This document was adopted in January, 2010 by the founding congress of the Socialist Equality Party (Australia).
It reviews and examines the most critical political experiences of the Australian working class throughout the twentieth century, within the context of global economic, political and social processes. It delineates the struggle for Marxism from all varieties of national opportunism, in particular the nationalist doctrines of Australian exceptionalism that have been promoted by the Australian Labor Party and the trade unions for more than a century. In doing so, it establishes the theoretical and political basis of the struggle for socialist internationalism.
Further material on the history of the Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International is available here.
- Capitalist breakdown and the founding of the Socialist Equality Party
- The financial crash of 2007–2008
- The origins of Australian exceptionalism
- The Labor Party and “White Australia”
- World War I and the Russian Revolution
- The Communist Party of Australia
- The Great Depression and the CPA’s “Third Period” line
- The origins of Trotskyism in Australia
- The struggle against centrism
- Stalinism, Trotskyism and World War II
- The post-war upsurge
- The betrayals of the CPA
- The post-war stabilisation and the emergence of Pabloism
- The post-war boom and its contradictions
- The resurgence of the working class
- The struggle against Pabloism and the growth of the ICFI
- The founding of the Socialist Labour League
- The political backsliding of the WRP, the SLL and the Canberra coup
- A global counter-offensive against the working class
- The Accord and the Hawke-Keating Labor government
- Political crisis in the ICFI
- The split in the International Committee
- The aftermath of the 1985–86 split
- The World Perspectives of the ICFI
- The dissolution of the Soviet Union and its implications
- The formation of the Socialist Equality Party
- The World Socialist Web Site
- Imperialist war and neo-colonialism
- The crisis of Australian capitalism and the tasks of the Socialist Equality Party