[The consul-general of the Republic of Cuba in Australia, Nelida Hernandez Carmona, presented the following greetings to the first congress of the RSP]

Some revolutionary socialists remain convinced that no revolution has taken place and that the government of President Hugo Chavez is substituting ‘socialism from above’ in place of grassroots working-class struggle.

The first congress of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) was held in Sydney over the June 6-8 long weekend. Sixty-two delegates and observers came from Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Geelong, Adelaide and Perth, and from several overseas locations, for three days of analysis, discussion and planning of future activities.

Marxists believe that a revolution is necessary to open the road to socialism. But what does a revolution actually consist of? Advertisers and capitalist politicians would have us think a revolution is a pretty ordinary event, with their talk of “a revolutionary new soap powder” or an “education revolution”. The reality is quite different.

[This declaration was unanimously approved by the International Meeting of Solidarity with Cuba, held at the Convention Centre in Havana on May 2.]

Tim Anderson is mistaken in thinking that there was a “split” in the DSP last year and that the existence of the RSP is the result of “sectarianism”.

Dear DSP and RSP, I observed with alarm the split in the DSP [Democratic Socialist Perspective] last year, and the creation of another party, the RSP [Revolutionary Socialist Party], a minority faction which now competes with the DSP’s Green Left Weekly through a rival paper, Direct Action.

On April 26, left-wing Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa was re-elected with the support of 52% of the country’s 10.5 million voters, under a new constitution approved last September by 65% of voters. Correa easily trounced his closest rival, former president Lucio Gutierrez, who scored only 28.4%.

[The following is an abridged version of an article that first appeared in the April edition of International Viewpoint, the monthly English-language journal of the Fourth International (FI), the largest international association of Trotskyist parties.

The Marxism 2009 conference held at Melbourne University over the Easter weekend was attended by 764 people according to its organisers, Socialist Alternative (SAlt). Around half of those attending came for the session with left-wing journalist John Pilger, which was sold out.

The draft legislation for the government’s planned greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trading scheme (ETS), released on March 10, contained no real answers to the problem.

In mid-March, Max Lane, a member of the Revolutionary Socialist Party and author of Unfinished Nation: Indonesia Before and After Suharto (Verso, 2008), visited Manila at the invitation of the Asian Centre at the University of the Philippines to speak on this year’s Indonesian legislative and presidential elections.

[This open letter to members of the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) concerns the Socialist Alliance (SA), an organisation controlled by the DSP which it promotes as Australia’s largest socialist group.]

Dear Comrades,

Today the state is so all-pervasive in nearly everyone’s life that it can be difficult to imagine a society in which it didn’t exist. But there have been societies without a state, and Marxists expect that there will be another in the future. The state is an organisation that seems to stand above society and regulate its operations and mutual relations.

Building the Revolutionary Party. Jim Percy Selected Writings 1980-87. Resistance Books, 2008
Traditions, Lessons and Socialist Perspectives. By Jim Percy. New Course Publications, 1994

Salvadorans will vote for a new president on March 15. For the last 12 months, former independent journalist Mauricio Funes has held a double-digit lead over his rival, Rodrigo Avila, a former chief of the national police.

Dear comrades,

We stand for the transformation of human society, from its current basis of greed, exploitation, war, oppression and environmental destruction, to a commonwealth of social ownership, solidarity and human freedom, living in harmony with our planet’s ecosystems.

After the Waterfront – the Workers are Quiet
Published by the LeftPress
2008

The winners of capitalist competition tend to become monopolies. Monopolies, in turn, reverse the character of capitalist investment. When there was widespread competition in an industry, there was great pressure on each company to reinvest its profits in order not to be left behind technologically and thus to lose out.

Over the weekend of November 7-9, 2008, socialists from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Singapore, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Australia, Britain, Sweden and Taiwan gathered near Kuala Lumpur for Socialism 2008, a conference hosted by the Parti Socialis Malaysia (Malaysian Socialist Party, PSM).

The Eighth Congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) [CPI (ML)], held in December 2007 in Kolkata (Calcutta), West Bengal, was its biggest yet, registering the party’s growing support among India’s workers and peasants.

Over 80% of people in Australia support a woman’s right to choose abortion – a significant gain of the women’s liberation movement. Having lost the debate on a woman’s right to choose, the anti-abortion movement has adopted a new tactic – posing as being “pro-woman”. At the forefront of this maneuver in Australia is Women’s Forum Australia.

Contrary to what some ideologues would like us to believe, the economic arrangements we know as capitalism are not of long standing. Capitalism arose fairly recently in history (in the late mediaeval period), in a particular place (western Europe, mainly in Flanders and England).

On August 10, Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, and his vice-president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, secured a resounding victory in an opposition party-initiated recall referendum with a popular vote of 67.4%, an increase of 14 percentage points on the vote that brought Morales to office in December 2005.