PARTISAN!

As the Victorian Socialists expanded, members, friends and sympathisers of the RCO were quick to form the Communist Caucus, which found itself under immediate attack from sections of the broader VS. Anthony Furia explains what the point of the communist caucus is to dispel rumours, slanders, and misinformation.

[See also: Rules & Points of Unity of the Communist Caucus]

In the early stages of its public formation, the Communist Caucus has suffered from a repeated (and often wilful) misinterpretation of its intentions, aims, and character. We hope to here clarify what, precisely, the caucus is, what it fights for, and why this fight is of utmost importance to the socialist movement in Australia.

The Communist Caucus is a sustained, coherent intervention into The Socialists. It is a political faction inside the organisation, agitating for a particular strategic, political direction. That strategic direction is a partyist one. For the caucus, this means advocating for The Socialists to aspire to the nascent potential within the organisation; to be the embryo of the type of party the socialist movement needs (a communist party). A unified, democratic, mass party with hegemony over the socialist movement itself, capable of mobilising and merging the communists and the workers movement, and striving to present, in all facets of life, a systematic alternative to the capitalist state (and thereby class). This, of course, all sounds highly ambitious and far beyond the scope of an organisation such as The Socialists as it stands. It certainly is! The caucus does not propose that in adopting a strategic orientation, which emphasises the primary task as the formation of a communist party, that such a party will magically emerge.

Adopting this strategy is a fundamental step toward achieving such a party. We cannot wait for it to fall from the sky, pre-formed and ready-made, nor can we depend on spontaneous upticks in class struggle to begin the fight for such a party. We must lay the foundations and establish a plan; a cohered, central, strategy before any torrential downpour of class war, precisely because such foundations are what will allow us, allow the socialist movement, to capture these spontaneous eruptions and transform them into the long struggle for workers power. This, then, is what the caucus aims to do – it aims to transform The Socialists into an organisation that is comprehensively fighting for the unity of the socialist movement, for a systematic alternative pole of power to the capitalist state, and thus for the communist party.

The first place to look in any good-faith engagement with the nature of the caucus is, undeniably, its Points of Unity – those eight points which outline precisely what it stands for, and thereby what it stands against. Here, one can see clearly what the Communist Caucus aims to achieve in any transformation of The Socialists. We are in favour of a democratic party, a scientific party, an internationalist, programmatic, centralist, mass party. A party defined by such characteristics is well on its way to becoming the communist party. An organisation defined by a combination of such characteristics and a strategic aspiration towards them is an ambitious, pre-party formation with far more promise than any of the sclerotic sects that compose the movement today. The Communist Caucus fights for The Socialists to become such a formation; to both affirm and adjust the trajectory it already finds itself on today and establish firmly and concretely a strategy that truly embodies the immense potential of the organisation.

What the caucus is not, has never claimed to be, and does not aspire to be, is a broad tent ‘opposition’ to the current orientation of The Socialists; one dominated by the attitude of Socialist Alternative to the project (an attitude which, it seems, is increasingly less monolithic, and often unclear, in character). We are not attempting to embody some sort of Frankenstein’s monster of sects; a cobbled-together mishmash of groups which find themselves opposed to Socialist Alternative simply because Socialist Alternative is the biggest target. The politics of the caucus are partyist, they, in the points of unity and rules, reflect a proposed strategy for The Socialists. Opposition to the executive, and to the position of Socialist Alternative towards the organisation, is contingent upon how such a position contradicts and impedes the potential of The Socialists to become something far greater than an electoral front for a sect, or a faux-Menshevik Australian ‘left’ electoral party.

By its detractors, the communist caucus has been labelled derogatorily as a caucus seeking a party “modelled on the politics and structure of early-twentieth-century European social democracy.”¹ This, as with many political criticisms made between socialists, is a half-truth. We do indeed admire, and, in certain senses, seek to emulate the politics and structure of early-twentieth-century Social Democracy – just as Lenin did. Yet the concept of a mass party, of a totalising oppositional force that penetrates every layer of social life and unifies upon the basis of a clear, coherent strategy – a programmatic road to worker’s power – is not new, nor is it unique to some obscurantist trend. It is an essential element of Marxist theory and practice, of the history of Marxism as an emancipatory struggle. What the caucus does is propose a way to get there, a centering of the organ of the class – the party – in the practice of the socialist movement and socialist politics. The Socialists can be one of the most vital conscious elements in the construction of such a party.

The Communist Caucus, then, is a caucus that struggles against any strategic orientation for The Socialists that fails to recognise this potential. We oppose perspectives that see The Socialists as purely a cynical electoral/recruitment front for more ‘revolutionary’ sects, and we oppose perspectives that blindingly accept the place of The Socialists in political life as akin to that of the Australian Greens, or an Australian Die Linke. There will, of course, be circumstances in which these differing strategic orientations align with that of the Communist Caucus. Perhaps those with a propensity to accept The Socialists as a potential Australian Die Linke will support proposals pertaining to the independence of The Socialists as an organisation such as branch organising, and perhaps those who see it as an electoral front will support ones that seem to increase their potential recruitment pool (such as national expansion). Yet the only caucus that can currently claim to struggle for The Socialists to embody a party that is both revolutionary and mass in politics and practice, to orient itself to the formation of such a party, is the Communist Caucus.

1 Tavan, Luca. “Victorian Socialists Conference Resolves to Expand Party Organisation.” Red Flag, June 17, 2025. https://redflag.org.au/article/victorian-socialists-conference-resolves-to-expand-party-organisation.