Across the Ditch in Australia, a serious socialist political force is taking shape. Mid-2025 the Victorian Socialists (VS), following respectable results in the most recent federal election, launched nationwide. This new nationwide political party has attracted over 6,000 members and counting. With the rotten right-wing Labor Party in power and the far right on the march in the form of One Nation, the Socialist Party brings hope and a genuine alternative for many. The Socialist Party represents a small but bright and growing light in an otherwise dark political landscape.
Brief Background to the Founding of the Party
The Victorian Socialists, the state-limited precursor to the Socialist Party, was founded in 2018. Socialist activist and city councillor Steven Jolly instigated the founding, attempting to unite the two largest forces of Australia’s socialist left, Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative (SAlt) around a joint political project. Socialist Alternative is an explicitly revolutionary organisation of the same International Socialist political tradition as the ISO. They were originally hesitant to take part, but after a period of vigorous debate the organisation decided to join in order to bring socialist politics into the mainstream.
Just one year later, Socialist Alliance left to build its presence independently, and Jolly resigned in the face of sexual misconduct allegations. Nevertheless, VS persevered and consistently built its presence, developing its political program, internal democracy, and culture, and building a recognisable political force in Victoria.
The Political Character of the Party
The party is, to an extent, a broad party formation – the bar for membership is low, and you don’t have to be a revolutionary Marxist to join. That said, there are a number of factors which differentiate the Socialist Party from those many examples of broad-left parties which have failed or otherwise degenerated. Firstly, there is little room for illusions in capitalism in the party. The aims laid out on the party website are thoroughly and explicitly anti-capitalist, it reads:
…Our goal is to contribute to abolishing capitalism in Australia. To this end, we agree that:
- Because of their illegitimate origin and present-day function, the Australian economy and state cannot be reformed or managed to overcome capitalism or its consequences, but instead must be fundamentally transformed;
- This can only be achieved by a working-class movement that leads the majority against capitalism and its defenders;
- This movement must expropriate those whose wealth and power are dependent on exploitation and oppression, and abolish the economic, political, and juridical structures that preserve their hegemony.
The same document outlines the party’s view of socialism, which leaves little room for social democratic misunderstandings:
To ensure a classless society free of exploitation and coercion, socialism must:
- Abolish all exploitative forms of property ownership and control, including private ownership of and control over the means of production, distribution, and exchange, as well as other exploitative property relations, like rent, speculation, etc.;
- Institute social or collective ownership over the means of production, distribution, and exchange, to be managed on a democratic basis. Far from jeopardising personal property, this will enrich members of society, both collectively and as individuals;
- End gross inequalities in wealth through progressive taxation and other redistributive measures, including the expansion of the public sector and the universal provision of goods including housing, welfare, healthcare, and education.
The second area of differentiation is around the stated means by which the party will make change. The first and second of these means are “workplace organisation and workers’ struggle” and “community organisation – we participate in and support progressive community campaigns and work alongside other left-wing activists regardless of their party affiliation or worldview.” Far from being mere words on paper, the party has demonstrated in practice its devotion to class struggle outside of the halls of power.
The third of these stated means is “political organisation”: “We have formed a political party [Victorian Socialists] for the purposes of developing our understanding of the tasks that flow from these aims, of communicating socialist ideas, of contributing to and leading progressive campaigns, and of contesting elections.” While contesting elections is not a differentiating factor from those reformist broad parties, the approach they take is itself a point of differentiation. As well as running people-powered campaigns and training up an active membership in arguing for socialist politics, their intention when they do win positions is noteworthy. In an episode of The Party Line podcast, leading Socialist Party member Anneke Damule said:
…Socialists want to get in there [parliament] to put forward an argument about the way that the world should exist, to call out the way society runs and functions and the fact that everything that happens is to make the rich and powerful more rich and powerful. And then, I think it’s to give ballast to movements that exist outside of parliament using any institutional weight, resources, etc, to help bolster the social movements that will be required to actually do the job of transforming capitalism.
In the same episode, Omar Hassan, convener of the Socialist Party, said:
…Socialist MPs are not in parliament to write legislation. That is not the way we change things; that is not the way we affect things; it is to strengthen social movements, class struggle, and socialist organisation on the ground, which ultimately is the vehicle that can achieve results.
The last point of differentiation is that by far the largest organised force within the Socialist Party is Socialist Alternative, an explicitly revolutionary Marxist organisation with many hundreds of members experienced in and committed to revolutionary organising. Naturally, SAlt members make up the most active section of the party’s membership and subsequently is where much of the party’s leadership and candidates are drawn from. SAlt, as a revolutionary cadre organisation, acts as a radical anchor for the party.
Activity of the Party and Electoral Performance
A major area of Socialist Party activity is union work. The party has a “Socialist Workers’ Caucus” with many different sections of members in unions of various industries, from construction to education. Their education formation “Socialists in Schools” recently led a rank-and-file rebellion against the union’s Labor Party-aligned leadership for endorsing a bad deal. Socialists in Schools largely won that fight; the deal was voted down, a massive strike was organised, and a much-improved deal was won.
Further, the Socialist Party is engaged in many extra-parliamentary street campaigns. Decent-sized demonstrations were organised around the closure of “cohealth” medical clinics, campaigns built opposing new data centres, opposition organised against Pauline Hanson and the far right, and so on. Wherever there is a major progressive fightback to be had, the Socialist Party is there.
Of course, a significant reason the Socialist Party exists is to give people an option to vote socialist. Through tactics of grassroots fundraising and organising, the party has achieved impressive results. In the 2022 Victorian state election in Legislative Assembly (lower house) seats, the party averaged 5 to 6.2 percent of votes, with results as high as 9.3 percent. In the 2025 Federal Election, the party won up to 9.4 percent of the vote in targeted seats. The South Australian Socialists, in their first election, won 6.5 and 5.6 percent in the two seats they ran in. In the 2024 Victorian local elections, a VS candidate won a seat with a 40.7 percent primary vote and 52.7 percent after preferences. For a revolutionary socialist party campaigning in neoliberal conditions, these results are nothing to scoff at.
Victorian state elections are coming up, and the Socialist Party campaign is already underway, launching with a meeting of some 800 people. A recent mass door-knocking attracted over 300 people in one day. This campaign is set to be the party’s largest yet, with Socialists running in every single seat (there are 88) for the first time. This campaign is one to watch.
Conclusion
The Socialist Party could be the beginnings of a serious, mass revolutionary socialist party, the likes of which will be needed to overthrow capitalism. They are, of course, not near large enough and have too little in the way of influence in the working class. They are not explicitly revolutionary. The party has many major tests ahead of it: how will they actually comport themselves in parliament; how will they respond to capitalist crises; will they degenerate into reformism, or clarify a revolutionary perspective when the time comes? That said, the performance and growth of the party, as well as their political roots in experienced socialist organisations, is promising. They are making serious interventions in politics, both electoral and extra-parliamentary, the likes of which no socialist organisation in Aotearoa is currently capable of achieving. With the right in power and a feeble non-socialist political opposition, a New Zealand equivalent of the Socialist Party is sorely needed. Such a thing will not simply fall into our laps, socialists must work diligently to build up our side. If you’re a socialist, take action, get involved with the ISO, and help build the kind of organisation we need to challenge this rotten system and get rid of it for good.
