Capitalism is fast destroying our planet, seen nowhere more clearly than the drive to build the Adani coal mine, against mass community opposition. This session will look at why a profit-driven market system inevitably leads us to environmental disaster, and how we can turn the situation around while looking after the most vulnerable.
The far right is on the rise across the world. Europe is one of the epicentres of their success. For the first time since the second world war far right or explicitly fascist parties have entered into government and are reshaping public policy and debate. How can we explain their successes? What relationship do these far right parties take to open fascists? How should the left reply?
The Fremantle docks have been the site of some of the most dramatic scenes in Australian labour history. From pitched battles between wharfies and scabs in the early part of the 20th century through to the infamous Maratime Union of Australia dispute in 1998 Fremantle has seen some of Australia's most militant workers fight tooth and nail for better wages and conditions, against racism and eventually to keep their union alive. Come along to hear long time socialist and wharfie Andrew Ian Jamieson reveal the secret radical history of the Freo docks.
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” – so wrote Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto. This session will look at why we need to understand the underlying class interests and conflicts of any society in order to understand why things are the way they are – and how they can be transformed.
Propagandists of capitalism always claim that humans are fundamentally selfish, greedy and individualist. Any careful study of human society will demonstrate that humans have, in fact, lived in many different and diverse communities. This session will explore recent archaeological studies that have revealed pre-class societies which were collective and demonstrate a radically different perspective on what human relationships could look like.
Revolution has returned to North Africa in 2019! The decades long dictatorships of Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria and Omar Al-Bashir in Sudan have fallen in a matter of weeks as mass protests have swept both countries. These revolutions are continuing to unfold as the remnants of these brutal regimes attempt desperately to restore order. But what is clear is the astounding impact these revolutions have had on broader society and those who have taken to the streets. Religious sectarianism has been swept aside, women have stepped to the forefront of the struggle and people have come together to organise and express their humanity. As the situation develops, join us to discuss the achievements of these inspiring uprisings, the lessons that can be learnt from them and the challenges they face going forward.
There is nothing natural about the rigid stereotypes of gender and sexuality that exist under our society. This session will explore how and why capitalism creates binary notions of gender and sexuality and what we can do about it.
Featuring Guest Speaker: Behrouz Boochani
Behrouz Boochani is a Kurdish refugee who has been imprisoned on Manus Island for over five years. He is a journalist, film-maker and author of the award winning book 'No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison'. Behrouz provides a rare window into the reality of Australia’s brutal refugee policy.
In this session Behrouz will be speaking on his experiences and analysis of the Australian government’s treatment of refugees based on his Manus Prison theory.
Capitalism has done more than just subjugated the natural world to the whims of the market: it has drastically distorted the relationship that humans have with the natural world. Rather than seeing human beings as a part of nature, the capitalist mode of production places the two in direct conflict with one another. This session will examine this “metabolic rift” and the often overlooked contributions of the Marxist tradition to understanding the role of capitalism in environmental destruction, and the possibility of restoring our relationship with the natural world through socialist revolution.
The working class has an inspiring history of resistance to the dictates of capital, but as Karl Marx once said (to paraphrase) they are also the gravediggers of capitalism. By this phrase, Marx was refering to the potential of workers to not just challenge inequality but to dismantle the system that created this inequality and to forge a whole new society based on freedom and justice for all. Come along to this session to hear about how and why working class democracy is both possible and preferable to the current state of affairs.
Control over the work process has always been one important arena of the class struggle. Historically, skilled workers have been more able to sustain strong workplace organisation than less skilled workers. So stripping workers of control over the work process – through automation, and by breaking the work into countless smaller, less skilled operations – has always been one driving factor behind the constant push to automate or “rationalise” work processes under capitalism. Jess Lenehan explores this struggle for control, and the manufacture of worker insecurity, over the past century – and what it means for the class struggle today.
The far right across the world is increasingly using mysoginy as a recruiting tool. Organisations like the Proud Boys are growing rapidly in Australia. This talk will offer a Marxist analysis of the intersection of sexism and fascism.
Hundreds of thousands of people are reclaiming the word ‘socialist’ for themselves to articulate their opposition to the status quo. But the word has meant many different things to many different people historically. This is not an academic debate about the definition of the word, but an urgent argument about the way forward for the socialist movement, and which vision of socialism has the most to offer for those fighting for a better world.
Donald Trump is on a rampage. His tarrif wars on China and now Mexico indicate an increasingly aggressive stance. But is there a logic to Trump's seeming madness. What is the state of US imperialism today?
Every year there is live coverage of the glitz and glamour of the Sydney Mardi Gras, but behind the sequined curtain is a story much more intersesting. In 1978 a gay pride march was brutally attacked by the homophobic NSW police. The resistance of those on the march was a reflection of the resilience of a community already used to both oppression and brave defiance. This talk will explore what lead up to the Mardi Gras and the radical political movement that evolved from it.
The most contested event in history, the Russian Revolution of 1917 is a source of dread for our rulers precisely because it demonstrates that another world, without exploitation and oppression, is possible. For that reason oceans of ink have been spilled to distort the real story. This session will explore the rise and fall of the revolution through the prism of Leon Trotsky’s incredible life as an organised socialist.
The Italian revolutionary and anti-fascist martyr Antonio Gramsci is known for theorisation of hegemony, arguing that the ruling class rules though a combination of coercion and consent. On socialist strategy for the West, he wrote that ‘In Russia the State was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West ... when the State trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed. The State was only an outer ditch, behind which there stood a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks.’ Gramsci is insightful, and relevant for revolutionary socialists today. Yet his writings – in particular those on the state, civil society and hegemony – have been misused to advocate a parliamentary road to socialism, or treated simply as a tool for academic analysis, not the revolutionary transformation of society. This talk, by contrast, will explore the relationship between the state and civil society present in Gramsci’s writings, and the concept of hegemony, from a revolutionary Marxist standpoint.
Western Australia is a state built on the genocide of Indigenous people. This is a dark history, of government sanctioned murder and brutality. This session will explore the history of the war colonial Australia waged on the original inhabitants of this land as well as the brave and determined resistance that Indigenous people mounted against it.
The ruling class is organised. They have their newspapers, their courts, their laws, their police, their education systems and their militaries. The working class has power in the workplace and on the streets. Working class history is filled with stories of brave and defiant resistance. Unfortunately bravery is not enough. Movements need politics. What kind of politics and what kind of organisation socialists require in the fight to end capitalism is the topic of this talk.
One of the important tasks of the socialist left is to learn the lessons from workers’ struggles of the past. This session will critique new interpretations of the events in France in the 1930s Contrary to the traditional revolutionary rejection of the class collaboration of the popular front strategy, some writers suggest that it should be emulated today. This is not just a difference over historical facts, but debates about the tasks which face socialists today.
The Australian media is one of the most centralised in the world. The Murdoch, Packer and Fairfax empires dominate the media landscape and can intervene and shape Australian political and social life. This kind of power can seem unstoppable. But is it? Are we all just brainwashed by millionaires? How can we resist the tide?
10:00AM | ||
|---|---|---|
 101: Climate change, climate justice: a socialist response to global warming |
 Why is the far right on the rise in Europe? |
 Radical WA: Radicalism on the Freo docks - with Socialist wharfie |
12:00PM | ||
 101: Marx’s Theory of Social Class |
 Can humans live collectively? |
 Revolt in Algeria & Sudan: the return of the Arab Spring |
2:30PM | ||
 Capitalism and the construction of gender and sexuality |
 Refugee speaks out: Understanding the Crisis on Manus |
 The Metabolic rift: Marxism and ecology |
4:00PM | ||
 101: Working class democracy: the alternative to capitalism |
 The capitalist struggle for control: automation and the manufacturing of insecurity |
 PANEL: Misogyny, women and the far right |
6:00PM | ||
 | ||
10:00AM | ||
|---|---|---|
 Sanders, Corbyn & AOC: Can Democratic Socialism work? |
 Trump vs the world: the state of US imperialism today |
 A history of gay liberation in Australia |
12:00PM | ||
 101: Trotsky and the Russian Revolution |
 Gramsci: the state, civil society & hegemony |
 Forging a racist state: The Frontier Wars in WA |
2:30PM | ||
 101: Fighting to end capitalism: why we need a socialist organisation |
 Popular Front in France |
 Manufacturing consent: the media and social control |
4:30PM | ||
 | ||
