The following article is based on selected excerpts from Building Red Spark in 2025, a report adopted by the Red Spark national conference held in June, 2025.
The re-establishment of an effective revolutionary Marxist party in Australia would profoundly change the political situation in Australia. It would not only completely transform the situation of the left and the far left but profoundly shape the overall balance of class forces in the country and impact every social struggle.
We live inside one of the richest imperialist societies in the world and for that reason the capitalist class grants us more or less unlimited democratic space to express revolutionary ideas, to fight for them and win people to them. We need to win more people to an understanding that a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism is possible, and that to make it happen it is necessary to organise those who have come to that understanding into a revolutionary party. That is the historical responsibility that falls upon us, whether we like that responsibility or not.
The Importance of a Revolutionary Party in Australia
The potential importance of the emergence of a revolutionary movement in Australia should never be under-estimated. There can never be full socialism without the victory of the working class in the United States, however the U.S. working class cannot alone defeat the most powerful ruling class ever known. To win, the movement for socialism must be international. We cannot afford to allow imperialism any uncontested territory, any bastion or any breathing space even in what seems like an out of the way country, like Australia.
There is no telling what form of crises and catastrophes the coming years will bring. It could become the case that South East Asia, or East Asia become the key global battle grounds between revolution and the reactionary status quo. That was the case for much of last century and in this century so far. It was the war in Vietnam, and the global reaction to it, that violently shook up and severely weakened US imperialism in the 1960s and 70s of last century. It was Australia’s neighbour, Indonesia, that grew the largest Communist Party in the world outside of the Soviet Union and China.
In the context of future revolutionary advances or crises that could occur in our region, the role of Australian imperialism, as the regional imperialist power in the South Pacific, could be decisive, conceivably even in tipping the international balance of forces. The Australian working class and the revolutionary movement in this country which needs a party if it is to develop could be decisive in weakening imperialism’s stranglehold in our region. That could help to start unravelling imperialism’s grip everywhere. Even outside of a scenario where our region has over-sized importance, our example here, any gains we do make, any battles we win, or even just fight tenaciously, will be an inspiration and a signal, for the development of revolutionary spirit, fight and confidence in other regions just as we also seek inspiration from any and all revolutionary gains across the world.
Imperialism’s Weakness
Since October 1917, when the Russian working class seized power, there has not been a single day when the capitalist class has been able to re-assert complete control over the entire globe. Try as they might, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the dark political period that eventually set in, imperialism never had the power to defeat the Cuban revolution, to overthrow social ownership in Korea, to defeat the Communist Party of China and to re-divide China among the imperialist exploiters. The Communist Party of Vietnam still holds power too. Starting in the current century, since losing state power on April 13, 2002, the Venezuelan bourgeoisie has continuously failed to overthrow the Bolivarian revolution despite decades of imperialist assistance via sanctions, mercenary terrorists and another failed coup attempt in 2019.
Why has imperialism failed to overcome these retreats even in the last several decades when the class struggle was at a low ebb? Its failure expresses the limits to imperialism’s power. This weakness also gives us a suggestion of what further weakening of imperialism could be possible if there can be a revival today of revolutionary organising and working-class struggle especially inside the imperialist core countries themselves.
Today US imperialism staggers forward in a weakened and highly chaotic state. The key aspect of this is not only its failure to project military force effectively in Asia that was already the case in the Twentieth Century. Most critically the ideological hegemony and credibility of the US ruling class is badly weakened. Internally divided and myopic, US imperialism’s attempts to guard its global hegemony and influence are causing untold global and domestic chaos with ramifications that nobody can foresee. These are fertile international conditions on which to conduct, as Fidel Castro famously put it, “the battle of ideas”; i.e. to win more and more people to commit their lives to organising for a future for humanity, and to rescue the planet from environmental destruction.
The Potential for a Revolutionary Party Today
The creation of a revolutionary party in Australia is not a pious wish. We know that because there has been revolutionary parties in Australia even in relatively recent times. From that experience we know at the very least there is the possibility today to recruit, organise and train hundreds of active revolutionary cadres (members of a revolutionary party). That is possible even in the fairly quiet and mild political conditions that still characterise the domestic political situation here.
We know an established revolutionary party could play the leading role in unifying broader forces into an effective Palestine Solidarity campaign. We’ve seen that in the past too, not in Palestine Solidarity organising but in comparable campaigns. That was the role of the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) in various campaigns in the 1990s like solidarity with with the victorious East Timor, national indepence movement.. We also saw that in the so-called “anti-corporate globalisation” movement which scored significant victories in shifting consciousness to the left in the exciting period prior to the imperialist “war on terror” offensive from September 11, 2001. One earlier example of the sorts of impact a revolutionary party can have was the Jobs for Women Campaign against BHP Steel at Port Kembla in the 1980s. Of course there are many other earlier examples not just from the DSP but also the Communist movement in Australia.
Today it appears the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) may be beginning to play that kind of role in the US. An excellent overview of that very exciting development is available in the detailed interview with Brian Becker in April that we re-published. The urgent political need exists for a similar type of party to re-emerge here in Australia also.
The Role of Red Spark and the Need to Grow
In its current state Red Spark cannot begin to meet the urgent needs of the situation we are in. We are still essentially starting out and remain far too small to begin influencing national political developments and consciousness. Our size also makes it more difficult to recruit. Only very serious and conscious people are prepared to join a revolutionary project that is still in the process of being established as opposed to one that already exists.
On the other hand, anyone who is serious about the question of re-building the revolutionary movement in Australia is confronted with the same situation that we face. There is no alternative to rebuilding essentially from scratch. Many individual socialists have made the same conclusion as us: they don’t see any of the existing Australian socialist groups as adequate so they don’t join anything. That was also our conclusion too. Otherwise, we would have taken the easier path joining one of them rather than starting over again, or we would join one now.
However, that does not at all mean we should adopt a dismissive or sectarian attitude towards others on the left. Disagreement is almost never on everything and disagreement on perspectives does not mean lack of respect. There is surely space for both dialogue and working together in campaigns.
Most immediately, we have to be prepared to work cooperatively with socialists and others in common campaigns especially solidarity with Palestine. We want to break down sectarian divisions on the left. In the medium term we are on the lookout for opportunities to fuse with existing groups. For us, future left unity has to be based on agreement about what to do in the immediate future (otherwise it won’t last), the central importance of an anti-imperialist perspective and the need for a mass action strategy to force changes, even now. This applies today in things like seriously building a united Palestine Solidarity movement. We think we can help win a successful unity in the future but only if Red Spark grows now.
As discussed elsewhere, we are aiming to grow on a principled basis, especially by orienting our organisation to contributing to the needs of the class struggle in Australia today. Principally that means strengthening the campaign in solidarity with Palestine and to end Australian support for Israel. In our assessment it is the Palestine issue more than any other that has the potential to begin to reshape the Australian situation.
More immediate than any other task, we need to start building up our numbers as rapidly as possible. We need to be many times bigger than we currently are. Only that growth will allow us to more powerfully contribute to Palestine and other campaigns to mobilise working people against our own ruling class.
The volatile and open international political situation is the objective reason it is possible for us to recruit and build up a bigger Red Spark. The rapid escalation of the class conflict, war and chaos internationally necessitate socialists taking more bold and effective action. It indicates that we are likely to find a growing receptive audience if we can find the ways to carry out such action.
The Red Spark building perspective outlined here is not new for us, rather it re-affirms the outlook we established when we started our project (then as Red Ant) in 2022. We have not allowed ourselves to be knocked away from that course. Rather we have consolidated our group and clarified this orientation. We look forward to working with others who have a similar outlook, seriousness of approach both to fighting the Australian state’s support for genocide and to building a new revolutionary Marxist political party in this country.