Revolutionary Socialist Party (Australia)
Encyclopedia
The Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) is a small socialist organisation in Australia
, formed in 2008 by a split from the former Democratic Socialist Perspective
(DSP). Members of the split were expelled from the DSP over debates about the organisation's participation in the Socialist Alliance
. While the RSP sees the project of the Alliance as liquidationist
, it still maintains the basic politics of the DSP. Van Thanh Rudd
, the nephew of former Labor Party (ALP) Prime Minister
Kevin Rudd
is a member and unsuccessfully ran against ALP Prime Minister Julia Gillard
in the Victorian seat of Lalor
in the 2010 federal election.
, Canberra
, Melbourne
, Perth
and Sydney
. Unfortunately because of slow growth six members left the party in September 2011 and called for broad left support instead behind Green Left Weekly -- a journal which supports the Socialist Alliance.
, exploitation
, war
, oppression
and environmental destruction and for a revolutionary
overthrow of capitalism
based on the ideas of Karl Marx
, Frederick Engels and other socialists. They support what they call "the Bolivarian
socialist revolution
now unfolding in Venezuela
." Like the former DSP who broke with Leon Trotsky
's theory of permanent revolution
in the 1980s, the RSP are advocates of the two stage theory
, as Doug Lorimer of the RSP outlines in In Defence of Lenin's Marxist Policy of a Two-Stage, Uninterrupted Revolution:
Other Australian socialist organisations have labelled this theory "Stalinist" and in contrast with classical Marxism
. The Socialist Party
, affiliated with the Committee for a Workers International claims the theory is "a policy of deception, consistent misquotation, [and] half quotations of Trotsky’s ideas and innuendo". Socialist Alternative
, who follows the core politics of (but not formally affiliated with) the International Socialist Tendency
claims of the same theory "[a] capitalist hell-hole by any other name is just as shit, surely!"
2010, RSP members, Van Thanh Rudd and Sam King, dressed in Ku Klux Klan
outfits holding signs "Racism - Made in Australia", outside the Rod Laver Arena
during the Australian Open
to protest what they said was the refusal of the Australian Government "to acknowledge that attacks on Indians were racist and that locking up asylum seekers was wrong." Rudd and King were arrested within 10 minutes and charged with inciting a riot. Rudd also told the Indian weekly newsmagazine Outlook
that the "dominant culture in Australia is a racist culture."
seat of Griffith
against Kevin Rudd, were not registered with the Australian Electoral Commission
as RSP candidates, this signifies the RSP's failure, unlike the Alliance, to generate the 500-member minimum required to register as an official political party. Both candidates polled very poorly. Rudd garnered a total of 516 votes, scoring 0.50% of the overall vote, with a +0.50% swing, placing him as the second least preferred candidate, ahead of regional
tourism developer, Marc Aussie-Stone, compared to Gillard as first preference, who garnered 66,060 votes, scoring 64.26% of the overall vote, with a +4.37% swing. Chitts garnered a total of 600 votes, scoring 0.75% of the overall vote, with a +0.75% swing, also placing him as the second least preferred candidate, ahead of far-right Citizens Electoral Council
candidate, Jan Pukallus, compared to Kevin Rudd as first preference, who garnered 35,286 votes, scoring 44.06% of the overall vote, with a -9.03% swing.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, formed in 2008 by a split from the former Democratic Socialist Perspective
Democratic Socialist Perspective
The Democratic Socialist Perspective was an Australian Marxist political group, which operated as the largest component of a broad-left socialist formation, the Socialist Alliance...
(DSP). Members of the split were expelled from the DSP over debates about the organisation's participation in the Socialist Alliance
Socialist Alliance (Australia)
The Socialist Alliance was founded in 2001 as an alliance of socialist organisations and individuals in Australia, initiated by the Democratic Socialist Perspective and the International Socialist Organisation along with 6 other founding socialist organisations, to create greater left unity in the...
. While the RSP sees the project of the Alliance as liquidationist
Liquidationism
Liquidationism is a term in Marxist theory which refers to the ideological liquidation of the revolutionary party program by party members. According to the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, liquidationism "consists ideologically in negation of the revolutionary class struggle of the socialist...
, it still maintains the basic politics of the DSP. Van Thanh Rudd
Van Thanh Rudd
Van Thanh Rudd is a Vietnamese Australian artist, activist and the nephew of Australian former-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. His artworks have created controversies due to their left-wing political content...
, the nephew of former Labor Party (ALP) Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Australia
The Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia is the highest minister of the Crown, leader of the Cabinet and Head of Her Majesty's Australian Government, holding office on commission from the Governor-General of Australia. The office of Prime Minister is, in practice, the most powerful...
Kevin Rudd
Kevin Rudd
Kevin Michael Rudd is an Australian politician who was the 26th Prime Minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010. He has been Minister for Foreign Affairs since 2010...
is a member and unsuccessfully ran against ALP Prime Minister Julia Gillard
Julia Gillard
Julia Eileen Gillard is the 27th and current Prime Minister of Australia, in office since June 2010.Gillard was born in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales and migrated with her family to Adelaide, Australia in 1966, attending Mitcham Demonstration School and Unley High School. In 1982 Gillard moved...
in the Victorian seat of Lalor
Division of Lalor
The Division of Lalor is an Australian Electoral Division in the state of Victoria. It is located in the outer western suburbs of Melbourne. It includes the suburbs of Werribee, Point Cook, Laverton, Rockbank and Melton....
in the 2010 federal election.
History
On 13 May 2008, The DSP National Executive expelled 39 members of the Leninist Party Faction (LPF) of whom went on to form the RSP. They claim to have established branches in BrisbaneBrisbane
Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...
, Canberra
Canberra
Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...
, Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Perth
Perth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
and Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
. Unfortunately because of slow growth six members left the party in September 2011 and called for broad left support instead behind Green Left Weekly -- a journal which supports the Socialist Alliance.
Politics
The RSP claim to stand against greedGreed
Greed is an excessive desire to possess wealth, goods, or abstract things of value with the intention to keep it for one's self. Greed is inappropriate expectation...
, exploitation
Exploitation
This article discusses the term exploitation in the meaning of using something in an unjust or cruel manner.- As unjust benefit :In political economy, economics, and sociology, exploitation involves a persistent social relationship in which certain persons are being mistreated or unfairly used for...
, war
War
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
, oppression
Oppression
Oppression is the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner. It can also be defined as an act or instance of oppressing, the state of being oppressed, and the feeling of being heavily burdened, mentally or physically, by troubles, adverse conditions, and...
and environmental destruction and for a revolutionary
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
overthrow of capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
based on the ideas of Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, Frederick Engels and other socialists. They support what they call "the Bolivarian
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
socialist revolution
Bolivarian Revolution
The “Bolivarian Revolution” refers to a leftist social movement and political process in Venezuela led by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, the founder of the Fifth Republic Movement...
now unfolding in Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
." Like the former DSP who broke with Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
's theory of permanent revolution
Permanent Revolution
Permanent revolution is a term within Marxist theory, established in usage by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels by at least 1850 but which has since become most closely associated with Leon Trotsky. The use of the term by different theorists is not identical...
in the 1980s, the RSP are advocates of the two stage theory
Two Stage Theory
The two stage theory is the Stalinist political theory which argues that underdeveloped countries, such as Tsarist Russia, must first pass through a stage of bourgeois democracy before moving to a socialist stage...
, as Doug Lorimer of the RSP outlines in In Defence of Lenin's Marxist Policy of a Two-Stage, Uninterrupted Revolution:
- "A state powerPolitical powerPolitical power is a type of power held by a group in a society which allows administration of some or all of public resources, including labour, and wealth. There are many ways to obtain possession of such power. At the nation-state level political legitimacy for political power is held by the...
which organises the working classProletariatThe proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
, in alliance with the peasantryPeasantA peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...
as a whole [...] to carry to completion a democratic revolution would also be a form of proletarian dictatorshipDictatorship of the proletariatIn Marxist socio-political thought, the dictatorship of the proletariat refers to a socialist state in which the proletariat, or the working class, have control of political power. The term, coined by Joseph Weydemeyer, was adopted by the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in the...
, of working-class state power. But it would not yet be a socialist dictatorship of the proletariat [...] It would be a special form of proletarian state power in a bourgeoisBourgeoisieIn sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
-democratic revolution, a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry."
Other Australian socialist organisations have labelled this theory "Stalinist" and in contrast with classical Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
. The Socialist Party
Socialist Party (Australia)
The Socialist Party is a small Trotskyist political party in Australia affiliated with the Committee for a Workers International. The SP has branches in Melbourne, Sydney, Newcastle and Perth. It publishes a monthly newspaper called The Socialist which contains a socialist perspective on news and...
, affiliated with the Committee for a Workers International claims the theory is "a policy of deception, consistent misquotation, [and] half quotations of Trotsky’s ideas and innuendo". Socialist Alternative
Socialist Alternative (Australia)
Socialist Alternative is a Trotskyist political organisation in Australia formed by an expulsion from the former International Socialist Organisation in 1995. It is one of the largest groups of the Australian far Left, claiming to have the largest active membership. With branches across...
, who follows the core politics of (but not formally affiliated with) the International Socialist Tendency
International Socialist Tendency
The International Socialist Tendency is an international grouping of unorthodox Trotskyist organisations based around the ideas of Tony Cliff, founder of the Socialist Workers Party in Britain...
claims of the same theory "[a] capitalist hell-hole by any other name is just as shit, surely!"
Campaigns
On Australia DayAustralia Day
Australia Day is the official national day of Australia...
2010, RSP members, Van Thanh Rudd and Sam King, dressed in Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
outfits holding signs "Racism - Made in Australia", outside the Rod Laver Arena
Rod Laver Arena
Rod Laver Arena is a tennis stadium that is part of the Melbourne Park complex located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and has been the main venue for the Australian Open in tennis since 1988, replacing the ageing Kooyong Stadium...
during the Australian Open
Australian Open
The Australian Open is the only Grand Slam tennis tournament held in the southern hemisphere. The tournament was held for the first time in 1905 and was last contested on grass in 1987. Since 1972 the Australian Open has been held in Melbourne, Victoria. In 1988, the tournament became a hard court...
to protest what they said was the refusal of the Australian Government "to acknowledge that attacks on Indians were racist and that locking up asylum seekers was wrong." Rudd and King were arrested within 10 minutes and charged with inciting a riot. Rudd also told the Indian weekly newsmagazine Outlook
Outlook (magazine)
Outlook is one of India's four top-selling English weekly newsmagazines. Like many other Indian magazines, it is reluctant to reveal its circulation, but the 2007 National Readership Survey suggested 1.5 million copies...
that the "dominant culture in Australia is a racist culture."
Elections
Although the split within the former DSP and the current RSP was due to the electoral project of the Alliance, the RSP still ran candidates in the 2010 federal election. However, as both candidates, Van Thanh Rudd contesting the Victorian seat of Lalor against Julia Gillard and Hamish Chitts contesting the QueenslandQueensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
seat of Griffith
Division of Griffith
The Division of Griffith is anAustralian Electoral Division in Queensland.The division was created in 1934, when the old seat of Oxley was abolished, and is named for Sir Samuel Griffith, 9th Premier of Queensland and principal author of the Australian Constitution...
against Kevin Rudd, were not registered with the Australian Electoral Commission
Australian Electoral Commission
The Australian Electoral Commission, or the AEC, is the federal government agency in charge of organising and supervising federal elections and referendums. State and local government elections are overseen by the Electoral Commission in each state and territory.The Australian Electoral Commission...
as RSP candidates, this signifies the RSP's failure, unlike the Alliance, to generate the 500-member minimum required to register as an official political party. Both candidates polled very poorly. Rudd garnered a total of 516 votes, scoring 0.50% of the overall vote, with a +0.50% swing, placing him as the second least preferred candidate, ahead of regional
Regional Australia
Regional Australia is a definition of the Australian Government designed to promote some areas of the country, especially for immigration. People who work in these areas can be granted extra points when applying for a resident visa...
tourism developer, Marc Aussie-Stone, compared to Gillard as first preference, who garnered 66,060 votes, scoring 64.26% of the overall vote, with a +4.37% swing. Chitts garnered a total of 600 votes, scoring 0.75% of the overall vote, with a +0.75% swing, also placing him as the second least preferred candidate, ahead of far-right Citizens Electoral Council
Citizens Electoral Council
The Citizens Electoral Council of Australia is a minor nationalist political party in Australia affiliated with the international LaRouche Movement, led by American political activist and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche. It reported having 549 members in 2007...
candidate, Jan Pukallus, compared to Kevin Rudd as first preference, who garnered 35,286 votes, scoring 44.06% of the overall vote, with a -9.03% swing.