quote a well known phrase: âThere may be thousands of principles of Marxism but they can all be boiled down in one sentence: It is right to rebel! For thousands of years they said itâs right to repress, itâs right to exploit, and itâs wrong to rebel. Only with the coming of Marxism was this untruth turned upside down.â That was the underlying synthesis. The people who understood it also understood that they need to study more theory. But if you werenât a rebel you certainly werenât going to be attracted to the Maoists. All these people who are fundamentally not rebels are attracted to all kinds of, allegedly, Left politics because theyâre desperately hostile to capitalism. They think things are not only terrible, but that theyâre going from bad to worse and you canât win. Thatâs their world outlook. Whereas the Maoist world outlook is, âwe are rebels, we are fighters and we are going to win.â
TP: Can you expand on how you understand how the phrase âit is right to rebelâ encapsulates the essence of Marxism or Marxism-Leninism?
TG: Iâll put aside Marxism for a minute, because it seems implicit in Marxism. You look at Gerrard Winstanley from 1650: âFreedom is the man who turneth the world upside down and he therefore maketh many enemies.â Or Percy Bysshe Shelley: âMen of England, heirs of glory, writers of unwritten story.â The urge from the bottom to rebel. This is not exclusively Marxist; it may not even be predominantly Marxist, but it is certainly Marxist.
AD: Marxism is it. Marxism is a form of rebellion. Itâs not a religious sect with particular tenets.
TG: Thatâs right. Individuals have to do their own thinking.
DM: Itâs going to be particularly important after the revolution. Certainly in the experiences of places like the Soviet Union and China before the Cultural Revolution, it was peopleâs job to hail the great leaders and just follow instructions. The whole thing about the Cultural Revolution was that there was still a revolution going on and there were still people to rebel against.
TG: Thatâs a profound cultural question. Seizing power ainât easy, but, compared to the kind of cultural change that is required, seizing power is easy. Changing the way people think, the rules and understandings they live by, especially since many of them are either unconscious or barely conscious, theyâre in a barely lit corner of our noggins. That is really long-term work.
The Russian and Chinese Revolutions, as important as they were, were wonderfully successful in completing the bourgeois revolutions which the bourgeoisie werenât strong enough to start, let alone carry out. Itâs not surprising in hindsight that the proletariat leadership fell, because they had to unite with the peasantry; there had to be compromises made. What could possibly go wrong? The revolutions didnât go wrong in the sense that they were successful in prosecuting the bourgeois revolution which needed to occur. It was an advance. But the styles of thinking which will have dominated the people, broadly speaking, will make it exceptionally difficult, almost frightening for people to stand up and rock the boat. I guess thatâs why Mao and Wang Hongwen made that comment about swimming against the tide being a revolutionary and Marxist principle, even if it involves being jailed or killed. It was serious.
AD: On âit is right to rebel,â the quintessence of it is with Marxism, but it is also whatâs attractive about modernity.
TP: Who are the figures there? When you say that bourgeois epoch is attractive because it is right to rebel, aside from Marx, maybe prior to Marx, who are the figures that phrase represents?
AD: Abraham Lincoln is a positive example leading a second bourgeois revolution in America, but I would take it even earlier. Oliver Cromwell would be the classic example of the puritan, ideological, fundamentalist christian, fanatic, dictator, etc. He was throwing the existing social relations up in the air, but does it resonate with you that thatâs what Marx was on about?
RM: Yes, but perhaps today there is not a sense of Marx inheriting high bourgeois enlightenment thought.
AD: We are in agreement there, but I wouldnât focus on that as being the dividing line. I would focus on the rebel spirit. That somebody can have a quite backward position, like those going through this reactionary green idiocy. You can have a rebellious spirit and be capable of growing out of idiocy, but you canât have a reactionary spirit and develop towards Marxism. There are personality types that are conservative and rebellious. Itâs true that one should admire the bourgeois rebellious spirit, but what we actually want is the proletarian rebellious spirit, which is lacking at the moment. We do support bourgeois modernity against these reactionary, feudal relics, but I wouldnât overstress the enthusiasm for the bourgeoisie.
RM: Did you view Marxism-Leninism-Mao-Zedong thought as a response to the change of the 1940s, 50s , and 60s, or did you view it as a clarification of Marx?
AD. It was partly a response to the negative side of the Communist International (Comintern) in Stalinism. The Trotskyists have this emphasis on the Maoists being Stalinists, and Iâm proud to say, âyes, Iâm a Stalinist.â We were acutely conscious that the Comintern played a negative role in the Communist Party, as well as a positive role: they wouldnât have survived without Comintern support. The idea that âswimming against the tideâ is a Marxist principle was not a concept that the Comintern had established and imprinted in the minds of every communist. It was the concept that Mao and the Maoists were trying to imprint, although the imprinting itself was dodgy. I love that scene in the Life of Brian (1979): Brian tells his followers, âyouâre all individuals; youâre all different,â and one replies, âIâm not.â We would be hammering into people that swimming against the tide is a Marxist principle: âwhy arenât you swimming?!â
TG: Itâs an inherent contradiction, because if someone stood against the tide they would automatically be swimming with the tide.
DM: Iâm particularly interested in how, just after the revolution, there will be people who will need to begin the whole revolution from below. Theyâll keep on learning. While there is another stratum of people, sleazy people running stuff, and theyâll be scheming and pretending to be friends. There will also be people who have strange social pathologies â psychopaths and sociopaths everywhere. People will need incredible moral courage to stand up against, rebel against, or resist a lot of shit. That was a big experience in the Cultural Revolution. It wonât be the same. It will be under better conditions in a more modern capitalist society, but itâs going to be a new way of thinking, behaving, and transforming their relations.
RM: In 1978, Arthur debated the Spartacist league at Monash University. In their written review of the debate, they quote you as saying, âIf you had a revolution in Australia tomorrow, the social system wouldnât have fundamentally changed the day after tomorrow. Youâd go back to work the next day and youâd find that youâd probably have the same bosses.â[8] Can you expand on what you meant?
AD: To which they reply, yes, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the class struggle continues, with one rather enormous difference that workers then have state power and can subject the masses to their will. The Spartacistsâ consensus of responding to that is to denounce you: that you have not realized the suppression by state power would solve the problem. The working class has state power. If it were some comrade who was part of the struggle, you would explain that it was a Stalinist error, which was from this failure in Russia, that the basic point was that the working classes got state power and they got to suppress the enemies with state power, and they didnât realize the need for the fundamental revolutionary upheavals like what China was trying to do with the Cultural Revolution.
RM: Red Eureka has held an explicitly pro-NATO position, in contrast to almost all of the established far Left in Australia well before the war in Ukraine. What made you come to this position, and how has it changed, if at all, during the last 50 years?
DM: Weâre not pro-NATO, we just want NATO to do things. We want it to get in there and do bloody more to help Ukraine. In the second World War, the Americans and the British were fighting fascism. Trotskyists had trouble with that, but most of the rest of the human race had no trouble with the idea that we were all fighting against fascism. We shouldnât have any trouble with the idea of getting together to ensure that Ukraine wins, and that the regime in Russia collapses. It is the natural thing to do. Some people have weird theoretical notions running around in their head, making them think otherwise.
AD: You could be a wishy-washy pacifist, opposing some wars that should be opposed, but you cannot be far Left and be against going to war against fascism.
DM: The Ukrainians desperately want to become Europeans, and join with everybody else.
RM: Iâve read some of your writings about fascism, David,[9] especially today, to say various states are fascists, their leaders are fascists, how do we understand that category today? Most people on the Left are confused; they say, for example, that Reagan was fascist, and some said Bill Clinton was a fascist.
TG: âFascismâ has come to mean whatever you want. If you listen to the rulers and their mouthpieces in China and Russia, they are against democracy. They donât like democracy; they are rabidly nationalistic; and they think the West is decadent.
AD: We should confess: there was a trend, in the 60s Left, of calling everything fascist, of which we wouldâve been guilty. Neither Reagan nor Nixon was a fascist, but one is entitled to denounce their fascist policies.Nixon was killing people with fascist policies. There is a distinction between the sort of fascism of the Chinese regime, against that of the classic Italian and German fascism, but what they do have in common is that they were mass movements. Even the Chinese regime tries to mobilize the people as the German and Italian fascists did. Putinâs regime, on the other hand, has been demobilizing people. The basic principle of all the fascist governments is Georgi Dimitrovâs classic definition of fascism: âthe terroristic dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.â[10]
HH: While the USSR existed, you categorized it as social imperialism. What did social imperialism mean to you back then, and how did you view the collapse of the USSR post-1991?
AD: We moved on from social imperialism to social fascism, and from there to fascism. The USSR was fascist long before its end and the Putin regime. China was definitely the source of that. It wasnât an independent analysis, but it was one that we had to think about because it was completely foreign to what the whole of the hard Left, both Maoists and other groups, were completely focused on U.S. imperialism. It was startling for the Chinese to suddenly be raising the question that USSR imperialism was just as dangerous, and we had to study if they were right, because we werenât going to swing with the tide. The Trotskysits wouldnât have let us get away with not thinking about it, because they were hammering us continuously about echoing the Chinese. So we did think about it. The USSR was clearly threatening nuclear war against China. It was no longer a problem that they were saying, âfight U.S. imperialism,â but that they were invading other countries for conquest.
RM: That leads us to the topic of imperialism in general. It is one of these words, like fascism, that the Left uses to describe anything. Youâve used it less analytically in the past. How do you think of it as forming a part of your theory and analysis?
AD: When the Vietnam War was on, anti-imperialism was promoted as the explanation for how the world works: U.S. imperialism is the number one enemy of the peoples of the world; the national liberation movements were fighting it. That was a crude, but roughly reasonable description of the central issue in politics. Just as during the second world war, the central struggle was understood as being against fascism. That got turned into, âweâre all an anti-imperialist movement,â âeverything is a reflection of imperialism,â etc. It would be hard to disentangle where we got off that trajectory. I wouldâve got off it by now to the point of being practically pro-imperialist! I canât stand this pseudo-Leftist, anti-imperialist posturing.
TG: They say that imperialism did this or that, and it has become this mysterious object â the great Satan. It doesnât matter what everybody else does, including the Russians; it will still be the Americans who are behind it â that American imperialism is the problem.There is still an anti-West tendency that can get twisted and perverse, morphing into anti-modernism, anti-global society.
AD: There is a general thrust against modernity and the West. The connection is, these people who you call Marxist, and nearly all the Left, think like this. You are describing a bunch of reactionaries. Their actual political position is not even mildly progressive. They are against modern society, which does mean they are against capitalism, because the modern society is capitalist. They want to go backwards. Thereâs lots of progressive people around; they are the Left in the abstract sense: people who are both on the side of the oppressed and in favor of progress. Many such people are not organized politically, would not dream of getting involved in any of these hard Left groups, and clearly have nothing in common with them. Why do you keep referring to them as the Left, let alone Marxists?
RM: What Iâm saying is, thatâs the Marxism we have today.
AD. Itâs not!
DM: Thereâs a whole lot of these Marxians and Marxists, academics, who have been an important factor in turning Marxism into mush. The people who say the working class is dead, the revolution is dead, but we have to rescue something from Marx.
AD: There is a slightly contradictory thing: there is some valuable role for people who can speak German and understand 19th-century German Idealist philosophy, and doing academic studies. Iâve seen articles by them which are of some value in an academic sense. But the idea that there would be a Marxist tradition passed on by the Marxists, Marxian academics is bizarre in itself.
TB: Marxism is dead, and so it does get passed on that way.
RM: Tom Griffith, you participated in our âMarxism and anarchismâ panel in 2022, where you said,
both the Russian and Chinese revolutions were remarkably successful in completing the bourgeois revolution. They fell short of promoting the proletarian revolution. My hunch here is that for the proletarian revolution to be realistic to occur, to be successful, modernity, the bourgeois revolution, the bourgeoisification of society needs to be utterly complete which doesnât mean finished because things always tend to develop. But the feudal ideas, the traditional ideas, they can be pre-feudal, they can be tribal, can adjust themselves up or can be interpreted as things that look remarkably necessary, almost modern or revolutionary, no thanks.[11]
To even claim that the bourgeoisification of society should be completed â this would not only be rejected by most of the Marxists today as being Eurocentric, but thereâs a kernel there. This motivated my other questions. Where did you learn of this bourgeoisification of society and think in this way, and could you maybe expand on it?
TG. The key thinker that has helped me here is Marshall Berman. Berman was an American academic in New York of Jewish heritage. Here is an example of what I find attractive in Berman: in his centenary of Times Square he mentions a chat with a mate, and theyâre talking about Times Square, thinking about American capitalism: at Times Square you can be yourself and someone else at the same time. In other words, itâs the dynamism; itâs transformative, and without that weâre nothing. People seek transformation. The work I do with refugee communities and people who have been traumatized, is compelling in this regard. People donât want to be fucking stuck. People, women, especially from Africa and Sudan, donât want to be stuck. They want transformation; they canât necessarily articulate it in that way, but that doesnât matter. People want transformation and itâs the dynamism that is implied in capitalism. And Richard Wright, when he fled the Jim Crow South, described himself being picked up by the burning arms of the city, and he wasnât joking, it was burnt, but he grew.[12] Unless revolutionaries understand and embrace that dynamic, weâre fraught. We can have disagreements over all sorts of things, but if you donât understand and embrace that dynamic, please retire.
DM: That is perhaps where that reactionary character comes in: the idealization of getting out of the city, returning to farm life.
DP: In an article you authored on Online Opinion, David, you write that a genuine Left would align itself with the neo-conservatives and support their re-emergence.[13] They stand for an activist foreign policy of regime change, nation building, and economic development. This is reminiscent of Christopher Hitchensâs political turn from Trotskyist to neo-conservative, only that, unlike Hitchen, you do not identify with neo-conservatism. Why is this such an unusual position among the Left, and why should a genuine Left support it?
DM: Itâs about regime change, and it got fucked up by Obama. Iraq became the only Arab country in that area with an elected government and civil society as a result of getting rid of one of the most barbarous regimes on the planet.
TG: Itâs even more barbarous than the similarly named regime in Syria.
DM: It was an exceptionally fascist regime, and toxic militarily. It was a threat to everybody. Obama failed to stay on the cause, and within five minutes you had ISIS.
TB: He didnât support the Arab Spring.
DM: The problem was not following through on the neo-conservative position. The neo-conservatives lost their influence fairly quickly. The Americans decided for their own reasons that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a good thing to do. They had the concept of regime change, which makes sense, depending on conditions. There are lots of cases where we are not in a position to do that. But this was a case where it made sense and had a positive outcome with an elected government. It couldâve led to something similar in Syria.
TG: The appalling situation in Syria was that when the Baâathists had deployed chemical weapons, and the Americans said, you fucking do that, and youâre in deep shit, but then the U.S. did nothing. Russia saw, and you canât blame Russia but they stepped into a vacuum. Regarding the Arab Spring and the Americans and the neo-conservatives, people think that if the motivations are not pure, they must therefore be bad. Now the motivations may be bad, but the results may be good. We are not after fucking saints.Weâre atheists; we make the gods. For Christâs sake, why would we need a god that would invade Iraq?
TB: We just want the outcome.
AD: Fundamentally the people who are regarded as the Left and even as being Marxists, intend to be counter-revolutionary scum. Itâs not a problem of an inadequate grasp of Marxism. They are rabidly hostile to progress. There are other people who are quite conservative and yet more progressive than they are.
TG: Although they can spin all sorts of weird theories together to explain why America is the main problem, and we should embrace all sorts of garbage.
TB: Itâs easier to oppose than to support things. Thus the anti-imperialism and the anti-capitalism, which is really an excuse to whine, complain, and say we are opposed to them. Whatâs difficult is to come up with a program, an alternative â and we support this. |P
[1] Regarding Arthur Dent, see also Rjurik Davidson, Arthur Dent, and Rory Dufficy, âWhat is capitalism, and why should we be against it?,â Platypus Review 139 (September 2021), <https://platypus1917.org/2021/09/01/what-is-capitalism-and-why-should-we-be-against-it-2/>; Andy Blunden, Arthur Dent, and Alison Thorn, âThe legacy of 1968â and Barry Yorkâs response, Platypus Review 165 (April 2024), <https://platypus1917.org/category/pr/issue-165/>.
[2] Regarding Tom Griffiths, see also Matthew Crossin, Tom Griffiths, Lachlan Marshall, and Benjamin Smith, âMarxism and anarchism: Radical ideologies today,â Platypus Review 154 (March 2023), <https://platypus1917.org/2023/03/01/marxism-and-anarchism-radical-ideologies-today/>.
[3] Regarding David McMullen, see also David McMullen, âA Maoist response to âWhat was the Chinese Revolution and where is it going?,ââ Platypus Review 147 (June 2022), <https://platypus1917.org/2022/05/31/a-maoist-response-to-what-was-the-chinese-revolution-and-where-is-it-going/>; Verity Burgmann, Kevin Healy, David McMullen, and Max Ogden, âThe Australian Labor Party and the Left,â Platypus Review 148 (JulyâAugust 2022), <https://platypus1917.org/2022/07/03/the-australian-labor-party-and-the-left/>; Conrad Hamilton, Griffith Jones, David McMullen, and Anthony Monteiro, âChina and the Left,â Platypus Review 162 (December 2023 â January 2024), <https://platypus1917.org/2023/12/01/china-and-the-left/>; and David McMullen, âEcosocialism and degrowth are great ways to become irrelevant,â Platypus Review 167 (June 2024), <https://platypus1917.org/2024/06/02/ecosocialism-and-degrowth-are-great-ways-to-become-irrelevant/>.
[4] CPA (ML) split from the Communist Party of Australia in 1964 after the Sino-Soviet split.
[5] One of the four âgenerals,â mentioned in Mao Tse-tung, âDialogues with Responsible Persons of Capital Red Guards Congressâ (July 28, 1968), <https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_81.htm>.
[6] In 1854 Victorian miners built a stockade near the Eureka mine in protest against the colonial governmentâs mining license fees. The struggle of these miners came to be considered by many a highpoint in Australian political history.
[7] âEditorial,â Discussion Bulletin 3 (March 17, 1979), <https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/australia/db-3.pdf>.
[8] âMaoist âin the service of peanut king Carterâ: Spartacist League debates Albert Langer,â Australasian Spartacist 59 (November 1978): 4, 7, <https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/periodicals/australasian/059_November_1978_Austral_Spart.pdf>.
[9] See, for example, McMullenâs opening remarks in Hamilton, Jones, McMullen, and Monteiro, âChina and the Left.â
[10] Georgi Dimitrov, âThe Fascist Offensive and the Task of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascismâ (1935), in Georgi Dimitrov, Selected Works, vol. 2 (Sofia: Sofia Press, 1972), <https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm>.
[11] Crossin, Griffiths, Marshall, Smith, âMarxism and anarchism.â
[12] Tom Griffiths expands on Richard Wright in his article ââFollow me and you need never think againâ: Richard Wright, Liu Shao-Chi, Julius Fucik, the CPA(ML)... and the fire we need,â C21st Left (March 11, 2021), <https://c21stleft.com/2021/03/11/follow-me-and-you-need-never-think-again-richard-wright-liu-shao-chi-julius-fucik-the-cpaml-and-the-fire-we-need/>.
[13] David McMullen, âA genuine left would support Western Civilisation,â Online Opinion (Jun 1, 2018), <https://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=19769>.
