Join us on the Friday evening of the Marxism Festival, for this fun and inspiring tour of the radical history of Sydney Uni.

For more info about the Marxism Festival visit:

https://www.marxismconference.org/program?city=sydney

Sydney uni, long a bastion of elite conservatism, has also frequently been a base of radical activism from students and staff, from the harbouring of Vietnam draft resisters, to the Freedom Rides for Aboriginal rights, to countless protests, strikes and student occupations over the decades. Come along to hear some stories of rebellion.

Our tour will be led by the one and only Diane Fieldes, participant in the anti-Vietnam War movement, Mardi Gras 78er, and revolutionary socialist ever since.

The tour will commence at around 7pm from the Holme Building Courtyard, where our post-conference dinner and drinks will be happening. We will return around 7.45, in time for last drinks.

All tickets to the Marxism Festival include access to this radical walking tour.

Radical History Walking Tour of Sydney Uni

PLEASE NOTE: The opening night event will be taking place at the Trades and Labour Council Building, at 16 Peel St, South Brisbane. The rest of the conference is taking place at UQ, St Lucia. 

Brisbane has a long history of radicalism and trade union activism. From the general strike in 1912 to the students protests in the 70's, Brisbane has been a hotbed of left wing activity.

Our opening night event will feature a panel on this topic, followed by informal discussion. Marxism ’22 is the largest gathering of left-wing people in Brisbane and presents a unique opportunity to connect with local activists.

All tickets to the conference include entry to the opening night event.

Opening Night Panel: Radical Brisbane

Sydney Park Pavilion, Euston Rd, Alexandria

https://g.page/sydney-park-pavilion?share

We are excited to announce that in addition to the two days of talks and discussions from 15-16 April at the Marxism Festival, we are now adding an opening night extravaganza!

The night will feature lots of time to meet and greet other conference goers and organisers, with a bar and plentiful buffet of finger food, open from 5.30pm.

From 6.30pm we will hear from some of our most powerful conference speakers, about resisting the endless capitalist atrocities that confront us today, from imperialist war, to climate crises, to an economy that only serves the rich, and beyond. Along with the horror, they will speak about the hope of resistance and the fight for a better world, and what we can look forward to in that vein from the rest of the Marxism Festival.

It will be a great way to kick off what is sure to be a fantastic weekend for the rest of the Festival.

All tickets to the Marxism Festival will also grant access to the opening night.

For details of the Marxism Festival, including how to get your tickets, visit our website here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/481416066927397

April Holcombe: Convener of Community Action for Rainbow Rights, which recently celebrated a victory over Scott Morrison's and Mark Latham's religious discrimination bills. April is a revolutionary, an anti-capitalist, and the bane of every bigot in Australia. She will be speaking later in the conference on "Understanding Chinese capitalism today".

Chloe Rafferty: one of Sydney's leading climate activists and socialists, who organised and spoke at the immense "Sack Scomo" climate rallies, during Australia's bushfire crisis. Chloe will be speaking at the conference on "The war in Ukraine and its meaning for world imperialism".

Following speeches, there will be plenty of time to mingle and enjoy the bar and food.

Our venue will be the beautiful Sydney Park Pavilion, which is close to St Peters station, or via buses 308, 348, 370, 422, and has a carpark.

https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/hireable-indoor-spaces/sydney-park-pavilion

Opening Night: Resisting a system of endless war and crisis

Wrap up the Conference with some drinks, dinner and speeches.

Closing Panel: Resisting Barbarism, Fighting for Socialism

This all-in closing panel is an absolute must for conference participants. Some of our most powerful speakers will seek to draw together all the different threads of discussion and make the case for a socialist alternative to this monstrous capitalist system.

As Karl Marx said, "the point is to change it!"

Closing Panel: Building the left in a world in crisis

Gender roles are deeply ingrained in both our sense of self and how we see others. They are also a product of oppression and a means to perpetuate it. Marxists both support people's right to express their gender however they like and fight for a world free from gender roles and women's oppression.

The freedom to be: Marxism, gender oppression and the struggle for trans liberation

The failure of identity politics: A Marxist analysis

Against Transphobia and Misogyny: a Marxist critique of gender

China's rise as an economic and increasingly assertive imperialist power is a key development which has reshaped the world. This session will discuss this, but also explore the internal dynamics of Chinese capitalism. China is, after all, a class divided country like every other, with a myriad of contradictions, class struggle and other forms of popular resistance.

China under Xi Jinping

China's Century?

China's Growth Pains

China's Rise as a World Power

Understanding Chinese capitalism today

Anarchist ideas are attractive to many on the left, and are often seen as an alternative to the supposed ‘authoritarian’ politics of Marxism. However, throughout history anarchism has failed to adequately understand the nature of the capitalist system and how to overthrow it. This session will provide a critique of anarchist politics, and explain why a politics based on opposing vague concepts like ‘authority’, and supporting individual liberty will never be able to guide a successful fight against capitalism and liberate workers and the oppressed.

Anarchism: a Marxist critique

Marxism and Anarchism

Counterpower, participatory democracy, revolutionary defence: debating Black Flame, revolutionary anarchism and historical Marxism

Anarchism, syndicalism and strategy: a reply to Lucien van der Walt

A Marxist Critique of Anarchism

This session will tackle the long-running debate between Marxists and anarchists. Which approach can actually overthrow capitalism and create a classless society?

While anarchism has a radical gloss, and can understandably attract people who rightly reject the horrors of Stalinism, we will argue that it has no strategy to actually win the class struggle, and boils down to a more radical form of liberalism. A victorious workers' revolution is the only way to actually smash the state and bring about a classless society, but in practice anarchists have always opposed this strategy.

Marxism vs the state

Can we change the world without taking power?

Nestor Makhno: the failure of anarchism

Marxism vs anarchism

Friederich Engels was a revolutionary socialist until his death in 1895. His political legacy is however contested. Since the death of Engels, the revisionist right-wing of German Social Democracy falsified his political views to blunt their revolutionary character. The extent of the falsification was demonstrated when David Riazanov, who was then collecting Marx and Engels complete works after the Russian Revolution, discovered the original version of Engels Political Testament. Engels in fact tried, in the aftermath of Marxs death, to pave the way forward for a revolutionary tactic in the context of the growth of mass Social Democratic parties at a moment in history, the first time in history, when Marxism became a guiding thread of working-class politics.

David Riazanov: biography of Marx and Engels, pp. 152- 169

Introduction to The Class Struggles In France

Engels after Marx: a revolutionary intervention into Social Democracy

The "bourgeois revolutions" which laid the basis for capitalism were varied and contested historical events. Lenin often drew lessons rom the French Revolution. So we will examine the social and political processes involved in those upheavals and consider how much, if at all, they provide a guide to what will be involved in overthrowing capitalism.

The Great French Revolution

The World Turned Upside Down

The Dutch Revolt: a socialist analysis

 Part 4, Chapter 2, “Renaissance and Reformation” and chapter 3, “The birth pangs of a new order”

If the French Revolution didn't bring us Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, how do we know a workers' revolution will?

The English Revolution and the transition from feudalism to capitalism

The Dynamics of Revolution

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

A Marxist view of bourgeois revolutions: from peasant wars in Germany 1552-5 to Russia 1917

Fighting racism and every form of oppression is integeral to socialist politics. But how racism is to be fought and whether it can be eliminated depends on what you think its source is. The concept of 'whiteness' presents white people or white culture as creating the racist society we live in. Marxists instead argue that it's capitalist society that creates racism. This session will explore these two different theories of racism, their strategies for fighting it and investigate what will be needed to win liberation and a world without oppression.

Who's to blame for racism in Australia?

A Marxist critique of the theory of 'white privilege'

Racism: is whiteness the problem?

A large part of Pakistan is under water. The devastation is immense. This session discuss the nature of the climate crisis and why and how the global south is suffering in the way they are. We will also hear from socialist environmentalists in the frontlines of events in the global South as well as Australian activists.

The climate crisis in the global south

The workers' revolution that took place in Spain in 1936 successfully confronted an attempted fascist coup by the military, and began a social transformation on a scale unseen outside of the Russian Revolution of 1917. This talk will discuss the revolutionary potential of this little known period and lessons for today's radicals. 

The Spanish civil war: anarchism put to the test [book chapter]

Revolution and Counter Revolution in Spain [book]

Homage to Catalonia

Fighting fascism and capitalism: the workers revolution in Spain, 1936

"It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties..." The Spanish revolution brought the working class to power and pitted them against an insurgent fascist movement. It raised, and answered, crucial questions about how to fight fascism, and what the practical divergences are between Anarchism, Stalinism, and revolutionary socialism.

Italys Hot Autumn of 1969 triggered a decade-long battle between the working and ruling classes. It saw migrant, unorganised workers and women take the lead in challenging the old order. The Hot Autumn was the biggest, most prolonged strike wave in history, which developed into a struggle for a better society. It also saw the emergence of a large far left. This talk will explore the relationship between revolutionary students and workers and draw out some more general lessons.

The ’Hot Autumn‘ of 1969: when Italy erupted

Fiat Has Branded Me: A Hot Autumn Timeline for Nanni Balestrini’s We Want Everything

Students and revolution: the Italian Hot Autumn

Georg Lukácss History and Class Consciousness is one of the great works of Marxist philosophy. As a theoretical generalisation of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the practice of the Bolshevik party under Lenin, it was an attempt to understand the philosophical and political significance of their break with Second International Marxism, and build a current of interventionist Marxism around it. But since its publication in 1923, History and Class Consciousness has generated controversy on the left. Lukács was famously denounced by Zinoviev at the Fifth Congress of the Comintern, followed by critiques of Lukácss supposed idealism, revision and other heresies, by apparatchik-philosophers Rudas and Deborin. This, combined with the Stalinisation of the Cominternand the Hungarian Communist Partyleft Lukács sidelined, leading him to withdraw from organised politics into literary criticism and philosophy, alongside an uneasy reconciliation with Stalinism. During the radicalisation of the 1960s and 1970s, the Lukács of History and Class Consciousness was rediscovered by a new generation of activists, and subsequently denounced by Theodor Adorno for its idealist dialectics and Louis Althusser for its left Hegelianism. Today, his name is more associated with the first generation of Western Marxism, and as a key influence on the Frankfurt School, than he is with revolutionary Marxism. This session will explore Lukácss philosophical and political project in History and Class Consciousness, as well as a number of articles and essays published until 1929, addressing both historical and contemporary debates, and their relevance for those who wish to understand and change the world today.

History & Class Consciousness

The Legacy of Lukács [chapter]

Lenin: A Study on the Unity of his Thought

100 years of Georg Lukacs 'History and Class Consciousness'

The film business is one of the largest capitalist industries. It employs millions and makes billions. It is also one of the most important and widely consumed forms of popular entertainment. What do Marxists have to say about modern cinema? And do socialists dream of a world without Marvel?

A world without Marvel? A Marxist critique of the film industry

Join us for this musical and theatrical journey through Australia's radical past. Inspired by Howard Zinn's 'A People's History of the USA' this evening session will introduce the audience to some of the most famous and inspiring speeches from Australia's radical history. We will also hear songs from some of the best radical musicians across the continent.

People's Voices of Australia

Russia's invasion of the Ukraine with the tacit agreement of China has seen a renewal of militarist rhetoric and accelerated arms spending across the US-aligned states, from Europe to Australia. Western powers are pitching themselves as defenders of "democracy", despite their clear track record of invasion and mass murder. 

Even before this recent conflict, the Australian state was preparing for a future war with China, as seen by the new AUKUS pact between Australia, the US and the UK, which will see Australia wielding nuclear-powered weapons of death. This session will make sense of the recent wars and increase in tensions and put forward how socialists should respond. 

Australian imperialism and the rise of China

AUKUS and the US Alliance: Australian Imperialism in the Indo-Pacific

Bukharin's theory of imperialism

Capitalism and the threat of WWIII

Australian Militarism Resurgent

Ukraine resists invasion

West's "Solidarity" with Ukraine displays breathtaking hypocrisy

The war in Ukraine and its meaning for world imperialism

We are now entering a new Cold War between the US and China. In the US Biden has built on Trump's hostility to ratchet up tensions with America's 'strategic competitor'. Biden has openly declared "We are in a competition with China to win the 21st century" and he's matched that with high profile diplomatic stoushes, rising military spending and hawkish rhetoric around Taiwan. In Australia, the Liberal Government is openly speculating about the prospect war with China in the future. This raises important questions for the socialist left. 

Is conflict with China likely? How do we oppose the growing imperialist tension, militarism and a future war?

We have to stop the coming war with China

AUKUS makes workers pay for war on China

Taiwan's independence and the new Cold War

Biden's plan for the US empire

Imperialism today: the US, China, AUKUS and the threat of WWIII

When birth control was still taboo, socialists fought to make it accessible to working-class women, recognising womens emancipation as at the heart of the fight for a better world. This session will reveal the hidden stories of how revolutionary socialist men and women were often at the heart of the fight for women to control their own bodies and reproductive processes.

 The socialist pioneers of birth control : New Frame

E16: Women in the early IWW – Working Class History

Abortion rights—how socialists led the fight

Socialists in the history of the battle for birth control

In 2019 Chile explode in revolt. Led by radical students, workers went on strike and a new Left wing government was elected. An assembly was also elected to draft a new constitution. Since then the movement has been confronted with a series of defeats. This session will consider the various strategies adopted by radicals.

Reformist strategy leads to defeat of Chile’s new constitution

Chile has awoken! 

From the streets to the ballot box: Chile 2019 to today

Australian Workers Fight Back

The 1987 Intifada transformed Israel-Palestine relations, birthed new forces and political parties, and posed the question of how Palestinian liberation might be won. Last year Palestinians from the Occupied Territories and within Israel’s 1948 borders demonstrated against the eviction of Palestinians in an East Jerusalem neighbourhood to make way for settlers, and against IDF attacks on the al-Aqsa mosque. Come and learn more about the socialist analysis of Palestine and the Intifada.

The Story of Palestine

Ending Apartheid in Palestine: the case for a revolutionary strategy 

Israelis and Palestinians: Conflict and Resolution

Intifada: the Palestinian Uprising of 1987

As they let covid rip, the message of our rulers to the working class is "work 'til you drop". Labour shortages everywhere due to mass infection is proving the basic argument Marxists have always made, that it's our labour that makes the world run; and the bosses need us, we don't need them. 

This session will feature a panel of socialist union delegates - a train driver, a teacher, a retail worker and a healthcare worker - who have been leading a class fightback in their workplaces, including strikes and other campaigns, to fight for health and safety over profits, for wage rises and more staff, and for left wing politics.

Extensive coverage of the class struggle during the pandemic

Our unions in crisis: how did it come to this

Look who's essential now: panel of socialist union activists

A World To Win

Fighting the System. Rebuilding the Left

The ideas of Mahatma Gandhi have had a lasting impact on the left, from the civil rights movement of the 1960s right through to the movements against corporate greed and racism that are developing today. Many see Gandhi as the embodiment of politically-effective pacifism.The success of his nonviolent strategy, however, is largely a myth. This session will discuss the relationship that Gandhi had to the Left and the debates between them in the context of a struggle for independence.

Indian: Imperialism, Partition and Resistance

Indian Independence: A Revolution lost

Gandhi--hero or humbug? How nonviolence failed in India

Gandhi, the Left and Indian independence

Have your burning questions about socialist politics and organisation answered by a panel of leading Socialist Alternative members!

Q and A with Socialist Alternative

The Prices and Incomes Accord between the Hawke and Keating Labor governments and the ACTU is to this day held up by union leaders like the ACTU's Sally McManus as a fantastic achievement. They argue that it staved off neoliberalism and lifted workers' living standards. An honest account, however, shows that the Accord was a disaster for the union movement. Not only did it cut wages but it gutted workplace union organisation as union leaders squashed union militancy. Strikes collapsed and union coverage fell dramatically. This talk explains why the class collaboration at the heart of the Accord did so much damage to the working class in Australia.

Trade Unionism in Australia: A History from Flood to Ebb Tide - Chapters 5 and 6

How Labour Built Neoliberalism

Labor's five years: counsel for the defence: an interview with Laurie Carmichael

Unions, the ALP and the ebb tide 1983- 1996.

We are now entering a new Cold War between the US and China. The largest capitalist powers in the world - the US and China - are increasingly at odds. Veiled threats over Taiwan, boycotts of the Olympics, and military buildup make the possibility of military conflict between these superpowers increasingly possible. In the US Biden has built on Trump's hostility to ratchet up tensions with America's 'strategic competitor'. Australian politicians are building nuclear-powered subs and openly talking about the prospects of war. Is conflict with China likely? How should the left respond to these increasing tensions?

Biden's plan to rebuild the US empire

AUKUS and the US alliance: Australian imperialism in the Indo-Pacific

Clash of empires: the USA versus China today

History's forgotten heroes don't get much more radical than the legendary John Brown. Born during the time of the great revolution of the Haitian slaves, he believed he was "an instrument of God", raised up to strike the death blow to American slavery, a "sacred obligation". He attempted to lead a slave revolt when he raided an armoury at Harpers Ferry - an act which help push the country inexorably toward the Civil War. But this was only the final act of a man who had committed his life to the destruction of slavery and an uncompromising hostility to oppression of all kinds.

John Brown: A Biography

John Brown: he fought for slaves' freedom

The Good Lord Bird

John Brown: Abolitionist firebrand

Capitalism is an undemocratic system that deprives workers of control over the world around them.  Workers are shocked and appalled by the injustice of the system, and so charity is one way in which capitalism creates an illusion of control and a way of explaining away its failures.  There are charities which give to the poor, fund research and provide relief for women facing domestic violence.  Charity however raises the question; Why isn’t the rich paying for all this stuff?

This talk will explore the trouble with charity and why individualist strategies of social change can’t make capitalism moral.

The ambiguity of charitable volunteering

The dead end of moral individualism

"Be the change you want to see": Do we need Charity or Revolution?

At the core of capitalist ideology is the notion that any understanding of society, of politics, the economy, morality and justice must begin with the individual. This stands in stark contrast to pre-capitalist societies, and today serves above all to conceal fundamental class divisions. 

This session will explore liberal individualism, including its many impacts in left wing circles today, and why we need an alternative worldview and politics of class solidarity and struggle.

Profit-hungry hippies aren't progressive

The dead-end of moral individualism

The tangled paradox of liberalism

Marxism vs liberalism

Class politics vs liberal individualism

The Congress of the Peoples of the East was a multinational conference held in September 1920 by the Communist International in Baku, Azerbaijan. The congress was attended by nearly 1,900 delegates from across Asia and Europe and marked a commitment by the Comintern to support revolutionary nationalist movements in the colonial "East" in addition to the traditional radical labour movement of Europe, North America, and Australasia.  It was the first attempt to appeal to the exploited and oppressed peoples in the colonial and semi-colonial countries to carry forward their revolutionary struggles under the banner of Marxism and with the support of the workers in Russia and the advanced countries of the world. This session will detail the wonderful history of this congress as well as explore the many debates that raged throughout. WE RECOMMEND PAIRING THIS SESSION WITH: 'Debates in the Comintern: The National Question' or any of the sessions in the Debates in the Comintern Stream.

The Baku Congress of 1920 Sounded the Call for the End of Empire

To See The Dawn: Baku, 1920: First Congress of the Peoples of the East

Revolutionaries and the colonial world: The 1920 Baku People's Congress of the East

Women’s oppression has long been contested between feminists and Marxists. Key debates include does patriarchy or capitalism cause sexism, do working class men benefit from sexism and will ending capitalism end sexism.

These debates re-emerged and took a new form in the 70s and 80s, as women’s liberation emerged in a context of heightened struggle, social movements and a contested left.

A school of socialist feminists including Heidi Hartmann attempt to bridge the debate by arguing that “economistic” Marxism and feminism should be combined for a materialist understanding of society that takes women’s oppression seriously. Hartmann argues that Marxism alone is sex-blind and cannot explain the relations between men and women.

This session will engage in the debates between Marxists, feminists and socialist-feminists – and present a Marxist critique of the socialist feminist arguments.

The unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism: towards a more progression union

Women and revolution: a discussion on the unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism edited by Lydia Sargent

The poverty of patriarchy theory

"The unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism": Socialist feminism debates

Long before the greenhouse effect was well known, Marx had much to say about the destruction of the environment. He argued that capitalism necessarily exploits human beings and the natural world simultaneously and sacrifices the interests of both on the altar of profit. In doing so, capitalism estranges human beings from nature, in a way that no other society has done before, laying the groundwork for the colossal environmental devastation we face today. Marxist philosophy has much to offer environmental activists of today, in both explaining the roots of the current crisis and pointing the way towards an environmentally sustainable world, free of exploitation and oppression.

Marxism, nature, and the current ecological crisis

Marx and the First International - Critique of the Gotha Program

Join us for the relaunch of the wonderful book 'Years of Rage: Class Conflict in the Fraser Years' by Tom O Lincoln. It's 1975, and Malcolm Fraser makes his ruthless grab for power. Workers resist, opening up seven years of bitter class conflict.Years Of Rage analyses the crisis into which Australia plunged under Whitlam and outlines the responses from politicians, capitalists, oppressed people and above all the organized working class. From the upheavals of the Constitutional Crisis through the strikes in defence of Medibank and on to the 1981 wage push, Tom O'Lincoln traces the industrial and political struggle.He complements this with studies of social movements against oppression, unemployment, environmental destruction and war. Joh Bjelke-Petersen's crisis-ridden state of Queensland gets a chapter of its own, as do major debates on the left. The book shows how the exhaustion of the two sides after years or unrest set the scene for a Hawke Labor government which replaced Fraser, yet brought nothing but disappointment to his opponents.This is a partisan, Marxist history which takes sides on every issue, reserving its sharpest barbs for capitalists and establishment politicians, and those labour leaders who assist them.

Years of Rage: class conflict in the Fraser years

Karl Marx's experience as a campaigning newspaper editor in the early 1840s was crucial to his development into the leading activist and theorist of the European revolutionary movement, which exploded just after the Communist Manifesto was published in 1848. This session will give an overview of Marx's earliest writings in the Rheinische Zeitung, a paper financed by liberal capitalists in the Prussian Rhineland. More importantly, it will outline the changing nature of European society at this time.

The Dispossessed

The Theory of Revolution in the Young Marx

What Karl Marx discovered in the woods

Marx's early journalistic writings

This session will survey the development of the healthcare system in Australia in the post-war years. It will recount how capitalists and doctors fought against universal care, how Labor repeatedly walked away from its progressive commitments, and how nurses have struck to fight back. We will also hear from healthcare workers on the frontlines today who are experiencing perhaps the most acute crisis in care this country has ever seen.

Private profit vs public access: How class struggle shaped Australia's healthcare system

Australian healthcare: History and reality today

In the coming decades, tens of millions of people will be displaced by coastal flooding as sea levels rise. This rise can no longer be prevented, even if all carbon emissions stop tomorrow. According to the IPCC, the world in 2100 will be "no longer recognizable, with decreasing life expectancy, reduced outdoor labour productivity, and lower quality of life in many regions because of too frequent heatwaves and other climate extremes." Increasingly, scientists are talking about the potential for devastation so significant and widespread as to trigger the collapse of entire societies and the unravelling of the global social order in the space of a few decades. And for many millions of people, already forced to flee their homes as a result of extreme weather events, the climate disaster is a present reality. Despite this, annual carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise. Given the apparent impossibility of change within the system and the little time left - is it just too late to stop the runaway train of climate destruction?

Is it too late to save the planet?

The Industrial Workers of the World were one of Australia's earliest revolutionary organisations. Their iconoclastic, rabble rousing approach to organising workers gained them the trust of many thousands. This session will look at the rise and fall of the 'Wobblies' (as they were known.)

The Industrial Workers of the World in Australia

Revolutionary industrial unionism : the industrial workers of the world in Australia

Wobblies! The Australian Industrial Workers of the World

For the Auschwitz survivor and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust “negates all answers,”“lies outside,if not beyond, history,” “defies both knowledge and description,” is “never to be comprehended or transmitted.”But for Marxists it is not sufficient to throw up our hands and declare incomprehension, if such horrors are to be avoided, some understanding must be reached. This session will attempt to come to grips with debates over interpretations of the Holocaust between Marxists and non Marxists and also within Marxism itself.

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