Communist Party of Australia

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The Communist Party of Australia (CPA) was founded in 1920, dissolved in 1991 and in October 1996 the Socialist Party of Australia was renamed the Communist Party of Australia . The CPA developed its greatest strength in the 1940s and was threatened with a party ban in 1951. Although she never achieved great electoral success, she had a significant impact on Australian trade unions, social movements and Australian national culture.

history

1920 to 1991

John Garden , co-founder of the Communist Party of Australia in 1920
Adela Pankhurst , co-founder of the Communist Party of Australia in 1920

The Communist Party of Australia was founded in Sydney in October 1920 by a group of socialists inspired by the October Revolution in Russia in 1917. Among the party founders were the trade unionist John Garden, known in Sydney, and Adela Pankhurst , the daughter of the British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst , along with other members of the illegal Australian section of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The IWW and its members soon left the CPA because they did not agree with the political directives of the Soviet Union and the ideas of Bolshevism . In the early years, largely through the work of Garden, the CPU developed influence in the trade union movement in New South Wales , but by the mid-1920s its influence waned and it became a minor sect at the time.

In the late 1920s, the CPA was reconstructed by Jack Kavanagh , a Canadian communist activist, and Esmonde Higgins , a Melbourne journalist who was a nephew of Judge HB Higgins at the High Court of Australia . However, this party leadership fell out of favor with the Comintern , which was under the leadership of Joseph Stalin , who enforced his policy through issuers such as the American communist Harry M. Wicks , who was sent to have the CPA stand up for the Comintern's political line. Kavanagh was expelled and Higgins resigned.

A new party leadership consisting of Jack Miles , Lance Sharkey and Richard Dixon was installed by the Comintern, which took control for the next 30 years. During the 1930s the CPA developed influence in the labor and trade union movement, in particular members of the CPA were elected to leading positions in large trade unions. Her influence continued to grow in the Australian peace movement after 1935 when the Comintern changed its policy to fight against fascism . The movement against war and fascism intended to bring together all forces against fascism in an umbrella organization under the leadership of the CPA. This movement also investigated the incidents that led to Egon Erwin Kisch having considerable difficulties entering Australia in the late 1934s and early 1935s.

The CPA held leading positions in Australian unions, such as the Miners Federation and Waterside Workers Federation , although its candidates won few votes in general elections.

1939 was the Hitler-Stalin Pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed, although fundamental antipathy existed between the dictators and finally the belligerence of the Nazis at the beginning of World War II led. This treaty was a non-aggression pact between the two peoples, which included that after a successful attack by the Wehrmacht, the Soviet Union could annex eastern Poland . Australia declared war on the Third Reich after the attack on Poland . The CPA opposed this and condemned Australia's policies in the first phase of World War II as imperialist and called for an end to the war against Germany.

After the defeat of France in 1940, Robert Menzies banned the CPA, but Stalin left the alliance with Hitler when he attacked the Soviet Union . With the Soviet Union bearing the brunt of World War II, the CPA lost its initial war stigma. Her membership rose to 20,000 and she took over the leadership of major Australian trade unions and communist candidate Fred Paterson was elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly in 1940 . Paterson was the only member of the CPA to be elected to a state parliament in Australian history. But the CPA continued to remain insignificant in Australian politics and the Australian Labor Party continued to lead the Australian working class, but it split in the 1950s because some members feared the CPA's influence in the union movement.

After 1945 and the beginning of the Cold War , the CPA continued to lose influence. It followed the political line of the Soviet Union that imperialist wars and new economic depressions were immanent in capitalism and that the CPA should take up the struggle in the working class against the influence of the ALP. The CPA has been involved in the strike activities of Australian trade unions since 1947, culminating in the Australian coal mine strike of 1949 . The labor government of Ben Chifley feared for its position in the labor movement and broke the strike by deploying the military. The CPA never succeeded in gaining such a strong position in the trade union movement, although their concerns and ideas continued to influence. In 1955 an Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist) (ALP-AC) split off from the ALP, fearful of the influence of the communists in the trade union movement.

In 1949 the USSR carried out its first atomic bomb test and Mao Zedong gained power in the People's Republic of China . A year later, North Korea invaded South Korea and in 1951, during the Korean War , Prime Minister Robert Menzies of the Liberal Party of Australia tried to ban the CPA, but failed because he lost before the High Court of Australia . When Stalin died and Nikita Khrushchev condemned Stalin's crimes, members of the CPA resigned. Further resignations took place in 1956 after the Soviet invasion of Hungary. In 1961, the differences between the Soviet Union and China were reflected in Australia: A small Maoist party emerged, the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) .

In the 1960s, the CPA's membership fell to around 5,000, but the CPA held its positions in various unions and was also influential in various protest movements, particularly the anti- Vietnam War movement . In 1966 the CPA published its own magazine, the Australian Left Review . But the military intervention in the Prague Spring in 1968 created another crisis for the CPA. Party leader Laurie Aarons condemned the intervention and a group of supporters of the Soviet Union's measure resigned from the CPA and formed a new party, the Socialist Party of Australia .

In the 1970s and 1980s, this party continued to lose influence, although it adopted the notion of Eurocommunism and advanced the democratization of its internal structures, it developed more into a lost radical party than a classic Marxist-Leninist party . By 1990, its membership dropped to less than 1,000.

In 1991 the party broke up and formed the New Left Party . This new party intended to position itself on a broader party with additional members. However, this did not succeed and the New Left Party disbanded in 1991. The legacy of the Communist Party of Australia has been transferred to an organization called the SEARCH Foundation .

Youth organization

The CPA's youth organization appeared under different names at different times, such as Young Communists , Eureka Youth League , Young Socialist League and Young Communist Movement of Australia . The Eureka Youth League was a founding member of the World Federation of Democratic Youth , this membership was later taken over by the Young Communist Movement .

meaning

Although the Communist Party of Australia played an insignificant role in official Australian politics and ultimately failed, the Communist Party had influence in many areas. From 1935 to the 1960s, communists took leadership in numerous major unions and were at the center of the Australian strike movements. Many of its members played an important role in the cultural life of Australia such as the writers Katharine Susannah Prichard , Judah Waten , Frank Hardy , Eric Lambert and Alan Marshall , the painter Noel Counihan and the poet David Martin .

In numerous cases, the CPA's responses have had a significant impact on Australian politics. Conservative politicians like Stanley Bruce in the 1920s and Robert Menzies in the 1950s won elections because the ALP sympathized with the ideas of communism and split the ALP. Irish Catholics left the ALP in the early 1950s because they refused to accept the influence of communism on union strike movements. In 1954 this led to the split-off and founding of the ALP-AC and temporarily deprived the ALP of the opportunity to come to power.

For years the CPA and its members campaigned for better conditions for industrial workers, opposed fascism and dictatorships, stood up for equal rights for women and for the human rights of the Aborigines . She had partial success in these areas and many of her positions were later taken up in Australian politics, but she never achieved significant acceptance for communism in Australia. For years the party was a defender of the policies of the Soviet Union, which it criticized from the 1960s. Due to its partisan support for the Soviet Union, it lost numerous members.

Renamed in 1996

Communist Party of Australia on Labor Day 2007 in Queensland

The Socialist Party of Australia (SPA) was founded in 1971 when members resigned from the CPA, as they no longer overruled with the policies of the CPA and wanted to prevent the CPA from becoming a left-wing social democratic party . Those who left were of the opinion that the CPA should remain a classic Marxist-Leninist party. Nor did they share the criticism of the Soviet Union's intervention in the Prague Spring of 1968. The SPA was led by a group of veterans of the trade union movement, such as Pat Clancy and Peter Symon , who was the general secretary until his death in December 2008. In 1996 the SPA took over the name Communist Party of Australia and thus declared itself to be the successor organization of this party.

In 2009, Hannah Middleton was elected General Secretary and Vinicio Molina was elected Party Leader, a member of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union in Western Australia who was born in Guatemala.

The CPA is pursuing the introduction of socialism in Australia, is against the privatization of public property, is campaigning for the federal government to set prices, profit levels and interest rates, lifting taxes on food and services, is for the expansion of public property Sector, for land rights of the Aborigines , increase of the minimum wage and pensions, reduction of weekly working hours and for equal wages for women.

The CPA publishes The Guardian magazine.

The CPA defines the relationship to the Soviet Union and to the other former socialist states as follows: Since these were the first countries to introduce socialism, mistakes made by these states on the way to socialism are acknowledged and seen, such as the failure to implement a socialist democracy Stagnation of social life and economy. The CPA does not consider socialism to be a mistake and has - according to it - learned from the experiences of these states.

Individual members of the CPA ran for elections, albeit with little success. Michael Perth, for example, ran for the Port Adelaide constituency in 1998 and 2001 and also for the House of Commons, receiving less than 1% of the vote in both elections.

further reading

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c greenleft.org.au: John Percy: Towards a history of the CPA, September 27, 1995, accessed March 17, 2011
  2. ^ Joan Beaumont: Australia's 1939-1945 . Allen & Unwin , 1996, pp. 94-95.
  3. ↑ greenleft.org : John Nebauer: A Communist in parliament: the story of Fred Paterson, October 7, 1998, accessed March 17, 2011
  4. ↑ Benjamin, Roger W .; Kautsky, John H. Communism and Economic Development , in The American Political Science Review , Vol. 62, No. 1. (Mar., 1968), p. 122.
  5. ^ CPA : Celebration of a life dedicated to peace and socialism , The Gardian , accessed March 16, 2011
  6. ↑ CPA : About us , accessed March 16, 2011