09.10.2025
Opening the second front
Labourism dominates the working class electorate in Australia. Meanwhile, sectarianism dominates the left groups that pass themselves off as Marxist. Brunhilda Olding, a member of the Revolutionary Communist Organisation, welcomes an initiative designed to challenge both labourism and sectarianism
Australia’s history as a unified state is above all else a history of labourism, And the highest form of that is the Australian Labor Party.
The ALP was the first nationwide political project, founded in 1891, a decade before Federation. It has always been through, and around, the ALP that the Australian proletariat has been defined as a unified political movement. The core thesis of Humphrey McQueen’s A new Britannia rests on the examination and explanation of the historical logic and development of the ALP’s political hegemony and the cultural, political and social effects that come from that. If one is to understand anything about Australia and its fragmented left scene, one must first understand that.
The launch of Labor Tribune in September as a publication of Marxists within the ALP has overall been met with a level of scepticism by much of the organised Australian left. The hegemonic Cliffite grouping, Socialist Alternative, with its deeply sectarian and student politics-based opposition to the Labor Party, has dominated the immediate reaction. This opposition overshadows much of the important nuances and the deeply complex relationship of the socialist movement to the ALP.
The Labor Party emerged as the logical outgrowth of the immediate interests of the labour movement in Australia. As opposed to the classical parties of social democracy, which it is often compared with, and much more akin to its British sister party, the ALP never emerged with a Marxist core. Whilst early Australian Marxism developed in and around the ALP, it never reached a unified position until the 1920s, with the formation of the Communist Party of Australia. The solidification of this divide would serve as the framework for the Australian left going forward, and indeed still shapes the political scene on the left today.
The Labor left was historically deeply tied into the communist movement; the difference now is merely that the Labor left is cut adrift from its external CPA brain and drifting to the right. Outside the ALP there is a layer of notionally anti-labourite sects (Socialist Alternative and the Anarchist Communist Federation stand out in particular) in constant conflict with labourites attached at the hip to the ALP’s low-ranking functionaries. The critiques lobbed at the ALP and its supporters, however, fundamentally do nothing to challenge the political hegemony of the ALP or of labourism: indeed the common rhetoric of the anti-ALP left is farcical reheated labourism, rather than any attempts to solidly challenge the ALP on a genuine Marxist basis, thus allowing the ALP and its political project to march on unchallenged.
The recent AUKUS nuclear submarine deal has seen the redevelopment of more openly oppositional factions and groupings within the ALP - most notably Labor Against War (LAW). Labor Tribune’s members have all been involved in this struggle - either in the form of LAW or in their involvement in the mass Palestine struggles, including the March for Humanity on August 3, which saw at least 200,000 protestors in Sydney march across the Harbour Bridge in opposition to the will of the ALP New South Wales premier, Chris Minns. The march also saw a wide layer of ALP members, including MPs, march under the banner of Labor Friends of Palestine.
Classical Marxism
These signs of division within the ALP have broadly been ignored by the Australian left - indeed for many socialists even getting them to acknowledge the existence of the layers of at least notionally pro-Palestine members of the ALP is akin to pulling teeth. It is within this immediate context, as well as the growing tension between the ALP and sections of its historic union support base that Labor Tribune has been launched.
It could be argued that its roots emerged from the historic CPA. And while Tribune activists come from a range of political backgrounds, it is unlikely an accident that the comrades have chosen the name of the CPA’s newspaper, Tribune.
The CPA’s dissolution in 1991 saw its legal assets and formal organisational continuity transform into SEARCH (Social Education, Action and Research Concerning Humanity) Foundation. Whilst SEARCH conducts very few public political events, primarily serving as a historical society, ginger group to the Labor left and Greens and the stomping grounds for ex-CPA members, this political lineage to the historic CPA is not hidden.
Labor Tribune’s first publication contained a reprint of a Comintern letter to the CPA outlining the political reasoning why the newly formed, and politically untested, party should not cut itself off from the ALP.1 Discerning readers of this text will notice the intense similarities to Lenin’s famous Leftwing communism - which makes sense, considering the deep political, cultural and social similarities between Great Britain and Australia.
Labor Tribune points out that the rules and constitution of Australian Labor open with the claim of it being a “democratic socialist party”. This is combined with the fact that the party’s primary objective is the “democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features in these fields”.2 It is from these two bases, Labor Tribune argues, that the tasks of Marxists in the ALP emerge.
Throughout the core documents of Labor Tribune, a picture is painted of what their conception of Marxism means. This picture is one that will be familiar to readers of the Weekly Worker and Partisan Magazine in Australia. It is one of classical Marxism, with a firm commitment to internationalism, democratic republicanism and Marxism as a political strategy of and for the proletariat.
Vulgar economism
The emphasis on the need to fight for a genuine republic is deeply refreshing in a Marxist movement dominated by a vulgar economism, which consistently pushes to the side the myriad constitutional and political issues that nust be championed in order to win socialism. Rather than facing the undemocratic, and fundamentally anti-proletarian, nature of the Australian state head on, and fighting against it in every formation, most sects merely stomp around chanting about the need for bigger and bolder strikes, or the need to lend (un)critical support to either the Greens or the ALP. Even the Socialists - notionally the largest socialist group in Australia, and one that has strong chances of winning elected representation over the next few years, especially in their stronghold of Victoria - has utterly refused to pose any constitutional questions or opposition to the Australian state in any fundamental form.
Instead it relies on a combination of moralistic and fundamentally liberal political demands, and warmed over labourism, with a covering of radical paint.
The position outlined by Labor Tribune, on the other hand, is in many respects a breath of fresh air, amidst the constant squabbling of the sects and their fundamentally labourite project, and one that ties in with the struggle currently waged by the Revolutionary Communist Organisation for the reconstitution of the Communist Party in Australia. In their article explaining the political reasoning behind their launch they argue that “Labor Tribune aims to contribute to the formation of an authoritative political centre that can rebuild a revolutionary strategy for the working class movement, with militant opposition to the monarchist constitutional order at its centre.”3 This perspective is one aligned with the increasingly developed ‘partyist’ movement in international Marxism. An outgrowth which makes sense, when you see Marcus Strom, a contributor to the Weekly Worker, is editor of Labor Tribune.
Australia has seen the development of a partyist current with the formation of the RCO. The launch of Labor Tribune alongside the growth of the RCO, and the increasing question of whether the Socialists actually function as a party (which it currently very much does not), will only further reinforce the need for a genuine mass Communist Party with influence over large sections of the ALP’s left once again. In this regard the launch of Labor Tribune has seemingly come at an opportune time, as the tasks and developments of the Australian left increasingly pose the party question point blank.
In that regard it is positive news that Labor Tribune has seemingly managed to develop a base within the ALP. At the current stage of the project, it is positioned to draw in layers of the pre-existing scattered Marxists within the party who have not yet cut up their membership card in disgust. In that sense, it cannot be regarded as an ‘entryist’ vehicle, but arising from within the ALP itself.
Outside the ALP, however, Tribune has a much more contentious field to contend with. Many of the immediate reactions from the wonderful world of the Australian sects is tinged with the bone-deep sectarianism that most have against the ALP.
Whilst pre-existing ties, and a shared political perspective with the RCO, has ensured a warm welcome, at least on that front, the broader Australian left has, if they react at all, responded with a layer of general disdain. There has been one notable - if somewhat sectarian - public response to Tribune so far. Jordan van den Lamb (aka ‘Purple Pingers’), a recent Victorian Socialists Senate candidate for Victoria in the May federal election, has written a letter of greeting published by Labor Tribune. Hopefully this trend will continue, and a genuine culture of debate and engagement will emerge.
Left adrift
With the formation of Tribune, the historic question of the ALP is being forced into the face of Australian Marxism once again. In the 50 years since the election and subsequent overthrow of prime minister Gough Whitlam and the collapse of the CPA in 1991, the ALP left and the Marxist sectarian left have drifted nowhere. Where once Jim Cairns, the deputy prime minister and effective fellow traveller of the CPA, had mass levels of support and influence over a democratic and thriving ALP branch in Victoria, now the entire culture of the party has been hollowed out into an arena for cliques with vaguely ideological names to backstab each other - the divide between the Victorian ‘socialist left’ and ‘industrial left’ being a prime example. In NSW it is between the Albanese aligned ‘hard left’ and its oppositional ‘soft left’.
Labor Tribune has the task of injecting genuine communist politics into the internal life of the ALP, and fighting to rebuild proletarian politics - and political culture in every field it can. Through that, and alongside the work of the RCO outside the ALP, the fight for the merger of the workers’ movement and socialism can increasingly be waged.
Thus, if the history of the Australian state is a history of the ALP, hopefully one day we will be able to say that the history of the Australian revolution was the history of its overcoming. The hegemonic ‘common sense’ of labourism must be overcome - via Marxists challenging its stranglehold of the ALP alongside the communist movement, through clear, concrete programmatic struggle inside and outside the ALP, winning the hegemony of Marxist politics within the proletariat in Australia.