Socialist Alliance (SA) is an Australian socialist political party and activist organisation. It was founded in 2001 as an alliance of various socialist organisations and activists, initiated by the Democratic Socialist Perspective and the International Socialist Organisation.
Engaging in a combination of grassroots activism and electoral politics, Socialist Alliance has one elected officeholder in Australia, Sue Bolton in the City of Merri-bek.
The party is involved with the trade union, environmentalist and student movements in Australia. It takes strong left-wing stances on numerous issues, including refugee rights, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights, anti-racism, and public ownership. Socialist Alliance also proposes nationalising the banking, energy and mining sectors. On workers' rights, the party supports raising the minimum wage, implementing wage theft and industrial manslaughter laws, increasing trade union bargaining to industry-wide status and reducing the working week to 30 hours. It opposes the building of new coalmines and any attempts to privatise public services such as Medicare. The party supports expansion of the public healthcare system to cover dental services and the cessation of public funding to private schools. Policies of state branches include support for public housing, public transport, public education and publicly owned utilities, as well as advocating for less militarised and hard-line policing and justice systems.
The party participated within the Victorian Socialists electoral alliance in Victoria, until it withdrew from it in May 2020.
History
Formation and growth Socialist Alliance was founded in 2001 as a loose alliance of socialist organisations and individuals. The project was initiated by the Democratic Socialist Perspective and the International Socialist Organisation. Seven other organisations were included in the initial exploratory meeting: the Freedom Socialist Party, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Democracy, Worker-communist Party of Iraq, Workers League, Worker's Liberty, and Worker's Power. The aim of the merger was to create greater left unity in the aftermath of the S11 protests of the World Economic Forum in Melbourne on 11–13 September 2000.
Many non-aligned socialists were attracted by the idea of left unity, and soon after its formation Socialist Alliance grew to a point where a majority of its members were not members of any of the affiliate organisations.
Debate on form In response to this growth, the Democratic Socialist Perspective and many non-aligned members won a majority at successive national conferences for measures that would move Socialist Alliance in the direction of becoming a united socialist party, rather than simply an alliance of groups and individuals.
Most of the affiliate organisations, however, in particular the International Socialist Organisation, preferred to keep Socialist Alliance as a broad left-wing electoral front for socialist organisations and individuals.
In late 2003, the Democratic Socialist Party resolved to become "a Marxist tendency in the Socialist Alliance", renaming itself the "Democratic Socialist Perspective" as a step towards turning the Socialist Alliance into a "Multi-Tendency Socialist Party". This move was supported by some 75% of conference delegates at Socialist Alliance's national conference that year,"Socialist Alliance 2003 Conference Minutes " although other affiliates remained opposed.
The 2005 National Conference saw the emergence of a number of particularly sharp political differences. These centred on: the extent to which Socialist Alliance should criticise the Australian Labor Party; whether the organisation should have a formal relationship with the newspaper associated with the Democratic Socialist perspective, Green Left Weekly, as a step towards Socialist Alliance itself having its own newspaper; and whether non-aligned members should have an automatic majority on the organisation's national executive.
Mergers and withdrawals Following this conference three of the leading members of a "Non-Aligned Caucus" and most of the active affiliate organisations gradually withdrew from the Socialist Alliance. The "Non Aligned Caucus" was an ad hoc grouping of members who weren't aligned to any affiliated organisation which formedSocialist Alliance May 2003 national conference in the lead up to the 2003 national conference.
In 2006, Workers Power left the Alliance. In 2007, the International Socialist Organisation also left.
In January 2010, the Democratic Socialist Perspective voted to merge into the Socialist Alliance, in effect ceasing to exist as an affiliate organisation.
In September 2012 the Socialist Alliance initiated unity discussions with Socialist Alternative. At the time, Socialist Alternative were in unity discussions with the Revolutionary Socialist Party which led to a merger in early 2013.
After approximately a year of leadership discussions, joint forums and participation by Socialist Alliance at Socialist Alternative's Marxism conference, the Socialist Alternative leadership publicly announced that they were pulling out unity discussions in November 2013, but remained open to ongoing collaboration. Socialist Alternative claimed the Socialist Alliance's approach to a transitional program and electoral politics was "not sufficiently similar to carry through a sustained and productive unity."
While the Socialist Alliance welcomed the opportunity for ongoing collaboration, it was critical of Socialist Alternative's reasons for withdrawal. Leading Socialist Alliance member Dave Holmes accused the Socialist Alternative of "sticking with its very narrow, propagandist view of socialist politics" rather than seeking to unite to appeal to socialists more broadly. The Socialist Alliance published the full correspondence on the unity discussions in its discussion bulletin, Alliance Voices.
At its national conference in 2014, the socialist youth organisation Resistance voted to merge with the Socialist Alliance and become its official youth organisation. The new organisation renamed itself Resistance: Young Socialist Alliance.
Resistance elects its own leadership body to coordinate the party's youth work and organise its youth conference, Radical Ideas.
Victorian Socialists
On 5 February 2018, it was announced that Socialist Alliance, the Socialist Alternative, community activists and trade unionists would work together to form an electoral alliance named the Victorian Socialists in order to contest the 2018 Victorian state election. The leading candidates for the Northern Metropolitan Region included Yarra councillor Stephen Jolly, and also featured Moreland councillor Sue Bolton (Socialist Alliance) and asbestos lawyer Colleen Bolger (Socialist Alternative). Socialist Alliance's Tim Gooden, former Geelong Trades Hall Secretary and CFMEU organiser, led the ticket for the Western Victoria Region. Although the party gained 4.6% of the vote, the highest of any minor party in the Northern Metropolitan Region, it failed to win a seat following preference deals.
The Victorian Socialists ran candidates in the electorates of Calwell, Wills, and Cooper during the 2019 federal election, gaining 4.6%, 4.5%, and 4.2% of the vote respectively.
In 2020 Socialist Alliance withdrew from Victorian Socialists.
Branches and membership numbers
In addition to having branches in major capital cities Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, and Hobart, the Socialist Alliance also maintains branches in and around a number of minor cities and regional areas, including in the Blue Mountains, Cairns, Geelong, Illawarra, New England and Newcastle. The Socialist Alliance also has individual members spread across rural and regional Australia.
A branch in Fremantle existed, it included a branch office and a library.
The Socialist Alliance is a registered political party at a federal level, and annually maintains electoral registration in New South Wales and in Victoria.
Federal registration requires 500 members, Victorian registration also requires 500 members in Victoria, and 750 members are needed for NSW registration.
These figures reflect electorally registered members, however, and may not be an accurate measure of active or financial membership. A Socialist Alliance Perspectives resolution published in Alliance Voices in February 2012, suggests a membership figure of approximately 600.
Socialist Alliance members are generally organised in branches of at least 7 voting members who "...must pay an annual membership fee.", however the party Constitution allows for "at large" members living in areas with no nearby branch structure to join.
Publications Socialist Alliance's policy and constitution can be found on its website.
The newspaper Green Left Weekly – which is politically associated with the Socialist Alliance – runs a weekly Socialist Alliance column called "Our Common Cause". The Socialist Alliance also has a close working relationship with Links – International Journal of Socialist Renewal. The Brisbane local newspaper The Westender has also run a column written by the Socialist Alliance, and its members have been published on sites such as ABC's The Drum and Online Opinion.
For around one year the Socialist Alliance published a quarterly journal, Seeing Red, the final issue of which came out in March 2006.
The Socialist Alliance and its members have also published a large number of pamphlets and books, primarily through Resistance Books, on a range of historical, political and social justice issues.
Before Green Left's website became the dominant means by which Socialist Alliance published written material online, they maintained a variety of blogs. Their internal discussion bulletin and national newsletter 'Alliance Voices' was maintained until 2014. Their West Australian branch maintained a blog until 2016. Socialist Alliance local councillors Sam Wainwright and Sue Bolton maintained individual websites until 2009 and 2013 respectively.
Grassroots campaigning While Socialist Alliance, its affiliates and non-aligned members continue to put forward and argue for socialist politics in the electoral arena, the organisation places a stronger emphasis on building successful grassroots campaigns as a way of promoting socialist politics."Another Australia is possible...", Socialist Alliance. Retrieved 20 April 2011. In the recent unity discussions with Socialist Alternative, the Socialist Alliance re-emphasised its support for this "transitional method" towards campaigns, arguing that campaign work is key to leading people to understanding the need to transform the whole capitalist system.
Socialist Alliance has been involved in a broad range of campaigns since its formation, reflecting both its own developing political orientation, as well as the activities and politics of its affiliates. These include in trade union movement, education, and environmentalist movements, as well as numerous other grass roots campaigns including refugee rights, same-sex marriage rights, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights, climate change, and international solidarity with movements such as the Palestinian struggle for national self-determination, the Rojava revolution and the Bolivarian Revolution in Latin America, and social-justice and pro-democracy movements in South East Asia.
Industrial