Laurence Aarons

Laurie Aarons (1971)

Laurence "Laurie" Aarons (born August 19, 1917 in Sydney , New South Wales ; † February 7, 2005 ibid) was an Australian politician and party leader of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) from 1965 to 1976.

Early years

Laurence Aarons was the son of Sam Aarons, a leading CPA veteran and participant in the Spanish Civil War . His brother, Eric Aarons, was also a CPA veteran who joined the CPA as a teenager and was an active unionist. The Aarons family were of Jewish faith . In 1944, Aarons married Carole Arkistall with whom he had three sons: Brian Aarons, who later became a noted communist in Australia, Mark Aarons , an Australian broadcaster, journalist and author who published the book Mark Aarons Book: The Family Files , and John Aarons.

Political career

During World War II , Laurence Aarons served in the military in Australian domestic security facilities and in the CPA's office for CPA members in the military. During World War II, the CPA had the most influence and power in its history. At that time it had more than 10,000 members, including the former party chairman Lance Sharkey , who helped build the Comintern in 1930. When the CPA lost influence and membership in the 1950s, Sharkey's political party leadership and his old age were heavily criticized. Laurence Aarons became the leader of a group of young party members employed in the CPA who wanted new leadership and a change of party line. Because they chose Palmiro Togliatti , leader of the Communist Party of Italy (PCI) as their model, they were called Italians .

During the Sino-Soviet quarrel in the 1960s, the CPA split and Aarons led the pro-Soviet and anti-China factions. In 1965 Sharkey resigned and Aarons succeeded him as General Secretary. Aarons was a strong supporter of Nikita Khrushchev 's policy of de-Stalinization . After the fall of Khrushchev, he was criticized for this by the leadership of the Soviet Union . In 1968 he welcomed Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia and criticized the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. In 1969, in a speech at the World Congress of Communist Parties in Moscow , he criticized the policies of Leonid Brezhnev .

In the 1970s the CPA supported the path of Eurocommunism to socialism, rejected Leninism and Democratic Centralism and tried to form a united front of the various left parties against the Vietnam War . However, the CPA failed to attract new members from the New Left , and its influence and membership decreased. Aarons resigned as General Secretary in 1976 but remained influential in the CPA until it disbanded in 1991.

Eric Aarons commented on his brother's career: The CPA and Laurence Aarons had succeeded in shaping the most important political issue of the 1960s, a broad anti-war movement against the Vietnam War under the recognized leadership of the CPA. The change in the political line initiated by the uncritical CPA followers of the Soviet Union, which began with the criticism of the Soviet Union's military intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968, was significant. However, Laurences Aarons did not succeed in the long term in halting the decline of the CPA and communist politics in general in Australia.

Others

During the CPA's years of political decline, Aarons lived in Maianbar , New South Wales after several painful medical procedures, where he wrote political books and articles. He died after a long illness at the age of 87 in Sydney.

Criticism of the CPA

In its April 2005 obituary in The Gardian , the CPA criticized that the policy developed by Aarons had led to the dissolution of the CPA in 1991, that the abolition of democratic centralism in the 1970s had not advanced and weakened the CPA, that it was also a mistake to accept Trotskyism's political line. Aaron's grave mistake was to allow communism as a term to become a dirty word within the CPA . He was particularly accused in this article for having the philosophy for an Exploding World in his brother Eric's book . Today's Values ​​Revolution adopted popular theories that, in the end, were the idea of Mikhail Gorbachev that led to the end of the Soviet Union. He had given up the historic role of the Communist Party as a party of the working class, which was shown in 1985 when the National Committee passed a resolution calling on the CPA to adopt a broad left movement, a socialist party in a broad left coalition. Another fatal mistake was that the CPA, led by Aaron, was neglecting the interests of the working class, as evidenced by the CPA's approval of the 1983 concept of wage change proposed by the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Council of Trade Union- led unions persecuted. This neglect has limited the ability of the Australian labor movement to fight.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Aarons family file by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation , accessed April 15, 2014
2. ^ Workers Online : Vale Laurie Aarons 1917-2005 (English), accessed April 15, 2014
3. ↑ The guardian (PDF file; 1.2 MB): The legacy of Laurie Aarons (English), accessed on March 19, 2011