At our 2019 National Conference in October the Socialist Party decided to change its name to Socialist Action.
While the politics, structures and outlook of our organisation remain exactly the same, we felt that the term ‘party’ was giving people a one-sided understanding of our character.
For many people, parties are associated exclusively with electoral politics, and many parties are seen as corrupt and connected to the establishment.
For us, electoral work is but one small part of what we do. We exist to challenge the establishment and the capitalist system. We are not in any way similar to the many capitalist parties that exist.
We think the working class needs to be organised around a program that is capable of transforming society. We understand that kind of organisation to be a political party. But in the minds of many people political parties are untrustworthy and exclusively focussed on the spoils of office.
We think this will change when the working class moves to create its own forms of political representation, but in the meantime the word ‘party’ can come across as negative and confusing.
We wanted our name to more accurately match the character of our organisation, which is why we chose to include the word ‘action’.
While much of our work at the moment involves the promotion of socialist ideas, we also want to point towards the need for socialist action.
Ever since our organisation was established in 1985, we have shown that even small groups can have a big impact if they are organised around the right ideas.
Today we firmly believe that in order to take the class struggle forward we need socialist ideas and action in the trade unions, amongst students, in community campaigns, and within the social movements. Socialist Action plans to continue our work in all of these fields.
We will also continue to publish The Socialist magazine as well as material at thesocialist.org.au.
We look forward to the ongoing support of our readers and appeal to all those who agree with our ideas to join Socialist Action and help us to build a socialist Australia and a socialist world.
Socialist Action National Committee
