Yours for the Revolution

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."

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For high school students, full weekend tickets to Perth’s biggest left-wing conference, Socialism Perth 2020 are just $15.

The conference features sessions designed to introduce you to socialist ideas including “Is the Communist Manifesto relevant for 2020?”, “How can we turn rebellion into revolution?” and “Why capitalism need oppression”.

There’s other sessions on radical debates, resisting racism, gender & sexuality and more. Take a look at the full program here: http://socialismperth.org/program

For young radicals, it’s the perfect place to explore left-wing ideas, ask questions and find out how to get involved in socialist activism in Perth.

Get your tickets now at www.socialismperth.org/tickets

[yoursfortherevolution]

History is not going to make our revolution an easy matter like the bourgeois revolutions in which it sufficed to overthrow that official power at the center and to replace a dozen or so persons in authority. We have to work from beneath, and this corresponds to the mass character of our revolution which aims at the foundation and base of the social constitution; it corresponds to the character of the present proletarian revolution that the conquest of political power must come not from above but from below. The 9th of November was an attempt, a weak, half-hearted, half-conscious, and chaotic attempt to overthrow the existing public power and to put an end to class rule. What now must be done is that with full consciousness all the forces of the proletariat should be concentrated in an attack on the very foundations of capitalist society. There, at the base, where the individual employer confronts his wage slaves; at the base, where all the executive organs of political class rule confront the object of this rule, the masses; there, step by step, we must seize the means of power from the rulers and take them into our own hands.

Rosa Luxemburg (Our Program and the Political Situation, December 1918)

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The real education of the masses can never be separated from their independent political, and especially revolutionary, struggle. Only struggle educates the exploited class. Only struggle discloses to it the magnitude of its own power, widens its horizon, enhances its abilities, clarifies its mind, forges its will.

- Lenin in Lecture on the 1905 Revolution

Join the livestream forum and discussion on Lenin & the Russian Revolution Sunday May 3, 7pm AEST

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“We’re all in this together?”

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“Under socialism all will govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing.” - Lenin in State and Revolution

Join the livestream forum on Lenin and the Russian revolution Sunday May 3, 7pm AEST

[yoursfortherevolution]

The choice today is not between democracy and dictatorship. The question which history has placed on the agenda is: bourgeois democracy or socialist democracy… The dictatorship of the proletariat…means using every means of political power to construct socialism, to expropriate the capitalist class… A class organisation is needed to sharpen [the conscious will of workers], to organise this activity: the parliament of the proletarians of town and country.

Rosa Luxemburg in Die Rote Fahne 1918

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The most important and longstanding debate on the left is between revolutionary and reformist politics. It goes at least as far back as the 19th century debate in the German Social Democratic Party, when Rosa Luxemburg, in Reform or Revolution, demolished the arguments of Eduard Bernstein. Bernstein advocated that the party abandon its commitment to overthrowing capitalism and instead strive only for reforms to the system, with the vague hope that socialism might eventually come.

This debate has sharpened recently with the emergence of reformist currents associated with British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and with the Democratic Socialists of America and Jacobin magazine, which has popularised the reformist approach of Karl Kautsky, the leading theorist of socialism before World War One.

Some reformists accept that revolution is necessary in contemporary dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia. The real debate is over revolution in the West.

READ MORE: Revolution, reform and socialist strategy

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Capitalism is coming into crisis; now is the time to become an organised socialist. 

These discussion groups bring together people from all over Australia to discuss Marx’s understanding of capitalism, crisis, and revolutionary socialism. Fill out this form to join in: https://bit.ly/marxismdiscuss

Learn about why the system we live in comes into such vicious crises, but also how we can transform the world around us to create a society based on human need rather than profit. Investigate the ideas of Socialist Alternative to figure out if you want to join Australia’s biggest socialist organisation.

The discussions will run as a short course. First everyone doing them will come into a joint call, and then we will break off into smaller groups to facilitate better discussions. Each discussion will be facilitated by a member of Socialist Alternative, around the following topics. We will talk through them in order, so if you have never done one before, start at the beginning. Once you choose a session, we will email you a link to the zoom call to participate.

Capitalism

Class

Revolution & socialism

The state

Imperialism

Racism

Gender & sexuality

The Russian revolution

The defeat of the Russian revolution

Socialist organising

Interpersonal sexism

Sessions will run:

6pm Monday

6pm Tuesdays

3pm Wednesdays

2pm Saturdays

10am Sundays

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Prisons, detention centres and refugee camps are filled with the poor, the disabled, the marginalised and, often, the completely innocent. The facilities are dirty and overcrowded sites of infection and abuse, and mental and physical illness. Social distancing and adequate hygiene are not options for those detained. If they aren’t shut down, the COVID-19 pandemic will create a health emergency for detainees and anybody in the community who comes into their contact. Prisoners have been resisting through the few methods left available to them: protests, riots and escape attempts. These have spread across prisons in Brazil, France, Columbia, Italy and more. Refugees imprisoned by the Australian state have protested for release. Refugees held in the Moria refugee camp off the coast of Greece have rioted for their lives. To discuss the conditions of refugees and prisoners in the time of COVID-19, the violence of the capitalist state and the incredible resistance of those incarcerated by it, join us this Sunday for the livestreamed forum. Speakers: Aran Mylvaganam fled the Sri Lankan military’s violence as a young teenager. He is a founding member of the Tamil Refugee Council and a longstanding activist for workers’ rights. Ben Hillier is an editor of Red Flag newspaper and the author of Losing Santhia: Life and loss in the struggle for Tamil Eelam. He has recently traveled to India with the Tamil Refugee Council where he reported on the refugee camp in Tamil Nadu. Priya De is a leading member of Socialist Alternative in Brisbane and is author of this recent piece calling for prisoners and refugees to be released from the jails and detention centres. https://redflag.org.au/node/7076

Will be livestreamed from the socialist alternative - red flag facebook page

[yoursfortherevolution]

Muslims of Russia…all you whose mosques and prayer houses have been destroyed, whose beliefs and customs have been trampled upon by the tsars and oppressors of Russia: your beliefs and practices, your national and cultural institutions are forever free and inviolate. Know that your rights, like those of all the peoples of Russia, are under the mighty protection of the revolution

‘To all the Muslim workers of Russia and the East’, declaration issued by the fledgling Soviet government on 24 November 1917 (x)

[19171968]

Capitalist democracy hinges on a separation of the political and economic spheres. Democratic rights are granted to a greater or lesser extent in the political sphere, while dictatorial class rule is protected in the economic sphere. Socialism, therefore, cannot be complete without the complete democratization of both spheres.

Tim Goulet (via festivaloftheoppressed)

[frederickengels]

The closeness of the relationship between the masses and the leadership is well conveyed in a scene described by John Reed. Trotsky was reporting to the Petrograd Soviet on the progress of the fighting: ‘The cruisers, Oleg, Avrora and Respublika are anchored in the Neva, their guns trained on the approaches to the city …’ ‘Why aren’t you out there with the Red Guards?’ shouted a rough voice. ‘I’m going now!’ answered Trotsky, and left the platform. Another scene illustrates how the leaders had to accommodate the feelings of the masses: V.A. Antonov-Ovsenko, Joint People’s Commissar of War and Navy, needed a car to go and inspect the revolutionary front on 28 October (10 November) 1917. Antonov stood in the middle of the street and signalled a passing machine, driven by a soldier. ‘I want that machine,’ said Antonov. ‘You won’t get it,’ responded the soldier. ‘Do you know who I am?’ Antonov produced a paper upon which was written that he had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of all the armies of the Russian Republic, and that everyone should obey him without question. ‘I don’t care if you’re the devil himself,’ said the soldier, hotly. ‘This machine belongs to the First Machine-Gun Regiment, and we’re carrying ammunition in it, and you can’t have it.

The Revolution Besieged: Lenin 1917 - 1923 (Vol. 3), Tony Cliff (via trotskies)

[fuckyeahsocialists]

Tony Cliff

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Why Marx was right about capitalism

Red Flag’s top articles of 2015 - countdown to the new year

Most popular #3

[art-and-anarchism-deactivated20]

[19171968]

As long as workers wish to create a better world, but lack the confidence to do it themselves, Labour will retain a decisive influence. Reformism may cease to make sense of reality, just as religion did when Galileo showed that the earth moved or Darwin wrote the Origin of Species. But as Marx said of religion, so we can say of reformism: it expresses ‘the sigh of the expressed creature, the heart of a heartless world.’ On a mass scale reformism will never be undermined by appealing for workers to cast out their illusions, it can only be done by helping to raise the confidence of the working class through their own experience of struggle.

Tony Cliff - The Labour Party: A Marxist History (via festivaloftheoppressed)

[19171968]

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TIN SHEDS ART WORKSHOP

Our power lies in organisation - 1979