The party question
Andy Blunden
Platypus Review 185 | April 2026
IT IS WIDELY ACCEPTED that an essential premise of Marx’s theory is that socialism must have a party as its vehicle. I do not accept this claim.[1] To explain why, I will briefly review the historical record, the present-day political terrain on the Left, and the social terrain as a whole in light of the present-day labor process, and then I will suggest an alternative view.
The history of the revolutionary party
Marx and Engels wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) for the Communist League.[2] But there was no “Communist Party.” The Communist League, founded in 1847, was a small organization whose constitution was modelled on those of 18th-century secret societies such as the Freemasons and the political sociétés (usually translated as “clubs”) of the French revolutionary period. Despite the threat of state repression, Marx and Engels worked to turn the League into a more suitable vehicle for a modern political movement. The “Communist Party” of the Manifesto, on the other hand, was understood more in the way we understand “the Left” today, rather than an organization with a membership list. Marx intervened in the revolutions of 1848 by printing and distributing the Neue Rheinische Zeitung daily, financially supported by shareholders, with the aid of an editorial board and informal supporters acting as distributors.
In the UK, the Whigs and Tories were more like parties in the modern sense, but they oriented exclusively toward parliamentary representation, without any active branches with real internal lives. The Reform Act of 1832 had failed to extend the franchise to the vast majority of workers, whose only avenue for political activity was to attend hustings and sign petitions. The People’s Charter was published in 1838 to remedy this problem, and in 1840 the National Charter Association (NCA) borrowed its structure from the Methodist Church. However, its vibrant internal democratic activity was made illegal and brutally suppressed. By the time of the Communist League, the NCA was enduring its swan song as the British bourgeoisie blocked the road for any political organization or parliamentary participation by the working class. But Marx and Engels looked to it as a model so far as it was possible, given the threat of state repression.
By the 1860s, the franchise was being gradually expanded in Britain and trade unions were increasingly tolerated, now preferred by employers to employees organizing in secret. The International Workingmen’s Association (IWA, or First International) was founded in 1864, mainly by the London Trades Council, and was the first mass working-class organization that Marx was part of creating. Under Marx’s leadership, the IWA was based on the principles of solidarity and the self-emancipation of the working class, and was very loose in its attitude to membership. Organically embedded in the industrial working class of Europe, it was not involved in elections and did not foment revolutionary activity, being exclusively involved in industrial activity and education. The IWA played next to no role in the Paris Commune and declined in the 1870s. This did not stop Marx and Engels working like Trojans: studying, writing, publishing, and occasionally lecturing.
In the decades following Marx’s death in 1883, large masses of unskilled workers (i.e., workers outside the apprenticeship system) formed trade unions, and in Europe and later Britain, workers swelled the ranks of the parliamentary parties which formed the Second International. The largest, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), originated in the Gotha Congress of 1875, when Ferdinand Lassalle’s General German Workers’ Association and August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht’s Social Democratic Workers’ Party merged. Marx maintained a comradely but critical attitude to the new social democratic parties until his death in 1883.
In Russia in 1905, the workers formed soviets, a different kind of working-class organization; members of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) participated alongside the politically active section of the Russian working class, while also maintaining a presence in the Duma after 1905.
Colonial and early 20th-century Australia had several small Marxist groups. The Victorian Socialist Party, founded in 1906, was active in the trade unions, founding the local branch of the IWW, and worked inside the Australian Labor Party (ALP), and was popular among the working class of Melbourne. But it was a very small group.
At this point, the predominant form of political organization in the workers’ movement was large formations that were organic parts of the class itself, in which various political factions participated. But the soviets and the labor and social-democratic parties existed independently of the Marxists; they were not the creation of Marxists.
Under Tsarist rule, the Bolshevik wing of the RSDLP could have no illusions in the parliamentary road, but universal suffrage was established by the February Revolution of 1917, and the Bolsheviks seized the opportunity. In the aftermath of the October Revolution, they took power on behalf of the soviets and founded the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. Notwithstanding the centrality of the soviets, it was the Bolshevik Party which led the Revolution at the head of the soviets, an achievement formalized by the change of name to the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
Subsequently, the Third, or Communist, International (Comintern) set up communist parties internationally, in the image of the Russian Communist Party. But the Comintern could not will into existence the soviets that had made the Russian Revolution. The Communist Party of Australia (CPA) was founded in 1920, and the small Marxist groups which had been active before then withered away, leaving the leadership of the workers’ movement to the overlapping membership of the trade unions, the ALP, and the CPA. This formation largely remained in place, as in many other countries, until the 1960s. Only the CPA saw itself as a vehicle for social revolution and Marxist ideas.
All the parties which made revolutions during the period when the Comintern was interested in making revolutions were subordinate organs of the Comintern. What made the Chinese Revolution of 1949 was an army of peasants led by intellectuals and workers loyal to the Comintern, not a political party. The revolution in Yugoslavia was likewise made by a partisan army, albeit in this case with limited interference from the Comintern. Otherwise, all the regime changes in Eastern Europe were the result of the military conquests of the Soviet army. Subsequent “revolutions” in Africa and Latin America were made by guerrilla armies, not political parties, with the material aid of either China or the Soviet Union, as rival quasi-colonial powers.
The CPA was at times more radical than its Comintern directives demanded; it could be said that it was the most successful revolutionary party in Australian history. At the end of the Second World War, in which the Soviet Union was an ally of Australia against Nazi Germany and bearing the brunt of the fighting, the CPA had a high profile. Its membership was estimated to be 22,000 in a population of 7.5 million, and it led a large faction in the trade unions, holding 8 of the 18 seats on the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) General Council. It could be said that the CPA was the organic leadership of the Australian working class, even though its policies were controlled day-by-day from Moscow. It should be noted that only once has a member of the CPA been elected to Parliament at state or federal level (Fred Paterson, member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly, 1944–50). It has always been the case that Australian workers are happy to have communists leading their trade unions, but not in charge of the government.
Then came the Cold War, which brought political suppression and victimization to members of the CPA, and, in combination with the post-war boom, produced distinctly unfavorable social conditions for communism. The Soviet Union was not looking for revolution in the advanced capitalist countries. While continuing to defend its positions in the unions, the CPA put its head down and concentrated on the peace movement, a pre-feminist women’s movement, the arts world, and folk-music clubs.
When millions were thrown into political activity via their opposition to the Vietnam War, the CPA led the first protests against the War and conscription; to the youth it looked like a quaint society for the elderly. It was not culturally equipped to absorb the new generation of young communists, and it declined as the tide of 1960s radicalism ebbed.
The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia led to a split in which those supporting the Soviet Union formed the Socialist Party of Australia (SPA). The split in the CPA reflected the changes in the labor process underway and the character of the radical youth. These were not the children of blue-collar workers following their parents into blue-collar jobs and blue-collar unions. Just as the ALP was increasingly dominated by the professional classes, revolutionary politics was resonating with university students who were outraged by the Soviet invasion. Meanwhile, changes in the nature of work accelerated in the 1970s, leading to a marginalisation of blue-collar workers in the political life of the country.
In 1989, what remained of the CPA wound itself up and launched the New Left Party, which never worked out a program, and lived only long enough to wind itself up 1992. The assets of the CPA were left to the SEARCH Foundation, which operates as a kind of Left-leaning charity, distributing funds to Left causes, and is managed by ex-members of Left parties. In 1996, the SPA took the name of the CPA and now forms a part of the ecosystem of small communist groups in Australia, all with broadly the same policies.
Today, the Left in Australia somewhat resembles the Left as it was prior to the October Revolution, differing only in the volume of small Left groups that compete for the larger population of non-ALP socialists.
This is the sense in which I say that the 20th century turned out to be a mistake.
Apart from October 1917, political parties have not made revolutions. Revolutions have been made by armies of one kind or another. Political parties have been part of opinion formation and the political education of the masses, but they have not actually made a revolution. Parties are governments-in-waiting, and whether the road to power is a parliamentary election or a military conquest will determine the nature of the formation which claims to be a “party.” Although parties may be a factor in opinion formation, generally the job of opinion formation is the work of social movements.
The degeneration of the Soviet Union has much more to do with factors outside the control of the revolutionaries themselves: the invasion of the USSR by imperialist armies and the subsequent political and economic isolation of the Revolution in a country which was already devastated by war and, in any case, was 95% composed of peasants and landlords.
Where states were created by victorious armies, their resulting nature was unattractive to anyone who wished for a reasonable standard of living, a voice in political life, and social peace. Granted, many avoided the worst features of neoliberal capitalism, but they did so at the expense of social and economic development and the normal kind of freedoms enjoyed in the capitalist world. Leaders that come to power by the sword tend to rule by the sword.
The political landscape in Australia today
If you live in a country like Australia where universal suffrage is in place and is implemented fairly, then you should know that changing government policy is not achieved by changing the government but by changing the opinions of the voters, notwithstanding that governments do a lot of things which their voters hate. The general rule is: don’t try and persuade the politicians, persuade the voters. Of course, without universal suffrage the same would apply, but only the enfranchised section of the population would have a say.
Generally speaking, the class that controls civil society controls government, and this is more true than the converse, i.e., controlling government does not necessarily bring with it control of public opinion, even though governments hold many powerful levers to that end, and can determine activity in civil society in the face of public hostility.
Capital has at its disposal vast means for the control of public opinion. Capitalists own the means of communication and collectively determine in large measure the content of all public communication through ownership of industry, property, and money. They teach the working population “common sense” by controlling the experiences people have in their working life as employees, and by means of the laws of economics, which are but the ideal form of the bourgeoisie and saturate the cultural atmosphere with advertisements and all kinds of diversion.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party said that “the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.”[3] This first step remains before us. We know all the advantages the bourgeoisie has in “the battle of democracy,” but the working people also have advantages, above all the advantage of numbers. Whatever the barriers to winning the battle of democracy, these are basically the same barriers which bar the way to social revolution. There is no way of bypassing public opinion. A social revolution cannot be made without the support of the overwhelming majority of the politically active population.
However, not every socialist is concerned with changing government or government policy. Taking the long view, some socialists work to bring about socialism at some future time, and in their view governments have little to contribute. They claim that socialism can only arrive via socialist revolution because the capitalists will only relinquish their property in the face of overwhelming force. While the government formally has the capacity to expropriate, the enormous power of capital, in the world economy and domestically, militates against this. In the 125 years of universal suffrage in Australia, elected governments have never had the power or the will to expropriate capital.[4] Therefore, the leadership of the revolution and the readiness of the working class for revolution must be prepared in advance. The preparation for a violent revolution is a task quite distinct from the task of improving life under capitalism. Thus the dichotomy: reform or revolution. As Marx noted in The Civil War in France (1871): “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.”[5] This is true.
Today, the preparation for a future revolution is conceived of in terms of the size and influence of a revolutionary party which has grown from a presently existing embryo and will seize power on behalf of the working class, having transformed itself into the organic leadership of the working class. It is presumed that one of the 20-odd little revolutionary parties will grow and lead the revolution.
As a result, the explicitly political landscape is inhabited by three types of animal: (1) political parties, or governments-in-waiting oriented towards winning elections and implementing their program through the state apparatus; (2) revolutionary groups propagating the conception of socialist revolution and preparing the general staff of a future revolutionary army; (3) social movements working at changing public opinion on specific issues with the aim of forcing governments to act on these issues by convincing the voters. Social movements are frequently active in dealing with the issue themselves, but are not interested in becoming a government either by voting or by revolution. Although there are hybrids such as the trade unions, which are institutionalized social movements, these tasks are more or less mutually exclusive, and the organizations are generally clear about their raison d’être.
No one today seriously repeats the slogan “After them, us” by which German Communists in the 1930s expressed the belief that life would be so terrible under the Nazis that people would vote for the Communist Party of Germany. Further than this, there is such a thing as what Nancy Fraser calls “non-reformist reforms”[6] — that is, measures which can win widespread support on their own merit here and now, but at the same time actually improve the self-confidence, unity, and fighting capacity of the working class. The abolition of all anti-union laws and the guarantee of access to the best possible quality of education and health services improve the prospects for a successful and lasting social revolution, even though they militate against the immediate stimulus to endure the civil war which will ultimately be needed to defend these conditions. It is generally the taking away of some benefit, rather than a long-held desire for that benefit, which stimulates the masses into political action. Some benefits, like a good public health system, are extremely difficult to take away. In any case, any advocate of socialism, whether or not they believe that social revolution is necessary to achieve it, is duty-bound to work for such reforms. Not all reforms have this character. For example, measures which aim to foster small business and self-employment may improve life under capitalism for some, but they complicate the road to socialism.
The Slackbastard blog enumerates 20 groups dedicated to preparing for social revolution in Australia, even before he gets to the “see also.”[7] The largest and evidently “most successful” of these is the latest version of Tony Cliff’s tendency, now known as Socialist Alternative (SAlt), which split from the now-defunct International Socialist Organization (ISO) in 1995. SAlt makes it clear that socialist revolution is unlikely to break out in Australia:
It is much more likely that revolution will wash onto our shores only after major revolutionary waves appear in other parts of the world and global capitalism is beginning to falter, throwing our own society into turmoil — making existing problems worse, exposing new ones, while inspiring people to do something about them by following the lead of people overseas. . . . When it does, the question will not be, “Can it happen here?” The question will be, “How can we win?” The answer to that will depend to a large degree on how many people have already been trained as activists and know how to organise people, how many people have studied other revolutions and their dynamics and can apply the lessons learned by millions of people in previous attempts to change the world, how many people understand the ways different social classes mobilise to defend their interests. In short, it will depend on how organised our side is.[8]
The above verges on the self-evident. If there were a revolution originating in Australia, it would be easily crushed by international capital. A successful revolution would arise only as a part of an enormous social crisis originating outside Australia’s borders. But this tells us nothing to justify the project of revolutionary groups who deceive themselves into believing that it is they who are preparing the revolutionary general staff for the future social revolution. I’ll return to this, but they are right when they say, “In short, it will depend on how organised our side is.”
This is the raison d’être of SAlt: to train activists and organize in preparation for the revolutionary upsurge that will surely follow a revolution overseas (an interesting variant of the DSP’s raison d’être, which was to lend aid to revolutions overseas).[9] Whatever they say, everyone knows that SAlt has no real interest in the actual aim of any project in which they participate.
SAlt originates from a group expelled from the ISO in 1995. Contrary to the ISO, whose practice consistently exhibited this lack of interest in the goals of any campaign it participated in, SAlt claims to practice “a combination of arguing principled socialist politics and involving ourselves wholeheartedly in the campaigns that emerged.”[10] The following excerpts are taken from an authoritative reflection of the historical origins of SAlt by Mick Armstrong, written in 2010:
[Because of the deteriorating combativity of the workers’ movement,] New recruits, if they are to remain actively involved and be confident to recruit other people, have to be politically convinced through serious discussion, political branch meetings and reading groups, combined with well thought-out interventions into whatever struggles and debates that arise. . . . for a socialist group of a few hundred to operate successfully it needs to understand that it is nowhere near to being a mass party that can lead any significant layer of workers in struggle. Instead it has to be clear that it is reliant on its ideas to influence relatively small numbers of people. . . . With over 100 student activists we have by far the largest base of any left group on the university campuses and at the same time we have gradually built up a layer of members who are activists in a range of trade unions . . . We were even more right to resist the fantasy that in the space of a few short years a couple of hundred socialists could by an act of will and organisational quick fixes decisively break out and achieve a mass working-class following. With the ISO defunct, the challenge facing us in Socialist Alternative is to take the next step forward and begin to lay the basis for a serious current in the working class based on the politics of international socialism.[11]
Even more than in 2010, SAlt is the largest of the groups on the Left in Australia, but there is not the slightest sign of them “breaking out” with a mass working-class following. They have a smattering of members that retained their membership after leaving university and are now in trade unions. Via its electoral vehicle the Victorian Socialists, SAlt has not won a single local government position, although in 2022 it did win 4% of votes and retain its deposit in one region with a progressive, largely blue-collar and immigrant population, Northern Metropolitan. Their state-wide level of support in Victoria has been around 1% in general elections and went as high as 2% in some local government elections. The Victorian Socialists election platforms are firmly within the bounds of “reformism,” and are addressed to the present-day consciousness of the most politically active sections of the population — it is more or less the same menu of policies as is offered by the Australian Greens.
Judged by active membership numbers and election results, SAlt is dwarfed by the Greens, who get about 12.5% of the vote nationally and hold 33 lower house seats at state, one federal seat (although it was once as high as four), and over 100 local government seats. If SAlt gets much less support than the Greens, it is not because they are too radical. It is something else. For one, the voters take the Greens’ platform at face value, whereas everyone knows that the Victorian Socialists are putting forward policies which they believe will get a vote, and not policies they actually believe in. Given the minimal impact that SAlt has on the consciousness of the wider population, it is fair to suppose that the vote they get is mainly a response to the word “socialist” on the ballot paper. If the standing of this word in Australia has fallen to a level where it is preferred by only about 1% of the population, this alone is evidence that SAlt’s preparation for the coming socialist revolution has not been successful so far.
Armstrong’s critique of SAlt’s predecessor, the ISO, hinges mainly on the ISO’s inability to take the temperature of the working class and its disorienting of the membership with hyperactivism on the basis of delusions of the approaching “break out.” Recognizing that a revolutionary crisis was not itself going to sustain the revolutionary consciousness of their members, Armstrong advises more attention to the education of members in socialist ideas, as opposed to over-ambitious and invariably disappointing activism. However, Armstrong defends the ISO against the charge that “the idea that selling a socialist paper, arguing for socialist ways to build a campaign, and recruiting activists were sectarian ‘raiding’ — the classic red-baiting phrase of reformists.”[12]
It is very clear that SAlt continues these practices. Countless times I have been involved in some campaign alongside other workers when a group of young “socialists” from SAlt or some other “revolutionary group” turned up with copies of their paper under their arm and possibly carrying banners or placards bearing the party’s logo. Workers always politely welcome the offers of support, but it is patently obvious to all that these young fishers are here to recruit, sell papers, and in one way or another increase the size and influence of their group, with little if any belief in or commitment to the actual aims of the campaign.
In his historical review Armstrong constantly refers to membership numbers and paper sales as metrics of the success or otherwise of a group. This is consistent with SAlt’s self-conception that it is building the general staff of a future revolutionary army, but is utterly at odds with any idea that the role of the group is to advance the struggle for socialism as it is here and now — indeed, such an aim is nonsense, except insofar as it swells the ranks of the party. The idea that a person may be hostile to SAlt and go on to be a good fighter for socialism is inconceivable — a contradiction in terms.
Armstrong makes no reference to a single campaign success which SAlt can claim as its achievement. “Participation” in campaigns is obviously (both in Armstrong’s article and in the practice of SAlt) a technique which is subordinate to the objective of swelling the ranks of the party. The metrics of success are membership numbers, attendance at party events, and sales of party publications.
Any businessperson or public servant should know that the company’s mission statement plays little role in the company’s success compared to the key performance indicators (KPIs), if they are enforced, and the remuneration structure.
The aim of SAlt is to build SAlt. It is literally self-serving; it exists for itself. This is a negative with respect to the campaigns and organizations in which SAlt intervenes. Armstrong writes, “Student union officers have to be won to revolutionary politics, be subject to the discipline of the organisation and publicly identify as socialists — selling Socialist Alternative magazine and so on.”[13] To the contrary, in 1929 Trotsky wrote, “In the trade unions, the Communists, of course, submit to the discipline of the party, no matter what posts they occupy. This does not exclude but presupposes their submission to trade union discipline. In other words, the party does not impose upon them any line of conduct that contradicts the state of mind or the opinions of the majority of the members of trade unions.”[14] So, when SAlt happens to recruit a genuine fighter in some campaign or union, their first task is to eradicate their sensitivity to the state of mind of the masses and any impulse to submit to the discipline of the masses, and ultimately to turn them into a party operative dedicated to the KPIs of SAlt.
From 1973 to 85 I was a loyal member of Gerry Healy’s Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) in the UK and was guilty of all the errors I have just attributed to ISO and SAlt, and more. Millions of young middle-class people have been drawn into such projects over the past 50 years, and I was no different, except that I genuinely subjected my political activity to ongoing self-criticism — for example, my support for the expulsion of Healy in 1985.
From 1985 to some time in the 90s (I don’t remember exactly when) I worked on building a small “revolutionary group.” However, our KPIs were never the number of members recruited, the number of papers sold, or attendance at our very occasional events, but solely the success of our contributions to campaigns and unions and the progress of our process of self-clarification. Unsurprisingly, given that self-preservation was never one of their objectives, these groups had short lifespans.
In 1993, I self-published Stalinism: Its Origins & Future, which was the beginning of my political reorientation,[15] and from 1997, while continuing with my trade-union duties, I helped build the Marxists Internet Archive,[16] of which I have been Secretary since about 2005, devoted my time to study, and organized “Hegel summer schools,” from 1998 to 2011.
From 2006, personal circumstances prevented me from any involvement in meetings and I henceforth devoted myself solely to reading and writing. In 2019, now free of responsibilities as carer for my partner, but aged 74, I limited myself to modest activity as a member of the local branch of the Australian Greens, but have published nine books.
In summary, SAlt are doubtless correct that social revolution will come to Australia as part of a worldwide crisis and that the prospects of socialism in Australia will depend, on one hand, on events beyond our control and outside our own borders, and, on the other hand, on the readiness of the working class in Australia to take state power and abolish capital. However, the very last thing the Australian working class will need at that crucial moment is a party which suffers from the illusion that it has inherited the right to lead the revolution and take state power “on behalf of the working class,” while continuing to orient itself to measures of its own power and influence at the expense of the success of the revolution. Whatever policy such a “revolutionary” government implemented, the move from universal suffrage in a parliamentary system to rule by a small party constituting itself as the leadership of one class in society (especially a class with which it has little organic connection), is socially and politically a big step backwards. This would be true even if SAlt “broke out” into a million-strong party. But that’s never going to happen in any case. And there is no evidence to believe otherwise.
The next revolution
All the above is preparation for my claim that a revolutionary party that could not win a majority in a fair election based on universal suffrage could not win the leadership of the vast majority of the working people. Further, I claim that to make a socialist revolution requires not just the support but the active participation of the vast majority of the working population. The seizure of state power by one party as the organic leadership of just one class in society, and not the vast majority, would inevitably lead to a tyranny, as it has in the past.
True, in the crisis created by the defeat of Russian forces by Germany, the Bolsheviks, after winning only about 25% of seats in the Constituent Assembly — convened by the broadest suffrage in history to that date — dissolved it by force and made revolution at the head of the soviets. Even with the soviets, this is precisely the scenario which can only lead to tyranny, let alone without soviets. The reasons for the terrible degeneration of the soviet government are complex, but I will only say that today and in any future conjuncture, we live in a completely different world, and a century of trying to emulate the Bolsheviks has been as fruitless as Lenin insisted it would be in his famous pamphlet on the “infantile disorder.”[17] I do not propose to justify my view of the prospects for socialism by way of the experience of the October Revolution.
I agree, however, that a socialist revolution in Australia presupposes an enormous and doubtless worldwide social and economic crisis, a situation in which events are inclined to move very fast. It may well be that such a revolution will be in defiance of a parliamentary majority, but only because of the rapid pace of events, and not because the revolutionaries cannot command a majority! Bob Hawke’s demand that the workers wait for the election and not launch a general strike immediately after Sir John Kerr’s constitutional coup in 1975 made the point; this passivity led to a landslide victory for Malcolm Fraser.
The working class in Australia today is no longer the industrial working class which Marxist theory presupposed. The membership of the trade unions would at first glance seem to be a rational and objective estimate of what is meant by “the working class,” but union density is about 13% at the moment and the great majority of these union members are in state-funded occupations such as administration, education, and care; sales and finance, in contrast, are very weakly unionized. Blue-collar tradespeople and operatives are negligible numerically, even though their social significance exceeds their numerical representation. The Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union and Maritime Union of Australia notwithstanding, the majority of employees in the private sector are not union members.
Quite frankly, with a working population with this degree of objectively manifested social solidarity, Australia is not ready for social revolution! We communists have a long way to go to “win the battle of democracy,” which, if social revolution is to be achieved, will be marked by truly mass membership of the unions (or some new formation which might overtake our unions) across both the public and private sectors, and large and lively social movements and political groups such that the majority of the population is actually engaged in the political process. Achieving the support of the vast majority for a socialist revolution would then be just a matter of winning the argument. If the situation calls for it, then we can do it!
On the other hand, a government which had taken power from a government with an electoral mandate from the vast majority, but which failed to have the active support of the vast majority (and therefore could not win an election if one were called that day) simply could not run the country. Perhaps they could occupy public buildings and make a lot of noise, but you can’t run Australia from Government House, even with a well-armed police force.
In 1926, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) shut down the British economy; the government refused its demands. The TUC then had no choice but to call off the strike and go back to work, for the only alternative was to seize state power which lay prostrate before them. The TUC was neither willing nor able to transform itself into a government. If they were unwilling in 1926 in Britain, the unions are certainly unprepared to take power today, and the complexity of the economy is of an entirely different order!
It takes almost the entire population to run the country. It’s not as if the boss of a car factory can be pushed aside and everyone goes on as before — doubly so in the event of an international economic crisis. The economy is far too complex for any kind of command economy to step into its place. A revolutionary government will have to carry with it the consent and active support of the vast majority just to keep bread on the table.
Just as it is said that parliamentary democracy is the ideal state form for capitalism, the ideal state for the fostering of an anti-capitalist revolution is a parliamentary democracy supplemented by thoroughgoing democratic intervention and control in every aspect of social life, to an extent which would make parliament redundant. Insofar as revolutionary socialists want to do their best to prepare for a future social revolution, the best we can do is foster participation in economic, political, and social life by the largest possible number of people, using whatever avenues open up to accustom people to take responsibility for running this or that area of public life.
At the same time, it is necessary to support “non-reformist reforms,” such as protecting and extending the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, to restrict as far as possible the capitalist media, to expand education, to ensure the greatest possible level of participation in political life, etc.
What should socialists do?
From the above the reader might make the mistake of thinking that I have argued against socialist organization. Not so! All I have argued against is the project of building here-and-now organizations that take themselves to be the general staff of a social revolution, which will happen as a result of indeterminate external events at an indeterminate time in the future. The diversity of such pretenders — a persistent presence throughout my entire life — is surely the reductio ad absurdum of this conception. On the other hand, diversity is both a reality and a benefit. Diversity of opinion and activities needs to be given recognition and harnessed as an indicator of the potential for the world to be other than it is.
Socialists most certainly should be active. When I published my first effort at putting my own thoughts into print, Beyond Betrayal (1991), as a member of a tiny organization called Communist Intervention, I proposed the following lines of activity:
Publication of magazines, papers, and journals
Leadership of struggles
The creation of works of art: “books, plays and films, paintings and other works of art with the potential for making real changes in how people understand the world.”
being a model: “publicly expressing the outlook of a revolutionary Marxist; a journalist, not writing Marxist political criticism, but working within the restrictions of the bourgeois media; a lawyer or academic, side by side with first class professional work, championing causes, defending cases.”[18]
I haven’t materially changed that view in the 34 years since, though I could probably add to the list.
Once the absurdity of preparing the “embryo of the revolutionary party” an indefinite time in advance is recognized, the diversity of claimants to the mantle becomes a benefit not a parody. Discussion thrives on diversity. |P
[1] Terrell Carver, “Marx,” in Research Handbook on the History of Political Thought, eds. Cary J Nederman and Guillaume Bogiaris (Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024), 458–68.
[2] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, in Marx & Engels Collected Works, vol. 6 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2010), 477–519, <https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/>.
[3] Marx and Engels, Manifesto, 504, my emphasis.
[4] In contrast, Clement Attlee’s Labour government in the UK (1945–51) carried out extensive nationalization of industry when political and economic conditions made it possible.
[5] Karl Marx, “Preface” (1872), in The Civil War in France, in Marx & Engels Collected Works, vol. 22 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2010), 328, <https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/>.
[6] Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange (London: Verson, 2003), 79.
[7] Andy Fleming, “Trot Guide 2025 Update,” Slackbastard (July 18, 2025), <https://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=52946>.
[8] Ben Hillier, “Could there be a revolution in Australia?,” Red Flag (August 14, 2022), <https://redflag.org.au/article/could-there-be-revolution-australia>.
[9] Formerly the Trotskyist Socialist Workers League (SWL), and later the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), the organization rebranded once again in 2003 as Democratic Socialist Perspective (this time preserving its initialism) before dissolving into the Socialist Alliance in 2010.
[10] Mick Armstrong, “The origins of Socialist Alternative: summing up the debate,” Marxist Left Review (August 12, 2010), <https://marxistleftreview.org/articles/the-origins-of-socialist-alternative-summing-up-the-debate/>.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Leon Trotsky, “Communism and Syndicalism,” The Militant 11, no. 20 (December 14, 1929), <https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/unions/3-commsyn.htm>, my emphasis.
[15] Andy Blunden, Stalinism: Its Origins & Future (1993), <https://www.marxists.org/subject/stalinism/origins-future/index.htm>.
[16] Marxists Internet Archive, <https://www.marxists.org/>.
[17] V. I. Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920), <https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/>.
[18] Andy Blunden, Marxism: The Cutting Edge, volume I: Beyond Betrayal (Glebe: Intervention Press, 1991).
