This article will not attempt a comprehensive overview of the urgent need for and utmost importance of a mass party for communist politics. Many articles have already been written which do a spectacular job at just this, and any consistent engagement with Partyist politics will immerse one in the many nuances, historical examples, and theoretical developments on the question of the party. Instead, what we seek to accomplish here is a brief argument for the party in the context of the Australian socialist movement. We will begin with a broad question; what successes has the socialist left in Australia been privy to since the dissolution of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) in 1991?[1] What sustained social and political influence has it had since the decline of the CPA? Being an official communist party, the CPA was, like the vast majority of those tied to Moscow, a flip-flopping bureaucratic centralist mess – and only became more so from the 1960s onwards. But its absence, we contend, points clearly to a party-shaped hole in socialist politics.
From 1991 onwards, the history of the socialist movement in Australia has been wholly abysmal. To deny this is to blind oneself to basic reality in the name of a relentless ‘optimism of the sect’. We have been pushed to the outermost political margins, have suffered 30+ years of splits, witnessed cyclical organisational collapses in the face of disputes over theoretical minutiae and interpersonal chaos, and, worst of all, have proven utterly unable to seize upon moments of political rupture. Individual groups, it is true, have risen in (comparative) popularity at varying periods, successfully capitalising upon a smart tactical manoeuvre, or a less smart, but no less effective, opportunist turn. Their names are well-known to the left; the International Socialist Organisation, the Democratic Socialist Party, Socialist Alliance, the Socialist Party of Australia (better known as the contemporary CPA), are but a few of the groups who have split, renamed, remerged, grown in number, and split again since 1991. Yet each of these, even at their most successful, at their greatest heights (preceding an often swift, harsh fall), paled numerically and in terms of political influence in comparison to the CPA.
Currently, Socialist Alternative (SAlt) holds the title for largest sect in Australia, sitting at around 700-800 cadre nationwide (an estimate, there is no data on their exact numbers). Both numerically and in terms of sociopolitical penetration, it is a virtual political blip when placed beside the sheer scale of the CPA, both at its peak in 1945-50 and during its steady decline. All the most major, most successful sects have been – at best blips, at worst stains, in comparison to the party. In the absence of such a unifying, mobilising political force – a hegemonic organisation of the socialist movement – one thousand grouplets have bloomed. Experimenting, oscillating, and flailing together and in competition, these sects have assumed a multitude of forms. Generally, they fall into one of two categories. The first is the theoretically unified sect which predicates its existence upon a particular historical-theoretical lineage since the Russian revolution (see Solidarity, Socialist Alternative, the CPA(SPA), the ACP, etc.). These sects fluctuate in numbers and often grow during upticks in class struggle but hit a ceiling on their growth precisely due to a reliance upon a theoretical unity. That is, upon a tight, abstracted interpretation of communism as a project and the fetishisation of particular tactics over and above programmatic unity – unity in action around a cohered strategy for working class power. In attempting to surpass the sect ceiling, or naturally through their engagement with the class, such groups often loosen the theoretical rigidity of their organisation. Yet without a programmatic alternative as the basis for action, division and strategic dilution precisely due to loosened theoretical unity contribute to an innate tendency towards an organisational split.[2]
The sect-form has dominated for the previous decade, since the relative collapse of its opposition – the broad left party. For a more comprehensive overview of the differences between these two, I recommend Edith Fischer’s article in Partisan - Broad or Mass: What Kind of Party Do We Need?[3] In brief, the broad party similarly rejects the centrality of program but substitutes for it a ‘broad-tent’ organisational approach, in which differences are papered over, ignored, or simply left to the side in pursuit of the most broadly agreeable goals and aims. TS resembles a form of ‘broad party’ in this sense, as does the new Corbyn party in the UK, and as Socialist Alliance (arguably) used to. Both the narrow sect and the broad party are, in turn, limited by the very fragmentation of the socialist movement they aspire (either directly or indirectly) to fix. Both have demonstrably been inadequate at the task of unification, and both are constantly impeded by the existence of dozens of other sects, all competing with the same, or highly similar, thin layer of the ‘newly radicalised’.
It would be hasty to unilaterally condemn the period following the collapse of the CPA; after all, it provided the very conditions for the emergence of something greater. The Stalinist-to-Eurocommunist bureaucratic CPA was incapable of, and unwilling to, lead the working class to power. Its dissolution and decline were in one sense a tragedy – the influence of the socialist left dissipated into the wind, and capital went on the extreme offensive in the struggle against labour. But insofar as it was inevitable due to the composition of the CPA and the accumulation of decades of poor political decisions, it provided, through a gaping void, the prolonged identity crisis necessary for the socialist movement to rebuild itself, reinterrogate itself, and begin reconstruction. What has this identity crisis taught us? The total inadequacy of the sect form and the broad party, and the need for a comprehensive organisational alternative.
If the history of the socialist movement since the collapse of the CPA has been the history of a struggle with a party-shaped hole, we should remind ourselves why the question of party is so central. To put it simply, the party is important because it is the most effective, indeed historically necessary form of working-class organisation for the making of revolution, for the transformation of society, the turning of the world on its head. If one rejects this basic historical principle, we advise you stop reading – lest you be convinced of silly ideas like the importance of a dual society, or the merger of socialism and the workers movement. We can see clearly what the absence of a party looks like for the socialist movement, and for working class politics. It looks like irrelevance. It looks like spontaneous upheaval (Iraq, the Global Financial Crisis, the Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter) without any force capable of seizing upon it and driving forth if not revolution then mass radicalisation and preparation for it. It looks like a politically sidelined socialist movement, and a working class on the defensive in every respect. There is little disagreement amongst Marxists, within the socialist movement, about the eventual need for a ‘party’ in the abstract – the dispute comes down to what such a party looks like, and how it will come about.
Accepting, then, the importance of the party, if not through rigid theoretical unity, and not through a coalitionist fudging of differences, what does the force capable of transforming society look like? It looks like a mass party. A communist party founded upon a program for workers power, that is, a democratically cohered political strategy, operating upon the basis of democratic centralism. Unity in action, but diversity in opinion – freedom for political factions to agitate for programmatic changes, but such factions must carry out the strategy as outlined in such a program. Such a mass party would posit itself as a true alternative pole of power in all aspects of society. It would operate not just in the parliaments, the streets, or the unions, but in and through all of society. In communist party cultural centres, libraries, gyms, sporting clubs, women’s sections, and thousands of other institutions and organisations. The very embryo of socialist society would be built, brick by brick, within the mass party that nurtures it. Such a force is the only force capable of winning power on all fronts; of agitating at the mass-scale necessary to win a sheer majority of the working class to the program of revolution, the program of socialism.
Only an organisation of this sort, one that outlines and elevates a comprehensive, open political strategy and can wield mass support from the class, can seize upon moments of rupture and crisis as they arise. Without this force, without the mass party, we have nothing – and we are capable of even less. To support such an organisational form does not mean to uncritically adopt the legacy of its closest relative, the historic Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Clearly, further work must be done to expose and eliminate the flaws that contributed to the decline of such a party. Much work has been done on this already.[4] What it does mean, however, is an affirmation of the need for something greater than the sect-form. For a party truly capable of making revolution, of leading and embodying the class.
The need for a mass party, for a unified left beneath, through and within such a party, is extreme. The need for this party to be fought for – consciously constructed – not ‘organically emergent’ in the sect-form, is even greater. Thirty years of struggle, and longer for comrades in the UK and US, have proven this. The ‘partyist’ position – the position that argues for an intentional construction of the mass party – is a minority position, even within the socialist movement. It is, nonetheless, a necessary one. One that strives to answer the question others in the socialist movement ignore and consciously seeks to actualise this answer – to bring about the mass party. Step by step, little by little. This is precisely the attitude that guides the current Points of Unity of the Communist Caucus. Our position in TS is predicated upon a recognition of TS as a force capable of something far greater; of being a major component in the refoundation in the communist party, the creation of something beyond the wildest dreams of its founders. We will remain committed to TS for as long as this possibility remains precisely that – a possibility – and strive to help make it into what we know it can be.
[1] We are talking here about the real CPA, not the contemporary Socialist Party of Australia, a sect which snatched the name up 5 years after the CPA dissolved.
[2] Two recent examples of how threats to theoretical unity (either from leadership or from membership) culminate in splits in such sects can be seen here: Furia, Anthony. “What Happened to Red Ant?” Partisan!, January 22, 2025. https://partisanmagazine.org/2025/01/22/what-happened-to-red-ant/; Furia, Anthony. “Why Did Adelaide’s Communists Split?” Partisan!, February 28, 2025. https://partisanmagazine.org/2025/02/28/why-did-adelaides-communists-split/.
[3] Fischer, Edith. “Broad or Mass: What Kind of Party Do We Need?” Partisan!, August 1, 2025. https://partisanmagazine.org/2025/08/01/broad-or-mass-what-kind-of-party-do-we-need/.
[4] See Mike Macnair’s Revolutionary Strategy in particular for a further elaboration of such issues.
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