1. Serve the People - Our Party   

 

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) strives to build a revolutionary party worthy of the Australian working class; it aims to embody the needs and hopes of the working class.

 

The Party arises from and serves the struggles of the Australian people. It aims to embody the needs and hopes of the working class. Guided by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the scientific theory of the revolutionary proletariat, it examines reality, its material conditions and existing contradictions of Australia and the world.  Its aim is to fundamentally change the capitalist reality through a socialist revolution.

 

The Party exists to assist the working class to lead the Australian people in their daily struggles, and in struggle toward revolution. 

 

Only the united working class and the oppressed masses can overthrow the imperialist ruling class and begin the work of building a socialist Australia. 

 

Only they can create a system which serves the people.

 

 

Marxism shows that the material world is primary. Ideas and consciousness reflect this objective reality. But everyone’s thinking is shaped by their own circumstances, their actions and the class they belong to. In time each person’s outlook on life becomes a system of thinking, an ideology, which also influences their actions. How people make their living (what Marxists call their position in the class relations of production) is usually key to their class consciousness and ideological outlook.

 

Across the whole of the working class, and working people generally, there are different views and different levels of political consciousness. Communists know the real interests of the working class are only served by Marxism-Leninism. This includes the important theoretical and practical contributions of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong and others. Workers can’t be expected to immediately agree with us on this. Communists must find the best ways to help working people understand capitalism and to realise socialism is the necessary next stage in human social development.

 

Marxism is a guide to action, based on practice. 

 

It recognises all things in nature and society are constantly changing, coming into being and passing away. It recognises that contradiction (unity and struggle between opposites) is present in the process of development of all things. In the process of solving current fundamental contradictions, new and qualitatively different contradictions are created.

 

As Marxists, we seek to understand the contradictions in Australia and the world and use that knowledge to resolve problems in society. This approach is fundamental to Marxist philosophy. It’s called dialectical materialism. 

 

It openly serves the working class. It emphasises that theory grows out of practice and in turn helps guide and shape practice.

 

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” Karl Marx

 

 

Australia is a capitalist society characterised by expanded production for profit. 

 

The profit cycle in capitalist society starts with labour power being purchased to produce commodities, goods and services, incorporating greater values than the total the capitalist invested on all the inputs, raw materials, power, etc. The worker doesn’t have any ownership over the goods produced.

 

Profit comes from the unique quality of human labour power to produce value. Workers’ labour power is a commodity bought by capitalists in a competitive labour market. In exchange workers receive a wage sufficient to cover the cost of maintaining themselves and their families. Set to work in a process of production, the worker’s labour power produces more value than the worker receives as payment for working. This extra value, which the worker produces but is not paid for, is called surplus value and is the source of profit when the commodity is sold. Capitalists can exploit us without stealing from us. How is that possible? In a simplified model, Marx assumes capitalists pay us in full for all the costs we meet in reproducing the only commodity that our class has left to sell them. That commodity is our capacity to add value, a part of which is not covered by wages and constitutes, in Marx’s terms, an “unpaid portion of labour”.

 

Surplus value was identified by Marx in his massive three-volume study “Capital”.  By investigating numerous real-life situations, he showed that the way in which a worker receives a wage conceals his/her exploitation. A worker receives a wage for a whole day’s work. In fact, only a part of the value created in that day’s work is paid for – enough to cover the worker’s basic needs. The worker spends the remaining hours of the work day adding value to the commodities being produced without being paid for the value embedded in them. The wage may be $100 per day.  If the worker creates that much value in half a day and then adds another $100 in value during the other half of the day, then that second amount is a surplus value and the worker is not paid for it. Thus, Marx exploded the myth that there could ever be a “fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay”. Even if workers are paid higher than average wages, they are still exploited by the capitalists who obtain profit from taking and selling the products which incorporate the surplus value created by the workers.

 

Other groups of workers not directly engaged in the production of commodities incorporating surplus value include publicly-employed educators, aged and health care and welfare workers, and others like them. If the provision of the service is for a company that is privately owned, then the service is sold as a commodity and has surplus value embedded in it. Workers in non-profit, state-run employment create services of value to both private industry and the public at large, but they do not directly create surplus value embedded in a commodity. Their mental and physical exertions contribute to the functioning of society and, by extension, to the conditions that allow the capitalist system to operate. The greater numbers of workers now employed by the state in service sectors requires further investigation from the viewpoint of political economy.

 

Similarly, the background labour necessary to sustain the current generation of workers and to produce the next one includes the birthing and raising of children, caring for elders and others with high needs, domestic housework, community building, volunteering and the emotional labour required to maintain social bonds. In other words, labour which sustains life and culture itself. 

 

This labour is usually, but by no means always, performed by women. It does not produce surplus value when performed by a woman for herself or for her own family, but without it the capitalist class would not be able to continually accumulate capital.

 

When produced as a commodity in the private service industries in places like aged care facilities and childcare, or for commercial companies contracted to provide household cooking or cleaning, it is generally low paid and does produce surplus value. 

 

Feminised labour is exploited in similar but different ways to masculinised labour whether either are performed by women or men.

 

Another feature of capitalism that became more obvious as it developed was that production is socialised. This means many different workers together in society produce any one particular product or service. 

 

But the benefits of surplus value created by the labour of workers (including profits) don’t go to the working class, the biggest class. They go to the tiny but powerful capitalist class which privately owns the means of production.

 

This contradiction between socialised production and the private ownership of the means of production is the key contradiction in capitalism.

 

Another major contradiction is between highly organised workplaces designed to increase productivity, and the anarchic, unplanned and competitive nature of the market in which those commodities are sold.

 

These and other contradictions within the system of capitalist production lead to the inevitable cycles of boom and bust, overproduction and periodical crises that characterise capitalism. Mostly, oversupply of labour enables helps the capitalist class to suppress workers’ wages. At others, labour shortages assist workers to win better wages and conditions.

 

The extraordinary advances of technology over the recent period do not alter fundamental social laws. While capitalism’s ability to delay crises has grown, it’s clear the present technological revolution controlled by the capitalist class is sharpening the crises and those fundamental laws. Their effects on people’s lives must be deeply investigated.

 

These economic and social conditions and contradictions of capitalism impel people to resist, organise and create conditions which give rise to the revolutionary Communist Party of the working class. But only correct strategies and tactics will allow that party to effectively serve the revolutionary needs of the working class.

 

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) strives to guide the working class in its revolutionary and historical role to end capitalist exploitation and establish socialism. This can only be done by depriving the capitalist class of the right to private ownership of the means of production.

 

 

We live in the era of imperialism. Imperialism is the stage of capitalism when monopolies and finance capital (i.e. bank and industrial capital merged) dominate; when the export of capital rather than the export of commodities is most important; when the world’s resources, markets, government assets, and territories have been divided among big banks, financial institutions and multinational corporations, when information technology including artificial intelligence, in the hands of corporate monopolies, dominates.  Because there are no new territories for rival imperialisms to dominate, they are compelled to war. Proxy wars not only strengthen their rival strategic positions, but create a market for their weapons. 

 

Through important struggles, Australian people have won some formal independence; but it’s still limited. The US replaced Britain as the dominant imperialism in Australia after World War Two. The nation as a whole is trapped in a powerful net of economic, political, military, diplomatic and cultural domination by US imperialism.  Australians must break free of all imperialism to gain genuine and lasting independence. 

 

Imperialism concentrates the nation’s wealth in the hands of a small number of monopolies, most of them foreign. They are driven by fierce capitalist competition to maximise profit. As a result, millions of ordinary Australians suffer intensified exploitation, growing debt and insecurity, greater costs of living, and increased repression and discrimination. Australia’s natural wealth and heritage are looted for monopoly profit. Massive untaxed profit is shifted overseas. Struggles against this foreign imperialist domination at the heart of Australian capitalism are objectively struggles toward Australian independence and socialism.

 

US imperialism drags Australia into dangerous rivalry between different imperialist powers and groupings. US imperialism is declining economically and is in a political crisis, but is still the most dangerous military power. Contradictions between it and other imperialisms are growing, including European, Russian and Chinese. These contradictions and rivalries create constant international instability and wars of aggression. Imperialist expansionism and rivalry amongst the imperialist powers is the root cause of local and regional conflicts and wars, and the growing threat of a third world war. 

 

Internationally, people’s movements for peace, independence and opposition to US military bases and US wars of aggression, are growing stronger. Globally, US imperialism is more exposed and isolated.

 

The US-Australia military “alliance” embodies the dominance of US imperialism over Australia and its subservient ruling class. An expanding number of US bases, of a permanent presence of US marines, of Australian facilities made available to the US for use by its B-52 bombers and submarines (both of which can be carrying nuclear weapons), the use of Australian territory for US-led military exercises, and the storage of US fuel and equipment are symptomatic of that subservience. 

 

The US-Australia military alliance ties Australia into US global imperialist agendas and wars of aggression. It locks Australia into the US military-industrial complex. The Party works in the people’s movement opposing imperialist military domination of Australia and fights alongside the people to end the US military alliance. It struggles for genuine independence from any big power domination and control of Australia. It aims to develop political, ideological and organisational leadership within the working class.

 

In a world dominated by a handful of imperialist powers only a socialist Australia, active in solidarity with the world communist movement, can guarantee genuine and lasting independence.

 

 

To maintain the colonial dispossession of First Peoples and the imperialist domination of Australia, a powerful state machine has emerged. It consists of the bureaucracy, parliaments, police, courts and the judiciary, jails, armed forces, and intelligence agencies. It creates illusions that it stands independently over Australian society. In reality, it exists to uphold ruling class interests of imperialist monopoly capitalism and capitalist relations of production. Parliamentary “democracy”, with its limited formal rights, projecting illusions of democracy, operates within this context.  No matter how democratic the bourgeois state may appear, in the final analysis, it is always the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

 

All workers’ and people’s democratic rights have been won from the ruling class in struggle. While they have positive aspects, the central feature of the capitalist state with its repressive, violent and deceptive character, is unchanged. Without this bourgeois state dictatorship, the capitalist ruling class could not maintain its power or its exploitation of the working class and the environment.

 

Australia’s ruling class uses the mass media, education system and culture, to push a system of ideas which disguises capitalist exploitation and imperialist domination. It presents the current system as the final and most superior stage of human social development, as both inevitable and as unchanging. 

 

Capitalist class rule compels the erosion of democratic rights and more open repression, particularly in periods of deep economic difficulties, social unrest and working class resistance. There is always a danger that Australia's ruling class will dump its democratic mask and rule through systematic, open, ruthless violence – fascism.

 

This threat comes from both reactionary laws passed legally and non-violently by state and federal parliaments and intimidatory violence of Nazi and other far right organisations. These threats must be fought.

 

In the face of this likely ruthless and ultimately violent suppression by the capitalist state machine, the people must be prepared for all means of struggle. The imperialist ruling class and its local collaborators will never voluntarily give up their power to accumulate more capital by exploiting people. History shows that the only a revolutionary working class and its party can lead, mobilise and organise the people to overthrow the armed force of the capitalist state.

 

The Party must be able to function under any circumstances and continue its work through rapid changes of conditions. It must be ready to operate effectively despite hostile activities of the ruling class state. 

 

 

The revolutionary strategy of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) is the continuing struggle for socialism through anti-imperialist revolution. This strategy in the struggle for socialism is based in the concrete conditions of Australian domination by US imperialism. It can only be won through the organisation and mobilisation of a powerful anti-imperialist people’s movement led by the working class. Through this struggle the foundations for socialism, and the eventual move towards communism, are laid 

 

Anti-imperialist independence means the core of Australia’s capitalist ruling class has been defeated. The assets of these foreign imperialists and their local collaborators, will be seized and used to benefit the majority of Australia’s working class and the people. This gives a socialist character to this stage. It can only be successfully maintained under working class leadership using new revolutionary working class organs of state power. 

 

This anti-imperialist struggle of Australia’s socialist revolution will empower the working people through the establishment and expansion of people’s own democratic mass organisations and structures based on participatory democracy.

 

The deepening of the socialist revolution and its extension to all economic sectors in which private capital operates means a base for building socialism has been established. 

 

Independence and socialism are mutually dependent throughout the continuing revolutionary socialist strategy.

 

 

Mass work is key to the way the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) operates. Most importantly this means immersing ourselves among the masses in their struggles. It means respecting, listening to and learning from the people. It means deep and active involvement in their struggles. Only deep connections with people’s lives and struggles allow us to understand and respect their level of political consciousness, how they think and feel. Collective lessons learned from mass work allow the Party to fully understand the overall objective concrete conditions.  

 

Communists bring their experiences and lessons from people’s struggles to the Party. Collectively, the Party uses Marxism-Leninism to analyse numerous struggles, people’s experiences and different levels of consciousness. We take account of uneven developments and particular conditions in different areas of people’s struggles and the country. This assists the Party to assess overall objective conditions and develop strategies and tactics that advance the immediate and longer-term interests of working people. When correctly carried out, mass work allows us to gain the trust and respect of the people and consult with them. In turn, it allows us to build leadership with the people and their struggles, and step-by-step raise our own and the people‘s revolutionary consciousness.  

 

Mass work is central to all social investigation and class analysis of objective conditions by the Party. This is a key task for mapping the revolutionary road to an independent and socialist Australia. It’s essential for building the mass movement and our party’s strength and organisation.

 

Mass work, social investigation and involvement in people’s struggles are the bedrock of the Party’s ideology, practical and political work and organisation. It’s the method our party uses to develop revolutionary theory and practice in Australian conditions.

 

The Party and its members do not stand above the people.  We oppose arrogance, sectarianism and left blocism which divide people’s movements and mass organisations. 

 

 

The ruling class works systematically and skilfully to divide the people’s progressive and revolutionary forces. Our Party seeks to inspire unity in all sections of society against imperialism and its Australian collaborators.  We assist the people in building the united front, unite the many and isolate the handful of people’s enemies – imperialism and comprador capitalist class.

 

The working class movement was born simultaneously in cities and rural areas before Australia became a nation. Many workers still live in rural and regional areas which lack many services available in major cities. Basics like food and fuel are more expensive.

 

Remote areas are home to significant numbers of First Peoples living in Country. Despite previous demonstrated better outcomes in health and education than those in some regional towns, they have been systematically tied up in red tape and robbed of funding for basic services. 

 

Ten years ago, 400 remote WA Aboriginal communities were demolished. In the NT Intervention, compulsory Basics Cards could not be used at successful Aboriginal owned local shops. This ensured First Peoples, especially young people, were forced into regional towns to make exploitation of mineral or gas resources from their lands available to multinational resource companies.

 

Working farmers are important allies of the working class, but too often capitalist domination has meant their livelihoods have been sacrificed to major supermarket chains. Like workers, they labour increasingly long hours. They are squeezed by high overheads and low prices for products and by the rise of corporate-owned industrial-scale farms.

 

Small business people, small family farmers and subcontractors are squeezed by imperialism and burdened by high costs and insecure income streams. Many, like subcontractors, are simply workers in disguise to whom corporations outsource costs and risks. Faced with rising costs and market control by agri-businesses, many working farmers, men and women, take on contract work and increasingly live as members of the working class. Mental health issues, including suicide, reflect the hopelessness felt by these farmers.

 

These are just some of the groups the ruling class seeks to win to their side. But people’s long-term real interests are diametrically opposed to ruling class aims.

 

Currently, unity in people’s struggle is often based around important single issues, for example First Peoples, farmers and environmentalists’ unity against fracking; local community struggles and campaigns for improvement in services and local environment. It can form lasting alliances and bonds.

 

The Party actively creates the widest possible and most deeply rooted people’s movement against the ruling class.

 

 

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) recognises that Australia is built on the violent dispossession, oppression, and exploitation of First Peoples by British colonialism. For 150 years after 1788, a guerrilla war raged in every new area where settlement was attempted. Resistance, both then and now, takes many forms.

 

First Peoples are on the front line of struggle against the war industry and its military bases, against mining and resource multinationals and against property developers who want “crown” lands which are being returned to First Peoples. They are the most aggressive sections of the ruling class.

 

All sections of the ruling class attempt to divide, disillusion, disorganise and disempower First Peoples. They create, fund and organise capitalist collaborators among First Peoples and divert them to enrich themselves or choose reformist, parliamentary solutions that always fail them.

 

They continue to use force. Alongside staggering levels of imprisonment – including of ten-year-olds – imperialism imposes increasing systemic abuse and theft and of children, poverty, ill health, shorter life expectancy, denial of basic services like safe drinking water. It creates economic and legal roadblocks to cultural practices on country and enables terrorist murders by police and jailers, through new laws, curfews, prison overcrowding and funding ever more police and police centres where First Peoples live. 

 

For tens of thousands of years, First Peoples lived according to their lore. This lore and their custom, values, belief and practices have underpinned their survival and continue to do so in the face of attacks by multinational corporations.

 

The tap root of invasion is based on four principles, asserted to this day. It says to First Peoples:

 

“You are not who you say you are.”

“You don’t belong here.”

“This is not your land.”

“You must be like us.”

 

For First Peoples, decolonisation reaffirms who they are and where they belong. It places them in their Country. It affirms their identity.

 

First Peoples say, “Nothing about us without us.” 

 

First Peoples are less than four percent Australia’s population. This means the working class and its communist party have a responsibility to assist First Peoples in their battles against our common enemies. This means we need to decolonise our minds and actions.

 

Our Party strives to respectfully listen to and learn from the lessons First Peoples have learned by struggle and huge sacrifices.  

 

Without this, any struggle for a republic and the removal of colonial relics, including the Australian Constitution which places the British sovereign and their representatives at the head of government and military will fail. 

 

We acknowledge that First Peoples have never ceded their lands, and that colonial oppression and attempted dispossession everywhere occurred through force and violence, or the threat of force and violence. Resistance to that force and violence is the inalienable right of First Peoples.

 

Land rights, self-determination, language and culture, come from their lore and are held in their Country. They are the heart of First Peoples’ struggles.

 

We support First Peoples to actively assert control over their own lives and lands, choosing their own strategies, tactics and demands.

 

 

Socialism will liberate huge productive forces and profits from imperialist control. The vast majority of people, led by the working class, will rule over the tiny minority of exploiters. Life for working people will be better, fairer, more secure and culturally and educationally richer. 

 

Socialism will empower the working class as masters of their socialist society.

We saw this in the Soviet Union, we saw it in the Peoples Republic of China, and elsewhere. The forces of capitalism will try to reassert themselves over the newly established socialist society.

 

Under socialism, the major means of production, communication and distribution will be socially owned. This includes mines, corporate farms, energy, construction, technology and artificial intelligence industries, plus the banks and other financial corporations which fund them. 

 

This social ownership is the new foundation of socialism. Surplus value will belong to the whole of society. Planning will end over-production, crises and market anarchy. 

 

Workers will replace capitalists as the ruling class and will ensure that the benefits of a real democracy will extend to all but a small minority made up of the overthrown capitalist class. 

 

The new socialist society will release enormous potential for innovation and creativity of working people in production, technology, culture, literature, art, environment, and education to serve the collective interests of people and socialist society, not the profit hungry, brutally exploiting capitalist class. The new socialist society will create a new collective culture of the people from all backgrounds, building on the positive cultural struggles against capitalism. They will embrace the positive in all past cultures, and educate about any negative aspects.

 

These are the goals of socialism we seek to achieve through a revolution in Australia led by the working class.

 

Socialism will continue for a long time. It will be a transitional society between capitalism and our ultimate goal – the classless and stateless society of communism.

 

After socialist revolution, classes will still exist and class struggle against the remnants of capitalism and in defence of the young socialist society will continue. 

 

Because socialism emerges from capitalism, Marx warned that necessary hangovers from capitalism – like unequal wage payments, and distribution of commodities according to work performance – would continue to exist in some areas as “bourgeois right”. 

 

Many people will also be influenced by over five hundred years of capitalist indoctrination and a culture of greed and self-serving individualism.  Instead of serving the people, some will join the Communist Party and new socialist government to get power, privilege and wealth for themselves. 

 

“Bourgeois right” could be exploited by them to expand, their privileged position. 

 

They could become new bourgeois elements aiming to abandon socialism and restore capitalism. 

 

This happened in both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. So, a victorious Party must restrict bourgeois right. 

 

A new revolutionary state apparatus run by and for the working class is essential.

 

It will prevent the former exploiting class and foreign imperialists from destroying the newly-established socialist system. 

 

It will prevent a new bourgeois class from arising. 

 

The working class state will resist all attempts at counter-revolution and sabotage. It will resist any armed attacks, promotion of capitalist ideas that undermine socialist achievements or encourage capitalist relations of production.

 

The Marxist term describing this socialist period is the “dictatorship of the proletariat”.

 

It’s not a dictatorship over the big majority of the people. It’s a dictatorship by them over hostile minority class forces. Contradictions between the people will be dealt with by education. 

 

Once the working class wins power, it must defend and strengthen it. 

 

Just as the bourgeoisie uses their coercive state power to crush workers’ and people’s struggle, and stop revolutionary action, the workers must use their socialist state’s coercive power to stop the former capitalist ruling class undermining socialism. 

 

This coercive state apparatus will gradually be dismantled as communism rises and class society fades. There’ll be no need for it.

 

We are confident in humanity’s path towards communism in the hands of politically conscious, united and mobilised people. This confidence is sustained by our understanding of Marxist laws of development.  It will serve the people and empower them develop every aspect of their lives and culture.  The specifics of that path depend on our mass work and understanding of the contradictions in society. 

 

We know it will end war. We know it will end hunger. Everyone will be valued and cared for. Nature will be cherished, not destroyed. We know those who are sick will be given the best available treatment, and that all children, everywhere, will be richly educated in lifelong, respectful collective culture. 

 

The division between city and country will no longer exist.

 

The contradiction between mental and practical work will be overcome.

 

No one will be terrorised by fear of homelessness, or poverty. Selfishness, greed and racism will be understood as ugly products of cruel past class societies, of slavery, feudalism, capitalism and imperialism.

 

 

Our Party emerged in the struggle against the revisionism of former Soviet leader Khrushchev and his followers internationally and in the former Communist Party of Australia. 

 

Revisionism exists today and will persist into the future as long as classes exist. It seeks to water down Marxism-Leninism, taking away its commitment to revolution in exchange for an attempt at reformist change and a peaceful transition to socialism.

 

Revisionism is the most powerful weapon for capitalism to destroy revolutionaries and their organisations from within the party and the revolutionary movement. 

 

We are surrounded by the politics and culture of the dominant capitalist class. This constantly breeds revisionism and reformism within us as individuals, and as a party. The struggle against them is essential, ongoing, constant.

 

We must always remember the words of our founding Chairperson, E.F. Hill: “Nor must it be thought that the danger of return to revisionism has passed. It will never pass. It continually asserts itself in big things and small things.” 

 

To combat revisionism, we immerse ourselves in the struggles of the working class. We use revolutionary reflection and self-reflection, what Mao called criticism and self-criticism. 

 

 

The struggle for revolution in Australia is part of the international struggle against imperialism and for socialism.  

 

Imperialism exploits and keeps the people oppressed. The Party supports the broad masses of people around the world fighting back against exploitation and oppression. We learn from and support the right of all nations and peoples to self-determination, and the efforts to build revolutionary working class movements in countries around the world.

 

The Party recognises that the best way to assist the international working class and the oppressed people of the world is by building a strong anti-imperialist revolutionary movement here in Australia to overthrow imperialist dominated capitalism and establish socialism. This is the key task we set ourselves to fulfil our internationalist responsibility.

 

No country exists in isolation from other countries. An independent, socialist Australia led by the working class will determine the need for and nature of economic, political and cultural relations with other countries based on respect for national sovereignty and mutual benefit.

 

The Party recognises the uneven developments and conditions between countries.  The workers and working people of each country must themselves determine their road to socialism.

 

 

The struggles of women against their oppression by patriarchal capitalism are an integral part of the revolutionary movement towards socialism.

 

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) fights alongside working women in the struggles for economic and social equality, respect and an end to violence, abuse and exploitation of women.   

 

We are inspired and pay our respects to the courageous First Peoples’ women in their long and resolute struggles for self-determination, communities, land and culture. We support their fight against colonial oppression and dispossession.

 

We uphold equality and respect for women in the Party and in people’s struggles. We do not tolerate any form of discrimination, sexism and gender inequality, abuse and violence against women or children. 

 

The exploitation and oppression of women emerged with private property and the division of society into two main classes thousands of years ago. 

 

Patriarchy predates capitalism. Patriarchal capitalist economy and society treats women as inferior with fewer rights. 

 

Capitalist relations of production create the dominant culture that commercialises and commodifies women as objects and possessions for sexual gratification and exploitation for profit. Domestic violence and abuse against women and children flow from this patriarchal ideology.

 

Pornography with violent and demeaning abuse of women is common and circulates widely, including among young people. It increasingly normalises demands for violent and demeaning sex. This robs both women and men of respectful, consensual relationships.

 

Capitalism exploits and oppresses women at work and in social relations. The capitalist class as a whole exploits and benefits from paid and unpaid family work done mostly by women at home.  Without this work, the labour power of current and new generations of workers necessary for the survival of capitalism could not be created or maintained. Capitalism relies on the continuing dominance of men for the double exploitation and oppression of women.

 

For the overwhelming majority of working women exploitation at work is multiplied by the added responsibility as main carers of families, children, the elderly, the sick and family members with disabilities – with little or no state support. 

 

Many of the inequities and injustices of capitalism are visited more frequently and more intensively upon women of the working class than on men. Economic and social inequality, abuse and violence against women and children flows from the exploitative capitalist system and its culture. 

 

Too many men have learned capitalist Australia allows them to stalk, terrorise and rape with impunity. 

 

Women have learned not to report rape knowing they will be treated as liars by police and in courts where rapists are overwhelmingly found not guilty. United struggle against carnage has won new coercive control laws, but too often police and courts still fail to save women and children's lives.

 

In over 120 years of struggle since achieving the right to vote in Australia, women have won some important social and legislative improvements. But the continuing exploitation, discrimination, abuse and the burdens and stresses facing working women at work and at home are too often unchanged. 

 

The era of financialised and globalised capitalism, of turbo-charged imperialism, has seen Australian women recruited into the workforce in very high numbers, perhaps not seen since the mass-exploitation of women and children in the mills and factories of 19th Century capitalism and before the advent of the post-war housewife. This has brought significant benefits to working class women both individually and for women's liberation at large. A wage-earning working class woman has greater potential for economic independence within the dominant patriarchal structures of the family and society. In addition to their involvement in class struggle at the forefront of social reproduction struggles in health, education, community and environment, it has brought working class women directly into the class struggle at the point of production.

 

Capitalism has entrusted a small handful of privileged women, alongside the much larger number of privileged men, to wield the powers of capital and imperialism against the oppressed and exploited.

 

The acceleration of the bourgeois feminist struggle for recognition and equal rights in the last 30 years has produced significant increases in female executives, middle-management, Parliamentary politicians and among other professionals.

 

The trend has successfully, for capitalism, dovetailed with the neoliberal era whereby the exploitation of working class women and men continues apace while the dominant ideology celebrates emancipation and diversity.

 

Contradictions of class continue to create distance and dissonance between the bourgeois feminist project and the conditions of working class women and their aspirations for liberation.  As the bourgeois feminist revolution comes to its final stage the class divisions between women really sharpen, including the return of outsourcing domestic labour by ruling and middle-class women.

 

The double exploitation, inequality, abuse and violence against women cannot be eradicated under capitalism.  

 

Socialism will create the necessary conditions that will empower working women to achieve their full potential, economic independence, equality and respect in all sectors of society.  In a socialist system, working women will run the society as equals with men for the benefit of all working people.

 

 

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) acknowledges the country’s youth is crucial in the struggle for socialism and against imperialist rule. Young people have vast potential to inspire and lead social progress.

 

Older comrades must learn from and be guided by young people, in order to help mobilise them to be agents of revolutionary change. All comrades in our united party promote comprehensive examination of Australian conditions, literacy in class analysis, and revolutionary work among the young people in service of these goals.

 

As the rights of workers are increasingly violated, funds to vital social services are cut, and the prospect of affordable housing declines in a market dominated by multinational development firms and speculative private investors, the possibility of secure employment, comfortable retirement and “the Australian dream” of home ownership fade from view for many of the country’s youth. 

 

Meanwhile, environmental catastrophe and global war threaten us all. Capitalism offers almost nothing to a generation already disillusioned by its numerous cyclical crises, unemployment, mounting debt and the horrors of imperialist war. One young person turning to damaging behaviours, to self-harm and suicide, or being sucked in by fascist groups is one too many. 

 

These problems are not exclusive to young people but they particularly impact on them, especially to young First Peoples. As conditions under capitalism deteriorate, illusions, deceptions and social safeguards are eroded, young people will be more at risk than ever before and will be more open to embracing the revolutionary cause. 

 

The Party seeks to learn from young people, including those young First Peoples who are embracing and asserting their collective culture and language to build strength and resilience in the face of attacks. Young First Peoples suffer the most extreme attacks by the state, and carry the trauma of inter-generational of ongoing invasion. 

 

The Party has a significant role in tracing the origins of these social problems to their foundation – colonialism, capitalism and imperialism. 

 

Our comrades of all ages concentrate the scattered and unsystematic ideas of the masses. They integrate these ideas into a cohesive Marxist analysis, to provide clear direction to the struggles of young working people.

 

This analysis also repels lies and scapegoating from far-right fanatics and who seek to divide the working class.

 

The Party must learn to channel young people’s innate enthusiasm, optimism and energy toward revolutionary socialism, toward creating a new society which promises a life free of capitalist brutality and wage-slavery, a life of co-operative perseverance toward the common good of all, infinitely more fulfilling and abundant than what has gone before.

 

 

The only two sources of wealth are human labour power and nature. Capitalism attacks, devalues and destroys both. In the early stages of the 21st century, the damage to the environment as a result of capitalist plunder has reached potentially catastrophic proportions for humanity and the planet. The world’s climate scientists agree that human induced climate change and global warming are approaching the point of no return.

 

Fighting climate change is essential to the working class. Renewable energy must replace fossil fuels, and sooner rather than later.  Water must be a common good and not a tradeable commodity. Pollution and waste must be reduced and eliminated. The dangers in uranium mining and the problem of nuclear waste make nuclear energy unviable.

 

Biodiversity matters to the working class, working farmers, and all except a tiny handful of monopoly capitalists. It is central to the survival of all life and to the existence of the planet. The planet is experiencing catastrophic species extinctions. Habitats of other species must be rehabilitated and expanded. Research into the biology of other species must be ramped up in order to create programs for the restoration of their numbers.

 

The united struggle of the people can force short term advances under capitalism to reduce pollution, move to renewable energy and protect the environment.

 

However, capitalism and its current form imperialism have given rise to the irreversible destruction of the environment and global warming in particular. Imperialism is based on constant growth and expansion of profit at all costs before the needs of people and the environment. It must be overthrown and a socialist society established. Only this will make it possible for humans to be able to live in an environment that is sustainable long-term.

 

 The Party and the working class must exercise leadership in protecting the environment and ensure that a socialist society works not to “conquer” nature, but to co-exist with it, restoring the balance between humanity and nature.

 

The First Peoples of this continent and its islands survived many tens of thousands of years prior to invasion. We must learn from them, as well as from scientists.

 

 

Diversity of the working class is a great strength. The Party welcomes that diversity in its own ranks. It fights for a society where mutual respect exists between all races and genders, where divisive racism and gender inequalities are not tolerated, where gender identities and sexual preferences are respected. The Party upholds these standards amongst its membership.  All party members are equals, respected and valued for their contributions to the life of the party and people’s struggles.

 

Members of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) undertake disciplined and ongoing study of Marxism with the aim of developing revolutionary theory and practice in Australian conditions.  We study, investigate and sum up collectively to guide us in struggle with the people connected to concrete reality.

 

Members of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) accept a lifetime commitment to the welfare to the working class, to their struggles, interests and future liberation, that is to the great cause of communism. They struggle to remould themselves without ego or individualism. They aim to serve the people and will put the people’s interests before their own.