Socialist Alternative (SALT) grew to be the largest Left organisation in Australia from the mid-2000s. This occurred as a result of the decline of the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) and its liquidation into Socialist Alliance which is now many times smaller and weaker than the DSP was at its peak in the early-2000s.
Now, due to this relative weight, Socialist Alternative dominates the left’s response to major political issues in ways that no smaller organisations are able. While its role is often positive or necessary, SALT is also viewed as operating in ways that are self-serving, sectarian or that do not promote the long-term development of political campaigns or social movements. Sometimes it is criticised for having a parasitic relationship to the social struggles or campaigns that arise.
This negative side of SALT’s practice is justified by its view that, under current political conditions, social movements cannot become sufficiently large or powerful enough to win any significant victories – therefore dedicating ongoing resources to building them is not a priority. Solidarity with Palestine is a key example of this attitude, and the generally contradictory role that SALT plays.
Palestine Solidarity Organising
SALT’s role in Palestine solidarity has been both positive and negative. On the positive side, it has the national spread, resources and unity in action to provide the backbone and activist numbers which makes possible some key initiatives that it supports.
The most important case is Students for Palestine (S4P), a group SALT set up and controls, which has spearheaded several national student strike actions and tried to bring the National Union of Students behind these. S4P has also run on-campus campaigns such as campaigning for Student General Meetings that aim to pressure student unions to take a more significant stand against universities’ complicity in the genocide, particularly targeting involvement in producing weapons systems.
The tactic of pushing for Student General Meetings (SGMs) has been useful in applying pressure on right-wing student politicians (often in the ALP) who control student unions and student representative councils. This was the case at the University of Melbourne.
Soon after the Gaza invasion in October 2023, the right-wing controlled University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) annulled its own pre-existing policy in support of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign targeting Israel. The annulment was done in response to barely-credible legal threats made against UMSU by Zionist opponents of Palestine. The conservative and careerist student politicians who held majority control of UMSU quickly capitulated to the Zionist threat without a fight.
Socialist Alternative/S4P rightly called out this spineless back-down and in response ultimately organised two SGMs, in 2024 and 2025 – each attended by hundreds of students. These Melbourne University SGMs were also part of a national campaign run by S4P that involved major universities around the country. Only SALT (in this case operating within S4P) is currently strong enough to provide enough activist labour, co-ordination and discipline to have initiated and pulled off this important campaign.
In other campaigns besides Palestine, SALT has sometimes played a necessary role at least in initiating calls for action that have successfully brought onto the streets thousands or tens of thousands of individuals who are not part of any organised group, but oppose this or that example of injustice, oppression or environmental destruction. A clear example was the actions called against the Morrison Government’s climate policies during the 2019 “Black Summer” bushfires. Amidst the smoke then choking Australian cities, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in response to a protest call that was promoted by Socialist Alternative. SALT also led those actions in major centres.
The detrimental nature of SALT’s organising
The most immediate contradiction to SALT’s positive role is in the specific way it approaches organising. In the case of Palestine solidarity there have been many thousands of independent activists, and hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of people who would be supportive of a well organised and unified solidarity campaign if one existed. It is not only SALT members who are capable of playing important leading roles in this area – many others are also capable. There has been a pressing need to unite the small groups scattered around the country into an overarching campaign or common action targeting the Australian Government and pressuring it to cut ties with Israel.
Leading the establishment of a united campaign is a central task of any revolutionary socialist organisation with an orientation to re-building working class power. Crucially, to begin to rebuild power we need to strike some blows against the Australian Government. Ultimately, that means forcing the government to change its policy on Palestine: end military and economic ties to Israel and end its diplomatic recognition of the apartheid state. Forcing the Australian state to cut ties would be a huge step towards re-awakening working people to the idea that winning political battles is actually possible, and that battles can therefore be won in areas other than Palestine.
However, SALT’s approach seems to exclude the possibility of building a united campaign or waging a serious struggle to win concessions from the government or ruling class. We can see this looking at the same example of Students for Palestine (S4P). While there is some number of non-SALT members who have been active in S4P effectively the group is controlled by SALT and is widely seen as a SALT front organisation. Operating in this way means that SALT has its own pro-Palestine student group. Anybody else who wants to get active on the issue must either create or be part of a different group or acquiesce to SALT’s control of S4P. The result is an in-built disunity in the movement on campus between the major group and all the others. The inevitable result is that the various groups compete with each other, in some cases very destructively to the overall movement.
The extreme animosity between SALT and their arch-rival socialist group, Solidarity (who they split from in 1994 and still retain many political similarities with), is often highly destructive to the prospects of unified work. These two groups regularly become so fixated on how to out-manoeuvre one another that any campaign where they are both present tends to be poisoned or torn apart. The Melbourne left’s failed Trade Unionists for Palestine project was to some extent a victim of this destructive turf warfare.
A Festering Swamp or a Blockage?
As a former member of SALT (in 2013-14), the author has some insight into how the situation is viewed from the inside (or was viewed). The basic justification for SALT’s frequent lack of an orientation to working with others is the view that, outside SALT, all other organised left forces are far too small and weak, politically backward or sectarian, to justify wasting valuable time trying to collaborate.
The key formulation that reflected and reinforced this view within SALT was the derogatory term “the Swamp” to refer to the rest of the organised left. Far-left individuals were collectively referred to in internal meetings as “swampies” or even “swamp monsters” – the latter partly in jest. Only SALT is strong – everyone else “represents nothing” and is stuck in the mud – the thinking goes – so why bother with futile excursions into the marsh? There are, of course, elements of truth to this outlook. The far-left has weakened radically in the era following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. However, even if SALT’s “swamp” assessment were largely correct, the main question remains: how to bring more people into struggle (and not dismiss them out of hand)?
The political situation after October 2023, with its greater grassroots organising, provided opportunities to begin to turn around some of the Australian left’s weaknesses. Initiatives such as Trade Unionists for Palestine require careful, patient and generous support of revolutionaries. An approach that takes no care to re-grow grassroots organising but then complains of its weakness is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If socialists are not leading the re-building of grassroots organising, there are no other organised forces to do it.
Even in previous periods, characterised by much stronger working class organisation, forces outside of the revolutionary left have rarely been capable of independently organising mass action campaigns, i.e. without the involvement of communists or socialists (besides, perhaps, some purely industrial struggles). It’s difficult to imagine the initiative for effective, ongoing international solidarity campaigns coming from outside of the revolutionary left or without its active collaboration.
On the other hand, there are recent examples of large one-off progressive actions, such as on January 26 each year, or the recent march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge for Palestine. SALT has often played a role in initiating these. But these occasional mass expressions of anger, disgust etc. are not continuous or ongoing. Nor are they part of a more organised and targeted campaign. For those reasons, recent, large, one-off or irregular actions have not been able to build up momentum or develop into more effective ongoing campaigns with new leadership groups.
An ongoing mass movement with a serious strategy for forcing the Australian Government to change policy – such as occurred historically in the anti-Vietnam War movement – will require socialists and non-socialists to work together in a sustained way. Being the largest socialist group at the moment, SALT has a significant responsibility to work towards this.
The example of Melbourne University Student General Meetings
A concrete example may help paint a more vivid picture. The author is not a Melbourne University student, so this account will likely contain some inaccuracies. Though it comes from fairly close observation of developments on that campus, including discussions with activists involved over several years.
The two Student General Meetings (SGMs) held at Melbourne University in 2024 and 2025, as mentioned, appear to be excellent initiatives for bringing Palestine solidarity organising onto campus. Another main student group at the University, Students Against War, also supported and helped to build the 2025 meeting. The proceedings of the 2025 meeting seem to clearly express the two sides of SALT’s contradiction.
The meeting was an impressive mobilisation of over 500 students. It was so big it took around 20 minutes to get started because there were so many students in attendance, who all had to have their student IDs checked when entering the designated area (a formal SGM protocol). The fact S4P almost entirely ran the meeting must reflect their outsized role in building and organising it.
The meeting itself was essentially a set piece. All the main speakers were SALT members. No broader leadership participation was permitted. Students Against War (SAW) was excluded from any leadership role and prevented on procedural grounds from moving a motion. No real discussion was possible. Perhaps just five minutes or so was allocated to general discussion, and this was allowed only once the main work of the meeting was complete (i.e. discussing the motions that SALT/S4P moved).
Essentially, the procedure was a series of motions, each motivated by a short, agitational style speech by a different SALT member (perhaps with one or two close SALT collaborators). Discussion was firmly guided by the SALT chair. Two of the speeches were quite useful, largely outlining some of the history of SALT/S4P’s campaign against the right on the campus.
However, it was noticeable that no speaker seemed to seriously try to inspire or even convince the audience of anything much at all. The content of the various motions seemed sensible, but we didn’t get to hear the apparently counterposed SAW motion, so it’s hard to say. It was very striking how essentially formulaic the whole thing was. The SGM was basically a performance, enacted by SALT students, with no real engagement or interaction between the performers and the assembled student body.
Everybody at the SGM was outraged about what is happening in Palestine, but no broader creative initiative was permitted. There was no real discussion, so the meeting was very short. After around 40 minutes it was wound up with just a couple more perfunctory chants. Part of the crowd then went on a pre-planned march around the campus.
This organising style breeds passivity and cynicism among the most conscious students outside of the organising group. With over 500 students assembled – it seems largely to SALT’s credit – why not open a real discussion about what to do collectively, as a united campus movement? Why not allow other voices to be heard and work towards a real unity? Why be so scared of the independent voices of non-SALT members? Is activity from below so threatening?
SALT’s own response to that question is undoubtedly that what the SALT chairperson repressed was not genuine student energy but, again, “The Swamp” – troublemakers who represent nothing, pedants and right wingers who will just mess things up. Apparently the only acceptable way for Melbourne University students to play a leadership role in fighting for Palestine is to join SALT, or organise separately and against them. This is a very harmful situation that obviously weakens the movement.
Revolutionary Discontinuity
SALT can easily assert its virtual monopoly over campus organising due to a set of historical circumstances. Not only did the DSP collapse from the early 2000s but the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) earlier dissolved itself in 1991 following a long period of retreat. That came after the capitulation of the ALP’s left-wing when Labor was elected federally in 1983. Obviously, if other significant forces still existed on the left today, no one group could simply impose itself in the way SALT can. In that scenario SGMs (and many other things) would be much more lively affairs, and potentially interesting – the kinds of events that draw people in, that spark discussion and debate.
There is now a two-decade gap in revolutionary organising in Australia – the period since the decline of the DSP until today. Most students are unaware that any other situation existed in recent history, or the major differences between then and now. SALT (and the broader International Socialist Tendency current to which Solidarity also belongs) represents only one of the historical currents within the Australian socialist movement.
The DSP, which became dominant after the dissolution of the CPA in 1991, had a very different history, outlook and approach. The DSP approach to working with others in campaigns such as Palestine solidarity was referred to internally as the “mass action strategy”. This was applied and tested during the victorious mass campaign against the Vietnam War – from which the DSP current both emerged and helped to lead. Vietnam’s victory received important assistance from mass anti-war movements in the US, Australia and other countries.
Mass Action Strategy
Very broadly speaking, the “mass action” approach, aims to adopt and apply key lessons from the victory of the Russian Revolution and from the early years of the Communist International when it was led by Lenin. A key principle is the need to raise the political consciousness of the working class (and its allies – such as students) by democratically involving them in mobilisation. Part of that strategy is enabling broader political forces in leading campaigns – sometimes referred to as a united front. The working class cannot re-emerge as a powerful political actor if its leadership role remains limited to just the tiny number of organised socialists. Without others also playing leading roles, without serious and broad movements, there are too few opportunities for any emerging radical and grassroots leaders to gain experience and lessons.
Another key principle of “mass action” is the need to build campaigns that are seriously aimed at winning concessions from the capitalist state – such as forcing the federal government to break ties with Israel. Campaigns to win important demands will be organised and led very differently from performative campaigns that are limited to merely registering opposition. For serious campaigns to win there is, again, a necessity to involve the broadest range of people – including those from “The Swamp”, those who may be bourgeois in outlook, liberals, social-democrats, and so on. Moral-purity-ism may exclude such coalitions (with participants viewing themselves as too “radical” for that sort of thing), but a mass action strategy necessitates working with even those we may not like.
When the DSP was much stronger, it did not create or lead every campaign of that period, but there was a series of important campaigns that were characterised by democratic, open organising structures. These included the national series of mass mobilisations against the rise of Pauline Hanson; the successful national campaign in conjunction with the Mirarr traditional owners against construction of the Jabiluka Uranium Mine in Kakadu National Park; and blockading the World Economic Forum meeting at Melbourne’s Crown Casino in September 2000. These were all major national campaigns organised over long periods across Australia.
Different political forces could, and did, contribute to them because the organising structure of major campaigns was largely democratic. Sometimes, or in some cities or campuses, the DSP did lead these campaigns, other times not so much. In a democratic context, leadership meant convincing others to agree through genuine discussion, real engagement, real debate, common action.
Consistent work versus spontaneous “hotness”
These and other campaigns were the result of ongoing, united work of building up momentum towards identified priorities over time. That is distinct from simply putting out a call on an issue that is already “hot” such as the Black Summer climate actions.
Obviously the relative “hotness” of different issues (i.e. what the mass of people are thinking or concerned about) is a crucial factor in developing specific tactics to re-build mass consciousness and combativity. However, if it is the only criteria, a campaign’s orientation will be dictated by the consciousness of the mass. Under capitalism, mass consciousness is led by the bourgeoisie – so purely tail-ending mass sentiment cannot be an effective way to combat capitalist ideology. Mass sentiment, when aggravated, manifests not as ideology but as moral outrage – at least that is the case in the current period.
The point of social movements is to become a collective vehicle to change popular consciousness – to raise it. Raising working people’s consciousness, to the extent they organise and mobilise more strongly, is ultimately the only thing that can force the capitalist state to implement policies against its own will, i.e. to make concessions.
This means that patient work must be done on the most important issues even when the situation is not yet hot and doesn’t promise immediate large actions or recruits to socialist groups. The anti-Vietnam War movement was a small, isolated campaign for a long period before it broke out as a mass campaign in the late 1960s. Yet its successes in the mass phase were prepared by the less glamorous, patient, smaller-scale, earlier work. The mass phase would not have been possible without the earlier preparations by all the activists involved.
The DSP was for many years involved in publicising and patiently building up opposition to the Australian Government’s support for the Suharto military dictatorship in Indonesia and its occupation of East Timor. That priority was not only based on the DSP’s understanding of building its own party or building the socialist movement (at least in the immediate period). It also reflected the DSP’s assessment of the needs of the developing revolutionary movements in Indonesia, East Timor and other countries in our region. Breakthroughs overseas are also breakthroughs here in Australia – as the Vietnamese revolution showed.
Solidarity with South East Asia is also critical for developing political consciousness in Australia. That was especially the case in the 1990s given the “special relationship” between Australian imperialism and general Suharto’s brutal military dictatorship in Indonesia and East Timor. There can be no socialist movement in Australia of significance that is not thoroughly internationalist in outlook and orientation. Sometimes that orientation will require patience and hard work on issues that are not currently “hot”.
It was only in 1999 that solidarity with East Timor became a mass campaign outside of Timor itself. However, decades of slower political work by the DSP and many others had prepared the ground for the political explosion that occurred in 1999 in Australia. That campaign did force the Australian state to reverse its policy and, ultimately, to break its “special relationship” with the Indonesian armed forces.
The East Timorese national liberation movement, backed by a powerful international campaign, like the Vietnamese before them, ultimately won their independence and political freedom in 1999. Both of these victories were significant political defeats for Australian imperialism – the sort that can and did raise mass consciousness in Australia making it easier for the socialist movement to grow on a principled basis. It is a matter of historical record that Socialist Alternative and the IST essentially abstained from this critical work against an Australian backed military dictatorship.
SALT does not have a mass action approach. Its approach to actions, meetings and all political work – already familiar to some readers – reflects the IST’s different strategic and theoretical outlook. SALT’s approach is characterised by a reverence of working-class spontaneity and spontaneous consciousness in ways that absolve it of the work necessary to building up consciousness in a methodical way. (Within Leninist political theory, the term “spontaneous” is a key concept, essentially referring to consciousness that develops as a result of the impact of capitalist society on the mass of the working class without the added input of ideas injected by the intervention of the revolutionary party.)
SALT’s lack of responsibility for building the strength of the movement as a whole frees up the time and energy of members to focus on building the strength of their own organisation. They attempt to strengthen their own group as a vehicle principally to react to “spontaneous” outbreaks of mass sentiment – the “hotness”.
By tail-ending spontaneity SALT’s approach is anti-Leninist because it rejects Lenin’s thesis (first systematically articulated in the 1903 book, What Is To Be Done?) that revolutionary consciousness can only be reached by the interaction of two factors: the “spontaneous” impact of capitalist society and the conscious injection of revolutionary ideas onto this reality by the revolutionary party.
In a Leninist mass action perspective, the way these two component parts of revolutionary consciousness are brought into connection with one another is through the development of mass actions that respond to the realities of capitalist society and attempt to change it. Lenin argued there is no prospect of the working class developing an overall understanding of capitalist society (i.e. a revolutionary consciousness) unless it is active in trying to change its social realities.
Action is the incubator and crucible of all serious ideas. Working people, or the most politically conscious sections of the working class and its allies, armed with revolutionary ideas, must seek to win the broader working class to revolutionary ideas by winning revolutionary leadership over the spontaneous activity of the broader masses. This requires a continuous process of patient work, collaboration, thinking, explaining, democratic process, testing out ideas and building up over time.
The counter-posed strategy pursued by SALT assumes that spontaneous development of mass consciousness under the hammer blows of capitalist reality will itself be largely sufficient to bring the masses to revolutionary conclusions. In their conception, the role of the revolutionary party is limited principally to leading the spontaneously revolutionary workers over the finish line when the time is ripe for insurrection. When the working class is already revolutionary in sentiment – so the thinking goes – it will require only a party that has sufficient steadfastness and resolve – a party that is prepared to pull the trigger, i.e. lead the seizure of state power.
SALT’s “spontaneist” outlook and orientation is directly counterposed to Lenin’s political strategy. It is best understood as “Luxemburgist”, being part of the historical current pioneered by the Polish revolutionary leader Rosa Luxemburg. The historical origins and outlook of the IST within this current will be elaborated in more detail in part two of this series.
For now, we need to note only that SALT’s downplaying of the need to build revolutionary leadership of mass struggle today, is what underlies that organisation’s striking lack of care for the health of campaigns and for the movement as a whole. SALT’s notoriously sectarian approach to “movement work” and its method of building itself above all other considerations – even at the expense of the movement – is explained by this outlook.
The political priority of Palestine
If a revolutionary party with a mass action strategy had existed in Australia over the last two years it would have massively prioritised the Palestine solidarity campaign. This must be the case given the genocide in Palestine, the Australian government’s practical support for the genocide, and given the mass revulsion in Australia to our government’s stance. It is not conceivable in the current climate for broader working-class consciousness in Australia to take a serious step towards a more internationalist and anti-racist outlook, unless the crucial fight against the Australian state’s support for Israel’s genocide is waged effectively.
Such a party, if it had existed, would have been pouring its resources into building up and politically sharpening the Palestine solidarity campaign. This would have had to be an all-out effort to convert the campaign from its state of weakness and disparity into a larger and more united movement based around a clear strategy. Such a movement would need a democratic framework to unite key organisations, activists and leaders in a single perspective. Socialists would not always get their way, or be able to impose their will bureaucratically, but must learn to patiently engage with and work with others.
Rebuilding revolutionary organising in Australia
The possibility of developing a real mass movement, of forcing the government’s hand on something like breaking ties with Israel, of very large numbers of people getting involved and seeing such a victory unfold, of understanding how they were won – these are key ways the mounting crises of capitalist imperialism can be transformed into rising working class consciousness, combativity and power.
If short term sacrifices in socialist profile or control over minor campaigns are necessary, these concessions can be offset in the long run if revolutionaries can demonstrate in practice that they are capable of leading real struggles in ways that result in actual wins. The most serious fighters among youth and the working class will be inspired to join socialist or communist organisations that are able to genuinely contribute in this way. Through that a mass-action oriented, revolutionary party can be rebuilt.
In the serious and long-term work of raising the consciousness, confidence and combativity of the Australian working class, there is no shortcut. Recruitment on any basis counterposed to developing working class power is of dubious value. Building a revolutionary organisation can not be counterposed to building mass organising and working-class power. A socialist group with a parasitic relationship to mass movements won’t be able to grow beyond a certain point. In part this is because mass organising can only go so far without socialist leadership. It is also because many people are repelled by such an approach.
Socialist and Communist groups need to grow. They should not shy away from recruitment or be asked not to recruit new members or profile themselves – that would weaken the left. But the socialist movement needs to re-win support for that right by demonstrating an approach that is constructive and not parasitic. Unfortunately, Socialist Alternative, while contributing valuable activist resources and taking good initiatives, has a political outlook that prevents it from implementing even the best initiatives in a way that helps the left as a whole to rebuild.
This will ultimately doom it as an organisation. Notably, the timing of SALT’s rise corresponds exactly to the era of decline of social struggle. Its closest international collaborator, the US International Socialist Organisation was the largest left group in the US during a very similar time period to SALT’s rise in Australia. But in 2019 the ISO imploded – literally dissolving itself at conference. That is, the ISO’s demise occurred in the first stages of the major upturn in class struggle in the United States that is ongoing.
It would be a big exaggeration to argue that SALT’s rise in Australia has been the cause of the long downturn here. The causation seems to run mostly in the other direction: SALT has been best able to take advantage of already backward conditions. Though SALT’s approach to social movements is certainly one contributing factor to the left’s inability, so far, to re-build out of the long slump.
The big tests for SALT will come in the future. As the class struggle sharpens in Australia – following behind increasing class struggles overseas, and under the pressure of mounting crises for global imperialism – how will SALT respond? An approach that continues an essentially parasitic relationship to social movements will come under greater pressure as those movements strengthen.
Further, if organised socialist forces are able to emerge that can contribute to and amplify the interests of such social struggles, those socialist forces will grow along with the movement – perhaps toppling SALT from its perch as currently the largest far-left group in Australia.
The Red Spark project aims to re-establish anti-sectarian and mass action oriented socialist organising. If you have a similar outlook and would like to see the socialist movement re-built in Australia, get in touch and support us, or join.