Members of the Socialist Party are often asked what makes us different from other parties. Prospective left-wing voters bruised by the long history of politicians selling out their principles want to know how we will avoid becoming part of the same establishment we want to challenge. On the other hand, some left-wing Greens question whether the Socialist Party is even necessary, seeing as their party already offers similar policies.
The only way to answer these questions properly is to explain how the Socialist Party is unlike any other in Australian politics. We have a vision of society and a political strategy that differs fundamentally from all pro-capitalist parties, from the Liberals to the Greens. So what’s so distinctive about our project?
Socialism!
The first thing is in the name. We are a socialist party, avowedly opposed to the whole capitalist system. Of course, the meaning of the term “socialism” is contested. Many progressive politicians, from UK Greens’ Zack Polanski to New York’s Zohran Mamdani, have ridden a wave of hostility toward right-wing billionaires and use the term “socialism” to describe their goal of reformed capitalism.
But we don’t just want to tinker with the system: the Socialist Party wants to get rid of capitalism. We oppose an economy based on private business ownership and the exploitation of workers. We support a democratic, socialised economy that abolishes the profit motive and allocates labour and resources based on human need. So we fight the class of business owners and challenge the political and legal system that exists to defend their rule. We think the workers who make everything run, from the transport system to warehouses to our hospitals, should be in charge, not business owners and politicians.
Our policies reflect this: they’re not just about explaining how the world could be made nicer. They express a fundamental hostility to the fact that our society is organised around profit-making. They’re an argument that the wealth of the rich and the assets of corporations are the products of their exploitation of workers, and that we want to take back as much of that wealth as we can.
Parties can easily adopt socialist terminology, especially when it seems popular. But actually fighting for socialism is another matter. The Australian Labor Party, for instance, adopted the socialist objective into its constitution in 1921:
“The Australian Labor Party is a democratic socialist party and has the objective of the democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange, to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features in these fields.”
This came at a time when demand for socialism was widespread in the workers’ movement. But party leaders never took the objective seriously. The qualification “to the extent that” was tacked on to signal to capitalists that the ALP didn’t really intend to turn the tables on the economic system. Despite remaining in the party constitution to this day, Labor has been utterly committed to defending the priorities of the capitalist class for over a century.
For us, socialism is more than just a word—it is our core philosophy.
Building the workers’ movement
That gets to the second thing that makes us different: socialists have a completely distinct strategy for changing the world. Because we think workers should run things, everything we do is shaped by the goal of rebuilding the capacity of workers to organise, demand more, and take on their bosses.
That’s why Socialist Party members played a crucial role in the Victorian teachers’ strikes earlier this year. Negotiations over pay, conditions and school funding provided an opportunity to organise more socialist teachers, argue for an uncompromising form of trade unionism that doesn’t just accept Labor’s crumbs, and prove in practice that strikes can win real gains.
Rather than the movement existing to serve parliamentarians, Socialist Party MPs would be bound to use their positions to serve the movement. They would be forbidden from taking all the income that comes with a seat in parliament—they would have to give most of it back to the movement, rather than build their own wealth from their position. No other party is for this—their parliamentary leaders all get filthy rich.
Our inspirations include socialists like Broken Hill miners’ leader Percy Brookfield, who decided to run for NSW parliament while sitting in a prison cell for opposing the First World War. He won his seat handily and used it to organise support for a general strike.
We don’t just want to see more people in unions, or larger strikes and protests. We also want to help to shape the politics of future resistance. Socialism isn’t just a nice idea to keep us inspired while we fight for small victories—pay rises, better funded hospitals, more public transport and so on—in the here and now. It’s also a theory that guides action.
Socialism is about highlighting the links between the economic and political power of the capitalist class and understanding the role of institutions—from the capitalist media to the courts and police—that defend the capitalist system. This is what sets socialism apart from liberal progressivism. We don’t think it’s just a couple of bad billionaires or out-of-touch governments ruining things, but the entire business class that lives only by exploiting workers.
On this front, the Greens struggle with a split identity: they want to connect with young people’s left-wing sentiments while keeping the loyalty of their long-standing moderate, middle-class voter base—many of whom are capitalists motivated by profit-making. They want to be seen as a radical party while remaining deeply entrenched in the deal-making and compromise that characterises parliamentary politics.
That’s why the Greens flip between arguing that Labor is bankrupt and trying to appeal to it as a partner in government to manage capitalism in a nicer way. They want to be the conscience of the political establishment; we want to confront it head-on. They are not fundamentally against big business, but want a more enlightened, environmentally friendly and cosmopolitan capitalist class. The Socialist Party is different because we are for workers, not bosses.
How we organise
The last thing that makes the Socialist Party different is how we organise. While the Socialist Party includes a wide variety of socialists, we’re organised around a common set of principles that run deeper than simply wanting to see our candidates elected. Members must accept the fundamental principles and objectives of our party, all centred on the fight for a socialist alternative.
Labor allows right-wingers like NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey, a market fundamentalist, into its ranks. Or Martin Ferguson, who has spent his career jumping between union officialdom, the front bench and board seats at mining corporations, while advocating privatisation and wage cuts. Notwithstanding their anti-rich rhetoric, the Greens give a prominent place to centrist politicians like Sarah Hanson-Young, and even capitalists like former investment banker Peter Whish-Wilson. Party leader David Shoebridge lives in a multimillion-dollar mansion in leafy Woollahra, while his family manages three investment properties.
The Socialist Party is different. Capitalists do not fund our party, do not run our party and won’t represent our party. Because we want to build a party that is more than a launching pad for political careerists, the membership—workers and students, not a parliamentary caucus or wealthy donors—will always be the centre of decision-making. Too many electoral parties vote up nice-sounding resolutions at conferences only to see them scrapped at the negotiating table.
Politics offers no guarantees, but we know that building a party committed to challenging the power and priorities of the capitalist class is the only project that stands a chance of tackling the massive crises facing the world today.
We are at the very early stages of building this party. We’ve made serious strides in the past eight years, growing from our first Victorian race in 2018 into a national party with more than 5,000 members and some serious campaigning experience. But we have a long way to go. To transform politics in Australia, we need a party of countless thousands, rooted in workplaces and communities, and organised not just to vote, but to fight against the rich and all their hangers-on.
That is what makes the Socialist Party different.
