By: David Clarke, member of the NSW Teachers Federation and NSW Socialists

The Socialist Party states that it is a broad socialist working class alternative to the sects that dominates much of the Australian left. It proclaims to treat unions and the workplaces as a real theatre of power, insisting that a mass workers party must be forged inside those sites through clear line, hard and patient organising. In the current left landscape, it positions itself as the ‘principled’ core within the Australian Socialist movement arguing that real influence comes from rooted, collective struggle in workplaces, university campuses and communities rather than slogans or spectacle.

Omar Hassan’s Marxist Left Review article, “The Australian Socialist Party: A Project to Transform the Left”, advances a familiar argument from the Australian far left: that the crisis of socialist organisation can be overcome through a new broad formation capable of uniting disparate socialist currents, electoral initiatives and activist layers into a common project. There is a partial truth in this proposition. The fragmentation of the left is real. The need for a more coherent political organisation of socialist forces is real. And it is equally true that projects such as Victorian Socialists would not have developed as far as they did without the commitment, labour and discipline of Socialist Alternative members.

Yet none of this resolves the decisive question because without a clear, class based political line, organisational reforms merely repackage old weaknesses and leave the working class unrepresented in the workplace. The Marxist-Leninist method insists on line, cadre, and real power rooted in workplace and union struggle, not broad rhetoric or spectacle. From this standpoint, the problem is not simply whether the left can be brought together organisationally, but on what political basis, through what methods, and with what relation to the organised working class. These questions are not secondary. They are the substance of the matter. If they are evaded, then “transforming the left” becomes little more than a slogan for repackaging old weaknesses in a new organisational form.

Uniting the Left? Or who’s front is it anyway?

Hassan’s article suffers from precisely this problem. It approaches regroupment primarily as a question of initiative, convergence and activist will. But the Marxist-Leninist theory of the party insists that organisation cannot be reduced to broad networks, electoral reach, or mere membership numbers. A party, in this view, is a political instrument of the working class, forged through a clear line, disciplined cadre, and deep rooting in workplaces and unions. By contrast, the Socialist Project proclaims a large, umbrella party that can ride on a broad tent and mass appeal; yet that vision hands over power to a sect-like apparatus that centres on caucus control rather than class rooted mobilisation. This is the critical difference that determines whether regroupment serves the class or merely rebrands sectarianism.

Hassan asks us to regard Socialist Alternative as a credible force in constructing a new socialist party, while skimming over the political method and organisational culture Socialist Alternative has repeatedly demonstrated in practice. That omission is not accidental; it is essential to the argument for in the concrete, particularly in NSW, it becomes far harder to sustain the claim that Socialist Alternative can serve as a vehicle for overcoming fragmentation in a principled way. From a Leninist vantage, Socialist Alternative’s relationship to the broader socialist project can be read as a shift in the political terrain: it helped birth the Victorian Socialists in 2018 (with Steve Jolly and the Socialist Alliance) and, through the state-based leadership apparatus, has exerted control over party architecture since then. The Victorian Socialists launched nationally as the Socialist Party in 2025, and Socialist Alternative members have largely formed the active core of other state and territory branches, effectively shaping the organisational culture and methods of engagement across the federation. This dynamic warrants critical scrutiny if the aim is to advance a coherent, principled, centralised revolutionary project rather than a fragmented amalgam of competing currents.

It is certainly possible to recognise the activist commitment of Socialist Alternative members while also criticising the political content and organisational form through which that commitment is expressed. To do otherwise would be to confuse energy with correctness, or organisational capacity with revolutionary seriousness. The issue is not whether Socialist Alternative has cadres willing to dedicate time and effort to campaigns. The issue is whether its methods assist in building a durable, democratic, working class socialist movement, or whether they reproduce the sectarian dynamics that have long weakened the far left.

Recent Experiences in NSW Socialists &
Co-operating with SAlt in practice

In NSW at least, the record points decisively toward the latter, exposing how independent members are too often treated as adjuncts to a pre-existing internal bloc with its own discipline, assumptions and tactical priorities rather than as comrades on equal political footing. Political differences are not wrestled with in a clear, principled way; instead, they are degraded into interpersonal questions, issues of trust, tone, relationships or attitude, a substitution of psychology for politics that reflects an idealist method and a failure of democratic centralism in practice.

In my experience of attending official NSW Socialist events, I saw a trajectory consistent with this pattern: I was initially treated as a useful ally for Socialist Alternative who wasn’t allowed to engage in political discourse outside of the “party line” (even though there was no coherent political programme), and later was denounced in meetings as a “Stalinist,” cast to the “Right of the ALP,” labelled a “hack for the unions,” and even accused of membership in the “Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp.” This insistence on policing spaces and enforcing conformity is a conscious tactic to ensure that party spaces remain controlled by Socialist Alternative, organised on their terms, and conducted with a coercive demeanour that verges on schoolyard bullying, an approach aimed at shoring up internal discipline at the expense of open, collective political struggle. If a revolutionary project is to be built, this pattern must be branded as the distortions of a bureaucratised practice, not as legitimate political method, and counterposed with democratic centralism, transparent debate, and shared leadership as the material basis for a united, principled struggle.

Real political differences and tendencies do not arise from personality in the first instance. They arise from differing assessments of material conditions, class forces, strategic priorities and organisational tasks. These differences must be clarified through line struggle, criticism and self-criticism, and transparent political debate. When an organisation or tendency consistently reframes disagreement as a matter of personal conduct or group sensibility, it obscures the real political stakes and disarms serious debate. Instead of confronting contradiction politically, it manages contradiction informally.

That method is fatal to serious party building. A workers’ party cannot be built through social management, soft exclusion or factional manoeuvre concealed behind appeals to “good process” or “collective functioning”. Democratic centralism properly understood is not the suppression of disagreement, nor the informal domination of a broader formation by the best organised internal current. It is the unity of Marxists around a common line forged through open struggle and collective discipline. Where political disagreement is depoliticised, democratic centralism becomes impossible in substance, even if it survives as a phrase.

The practical consequences of this political culture have already been visible. The events discussed in the Labor Tribune article “Democracy Under Strain: NSW Socialists Pre-selections” provide a concrete example of how these problems manifest: not merely a single preselection dispute, but a pattern of narrowing democratic participation, marginalising independent voices, and treating political contestation as something to be managed rather than clarified. Whether every individual participant understood the process in the same way is beside the point; what matters is the political logic on display, a logic that subordinates genuine democratic life to the strategic needs of an organised sectarian current. In this light, Hassan’s call for reform resonates as a corrective to bureaucratised practice: “If the party is to succeed it will have to develop a culture of collaboration on the basis of open discussion and debate, where the majority views are respected. The rights of minorities are already enshrined in the constitution of the state-based parties, which should be reflected nationally as well.” This insistence on transparent debate, minority protections, and a commitment to democratic centralism must be translated into practice across the federation to counter the centripetal pressures of sectarian currents and to build a united, principled revolutionary project rather than a fracturing of political life.

This should matter enormously to anyone serious about socialist regroupment. A new socialist formation cannot be viable if one of its key organised components treats broadness primarily as a field within which its own caucus discipline can operate more effectively. Such a formation will not transcend the sect. It will simply provide the sect with a wider arena.

Organising Workplace Power: The base of Socialist Praxis

The same sectarian and idealist method is evident in Socialist Alternative’s orientation to unions, again especially in NSW. Hassan’s article speaks as though the central issue is assembling enough socialist forces to reshape the left politically. But no Marxist-Leninist can accept such an approach if it leaves unresolved the question of class implantation. The strategic centre of socialist politics is not the activist milieu, nor the electoral campaign machine, but the organised working class. Without roots in workplaces and trade unions, socialist organisation remains suspended above the class, speaking in its name but not organically connected to its struggles.

This is precisely where Socialist Alternative is weakest. In NSW, it has very little credibility when it comes to building union power in workplaces. That is not because union work is easy, nor because every socialist current has solved the problems of trade union strategy. It is because Socialist Alternative has too often approached the unions in an idealist and sectarian manner: as spaces for rhetorical militancy, external critique, or episodic intervention, rather than as contradictory institutions of the class requiring sustained, patient and materially grounded organising.

In Victoria, where the Socialist Workers’ Caucus (an internal caucus within the Socialist Party oriented towards union organising) is more developed, its activity has centred largely on producing social media material urging members to vote against the union leadership. The default posture toward that leadership is invariably sectarian, treating them as though they have already betrayed the membership rather than assessing them concretely in relation to the balance of forces at any given moment. In place of sustained workplace organising, the SWC has substituted a consistent focus on leadership critique. This is not to suggest that union leaders are beyond criticism, there are plainly moments when such criticism is warranted and necessary. But criticism of leadership is a tactical question, one whose appropriateness must be determined by the material strength that actually exists on the ground. When the SWC elevates that tactical question into a point of principle, the result is the sectarian conduct that has come to define its union work and, critically, that sectarianism actively undermines the very workplace power it claims to be building.

Marxist-Leninists understand that trade unions are neither revolutionary by nature nor politically neutral. They are shaped by class struggle, but also by bureaucratic mediation and the pressures of capitalist legality. That contradiction is precisely why communists must work within them. The task is not to denounce them from the outside, nor to tail officialdom from within, but to build rank and file organisation, develop militants rooted in their workplaces, and connect the immediate economic struggle of workers to broader political confrontation with capital and the state.

This kind of work demands patience, discipline, credibility and endurance. It means building trust among co-workers over time. It means taking up ordinary grievances and helping turn them into collective action. It means understanding enterprise bargaining, delegate structures, industrial law, branch politics and the actual composition of the workforce. It means learning how power is really built on the job. These are not glamorous tasks, but they are foundational. Any socialist current that lacks credibility here cannot compensate with louder rhetoric or more energetic campaigning.

The problem with Hassan’s perspective is that it underestimates this reality. It assumes, implicitly if not explicitly, that activist recomposition can generate the political conditions for a new socialist party. But if the organised forces driving that recomposition are weakly rooted in the class, sectarian in their internal conduct, and idealist in their handling of contradiction, then the outcome will not be a transformed left. It will be a more ambitious version of the same activist leftism that has repeatedly reached its limits.

That does not mean Marxist-Leninists should reject every broad formation or every attempt at cooperation. Far from it. Sectarian fragmentation is a real obstacle. Electoral work can play a useful role. Common campaigns can build trust and sharpen political questions. But principled unity is not achieved by minimising political differences or by suspending criticism for the sake of organisational optimism. It is achieved by clarifying line, testing methods in practice, and anchoring socialist politics in the working class rather than in the activist milieu alone.

This is what is missing from Hassan’s article. It speaks the language of transformation while sidestepping the concrete practices that have repeatedly blocked such transformation. It acknowledges the need for broader organisation but does not seriously confront the political and organisational habits that make broadness unworkable in practice. Most importantly, it does not reckon with the gulf between activist concentration and class implantation. A socialist party worthy of the name cannot be built on the basis of electoral voluntarism, internal caucus manoeuvre and weak workplace roots. It must be built through a serious turn toward the organised working class, through open ideological struggle, and through an organisational culture capable of treating differences politically rather than personally.

Conclusion

In this sense, the contradiction at the heart of the Australian Socialist Party project, as Hassan presents it, is the contradiction of much of the contemporary far left. It seeks scale without first resolving method. It seeks unity without first establishing a principled basis for it. It seeks political influence without the long-term work of building working class power. The result is a model of regroupment that remains trapped within the horizons of the activist layer, even when it speaks in the name of the class.

The socialist movement in Australia does need transformation. But transformation will not come from simply assembling more organisations and individuals under a broader umbrella while leaving sectarian political culture intact. It will not come from substituting electoral visibility for workplace implantation, nor from confusing activist commitment with revolutionary method. It will come only through a break with idealism and sectarianism, a recommitment to materialist analysis, and a sustained orientation to the organised working class as the decisive force in socialist politics.

Any project that cannot meet that standard should be approached critically, no matter how expansive its rhetoric. And any article that presents such a project as a path to transforming the left without seriously addressing these questions deserves the same response: not unprincipled hostility, but firm and comradely criticism.