New Zealand has a rich history of working-class struggle, but decades of neoliberalism have reshaped its politics, weakened union organisation and deepened inequality. 

The growth of the right, attacks on Māori rights and the pressures of a cost-of-living crisis pose new challenges for socialists. What does it take to rebuild a socialist movement capable of challenging the political establishment and organising resistance from below? How can socialists connect workplace struggles, movements against racism and oppression, and wider campaigns against capitalism? 

Join New Zealand socialists to discuss the state of the left, the lessons of recent struggles and the practical challenges of building revolutionary socialist organisations today.

Building socialist organisations in New Zealand

Since Narendra Modi and the BJP came to power, India has seen an intensification of Hindu nationalism, attacks on civil liberties and growing pressure on minorities, trade unions and political opponents. 

The government’s economic agenda has also brought privatisation, insecurity and hardship for millions of workers and farmers. Yet India has a long history of mass resistance, from enormous farmers’ mobilisations to general strikes and campaigns against communalism. 

How are socialists and activists organising in this increasingly hostile political environment? What challenges do they face, and what forms of resistance are emerging? 

Join an Indian socialist to discuss the state of the left in India, the fight against Modi’s government and the prospects for building a movement capable of challenging both Hindu nationalism and the economic interests it represents.

Organising under Modi in India

Zohran Mamdani’s rise has generated enormous enthusiasm among millions looking for an alternative to the political establishment. His promises of rent controls, free public transport and taxing the wealthy have raised important questions about the possibilities and limits of left-wing electoral politics. 

But can a socialist programme be delivered through the institutions of a capitalist state? What happens when movements built around radical expectations encounter the pressures of governing, corporate opposition and the Democratic Party establishment? 

This session will examine the politics of Mamdani’s campaign, the hopes it has generated and the dangers of mistaking electoral victories for fundamental social change.

Mamdani and false hope

Stalin was unknown in Australia until the mid 1920s, yet would rise from total obscurity to hero worship as the great leader of the only "socialist" state for many Australian socialists, particularly after the global depression began in 1929. 

Stalin's murderous counter-revolution in Russia was defended by Australian Communists, and the various twists and turns Stalin insisted on for the Communist International loyally adhered to, over time transforming the Communist Party of Australia into an outfit committed to class collaboration and even imperialism. When Stalin's own crimes became too much to ignore a few years after his death, the monolith of Stalinism was shattered and Australian socialists left to pick up the pieces. 

This session will look at how Stalin's dictatorship in Russia enabled him to corrupt the Australian communist movement and how his pernicious influence continues to scar socialism into the present.

Into the Mainstream: the decline of Australian Communism

The Marxism and Strategic Concepts of the Communist Party of Australia, 1963–1972

The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality

The Party: The Communist Party of Australia from Heyday to Reckoning

Stalin in Australia

Often Maoism is portrayed as a socialist theory to the left of Stalinism, charting a more radical path for revolution and against bureaucratisation. In reality, Maoism was the state ideology of a rising ruling class - as pragmatic and mystifying as the ideologies of all capitalist states. 

This talk will trace the twists and turns of the Chinese Communist Party’s state building project to help de-mystify Maoist ideology and understand the modern Chinese state.

The Mandate of Heaven: Marx and Mao in Modern China

People’s War and New Democracy: Maoism’s strategy for national capitalism

From heatwaves across Europe to floods in Nepal, climate disasters are becoming more frequent and more deadly. But Australia continues to be a major exporter of fossil fuels. 

The Albanese government has approved of over 37 fossil fuel projects, including the extension of the Woodside’s North West Shelf Project, Australia’s largest oil and gas facility. The ALP will not even raise the taxes on these fossil fuel giants. 

This session will explore why Australian capitalism is so addicted to coal and gas, and why meaningful climate justice cannot occur within the confines of the Australian capitalist economy.

Slick: Australia’s toxic relationship with Big Oil

Fuelled by coal: Piercing the mirage of a sustainable capitalist Australia

Energy wars: Fossil Fuels and the Australian economy

The mythology of Gallipoli celebrates Australian patriotism and sacrifice, but it obscures a history of fierce working-class opposition to the First World War. As thousands were sent to die in an imperialist slaughter, workers, socialists and trade unionists fought conscription, challenged wartime repression and organised against the drive to war. 

The bitter conscription battles of 1916–17 exposed deep class divisions in Australian society. This session recovers the radical history behind the Anzac legend and explores the lessons of working-class resistance to imperialist war.

In the Shadow of Gallipoli: The Hidden History of Australia in World War

The active chorus : the mass strike of 1917 in eastern Australia

Australia 1917: From world war to class war

In the shadow of Gallipoli: Australian working class resistance to WW1

Slavery and the movement against it played a big part in Marx's diagnosis of the incurability of capitalism's ills. 

This session will consider Marx's writings on slavery, his attitudes to the Civil War in the USA and his participation in the movement against slavery in Britain.

Karl Marx and the American Civil War

Marx and Slavery

An Unfinished Revolution: Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln

Marx and the movement against slavery

The rise of Stalinism is often blamed on socialism itself—but Marxists argue it represented a profound counter-revolution. This session explains how isolation, civil war, and economic backwardness created conditions for the bureaucracy’s takeover. 

The Bolsheviks understood that for socialism to be built in Russia, revolutions needed to succeed elsewhere. We’ll examine where this went wrong and why it led ultimately to the destruction of workers’ democracy, the rise of an authoritarian bureaucracy, and the reconsolidation of capitalism. 

Understanding this counter-revolution is vital for defending the legacy of 1917 while rejecting the distortions of Stalinism. It also sharpens our vision of what a genuine socialist society must be: democratic, internationalist, and run from below.

Stalinism: the degeneration of the Russian Revolution

The struggle for refugee rights has been one of the most important and enduring movements against racism and state repression in Australia. 

From the hunger strikes, protests and breakout attempts at Woomera detention centre in the early 2000s to the fight against offshore processing, indefinite detention and deportations today, refugees and their supporters have repeatedly challenged Australia’s punitive border regime. 

What did the movement achieve, and why have successive Labor and Liberal governments maintained such harsh policies? This session will trace the history of refugee activism, the role of grassroots solidarity and the lessons of past campaigns.

From Woomera to today: The fight for refugee rights in Australia

The movement for Palestine has brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets, sparked strikes and workplace protests, disrupted the political establishment and forced the question of Palestine into public debate. 

In Australia and internationally, mass demonstrations, student encampments, union initiatives and direct action have challenged governments’ support for Israel. What has this extraordinary mobilisation achieved, and what are its limits? How has the movement changed public consciousness, and why have governments continued to resist demands to end their political, military and economic support for Israel? 

This session will examine the movement’s impact, the debates over tactics and strategy, and the challenges of sustaining mass resistance after the devastation of Gaza.

Three years of Palestine solidarity

In our thousands: The Palestine Movement and its impact

Join members of the Australian Socialist Party to discuss the tasks, challenges and possibilities of rebuilding a revolutionary socialist movement today.

How the Socialist Party is different from the other parties

The Australian Socialist Party: A project to transform the left

Rebuilding socialism in Australia: The Australian Socialist Party

From Die Linke in Germany to LFI in France, left populism has promised to take on the billionaires and return power to ordinary people. But can a movement built around the idea of “the people” versus “the elite” overcome the divisions of capitalist society? What happens when the energy of mass movements is channelled into parliamentary elections and the project of reforming the state? 

This session will examine the political ideas behind left populism, its appeal and its limitations from a Marxist perspective. We'll explore why class struggle matters, the role of workers as agents of social transformation, and the dangers of substituting charismatic leaders and electoral success for mass working-class organisation. What would a genuinely revolutionary alternative look like?

Podemos and left populism

Ten years of the France Insoumise: A Marxist view

Party turn: the return of left wing parties

Is La France Insoumise anti-capitalist?

The People Are Not One: Socialist Strategy After Left Populism

A Marxist critique of Left Populism

Liberalism entered the world as the ideology of a rising capitalist class who promised their rule would bring liberty, fraternity and equality to all. 

After centuries of broken promises and false revivals, liberalism is fighting to save a deeply crisis-ridden, war-mongering, unequal and authoritarian capitalist system from itself. But the political and economic structures of capitalism pay no attention to platitudes about what it should deliver or castles in the sky. 

This talk will tackle the arguments of key representatives of contemporary liberal thought, and pose a Marxist alternative to how we can end the crimes of capitalism.

The futility of modern liberalism

Argentina’s revolutionary left is experiencing a remarkable breakthrough. The Workers’ Left Front (FIT-U), a coalition of revolutionary socialist organisations, has built a significant electoral presence while maintaining its commitment to class struggle. 

Its leading figure, Myriam Bregman, has recently emerged as Argentina’s most popular politician, with several polls recording exceptionally high approval ratings. The challenge now is to turn that popularity into a broader force capable of confronting Javier Milei’s austerity agenda and challenging the political establishment. 

How has the FIT-U built support for revolutionary socialist ideas, and what role have its elected representatives played in workers’ struggles and social movements? What can socialists internationally learn from its electoral successes, and how can electoral organising help build a mass revolutionary movement without becoming an end in itself?

The Left Front in Argentina grows in popularity

The lessons from electoral organising in Argentina

The genocide in Gaza has had a profound impact on Palestinian society. Not only have countless lives been destroyed, the political and physical infrastructure that existed before 2023 has been severely undermined. 

This session will look at the political realities of Palestinian resistance today and consider the question of Palestinian liberation in the face of three years of genocide and regional war.

Palestinian liberation after Gaza

Australia once had one of the world’s most powerful labour movements, built through strikes, mass union organisation and the emergence of Labor as a party claiming to represent working-class interests. But how did a movement forged in class struggle become increasingly integrated into the institutions of capitalism? 

From the defeats of the 1890s to the Accord of the 1980s, the rise of neoliberalism and the collapse in union membership, this session will trace the transformation of working-class politics in Australia. What role did Labor governments and union leaders play in this process? Has class politics disappeared — or is it waiting to be rebuilt? 

With inequality growing and working conditions under pressure, what would it take to revive a fighting socialist movement rooted in the organised working class?

The rise and decline of class politics in Australia

A safe, secure home should be a basic right, not a privilege reserved for those who can afford it. Yet rents and house prices are soaring, homelessness is growing, and property developers and landlords continue to profit from a deepening housing crisis. Why, in one of the richest societies in history, are millions of people struggling to find somewhere to live? 

This session will explore how capitalism turns housing into a commodity, why governments’ promises of affordable homes have failed, and what it would take to win housing for all. 

From tenants’ unions and rent strikes to public housing and collective action, we’ll discuss how working-class people can fight back against landlords, developers and a system that puts profit before people.

We need public housing, not social housing

How capitalism, not migrants, created Australia's housing crisis

The great Australian nightmare: housing and capitalism

Change doesn't happen spontaneously—successful movements require organisation, strategy, and political clarity. 

This session outlines why revolutionary socialist organisation is essential: to generalise lessons from struggle, challenge ruling-class ideology, and prepare for moments of crisis and upheaval. We'll discuss what a revolutionary organisation does, how it participates in social movements, and why building a committed, activist core is key to winning real change. 

If you're inspired by socialist politics and want to help overthrow capitalism, this session will outline the practical steps to getting organised.

Why we need revolutionary organisation

Cuba is facing a profound social and economic crisis, marked by shortages, emigration, popular discontent and the continuing impact of the US blockade. 

Decades after Fidel Castro’s revolution, what remains of the revolutionary project, and what political alternatives exist for Cuba’s workers and young people? How should socialists understand the Cuban state, the legacy of the revolution and the role of US imperialism? 

Join a revolutionary socialist involved in organising in Cuba to discuss the realities of life and political struggle on the island, the emergence of dissent from below and the prospects for an emancipatory socialist alternative rooted in workers’ democracy and popular power.

Struggle in Cuba after Castro

More than a decade after Greece became the epicentre of Europe’s austerity crisis, the country continues to grapple with the consequences of economic hardship, political disillusionment and attacks on workers’ rights. 

The rise and eventual defeat of Syriza raised fundamental questions about the limits of parliamentary reform and the prospects for a socialist alternative. What is the state of the Greek left today, and what can be learned from the struggles against austerity? 

Join a member of DEA (Internationalist Workers’ Left), a Greek revolutionary socialist organisation, to discuss the political situation in Greece, the state of the workers’ movement and the challenges of rebuilding a fighting socialist left.

Greek politics today

Join the hosts of Red Flag Radio Chloe Rafferty and Emma Norton for an exclusive Q&A event recorded live at Marxism 2027!

Live recording: Red Flag Radio Q&A

The Iranian revolution is often maligned as a purely “Islamic” revolution, proof of the supposed anti-democratic, backwards desires of the Iranian masses. In fact, the uprising in 1979 was a “riot of democracy”; a mass rebellion against imperialism and capitalism with workers’ power at its heart. 

The shoras linked the power of Iranian oil workers to workers in other industries, such as banking clerks, the railways, post offices and more. They fought for decent wages and job control, but also for radical political demands. 

The history of their rise and fall contains valuable lessons for socialists.

Revolution and Counter-revolution in Iran

Workers and Revolution in Iran: A Third World Experience of Workers' Control

Workers' and Peasants' Councils in Iran

Industrial Development, Culture and Working-Class Politics: a Case Study of Tabriz Industrial Workers in the Iranian Revolution

The Iranian Shoras

When the First World War ended, it left old empires crumbling across Central Europe, Asia and the Middle East. In the aftermath national movements contested for independence and Communists fought for influence over newly mobilised layers. 

The Comintern's Second Congress in 1920 had debated the national question in the age of imperialism and had generally resolved that Communists should support national movements while maintaining revolutionary and working-class independence. Yet balancing these priorities in practice was proving difficult and, in some cases, deadly for Communists. 

At the Fourth Congress, delegates weighed up the record of colonial revolts in the years since 1920 and attempted to formulate an "anti-imperialist united front" approach that could guide Communist strategy going forward.

Session 23. Eastern Question (12 July)

Theses on the Eastern Question

Marxism and National Liberation

The theses on the 'Eastern Question'

Violence against women is not an inevitable fact of life, nor simply the result of individual prejudice or bad behaviour. From domestic violence and sexual assault to harassment, women’s experiences of violence are shaped by a society built on inequality, exploitation and oppression. 

Why does violence against women persist despite decades of campaigning for equality? What role do capitalism, the family and entrenched gender roles play in perpetuating it? And what will it take to end it? 

This session will explore the roots of violence against women, the limits of relying on the state and the police to protect women, and how collective struggle can challenge the social conditions that allow violence to flourish.

Manosphere making classrooms toxic

There is nothing edgy about turning violence against women into art

The roots of sexual violence

How do socialists explain violence toward women?

The defeat of the US war machine by the Vietnamese army was one of the most impressive and consequential feats of the 20th century. It was the culmination of over 100 years of struggles for independence from imperialism, first French and then US. 

This talk will deep dive into the human forces that achieved that victory, the politics that moved them - from nationalism, to Trotskyism, to Stalinism - and the state-capitalist regime that ultimately succeeded in winning power.

The Vietnamese Road to State Capitalism

Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience

Vietnam, Nationalism and Liberation 1945-1975

Alongside Lenin, Trotsky was one of the foremost Bolsheviks known to Australian socialists after 1917, writing a well-read history of the Russian Revolution, and featuring in John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World. 

However, over the course of the 1920s he would come to be vilified in Communist circles as a traitor and even a "fascist." Despite the calumny leveled against him, in the 1930s in Australia the first socialist groups who agreed with Trotsky's opposition to the Stalinist counter-revolution in Russia were founded. They would go on to form a significant basis for the future of socialism in Australia from the 1960s onwards during the international student radicalisation centred on the Vietnam War. 

This session will look at how Trotsky's fight against Stalinism was understood and interpreted in Australia in these significant periods.

The sixties radicalisation and the emergence of Trotskyism on the Australian left

Trotskyism in Australia: Notes from a talk with Ted Tripp

The Militant (newspaper of the Trotskyists in the 1930s)

The “French Turn” in the Antipodes: Early Trotskyists and the Australian Labor Party, 1937–55

Red Hot: the Life and Times of Nick Origlass

The Socialist Left in Australia 1949 - 1959

Laurie Short: A Political Life

Trotsky in the antipodes

Consistently crisp podcasters - in the flesh

Live recording: The Party Line

Identity politics is often presented as the natural expression of struggles against racism, sexism and other forms of oppression. But where did it come from, and how has it shaped the left? 

From the Black Power movement and radical feminism of the 1960s and 1970s to the rise of postmodernism and contemporary identity-based activism, this session will trace the history of a contested political tradition. We'll explore the debates and divisions that emerged within movements for liberation, the relationship between identity and class, and the arguments of socialists who insist that oppression cannot be understood separately from the wider structures of capitalist society. 

What can we learn from past struggles, and how can we build a movement that fights every form of oppression while uniting workers in the struggle for universal liberation?

The failure of identity politics: A Marxist analysis

The real history of identity politics

The wave of working-class rebellion that followed the First World War had met with a combination of typical responses: violent state repression along with concessions and co-optation via reformist institutions. In some countries, though, a novel form of reaction was taking shape: mass petty-bourgeois movements bent on the physical annihilation of workers’ organisations.

Convening just five days after Mussolini’s fascists took power in Italy, the Comintern’s Fourth Congress grappled with the implications of this growing threat. The real gravity of events was yet to sink in—initial speeches somewhat flippantly praised the Italian comrades' abstentionist attitude to fascism's rise. But a handful of delegates pushed the issue from the floor. 

By the close of the congress, a majority was won to the need for urgent anti-fascist united front work across Europe. The leadership’s new perspective would be hashed out by Clara Zetkin at the Third Enlarged Plenum of 1923 in her historic address on the struggle against fascism.

The Resistible Rise of Benito Mussolini

Fumble and late recovery: The Comintern response to Italian fascism

Toward the united front: proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International 1922

Fighting Fascism: How to Struggle and How to Win

The Rise of Italian Fascism 1918–1922

Italian fascism

Join author Jeff Sparrow to explore the extraordinary life of Lesbia Harford: poet, feminist, labour activist and revolutionary socialist. Living through the upheavals of the early twentieth century, Harford fought for a world free from exploitation and oppression, bringing her radical politics into both her activism and her poetry. T

hrough her remarkable story, Sparrow illuminates the hopes, struggles and contradictions of Australia’s socialist movement, and the life of a woman whose vision of a different future still speaks to us today.

Revolutionary Lives: Lesbia Harford

Somewhere Here the Future’s Hid: The Extraordinary Life of Lesbia Harford

The Poems Of Lesbia Harford

Beginning its life as a one-on-one interview with his own father, Simon Reich’s acclaimed multimedia documentary has grown to include dozens of interviews with the migrants who experienced a war-torn Europe, passed through the Bonegilla migrant camp, and ultimately made their lives in Australia. 

Reich brings us a snapshot of the human experiences that were submerged in the great social forces of war and post-war migration flows, along with live political commentary and musical accompaniment.

Multimedia Event: Bonegilla: The Migrants Journey

The Jewish Labour Bund was one of the most important socialist movements to emerge from the Russian Empire, organising Jewish workers against antisemitism and capitalist exploitation. 

But its distinctive politics of Jewish national autonomy and its insistence on organising Jewish workers as a separate national movement also raised sharp questions about socialist strategy and working-class unity. 

This session examines the Bund’s achievements and limitations, exploring the tensions between revolutionary internationalism, national identity and the struggle to overthrow capitalism.

The rise and fall of the Jewish Labour Bund

Here Where We Live Is Our Country

Yiddish Revolutionaries in Migration: The Transnational History of the Jewish Labour Bund

From the Pale to New York: Revolution and Jewish Organising in the Bund

Racism is rooted in capitalism’s need to divide workers and justify capitalist inequality, conquest, slavery, and imperial domination. 

This session examines how racism and nationalism are produced and reproduced through policing, borders, media, labour markets and ideology. We’ll challenge ideas that treat race as separate from class, showing instead how struggles against racism and class exploitation are inseparable. 

From Black liberation movements to fights for refugee rights, we’ll explore how anti-racist organising strengthens the working class as a whole—and why a socialist strategy is essential for winning real, lasting liberation.

Racism and Nationalism: divide and rule under capitalism

From questions of identity and social construction to the politics of representation and resistance, this session will explore the ideas of queer theory from a socialist perspective. 

What can Marxism contribute to understanding the roots of sexual oppression, and where do individualist and poststructuralist approaches fall short? How can socialists fight for queer liberation while connecting struggles against oppression to the broader fight for a radically transformed society? 

Come along for a lively discussion of theory, politics and the possibilities for liberation.

In perspective: Judith Butler

Queer Theory and Politics

Queer theory: A socialist hot take

Discussions at the Comintern's Fourth Congress sought to apply the “united front” approach to various concrete scenarios. In the colonial world, the Comintern pursued an anti-imperialist united front; where the far right was growing, a united front against fascism. 

In some places, like in Germany, Communists were not strong enough to launch revolutionary offensives but would be able to form government in combination with other parties of labour. Could the united front tactic be extended to the parliamentary field? 

How should Communists characterise potential “workers’ governments”? What would be their social role? And what principles would guide a revolutionary approach to supporting, participating in, or opposing such formations?

The workers’ government debate in the Communist International

The debate on the workers’ government

The Comintern’s workers’ government debate (in 4 parts)

The workers’ government

The Workers' Government

The Australian Labor Party has long since abandoned its historic ambition to transform society. From Hawke and Keating’s neoliberal restructuring to Labor’s contemporary management of inequality, climate change and Australia’s military alliances, the party has become a vehicle for governing capitalism rather than challenging it. 

How did this transformation happen? What remains of Labor’s working-class roots, and what does its history tell us about the possibilities and limits of reformism? 

This session will trace Labor’s evolution, examine the relationship between the party, the trade union movement and the capitalist class, and ask what kind of political organisation workers need to fight for fundamental social change.

Labor's Conflict: Big Business, Workers and the Politics of Class

After the light went out: The modern Australian Labor Party

The Meiji Restoration transformed Japan from an isolated, samurai-based patchwork of aristocratic states, to an industrial powerhouse with a modern army and imperial ambitions. 

The resultant insatiable greed of Japanese industrialists and imperialists would transform the face of Asia through bloody wars and occupations. 

This talk will investigate the roots and impacts of Japan’s war machine, as well as the brave sources of resistance - from China, to Korea, to the Japanese working class - that were the only potential antidote to empire.

Program