Jordan Humphreys

A new international political situation

For going on 50 years, the left and workers’ movement has been in retreat. There have been important upsurges and small victories, but there has not been a revival of working-class power and radical politics equivalent to that of the 1960s and ’70s in the decades since. Many of the 1960s radicals moved to the right and were absorbed into the system, whether via academia, the media, NGOs or mainstream politics, while countless others have quietly given up on the hope of radical social transformation. The governments and institutions that briefly seemed vulnerable to challenge by mass movements have reasserted their dominance, to terrible effect.
This shift has been reflected at an ideological level. As the possibility of radical change has retreated, so too has confidence in the ideas that underpin it. What was self-evident in the 1960s and ’70s—that the working class has the power to transform society and solidarity is possible and powerful—today seems implausible and, to some, like nothing more than apologetics for those who are part of the problem. Unsurprisingly, then, contemporary progressive sensibility is often characterised by a sense of powerlessness, scepticism and suspicion towards attempts at solidarity, and bitterness at the world’s injustices rather than a confidence they can be challenged and changed. 
This is reflected in a number of what have come to be seen as truisms among progressives in the West. These include that movements against oppression are legitimate only if they are led by the oppressed and informed by “lived experience”; that people who don’t experience oppression are inherently privileged and therefore cannot be reliable allies; that the integrity of movements depends on “centring” or “elevating” the right voices; and that expressions of solidarity are at best paternalistic and at worst do more to perpetuate oppression than ameliorate it. From suffering, in other words, comes truth, and those who don’t suffer are part of the problem. 
In an article written at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, British writer Sam Kriss highlights the paralysing nature of this approach, characterising the movement leaders’ contradictory commandments to would-be supporters this way:
“DO the important work of interrogating your own biases and prejudices. DON’T obsess over your white guilt—this isn’t about you! 
“DO use your white privilege as a shield by standing between black folx and the police. DON’T stand at the front of marches—it’s time for you to take a back seat. 
“DO speak out against racism—never expect activists of colour to always perform the emotional labour. DON’T crowd the conversation with your voice—shut up, stay in your lane. 
“DO educate your white community by providing an example of white allyship. DON’T post selfies from a protest—our struggle isn’t a photo-op.”
There is on the one hand an acknowledgement that wider support is needed—after all, no oppressed group other than the working class is capable of liberating itself—but at the same time a dogged insistence that such support is insincere or a threat. 
The movement in solidarity with Palestine, which has been one of the most prolonged and widespread in recent history, blows all of this nonsense out of the water. 
It has overwhelmingly not been led by those with lived experience of Israel’s genocide, and nor has it been strongest where Palestinians are the most concentrated. 
Palestinians in Gaza have understandably been focused on survival rather than taking responsibility for an international protest movement. But it is not as though the countries that have mobilised the most for Palestine are countries with a large or particularly well-organised Palestinian populations. Of the ten countries which have had the most “large-scale” protests for Palestine since October 2023 according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, only one—Yemen—is even in the Middle East. Australia is second, and the rest are in Europe. 
The country that organised a historic general strike in support of Palestine—Italy—does not have a particularly large Palestinian population (0.002 percent of the population), and nor does Spain, where the strike has now spread. Likewise, the many hundreds of people involved in the various flotillas to Gaza, which provided an important focal point for the movement, were drawn from all over the world. 
The movement’s success therefore cannot be explained by reference to the prevalence of those with lived experience, although undoubtedly many Palestinians have been involved. Millions, if not tens of millions, of people with no direct experience of Israel’s violence have mobilised for Gaza—they’ve given up their weekends, foregone pay and, in some cases, risked their jobs and freedom to make a stand. They have decidedly not stayed in their “lane” or taken a “back seat”. 
Needless to say, this has not been to the detriment of the Palestinian cause. There has been no unnecessary burden of emotional labour placed on Palestinians, it has not crowded out their voices and it has not made the struggle about white people. Instead, it has helped bring the issue of Palestine to the fore everywhere, has made Western government military and political support for Israel more difficult and it has solidified a new generation behind the Palestinian struggle. 
The movement also demonstrates in living colour the underlying premise of solidarity: that an attack on one is an attack on all. Of course, the scale of the horror inflicted on Gaza is a major factor compelling people to act. But so too is a recognition that we all face a common enemy: the same governments lining up to cheer on Israel impose austerity and wage cuts at home. And their willingness to accept atrocities in Gaza when it is politically expedient indicate a degree of callousness that can just as readily be applied domestically. Solidarity is not and has never been about “taking over” struggles. It is about identifying and fighting a common enemy.
Much more than insights gleaned from lived experience then, the movement’s strengths have been drawn from the political culture and traditions that already existed among workers in different parts of the world: the level of union organisation, the political history of the working class, the degree of repression faced and the size and nature of the political organisations on the ground. 
In other words, political consciousness and organisation, rather than personal experience, have proved decisive to building movements that can make an impact. In Italy, the existence of more radical unions independent of the established and conservative union leadership was a key factor in bringing about the momentous and historic general strike in support of Palestine, which has now spread elsewhere in Europe. Here in Australia, the presence of Socialist Alternative clubs on a critical mass of university campuses enabled the Gaza solidarity encampment initiative at the University of Sydney to become a national phenomenon and, later, mass student meetings in support of Palestine. As did the existence of off-campus campaign collectives committed to regular and continued street demonstrations, which have proved important in past campaigns. 
These organisations, and the political activists who constitute them, don’t all exist for the sole purpose of liberating Palestine. But they were nevertheless able to mobilise and make an impact when needed. The strength and organisation of our side, therefore, are crucial to liberating the oppressed and resisting injustice whenever and wherever it emerges.
Of course, the political content of these traditions and organisations matters. Slavish loyalty to the Labor Party on the part of the mainstream union movement here meant the pro-Palestine mobilisations weren’t as strong or as workplace-based as they had the potential to be. On the other hand, this enabled the sort of smaller political forces that weren’t going to be placated by the government’s empty gestures—most importantly its bleating about recognising a Palestinian state once Israel had made it patently unviable—to wield more influence, which was positive. 
Revealingly, those subscribing most strongly to the idea that movements are best led by those affected (Hamas-aligned Palestinians in Gaza) tended to promote the most self-defeating positions, including illusions in the “axis of resistance” (which did precious little to actually resist the genocide) and that the Palestinians were likely to emerge stronger from the supposed tactical masterstroke that was Hamas’ 7 October attack (self-evidently untrue). This is in effect a continuation of the sort of thinking that has long proved disastrous to the Palestinian cause: that fellow Arabs—whether they’re the king of Jordan or a textile worker—will act to liberate the Palestinians. Illusions in solidarity around an Arab identity, rather than a class one, have let down the Palestinian movement repeatedly, from the Black September 1970, when the Jordanian regime drove the Palestine Liberation Organisation out of the country, to the complete inaction in the face of genocide today. 
The flip side of this argument—that privilege creates a conscious or unconscious bias towards the oppressor rather than the oppressed—is likewise not borne out by events. In the US, it has ironically been Jews who have disproportionately been at the forefront of Palestine solidarity actions—the very people in whose name Israel’s war has ostensibly been waged. Jewish Voice for Peace, for example, has organised more than 1,000 protest actions in the US and doubled its dues-paying membership since the genocide began. 
Supposed “privilege” in this particular case is the very thing that has politicised a new generation, understandably horrified at their religion being invoked to justify genocide. This again contradicts a core tenet of modern progressivism: that the division is between the oppressed—whose suffering automatically endows them with unique political insights that must be deferred to—and the non-oppressed, whose privilege automatically ties them into the status quo and the supposed benefits it brings them. 
If we are serious about changing the world and ending oppression, we need to learn from this experience and draw the appropriate conclusions about what actually makes a successful movement, not what makes us feel morally superior or momentarily powerful in a society that systematically disempowers us. 
Part of that is recognising that a perfect level of consciousness about oppression is not actually a precondition for resistance. A far-reaching and nuanced understanding of oppression is of course desirable, but what really makes a difference is having a sense of what side you are on, and our side being organised. 
The millions of people around the world who have marched for Palestine are not experts on the political dynamics or history of Gaza. What sets them apart is their refusal to look away when genocide is going on with Western backing, to keep coming out week after week, to not be intimidated by disingenuous denunciations of antisemitism and their willingness to see Palestinians as fellow human beings, not nameless, faceless terrorism sympathisers, as they have long been portrayed.
The politics on our side will not always be perfect, but this doesn’t mean successful movements can’t or shouldn’t be built. The progressive obsession with policing the ideas, language and actions of people attempting to show solidarity, however imperfectly, gets us nowhere. We need to focus our fire on the powerful: the governments and bosses who run the world. We need to understand what makes them tick, and how they can be stopped.
For all its strengths, the Palestine solidarity movement did not stop Israel’s genocide. To achieve that would have taken a threat to the imperial order and capitalist system on a much more significant scale. But the awesome gains it did make—opening the eyes of a new generation to the brutality and hypocrisy of Western imperial power, discrediting some important tenets of ruling-class ideology and making it clear that, although weakened, our side of politics still has the potential to mobilise and resist—are profoundly important. And, like all struggles whether they win or lose, the movement has been a testing ground for ideas and organisations, with important lessons to teach us. They are lessons we need to learn if we want to have a better chance of winning next time.

Louise O'Shea

How the Palestine solidarity movement discredits identity politics

Most of us have lived most of our lives under a one-sided class war. 
The billionaires have built fortunes while the poor have been screwed. Governments the world over have bent over backwards to facilitate this. The result has been a world in which the rich stomp over everyone with few repercussions. The apex of this laissez-faire attitude to the abuse of power is Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians. 
People have rebelled. In the 21st century, we have seen some truly enormous demonstrations: against the Iraq War, the Black Lives Matter movement, the climate strikes and now the global Palestine movement. 
However, a fundamental weakness of these movements has been the lack of action by workers. This is crucial because only the working class has the power to challenge the ruling class’s real source of power—its control over the economy. 
The decline in working-class activity had a devastating impact on the left. The idea that socialism was about building a mass popular movement of ordinary people who could unite and take power into their own hands was forgotten. Many socialists lost confidence that workers would ever move again. This helped open the space for the far right to masquerade as the new champions of the working class.
This is why what has happened in Europe has been so invigorating. 
On 3 October, a nationwide general strike shook Italy. Hundreds of thousands of workers shut down the country, demanding that their government cut all ties with the Israeli government.
This is unprecedented. General strikes aren’t unheard of in Italy, and particular sections of workers have taken strike action against militarism in recent history. But a mass general strike, backed by the mainstream unions, over a political issue like Israel’s war, is a different matter.
This action by workers grew out of the mass movement of blockades and street protests that has intensified in recent weeks. Since then, Madrid metalworkers have moved to take indefinite strike action over the links between their industry and the Israeli military. On 15 October, a massive demonstration is planned in Spain, various trade union federations planning strike action. Hundreds of thousands of Europeans are discussing the need for strike action to support Palestine. 
This marks a huge qualitative step forward both in the struggle to isolate Israel and in regenerating a radical working-class movement that can challenge capitalism. 
The genocide has “produced a new awareness, which took time and energy to take root, a lot of time, probably too much for those who are prisoners in Gaza, but which has distorted Western political coordinates”, argues the editorial of Italian magazine il manifesto. “[M]ultitudes in every corner of the planet are bringing together their apparently particular claims within a global paradigm that has found its own flag.” 
This is a watershed moment that demolishes much of the so-called common-sense thinking about workers and capitalism. 
For decades, it was common to think that the industrial working class didn’t exist any more, that white collar workers were, in the words of philosopher Slavoj Žižek, the “salaried bourgeoisie”, that those who had insecure work were incapable of taking any action and that those workers who had stable employment wouldn’t take action because they were a privileged aristocracy bought off by the ruling class. The workers of the Western world were seen as the beneficiaries of the imperialist machinations of their rulers. Within the Palestine movement, it has been common to condemn them as “settlers”, complicit in the oppression of the Palestinians. 
The general strike in Italy shows what rubbish this all is.
The striking dock workers of Genoa, Livorno, Ravenna, Venice and other cities confirmed that, while automation has reduced the number of workers in these ports, it has not reduced their industrial power. Vast numbers of workers joined the strike from hospitals, schools and universities, confirming that these are central nodes of the modern economy. 
This revealed the latent power that the working class possesses, not just in Italy but around the world. It also reinforces the core arguments that socialists have made for why the working class is the force that can fight for human liberation. 
The working class encompasses everyone forced to sell their ability to work, no matter what that work is or whether the employer is a private businessperson or a government department. 
It is the activity of the working class that moves the gears of capitalism. Workers are concentrated in semi-automated industrial factories, in schools, hospitals and government departments, in the ever-expanding “knowledge” industry of universities, while others are dispersed into millions of smaller businesses, all of which are connected by intricate transportation, energy and communications systems.
Because workers are at the centre of this vast behemoth of global capitalism, they have the potential to understand the way in which the system facilitates genocides and exploitation, and the power to shut it down. After all, workers are not just cogs in the machine. They are humans who are inspired by the determination of others and appalled by moral tragedies like the genocide in Gaza.
We can see this in a direct way when the Genoa dock workers strike to stop their ports from being used to send shipments to Israel, or when Spanish metalworkers demand an inquiry into their industry over fears that European arms production is being used to help Israel. 
The potential for workers’ action against genocide goes beyond those whose work is immediately tied to Israel’s war machine. The general strike also showed how workers have the power to severely disrupt the businesses and governments that depend on their labour.
When workers are passive, the innumerable differences among them make it seem unlikely that they can move into united action. But once they do, it seems so obvious. This is because the action is based on something that really unifies people—their common experience as workers exploited by the capitalist system. 
The Italian events also reveal the dialectical relationship between the power of workers and the activity of other social groups. The general strike would not have occurred without the two years of activity by young people and the Palestine solidarity campaign. There has been an accumulated impact of the involvement of hundreds of thousands of people in protests, despite the ebb and flow of the movement. This has produced the context in which left-wing workers felt more confident to take action, and in which the mainstream trade union leaders couldn’t hold back the tide. 
Italy also shows that to regenerate working-class self-activity, we need a sharp break with the established trade union leaders and the official left parties. 
Some socialists, scarred by the years of isolation, believe that the only way to rebuild working-class politics is by sucking up to union bureaucrats and reformist political parties. Often this is dressed up in talk about “united fronts” or “mass work”.
Yet the Italian general strike was not achieved because Palestine activists pleaded for trade union leaders to do the right thing. After a number of smaller left-wing union federations called for strike action on 22 September, pro-Palestine organisations and left-wing currents within the trade unions mercilessly and savagely criticised the mainstream trade union leaders who tried their hardest to avoid taking action. 
“The people protesting in the square, let’s be clear, literally can’t take it any more”, explained a statement from Unione Sindacale di Base, a left-wing union federation, “but since they have not found any support in the political and trade union world, they have remained silent for a long time, passively suffering the decay of political life, the decline of rights and the worsening of social conditions”.
It was not only the far-right government and the media that fundamentally misunderstood the shift in mass consciousness.
This is being repeated in Spain with the debates over the 15 October day of action. While smaller left-wing and regional union federations have endorsed the general strike call, the main Spanish trade union federations are trying to limit industrial action to only two hours. 
A key factor helping to facilitate action has been the militant activity of young people, particularly students. This has given a huge boost to all of those in the workers’ movement and the left pushing for more serious action against the resistance of the trade union leaders. 
This all has an echo of the past. When the workers’ movement and the radical left have gone forward, it has been in a form of a sharp break from the present and in revolt against established traditions and organisations. It can’t be otherwise. How else can we begin to break up the years of passivity and conservatism?
The events in Italy are exciting, but they also throw down a serious challenge to the left everywhere. 
The space to re-popularise the idea that workers are the agent of social change has grown larger. The actions in Italy didn’t come out of nowhere, and support for Palestine is not the only factor behind it. The cumulative impact of years of inequality, of militarism, of the elitism of the establishment, has shattered people’s confidence in capitalism. There is a strong polarisation across the world between progressive left-wing people who want to free Palestine, reject the far right and abolish the billionaires, and those who look to ultra-reactionary nationalist politics.
The possibilities are most obvious in Europe. Beyond the Palestine issue, there was a massive general strike in Greece in October against changes to the labour laws. France has been rocked by huge days of protests and blockades against its unstable neoliberal government. In Germany, there have been significant demonstrations against the far right.
The growth of left reformist parties is also an indication that a space has opened. La France Insoumise has shifted to the left in recent years and consolidated into the largest radical left party in Europe, with almost 400,000 members. The German Die Linke party has grown from 58,000 to 112,000 this year. Some 800,000 people have signed up for Your Party in Britain.
These are the strongest signs in years that a revival of radical left and working-class politics is possible. The world is rapidly changing. Now is the time to seize the moment.

The revival of the radical left and working-class politics

After decades of hegemony, the two-state solution is no longer considered a viable or desirable solution to the decades-long oppression of the Palestinians among pro-Palestine activists in Australia. In Melbourne, where I am involved, the phrase “two-state solution” has been essentially banned from the platforms of the regular Gaza solidarity demonstrations. 
This is an extremely positive development. For decades, the two-state solution has served as a means to browbeat the more principled and radical supporters of the Palestinian people. Prior to the 1980s, the majority of Palestinian political parties supported the full liberation of historic Palestine, and the two-state solution was used by Labor Zionism to denounce them as extremists and coopt them into a more moderate position. 
The two-state solution reached its zenith in the 1990s during negotiations for the Oslo Accords between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel. During this period the Palestinian leadership under Fatah abandoned all sorts of rights and principles in exchange for the chimera of a Palestinian statelet in the West Bank and Gaza. While a minority of Palestinian capitalists and politicians have become fabulously wealthy as a result of this process, the Palestinian people have continued to go backwards, losing further rights and territory.
So the clear rejection of the two-state solution by the majority of serious pro-Palestine activists is an important breakthrough. It provides a stronger basis from which to build a movement that can demand real justice. And importantly, it opens up space for discussion about what sort of scenario might actually succeed in achieving genuine liberation for the Palestinian people. 
For most people, the alternative to the perpetual apartheid and oppression entailed by the two-state solution is the creation of a democratic state for all inhabitants of the area. Far from “driving Jews into the sea”, the idea is for Arabs and Jews to live together peacefully, with equal rights in a liberal democratic set-up. In many ways this is a worthy goal, and when it was developed in the 1960s, it was a progressive position for the Palestinian liberation movement to adopt. 
But many of the same issues that make the two-state solution unworkable also apply to one state. Most importantly, the Israeli state will not accept equality between Jews and Palestinians. Its founding ideology is that of an ethno-state: a state that exists for a particular ethnic group, with others as second-class citizens. This means a single state based on equal rights will never be achieved through negotiation or brought into existence through UN mandates or diplomacy. It requires the overthrow of the Israeli state. 
The Western powers, to which Israel is an important strategic and economic ally, would of course never accept this. The only one-state outcome it’s possible to imagine is one in which Israel is in effect allowed to annex the entirety of the Palestinian territory and expel millions of refugees.
Supporters of Palestine often refer to the defeat of apartheid in South Africa as proof that a transformation from a system of apartheid to democracy is possible. But mainstream accounts of this important history tend to downplay the crucial role played by the economically powerful, politically sophisticated and industrially militant black working class, which existed in South Africa but does not in Palestine. By repeatedly bringing the economy to a halt through strike action, these workers made it impossible for South African mines and ports to function reliably, and for capital to profit. This hit the rich where it hurts, and created enormous pressure for change. 
Only when it became clear that the old order was doomed did Western governments impose sanctions to try to expedite the transition so that the vital mines and ports of South Africa could remain functional and be relied on. 
Palestinians have no comparable economic power, excluded as they are from large parts of the Israeli economy, particularly its most strategic sectors. So traditional class struggle at a domestic level cannot create the economic disruption needed to break apartheid and end the occupation of all Palestinian lands.
At a global level, Israel is a nuclear-armed imperial outpost in a central region of world politics and a long-term strategic ally of the US. Far from facing crippling sanctions for its many crimes, it is still being armed, funded and courted by the world’s elites. Indeed, its utility to US empire has been reinforced in the last two years, given the ease with which it has crushed Hezbollah and subdued Iran. 
This alliance is likely to continue as long as imperialist domination remains a central plank of US foreign policy. Even if the US is somehow dethroned, then China or any other rising power would have a strong interest in allying with such a well-armed and strategically important state. China is already the second largest importer of Israeli goods, and Israel imports more goods from China than any other country, $19 billion worth annually according to the United Nations Comtrade database.
So while the apartheid system in South Africa could be ended without fundamentally disrupting the structures of global and regional imperialism, the same is not true in Palestine. In any case, the end of formal apartheid has not fundamentally changed the experience of the vast majority of working class and poor Black South Africans. Their living conditions are actually worse, meaning this is hardly a model to be aspiring to.
The harsh reality is that while many former colonies have been able to achieve some measure of national independence within the capitalist system, there are a number of cases where it is just not possible. In the Middle East, the examples of the Palestinians and the Kurds stand out, where the maintenance of national oppression is absolutely essential to the functioning of capitalism as it has been established over the last century. So just as it is impossible to imagine a capitalist America without anti-Black racism, there will never be a capitalist Middle East without the whole suite of religious, national and caste hierarchies that have been deliberately entrenched in the region. 
It’s long been argued by revolutionaries in the Middle East and elsewhere that overthrowing the Arab regimes, which pose as champions of the Palestinians while simultaneously accommodating to Israel and repressing movements that challenge it, is a prerequisite for a liberated Palestine. But the experience of the Arab revolutions that erupted in 2011 shows that simply replacing one capitalist government with another in no way brings closer the goal of ending the injustices that face the workers and the oppressed of the region. It’s clear now that in a very direct sense the struggle for Palestinian liberation, and that of the masses in the region and beyond, will require a more radical goal. To be precise, only the successful overthrow of capitalism across the region, particularly in key states such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, can make possible the liberation of Palestine.
This doesn’t change the fact that the Palestinians will continue to have a central and leading role to play in organising popular resistance to Israel and capitalism, both inside occupied Palestine and in the neighbouring countries. But it does mean that the practice of seeking allies among the Arab regimes, which has been the long-term approach of the leading Palestinian factions, has to be opposed. Not only is it a betrayal of the Arab masses living under these regimes, but it is a dead end for the Palestinian struggle. 
Instead, efforts must be made to link up with the many economic, social and geopolitical grievances of workers and the poor across the region. This can most effectively be done by locating Palestinian oppression in a wider context of regional exploitation, oppression and imperialism, and Israel’s role in maintaining this unequal and oppressive status quo. This involves popularising a systemic critique of Arab capitalism and its role in propping up Western imperialism, and building a movement that can turn this critique into action. 
Those of us outside the Middle East also have an important role to play. Israel can survive and get away with its atrocities only due to endless Western support and funding. We have seen that a mass movement in Australia has been capable of shifting the terrain of discussion and politics, but not core aspects of government policy. It is similar elsewhere. To force Western governments even to begin to break ties with Israel would take immense struggle by workers, the kind of struggle that would make clear to the Albaneses of the world that the choice is between profits and social stability and continued support for genocide.
Standing in the way of this is the existing leadership of the workers’ movement, which has no interest in mobilising workers to make Australia’s support for Israel unviable. Such action would threaten not only the interests of Australian capitalism, which the union leaders do not oppose, but also the electoral fortunes of the Labor Party, which most union leaders are aligned with, and the relatively privileged position of the leaders themselves within the system, not to mention their future career prospects. 
To make the kinds of strikes that could lead to real sanctions against Israel and the arms industry happen today would require a profoundly more radical and organised working-class movement than what currently exists. This in turn presupposes the existence of a serious left in the workers’ movement, both able to lead action and carrying weight ideologically. Socialist-led unions, backed by a militant rank and file, could organise black bans of weapons companies and Israeli shipping lines, and engage in targeted actions to enforce them. The places where this has happened in recent years, for instance the dock workers in Greece, have long traditions of communist influence in the union. 
So both in the Middle East and in the imperialist West, fighting for revolutionary socialist politics grounded in mass working-class organisations is a vital step on the road to Palestinian liberation. This means rejecting both the two-state farce that serves to validate the status quo, and also the sort of liberal utopianism that assumes a single Palestinian state in the framework of capitalism is possible and able to bring liberation. 
Instead, a revolutionary socialist approach means a relentless and uncompromising struggle against all of the institutions that have become so discredited by their response to Israel’s genocide, including every powerful nation state on earth. Only a struggle for a socialist Palestine that unites the revolutionary workers and peasants of the Middle East with an insurgent, anti-imperialist working class movement in the West can hope to achieve liberation.
Omar is a long-time pro-Palestine activist based in Melbourne

Omar Hassan

Two-state solution is rubbish, what will it take to liberate Palestine?

OnlyFans is the same as any other porn platform or brothel: it enables a small minority of mostly men to get rich from the exploitation of women. What’s remarkable, though, is not that another business is making money from sexism, but that so few progressives are interested in criticising it. 
The leftist magazine Jacobin, for example, ran an article in 2021 about the site, much of which reads like an OnlyFans infomercial. It argues against measures to ensure that people appearing in adult content videos are doing so consensually and makes no mention of OnlyFans’ role in manufacturing misogyny and sexism. An <a href="https://www.queermajority.com/essays-all/critique-of-the-swerf-on-feminism-and-sex-work">article</a>
written for Queer Majority magazine likewise defends sex work as providing “many with the means of caring for themselves and facilitating the freedom to make their own decisions”. But there is nothing to defend, and certainly nothing progressive about OnlyFans nor the industry it is part of. 
For the uninitiated, OnlyFans is a subscription-based DIY porn site which exploded into the mainstream during the COVID-19 pandemic. As people spent more time at home and on their phones on Instagram and TikTok, and men were no longer able to access brothels and strip clubs, OnlyFans became a convenient substitute. In 2020, it was estimated there were over a million content creators on the platform; now that number has swelled to <a href="https://www.economist.com/business/2025/06/24/how-onlyfans-transformed-porn">around 4 million</a>. The company, which is currently owned by billionaire Leonid Radvinsky and is reportedly for sale, is estimated to be worth anything between $8 billion and $28 billion. 
The rise of OnlyFans is part of the wider normalisation of pornography and its increasing accessibility. Violent and degrading treatment of women in much of this material is widespread: one <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20980228/">landmark study</a> of 300 popular porn videos found that nearly 90 percent of them featured physical aggression towards women. This has real world implications. As Sophie Gilbert, author of Girl on Girl, argues, “inevitably, these kinds of behaviours [filter] out, leading to demonstrable changes in how people [are] having sex in their own lives. A 2019 study found that 38 percent of British women under 40 reported having experienced unwanted slapping, choking, gagging or spitting during sex”. 
OnlyFans content is contributing to the normalisation and spread of harmful sexual practices, partly because in order to attract more “subs”, creators are pushed to create more shocking and sensational content. This content helps creators increase their market share and make more money, but also usually involves more misogynistic content. This is the logic of market competition, and, as in every other area, the market is willing to do anything for money. This includes the sexualisation of children or the promotion of paedophilic fantasies—many OnlyFans content creators act in “childlike” ways to attract viewers or dress in school uniforms or other children’s clothing. These practices are lucrative business opportunities for OnlyFans creators and bosses, which is much more important than the fact that the real-world sexualisation of children destroys untold numbers of lives. 
It seems like a no-brainer that progressives who oppose sexism should recognise the viciously sexist nature of sites like OnlyFans and the porn industry in general. So why is it that when you Google “OnlyFans sexism”, the majority of articles that are critical are from conservatives on the Christian right or radical feminists, who are mostly not associated with the radical left.
There are myriad reasons why the left has been reluctant to take up the issue of porn and the sex industry. One is the hangover of the debates about pornography that took place in the 1970s and ’80s. Then, the debate was between the libertarians, who were for no intervention, censorship or restrictions, and those who, like the radical feminists, teamed up with conservatives to campaign for the state to intervene to restrict the import and availability of pornography. In response to this unholy alliance, much of the left sided with the former, seeing “censorship” and “prudishness” as the greater evil.
This camp championed “choice” for women, and argued that people who were hostile to things such as BDSM, fetish, sex work and the porn industry as sexist were reactionaries who shamed women and men who were just acting out their sexual desires in consensual ways.
These positions were more defensible at the time than they are now. Opposition to the state exercising more control over people’s lives, for example, was and continues to be a legitimate concern for the left. Another valid concern was that state repression and censorship would be used by reactionaries to target the LGBTI community, and that gay porn and erotica would end up banned rather than sexist and misogynistic content. Yet another was the assumption that the main issue facing women was their being siloed off into a domestic, motherly stereotype and having their sexuality denied in the process, which more repression would reinforce. 
The explosion of the sex industry since these debates several decades ago has shown these concerns to be largely erroneous, and that the intensification of sexism, not some sort of sexual liberation, has been the most important upshot and social negative of the normalisation of porn. The legacy of progressives having a one-sided approach to these questions historically is now reflected in a widespread acceptance of the sex industry and downplaying of the sexism inherent in it. 
Progressive-sounding justifications for the sex industry are now commonplace among much of the left. One of these is that porn, the sex industry and kink are OK if they take place between consenting adults. But the oppressed consenting to degrading and dehumanising practices doesn’t make them OK or any less oppressive; it just indicates an acceptance of aspects of oppression.
A focus on consent and the subjective attitudes of participants also doesn’t address the wider social ramifications of the sex industry and its offshoots, or the question of how and why people come to find dynamics of power and violence sexually gratifying. These are important considerations for anyone interested in challenging sexism and uniting the working class to smash oppression and liberate the oppressed.
Another justification is that it is prudish or “<a href="https://partisanmagazine.org/2025/07/03/womans-worst-friend/">busybody</a>”ish to interrogate the ways that women’s oppression is expressed and reinforced in the porn and sex industry. It has become taboo to address the issue, and doing so brings with it the risk of being labelled anti-sex. But there is nothing necessarily left wing, liberating or empowering about sex, and sex has and is used as a means of abuse in epidemic proportions. How sexuality is expressed is also closely linked to how women and men relate to each other, and navigate the systematic social inequality that invariably colours their relationships. So sex has to be understood in its social context, not just blindly championed. 
But it’s even worse than that. Many progressives now see sex work as not just a better alternative to prudery, but proactively empowering. They argue that it is the stigma that makes it a problem, not the inherent sexism, and that removing the stigma is desirable so that women can be better exploited without social disapproval. We shouldn’t critique the industry, in other words; we should promote and normalise it. 
Obviously, women in the industry should not be demonised, attacked or criminalised. But at the same time, an industry that relies on the eroticisation of non-consensual sex and dehumanised attitudes towards women should legitimately be stigmatised. Its existence has terrible consequences for women and men, and the dynamics between them. Porn and sex work creates a society that is increasingly sexist and tolerant of sexist attitudes and behaviour, which is a profoundly reactionary development. 
The sex industry bosses and promoters have done a lot of work to sanitise the image of porn and sex work. In her book Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy and the Split Self, Kajsa Ekis Ekman explores the way this happened over the last few decades. One of the things she points to is the way that the act of sex and the men who are buying sex are never mentioned in accounts of the sex industry written to portray it in a positive light. Discussing an article written by a defender of the sex industry, she writes, “If we didn’t know better, we might think prostitution was a strictly female affair. There is hardly a single word about men”. By not discussing the men, we don’t have to imagine the disgusting men who objectify women by masturbating to images of them, or purchase them for sex. 
One agency that manages OnlyFans accounts argued against stigmatising the agencies! “Part of the problem is not accepting sex work as work. This mainly affects the cis women and the LGBTQ+ community, who are often the target of nasty comments and vitriol from those who don’t understand the freedom gained from their sexual liberation.” This is a particularly galling example of a business using progressive language to defend their business model. Agencies, as well as the men who purchase sex, should experience social stigma. Not because sex is something that people should be ashamed of, but because these agencies and men are engaging in sexist, abusive and exploitative behaviours.
The reality of sex work and platforms such as OnlyFans is that they have nothing to do with empowerment and everything to do with a pro-capitalist ideology, summed up by “hustle culture”. According to those on the “grindset”, if you’re not making money via your social media, your body, your house, your car or your ability to do jobs in your spare time, you are failing. For women, the rationale to sell sex online is that if they are going to have sex anyway, they may as well profit from it. Everything is a potential transaction. As it was put in the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/12/lily-phillips-outrage-porn-100-men/681032/">Atlantic</a>, “it’s considered better to monetize your objectification than endure it without compensation”. The sort of mentality this promotes is directly at odds with the ethos of the workers’ movement, which is that our work is collective and interdependent, as are our incomes and standard of life. This is the material reality that unites workers and many of the oppressed. Seeing ourselves as one-person small businesses runs directly counter to that. 
Some women may earn large amounts of money engaging in OnlyFans, but this is not empowerment. Empowerment would mean liberation. That does not mean men having the right to sex or to women’s bodies. We need to fight for a society where women are not systematically oppressed, where they’re not constantly objectified and treated as sex objects. It’s clear that OnlyFans is nothing but a reactionary capitalist industry—it should be a no-brainer for the left to grasp that and to be confident to argue to smash it.

Anneke Demanuele

Why does OnlyFans have so few critics on the left?

The Australian Bureau of Statistics does not collect data on “class”. It collects data on income levels, household wealth and income by industry, all of which shines a useful light on the realities of working-class life. But class cannot be properly captured by statistics. That is because class is a relationship—between people and the productive process they depend on to survive. A shared relationship to production defines a social class. 
In capitalist society, a very small minority own and control the means of production. That is, whatever physical products—equipment, tools and technology—are required for any industry to operate. This minority is the ruling class, and includes those who own or control major corporations, senior bureaucrats, banking executives and media moguls, among others. The ruling class gets to choose what is made, the cost of products or services, who is employed and under what conditions. These economic decisions form the building blocks of society, and shape the conditions under which we all live. 
The working class, who are the vast majority of the global population, don’t own or control the productive apparatus. They don’t make the important decisions about what is produced or under what conditions. Instead, workers sell their ability to work—their labour power—to a boss, in exchange for a wage or salary. 
Workers can be white or blue collar, work primarily with their hands or their minds. They can be early childhood educators, IT assistants, train drivers, nurses, call centre operators or miners. What defines the working class is that they are denied control and decision-making power over the labour process, and they are exploited by their boss. 
Workers are the lifeblood of the economy. They produce every commodity you can think of and carry out myriad services—like maintaining roads and infrastructure, educating the population and caring for the sick—without which the economy could not operate. 
But workers perform all this indispensable labour not as free individuals but under rules and conditions imposed by bosses. You can’t show up to work whenever you please even under the most “flexible” arrangements. Construction workers employed to build a casino can’t decide to build a hospital instead. Workers are reduced to objects in the labour process, mere components of production with little or no agency or democratic right to make decisions about the work they do. 
Importantly for the bosses, workers are not only denied control over how they work, but also over the products of their labour. The value of what most workers produce in a day is far in excess of what they take home in the form of a wage or salary. The bosses keep the rest, a significant part of which ends up as profit. The expression “Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime” encapsulates this relationship, and the theft that is at the heart of it. 
Workers and bosses, then, are in an antagonistic relationship with each other. What’s good for one is bad for the other. The first page of any business textbook will tell you that minimising operating costs will bring in more revenue. Paying workers low wages, denying “benefits” like sick leave and skimping on workplace conditions including safety regulations can mean more in the bank for a company. 
For workers, high pay, job security, greater access to leave and safer working conditions mean a better life. And because workers are human beings, not actually cogs in a machine, they can organise to fight for these things. So the exploitative and antagonistic relationship between bosses and workers gives rise to a constant struggle, taking different forms at different times, but which shapes the capitalist economy. 
Not everyone is a capitalist or a worker. The middle classes form a substantial minority of society, comprising small business owners, general practitioners, senior academics, many freelance artists and writers, sole-trader solicitors and barristers, or mid-level managers and supervisors, for example. The middle classes may own and control sections of production—like a small shop—without being titans of industry. They may have significant control over their labour—the head of human resources doesn’t need to log their bathroom breaks—or might be responsible for exploiting a few workers themselves, despite also having a boss. The middle classes don’t have the economic influence of either workers or bosses, and tend to be pulled in the direction of one or the other politically. 
Capitalism pivots around the exploitation of workers by bosses, and the interests of a group— what is good or bad for them—and their ideas and attitudes, are shaped by their class position. 
The ruling class are driven by endless competition for profit. They benefit from the monetisation of everything, and collective rights for workers and the oppressed being trampled if they stand in the way of profit-making. Members of the ruling class are used to being in control, and treating other people as a means to an end, or a competitor for market share and profit. They can unite around limited demands, but ultimately they are pitted against each other, loyal only to their bottom lines. 
Working-class life, on the other hand, is characterised much of the time by alienation and powerlessness. Workers are taught that there are serious consequences for defying authority. Breaking the rules at work could cost you a job and an income, even if the rules are unsafe like working in hot weather, or humiliating like being expected to carry out errands for superiors. Workers are made to feel like a cog in a machine they have no control over, and face chronic insecurity in the competition for jobs, housing, and the fight to stay afloat as prices rise. 
But at the same time, working-class life is fundamentally collective. Workers have to cooperate with each other for production to function effectively and for the economy to keep ticking over. The injustices of exploitation that can make workers feel the most alone are shared by millions of others. Sharing grievances together, and being exploited by a boss together, time and again push workers to fight back as a class. 
Only through standing together as a group can workers exercise power, by collectively stopping production and the flow of profits to the bosses. Working-class resistance can push back against individualism and the powerlessness engendered by capitalism. It can bring to the fore a sense of solidarity and the collective good, ideas we are told by our superiors are contrary to human nature because they are contrary to the ethos of capitalism. By forcing billions together in exploited labour, capitalism plants the seeds of working-class rebellion that show the hope for a better world.

Priya T.

What is social class?

Anti-capitalists are often accused of a double standard: you hate the system, but want to enjoy its benefits. The latest to employ this supposed gotcha is none other than Meg O’Neill, CEO of Woodside Petroleum. “It’s been a fascinating journey to watch the discussion, particularly amongst young people who have this very ideological, almost zealous view of, you know, ‘fossil fuel bad, renewables good’, that are happily plugging in their devices, ordering things from Shein and Temu”, she said, before lamenting “that human impact and the consumer’s role in driving energy demand and emissions absolutely is a missing space in the conversation”.
That a fossil-fuel CEO on a $7.5 million salary can criticise the avarice of young people with mobile phones and who buy things online shows that “lifestylism”—a set of politics that starts from analysing individuals’ consumption choices—is all about letting the capitalist class off the hook. 
While O’Neill complains about young people charging their phones, Woodside is celebrating a 40-year extension of the North West Shelf gas project, which will release 4.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. That’s more than 87 million tonnes a year, twice the annual emissions of Portugal. The consumption choices of individuals don’t even register when compared to the consequences of decisions made by big corporations.
For a generation that grew up during the millennium drought of the early 2000s, water conservation was a way of life. Super-soakers were out, three-minute shower timers were in. Memories of these household standards were still fresh in young people’s minds when our government granted Adani an unlimited water licence for its Carmichael coal mine in 2017. The mine uses at least 12.5 billion litres of water annually. 
While capitalists pocket massive profits from these destructive decisions, they want to force a sense of collective responsibility onto the rest of us. It’s why oil giant BP hired an advertising firm to popularise the term “carbon footprint” in the mid-2000s: in order to invoke a sense of individual responsibility for climate change. Corporations can now cash in on the spurious guilt they help generate—by giving you the opportunity to pay them to “carbon offset” your flight. 
Socialists reject the idea that individual consumers are to blame for environmental destruction. We argue that responsibility for the direction of society should be placed on those who control and run it. Capitalists, not consumers, are the ones who decide what is produced, how it is made and how it is distributed—with profit, not the wellbeing of the planet, as their overriding concern. It is their decisions that have the biggest impact on the world around us, and which determine the conditions under which the rest of us live and get what we need, and the choices available to us.
Just think of how the world is clogged with trash because companies like Coca-Cola realised decades ago they could increase profits by replacing refillable bottles with single-use plastics. Or how millions of iPhones end up in landfill every year, leaking toxic chemicals into the soil, because they are designed to be difficult to repair and be made obsolete with the next release.
While many people still attempt to live as ethically as possible within the confines of the system, the operations of capitalism restrict the majority from having the agency and resources to make real decisions about their lives. 
The layout of our cities and the demands of working life mean it’s impossible for most people to ditch their car. The average person spends $20 per day getting to work, and average commute times in Sydney and Melbourne are more than one hour. Thirty years ago, mobile phones were used only by high-powered business executives, but now a smartphone is a practical requirement for most work and study. Most people are busy focusing on how to keep up with mortgage payments and making sure their kids have regular meals. Only a minority of affluent and time-rich people have the resources to reverse-engineer the supply chains behind their Monday night spaghetti bolognaise. 
All the while, ordinary people are up against huge marketing machines dedicated to generating desire for products that we would be better off without. Large advertising firms hire professional psychologists who are experts in manipulative techniques to overcome what they refer to as “sales resistance”. And then they have the gall to blame the people impacted by these relentless marketing campaigns for the damage the business’s production and transport practices do to the planet. No similar resources are dedicated to raising awareness about the harmful impacts of capitalist production and distribution techniques, which might push behaviour in a different direction and generate resentment towards predatory companies. 
Worse still, fossil fuel companies have been burying research about the implications of climate change since the late 1970s. In the decades since the secret got out, they’ve dedicated vast resources to defending the unsustainable status quo, from fighting against emissions regulations to lobbying governments for harsher criminalisation of climate protesters. But they still criticise consumers for not acting on the information that they try to hide or discredit.
The world needs to be transformed. But a focus on “voting with your dollar” and influencing the direction of capitalism by buying ethical products starts from where we are most powerless and frequently ends up appearing more like a marketing campaign for a different brand of harmful products than a strategy to change anything. Too often, the “ethical consumption” industry only helps give the status quo a progressive and socially aware image while taking attention away from the sort of actions that could bring real change. Tesla is a case in point. 
For years, owning a Tesla was the ultimate symbol of ethical capitalism, supposed to frame its buyer as a pioneer of a green capitalist future. Now owning a Tesla signifies something different. There’s a cottage industry of articles about rich people experiencing “buyer’s remorse” after shelling out $80,000 for a vehicle now labelled the “swasticar”. 
The problem isn’t just that Tesla buyers who thought they were funding the green revolution were really funding MAGA reaction. It’s also that Tesla’s business model relies on the same destructive and exploitative practices as all capitalist production. 
Tesla’s reported carbon emissions are 50 million tonnes a year and growing. That’s roughly equivalent to the combined emissions of Ghana and Sudan, home to 85 million people. 
Tesla cars require rare earth minerals: 520 grams are used in every Tesla Model Y motor. Seventy percent of rare earth minerals are mined at Bayan Obu in Inner Mongolia. Areas surrounding the mine and associated processing facilities are poisoned by lakes of toxic industrial by-product, leaking chemicals and radioactive elements into the soil. These places are now known as “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-21545868">cancer villages</a>”. Residents experience high rates of respiratory <a href="https://miningtechnologyinsights.com/2025/04/26/chinas-bayan-obo-rare-earths-giant-with-a-pollution-price/">diseases</a>, cancer and other health issues, as well as impoverishment because pollution makes farming unsafe in the surrounding areas.
There is a trail of brutal exploitation at every stage of the supply chain, from the use of child labour to mine cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to brutal conditions in the factories where cars are assembled. Tesla workers on average receive <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/uaw-strike-tesla-pay-gap-gm-ford-stellantis-labor-hourly-wages-2023-9">$20 an hour less</a> in wages than Ford and GM workers. Workers complain of wage theft, constant safety hazards and injuries, and aggressive company union-busting. 
This is why ethical consumption is so difficult. Modern marketing constricts “ethical” options, which are so often revealed to be complete bullshit. So even if we’re all trying to make the right choices, the likelihood is we’re being scammed. Is it any wonder people give up and just buy stuff on Temu?
As long as we live under capitalism, we can’t purchase our way out of injustice. The majority of us are forced through economic compulsion to participate in the system, by buying products necessary to reproduce life and engage with society, and by selling our labour to bosses. But it’s capitalists who dictate the terms and reap all of the benefits of exploitation, while the social costs are imposed on workers. 
This is why the Woodside CEO’s comments are so insulting. In her diatribe against anti-fossil fuel “zealots”’, O’Neill complained that “most people hit a switch and expect the lights to come on”, suggesting that, unlike her, ordinary people are unable to comprehend the complexities of energy production.
It’s perfectly reasonable for people to expect the lights to come on when they hit a switch, and the technology to do this sustainably has existed for decades. That this still comes at the expense of planetary survival really exposes the irrationality of capitalism, not the hypocrisy of ordinary people who want to be able to see things when it gets dark.
Under capitalism, it’s workers who have to face the consequences of irrational and destructive decisions made outside of our control. It’s the blue-collar suburbs of Melbourne’s west, blanketed in diesel emissions from trucking and smoke from factory fires, that face disproportionately high rates of respiratory illness, heart disease and asthma, not Toorak or South Yarra. 
Of course, the Woodside CEO isn’t truly concerned about the environmental and social impacts of fossil fuels. Her comments are entirely cynical, but there’s a real strain of “progressive” politics that says the world’s problems can be ameliorated by individual action. Lifestyle politics accepts that capitalism is the best that humanity is collectively capable of, and the best we can do is nudge the market in the right direction while leaving society in the hands of the bosses. 
Socialists, on the other hand, recognise that workers don’t just hit a switch; they are the ones who make the lights come on. It’s the collective labour of workers that powers everything, assembles the iPhones and ships the parcels. Socialists don’t want to reject this productive capacity. We want to democratically direct this vast knowledge and social wealth for the good of humanity, not just for the profit of a tiny minority.
But achieving this change is made harder by lifestylist politics. To be able to use their collective power to transform social conditions, workers need to see themselves as a class with common interests against their bosses, not as consumers who identify with particular brands—whether they’re the ones like Temu that promise unlimited cheap crap, or the brands like Tesla that market the lie that they’re saving the world. When these companies are viewed as what they are—giant, exploitative workplaces—the need for change and the source of the problem become much clearer.
Socialists have genuine solutions to the problems raised by lifestylist critiques of capitalism. A socialist society would organise a rapid transition to renewable energy sources. It would redirect research and development away from industries like marketing and weapons that thrive on human misery, toward improving transport, health and infrastructure. It would put an end to the production of endless disposable plastic products that poison the atmosphere and clog the oceans.
That's what being a socialist is about. Pro-capitalist lifestylism is a pathetic attempt by the real criminals to make us feel like hypocrites for even suggesting this. Thankfully, much like Tesla’s latest Model Y, almost no-one’s buying it.

Luca Tavan

Is it hypocritical for socialists to use iPhones and buy stuff on Temu?

Just when you thought society couldn’t get any more distressing, the horror show that is capitalism proves you wrong. Only days after Gaza was declared to be officially in “famine” (aka deliberate starvation) by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Famine Review Committee, news comes through that Israel has bombed the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, killing at least 20 people, including five journalists. Israel initially hit the hospital with two missiles, prompting emergency workers and journalists to rush to the scene, after which Israel struck twice more. 
Days after that, we hear that Tony Blair, the man who launched the UK into the 2003 Iraq War, met with US President Donald Trump in Washington to plan Gaza’s future. Now, 60,000 reservists are being called up to invade and occupy Gaza City, with the Netanyahu government warning that mass expulsions are coming. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has put together a plan to force 600,000 people into southern Gaza, an area that even former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has admitted is a concentration camp. In true 21st century Orwellian style, Katz calls it a “humanitarian city”. 
Here in Australia, the forces of darkness have been pushed back or held at bay to some extent. Two rounds of massive pro-Palestine marches, involving hundreds of thousands of people in cities and towns all over the country, have put the Albanese government under pressure on Gaza. And they have shown that the great majority of people see the concerted campaign by all the respectable institutions of society to smear supporters of Palestine as antisemites for what it is: a transparent attempt to intimidate people into remaining silent about the crimes of Western imperialism’s key ally in the Middle East. 
The far right has also not been able to make the sort of gains in Australia that it has in many other parts of the world. It remains relatively fringe, but this can’t be taken for granted. The substantial far-right rallies on 31 August, which mobilised people on an anti-immigration basis and were more or less openly backed by organised neo-Nazis, demonstrate there is a constituency open to those politics. Our side needs to continue to counter-protest these events to prevent them becoming a normal part of the political landscape. They must be pilloried and stigmatised and denounced for what they are.
This is particularly the case because, internationally, the far right is having a moment. It has cemented its place in mainstream politics in Europe, the UK and much of Latin America. France’s government is on the brink of collapse, with the far-right National Rally a contender to replace it, and current polling indicates the far right could well form government at the next UK election. 
All this will only encourage the far right here. Stemming its growth will require confrontations in the streets through mass mobilisations. It will also require creating a real political alternative that explains the source of housing scarcity, poverty and a rising cost of living by pointing the finger at the bosses, rather than migrants. 
We need to combat the racism of the far right and the centre alike, and we need to defeat the capitalist system that gives rise to both. The atrocities and inequality that we’re witnessing now are capitalism laid bare. A competitive, profit-based system cannot guarantee a decent society that prioritises human need and protecting the planet on which we all depend. It prioritises building up ever more deadly military forces, justifying their use against innocent people in the pursuit of power and economic dominance and trashing the environment and human rights when they stand in the way of profit. 
But the future isn’t a straight, fixed road. Every act of solidarity, big or small, shows that another world is possible. There are many millions of people who want something other than a future of war, inequality and environmental destruction. The problem is that wanting it isn’t enough. We need to form ourselves into a social force that, when big enough and well-organised enough and clear enough about our end goal, can take on and defeat the enormous power of the capitalist class. 
The end goal can’t be a version of capitalism without these excesses because history indicates such a thing is a utopian dream. It has to be something fundamentally different: a socialist society based on the collective power workers have to take control and reorganise the enormous productive resources of society according to what people need, rather than what enriches the tech bosses, energy companies and other degenerate, amoral capitalists. Such a society won’t come about on its own. We need to fight for it now.

Jasmine Duff

Capitalism is a horror show: we need socialism

Countless mass demonstrations in cities around the world over the last two years have shown the residents of Gaza that, while governments everywhere have abandoned them, “the people” on every continent nevertheless are with them in spirit. Reports from on the ground in Palestine have confirmed that this has been important for morale, if nothing else. 
The several hundred thousand people who marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge this month changed the political narrative in Australia, opening the space for more activism and less state repression and dealing a political blow to both the state government and the police. It showed that mass mobilisation is more powerful than the most radical-sounding phrases shouted by only a few people. 
Ultimately, however, nothing we have done thus far has challenged Israel’s resolve. This is not a denigration of the effort but an acknowledgement of reality: the opposition is simply not powerful enough. 
The previously widely touted Axis of Resistance—Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran—when they even bothered with a show of military force in support of the Palestinians, have proven to be, at best, minor irritants to Israel. Activists in the West still placing their hopes in these groups are deluded. 
If Israel were simply an outlier state—some middling, independent settler colonial project—stopping its grotesque violence might be easier. But Israel is not that. It is an integral part of the US-led global imperialist order. Membership in that order defines its character more than anything else and is the basis of its power and impunity. 
The global imperialist order has long since ceased to be defined by race or colonialism. It includes not only “white” Western states but also a range of regional powers and previously colonised nations. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt all play key roles in the Middle East as part of the US-led order (just as Japan, the Philippines and Thailand do in Asia). 
The ruling classes of various countries—those who control the states and most economic resources—have shared interests in being integrated into the US-led nexus of power. Some states might appear dependent or servile. But the global capitalist order is more akin to a series of exclusive golf clubs. Ruling classes sign up for the prestige, privileges, networks and deal making opportunities membership offers. In return, they agree to all the “gentlemanly” dress and decorum codes—and not to rock the boat of existing relationships. 
It doesn’t matter whether the rulers are Arab, Asian, African or Latino—what matters is that they run a capitalist state in the interests of one of the competing imperialist blocs. Indeed, the United States ruling elite for decades has been a practitioner of “affirmative action”, with a keen sense that its informal empire needs to be as multiracial as possible if it is to have any popular legitimacy in a postcolonial imperial order in which white people make up maybe 15 percent of the globe’s population. 
States like Israel and Australia need to be viewed in this light: components of the larger capitalist whole. Their governments cannot easily be disentangled from empire, which means that to defeat them, the entire edifice of global ruling class alliances must also be challenged. 
There is either victory for all the oppressed and exploited worldwide, or any victory will be short-lived as the ruling classes coordinate to nullify the gains of any one group of people. And genocide, mass slaughter, oppression and exploitation will continue, just as they did throughout the twentieth century. 
Because the abolition of capitalist imperialism is essential for securing fundamental and lasting social change, Marxists try to build revolutionary political organisations in every country. We need to build a counter-power to the elite imperialist clubs of the ruling classes—a global anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist network of revolutionary parties.
The last 150 years of left-wing political activism have shown that anything else either fails on its own terms, exhausts itself or is undermined, incorporated or smashed by the capitalist ruling classes. 
It’s true that building a revolutionary party today, as Socialist Alternative is attempting, has not stopped the carnage in Palestine (or anywhere else for that matter). But once the scale of the task is recognised, it becomes clear that simply taking a stand or bearing moral witness, though an important step in the right direction, will never be enough to defeat imperialism. 
Without the smashing of the global capitalist order, history will repeat itself again and again. If there were an easier or more realistic path, we’d take it. Unfortunately, there isn’t. We have to rebuild an international socialist movement—a network of mass revolutionary parties in opposition to the ruling classes in every country. 
We have no other choice. Join us—we have a world to win.

Editors

How can we stop the carnage?

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” —William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

Why do socialists put so much emphasis on reading, discussing and writing history? There are two main reasons. The first is that, in the absence of this work, the radical movements and traditions we draw our inspiration from would be buried under the ideas about the past promoted by the ruling class and its institutions. 
This was a theme of Walter Benjamin’s 1940 essay <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm">“On the Concept of History”</a>. In the sixth thesis of the essay, he wrote, “In every epoch, the attempt must be made to deliver tradition anew from the conformism which is on the point of overwhelming it”. The tradition he’s referring to is that of working-class radicalism and socialism, and the conformism that threatens it that of various forms of ruling-class ideology.
If the past, as William Faulkner put it, isn’t really past, but continues to exist as a component of contemporary reality, then it too is subject to the rule set down by Marx <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/">in The German Ideology</a>: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force”. 
You can’t directly observe and experience history, as if it were a view from a mountain. It’s something that’s constructed in the mind out of raw material of words, images and sounds—traces of the past that are captured and preserved amid the turbulent flow of time. It is, as such, easily manipulable by those in power. They fund and control our schools, universities, museums and other institutions that do both the capturing and preserving of history and the work of constructing historical narratives out of that material and presenting them to the public.
To the extent that some awareness of history is necessary for the smooth functioning of capitalist society, the ruling class wants to ensure it will be theirversion of it that dominates. This means history will primarily be the study of great men (and until very recently it has almost exclusively been men) and their works. 
Bertolt Brecht’s poem <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/brecht/works/1935/questions.htm">“Questions From a Worker Who Reads” </a>refers to (and cleverly critiques) this view of the past:
Who built Thebes of the seven gates? In the books you will read the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?


Popular history podcasts like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@restishistorypod">“The Rest is History”</a> present what can sound like a thorough account of past events, but their focus is almost always on the decisions and actions of a tiny layer of leading politicians, diplomats, intellectuals and artists, military generals and so on. Workers and the poor appear mostly as an undifferentiated mass, buffeted this way and that and blindly following along while history is made by those at the top.
This even applies when capitalist historians turn their attention to working-class revolutions. You may well have been taught about the Russian Revolution in school. As part of that, you were probably taught that the revolution was the product of the (nefarious) ideas and political visions of revolutionary leaders like Vladimir Lenin. According to this view, the mass of workers who made the revolution were only ever “useful idiots” for the Bolsheviks. And of course, it all ended in disaster, demonstrating (they hope you will agree) that all attempts at genuinely transformative change are doomed to fail.
Benjamin went on, in his essay, to say, “The only writer of history with the gift of setting alight the sparks of hope in the past is the one who is convinced of this: that not even the dead will be safe from the enemy, if he is victorious. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious”.
Anyone who has found themselves swept up in a historical narrative like that of Trotsky’s <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/">History of the Russian Revolution</a> will understand what Benjamin meant by “setting alight the sparks of hope in the past”. Trotsky makes us feel, as readers, as if we are somehow experiencing events as they happened, marching alongside the workers of Petrograd and sharing something of the intensity of their hopes and fears. And we learn that, far from being duped by Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders, the Russian workers strode confidently onto the stage of history and became, for a period, the true masters of their destiny.
It’s important to say, too, that when Benjamin writes of “the enemy” here he’s referring to all varieties of “conformist” ideology, not just its most overtly capitalist forms like fascism. He has in mind, too, both social-democratic, reformist socialism and Stalinism—which came to dominate the world communist movement after Stalin carried out a counter-revolution in Russia in the late 1920s and ’30s and had many of those who, like Trotsky, attempted to hold fast to Marxist principles murdered (including, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jul/08/humanities.internationaleducationnews">some have claimed</a>, Benjamin himself). 
The Stalinist economic model was that of <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1955/statecap/index.htm">state capitalism</a>, not socialism. With it came all the ideological trappings of the deeply divided class society that it was. From historians, it demanded the reinstatement of the “great man” view of history in its most extreme form yet. Trotsky’s History, in fact, was in large part inspired by a desire to preserve the true story of the revolution from the obscurity into which it was falling due to the distortions being peddled by Stalin and his supporters (Trotsky wrote it soon after being expelled from Russia in 1929).
It’s not for nothing that Victor Serge, another Russian revolutionary and veteran of the early, heroic years of the Soviet state, described the late 1930s as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/17/midnight-century-victor-serge-review">“midnight of the century”</a>. With Europe threatened by fascism on one side and Stalinism on the other, the danger was that the spirit and traditions of revolutionary socialism that reached their height in the years following 1917 would be snuffed out and lost forever. Trotsky, Serge and Benjamin count among the relatively small number of socialists who were awake to the danger. And despite Stalinism emerging strengthened from World War Two and continuing to dominate the world communist movement right up to the 1990s, theirs is a historical legacy on which we can, fortunately, continue to build today.
The work of socialist history is, then, a form of “raising the dead”. At its most effective, it does this in a double sense. First, it rescues and revives the events of revolutionary movements and the lives of their participants—events and lives that would otherwise be either completely forgotten or distorted and buried under the accumulating weight of ruling-class ideology. Second, it transmits the revolutionary spirit of those events to people in the present day, providing a spark of hope that can inspire us to take up the fight against capitalism in our own time.
The best socialist historians are (frequently, probably, contrary to appearances) rabble-rousers—stirring up trouble for the ruling class among both the dead and the living. This, however, is only step one. As socialists we know that merely “stirring up trouble” isn’t enough to win change. We also need to have a good understanding of the means and ends of socialist politics—how best, in short, to wage the fight for a socialist future. And the importance of identifying what to do (and not to do) in this regard is the second main reason that the study of history is essential.
The history of our movement is the only real guide to revolutionary organising and strategy that we have. There’s been no shortage of ideas on this front. But the real test of those ideas has come in practice, and the attempt to apply the ideas without consideration of the historic practice—and the way that practice can best be applied in contemporary contexts—is among the worst, and most frequently committed, errors socialists can fall into.
Imagine, for a moment, the theory and practice of socialism to be like a martial art. To learn it requires a knowledge of the established rules, theories and techniques of fighting. That alone, however, is no guarantee of success. The construction union slogan<a href="https://sa.cfmeu.org/product/hardened-by-battle-long-sleeve-shirt-white/"> “hardened by battle” </a>comes to mind. Being good at fighting (whether in martial arts or in socialist politics) requires a degree of accumulated knowledge and experience of actual fights. To be truly “battle hardened” means fighting and fighting and fighting until your movements (and your capacity to predict and pre-empt those of your opponent) become like second nature.
This is one reason why the truly great revolutionary fighters of the past have been the products of periods of heightened class struggle. By the time he was 26, Trotsky was a leader of the Saint Petersburg soviet in the Russian revolution of 1905. At age 19, Rosa Luxemburg was head of the revolutionary wing of the German Social Democratic Party, the most powerful working-class organisation in the world. Most socialists, most of the time, don’t get the chance to hone their skills in the kind of intense class battles that were raging across Russia and Western Europe in those years. What we can do, however, is study them. 
We can come to an understanding of the ideas and strategies socialists like Trotsky adopted in those circumstances, how they changed as the struggle progressed, what the ruling classes did in their effort to hold back the tide of revolution, and the reason, until 1917 at least, that those efforts were successful. We should try, as much as possible, to absorb the lessons of all the great battles of our movement throughout history. The 1917 Russian Revolution, Germany from 1918 to 1923, the Spanish revolution and civil war of the 1930s, Cuba in the 1950s, Chile in the early 1970s; the list could go on indefinitely.
Here in Australia, we should grapple with the history of radical movements and organisations like the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the Communist Party. We should come to understand why it was that, just at the point when—in the context of the anti-conscription fight during World War One—the potential for revolution was greatest, the IWW was crushed and never able to revive. And why, despite the immense potential for the growth of communism in Australia in the Great Depression and World War Two years, the CPA never established itself as anything more than a tepid left flank of the Labor Party and the trade union bureaucracy that ultimately played a key part in forging the class-collaborationist Prices and Incomes Accord of the 1980s. 
As the boxer Mike Tyson famously said, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face”, and history isn’t likely to stop laying punches on our movement any time soon. To really advance towards socialism through future class battles we need to do much more than just arm ourselves with a theory and a program. Leaving things at that is like stepping into the ring having merely memorised an instruction manual on how to fight. Fortunately, if we’re prepared to engage seriously with the work of reading, discussing and writing history, the socialist movement’s historic triumphs and defeats provide all the material we need to turn those sparks of hope in the past into a powerful fighting force for socialism today.

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