Indigenous Australians are the most policed people on the planet. This is doubly so for young people-from curfews in Northbridge to indefinite detention under state legislation backed by Australia's highest court. Children as young as ten are locked up in Banksia Hill, Western Australia's youth detention centre.
This session will explore the oppression faced by Indigenous young people today, and what we can do to fight against it.
The burning of fossil fuels is driving us towards climate apocalypse. Increasing temperatures are creating more erratic extreme weather events, and rising sea levels threaten to displace hundreds of millions over the coming decades. Instead of doing the rational thing and ending their use, the rich executives in charge are accelerating in the pursuit of profit, dooming the rest of us to deal with the consequences. This session will explain why capitalism is killing the planet, and why we need socialism to save it.
Almost all of the most explosive revolutions in the 21st century have taken place in the context of dictatorship or military rule in the Third World - from the 2011 Arab Spring, to the revolts in Algeria and Sudan and the revolution in Myanmar. This session will explore the dynamics of these revolts and explore debates about the relevance of Marxism to understand these revolution and importance of the working class.
Capitalism is a brutal, exploitative and destructive system, and for as long as it has existed people have fought against it. Throughout history a similar question has emerged time and time again - do we reform the system through parliament or do we overthrow it? This debate has pervaded struggles against capitalism for as long as the system has existed. This session will analyse this debate and argue that in order to really solve the world's problems we need to overthrow capitalism entirely.
It is obvious that capitalism is a deeply unequal and inhumane system. But the key question for any serious radical is what can we do? This session will make the argument that the only way to seriously challenge the system is to join collective struggles and to help rebuild radical politics in Australia today.
After almost 10 years of Liberal-National Coalition governments, some thought that the Albanese Labor government would offer an alternative. However, in the past two years, the Federal Labor government has demonstrated its comitment to the same neoliberal politics with tax cuts for the rich, no substantive action on the cost of living crisis or the environment, and support for a military build-up. This session will provide an assessment of the Labor government and explain its commitment to this right-wing, neoliberal agenda.
Rosa Luxemburg was a revolutionary martyred in the German revolution in 1919. She spent her life fighting for a better world in socialist groups in Poland and Germany. Rosa Luxemburg was began organising in the the Polish revolutionary underground, which was a province of the Russian empire. She then moved to Germany and joined the Social Democratic Party where she led the arguments for revolutionary politics, against a rising wave of revisionism and reformism. When the First World War broke out and the SPD supported this imperialist war, Luxemburg was a key figure to stand against the slaughter, regroup those who were consistent anti-war socialists and reform the German Communist party. There is much to learn from the life of Rosa Luxemburg: her arguments in some of the most important political debates of the 20th century, her socialist organising and her intransigence and tenacity in the revolutionary movement.
Revolution is a contested concept. Today, capitalist ideologues either associate it with technological innovations or pure anarchy. Instead, this session will argue that revolution, which is the mass democratic uprising of the majority, is the key to fundamentally changing society. It will look at key moments in the 20th and 21st centuries to illustrate how revolutions have challenged oppression and provided a glimpse of new ways to organise society.
A common perception held about Australia, and Western Australia in particular, is that nothing radical can ever happen here. Except it has. This walking tour across UWA will uncover the rich history of student activism from the 1930s to today.
The imperialist US war on Vietnam was stopped by a combination of mass street protests, student uprisings, workers action and rebellion inside the US military. We are currently in the midst of another major anti war movement. This session will consider the important lessons from the history of the anti Vietnam movement globally for us today.
Since the inception of capitalism, women's and LGBTI oppression have been baked into it. While there have been changes in laws and public opinion, it is undeniable that women and LGBTI are still systemically disadvantaged. This session will look at how these oppressive structures are created by, and help reinforce, capitalism.
The choice between geriatric Joe Biden and far-right lunatic Donald Trump indicates the decripted state of American politics today. This session will provide an analysis of the pro-establishment Biden administration, and explain the concerning strength of far-right Trumpian activism in America. An American socialist will join us to provide an on the ground perspective on these developments, and to discuss the type of politics and movements that are needed in America to fight both the "lesser evil" and the "evil".
The First Intifada was the most significant mass rebellion in Palestine in the latter part of the twentieth century. This talk will explore the dynamics and politics of this rebellion.
The European far-right have made considerable steps forward in recent years. Both in parliament and their confidence to act in the streets against migrants. We have seen, for example, the terrifying electoral victory of Giorgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia which can claim its lineage from Mussolini's fascist party. The politics of 'Fortress Europe', propagated from the EU and its various member ruling classes, has born this bitter fruit alongside the death and suffering of migrants and asylum seekers across the Mediterranean. In this session we will assess the current state of the far-right across Europe, explain the recent development of its growth and discuss how the left and working class movements can and must fight this rise.
Leon Trotsky, who was participant of the revolution and long-time socialist, described the Russian Revolution as the first "entrance of [workers] into the realm of rulership over their own destiny". Contrary to right-wing historians, this session will argue the Russian revolution was mass, democratic event that seriously challenged capitalism and still provides radicals with invaluable lessons for today.
Israel's apartheid in the West Bank is designed to suppress resistance to the colonisation and occupation of Palestine. It also suppresses education, with Palestinian universities often targeted with repression and closed, sometimes for years at a time.
The genocide in Gaza has only heightened the brutality of this. The destruction and repression of Palestinian education since it began, including the demolition of every university in Gaza, has been described as a ""scholasticide"".
This session will feature two Palestinian student activists in the West Bank, heroically defying and resisting the oppression of their right to education by Israel.
In 1936, in a response to an attempted right-wing military coup, workers and the poor seized control of Barcelona. From 1936-1938, Spain was split between socialism and fascism. This session will explore the dynamics of this civil war and the examples of working class control in the period. It look at how the politics of the Left - the anarchist-led CNT, the Communist Party, and the POUM - contributed to the defeat of this revolutionary moment and the ascendancy of the Fascist Franco dictatorship.
'The boss needs you - you don't need the boss!' This slogan comes from the epic student-worker rebellion in France in May 1968. But isn't this far-fetched? And can it happen here, in Australia?
This panel discussion looks at three episodes of workers' control in Australian working-class history: in a strike of oil workers New South Wales in 1972 'allocation of petrol for essential needs.was entirely in the hands of the workers on strike'; the same year workers building the Sydney Opera House got rid of their managers and worked without bosses for weeks; in 1990 Melbourne tram workers let the public ride for free and some kicked their managers out of tram depots.
These struggles offer a glimpse into workers' ability to run society.
Intersectionality theory, which was established by Black feminists in the 1980s, has become a dominant way to understand oppression. This theory stresses that individual experience provides the prism through which to understand systems of oppression. This session will provide an assessment of this theory and outline why Marxism has a greater explanatory power for understanding and fighting oppression.
This session will engage with the economy of social media - how major social media companies operate as businesses, the hidden hyper-exploitation of workers this relies on and its impacts on users, politics and society.
Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza has seen entire families, cities, and histories wiped from the map. The ongoing brutality is broadcasted to us daily, and has seen more than 40,000 people die to date. This genocide is caused by capitalism, and its system of imperialism which carves up the globe for exploitation and competition. Despite the horrors in Gaza, Australia and the US continue to back Israel to the hilt. Another world is possible - without war, occupation and genocide. This means ending the capitalist system. This session will look at the state of Gaza today and argue for a set of politics that can confront the system that produces such tragedies and horrors.
Featuring Palestinian activist Ayman Qwaider and longtime socialist and Curtin Gaza encampment activist Erin Russell.
Israel was formed as a state with the backing of many imperialist powers at the end of World War Two. Since then it has become an integral part of the Western imperial order in the Middle East. We are however, entering a period of new and intensified global conflict between China and the USA. This session will explore how these new dynamics are shaping and reshaping regional Middle Eastern politics.