The intransigence of Socialist Alliance – and the undemocratic nature of electoral law – has forced the NSW Socialists to seek registration as NSWSoc. Bob Sparks looks at ongoing barriers to socialist unity outside the ALP.
The New Year has thrown up new setbacks for socialist electoral campaigning and the fight for socialist unity outside the Labor Party. The year began with the declining Socialist Alliance voting to turn down the unity overtures of the Victorian Socialists-inspired Socialist Party (SP) and continue with its own separate electoral project. Not long after, the NSW branch of the Socialist Party announced that it logged an application for electoral registration, but with an official name that mutilates the word Socialist and inadvertently conjures up images of Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Big Brother.
Socialist Alliance on a road to nowhere
Instead of exploring the possibility of socialist unity, the Socialist Alliance has decided to dig its political heels in and go it alone. The Socialist Alliance voted at its 20th National Conference held in Geelong in early January to continue with its own electoral registration and not join the new Socialist Party as an organised tendency. It did however give a nod to the possibility of future Socialist Alliance / Socialist Party electoral cooperation.
As a recent article on the Socialist Alliance website announced: “The conference noted the significant progress the party had made towards achieving electoral registration in Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia, with a resolution passed affirming the Socialist Alliance’s intention to complete the process in all these states.”
Tellingly, for weeks now, the first pointers to action on the Socialist Alliance website are a push to get the organisation registered for elections.
At the Geelong conference, photos of which show a much diminished membership, delegates unanimously rejected a proposal from the newly-formed Socialist Party that the Socialist Alliance immediately relinquish its own electoral registration, in order to become a tendency within the Socialist Party.
Instead, delegates reaffirmed support for the previously agreed position of both parties to:
- seek to avoid running in the same seats and to consider endorsing each other’s candidates;
- joint upper house electoral tickets where agreement can be reached; and
- to explore areas for potential cooperation and collaboration between the two organisations.
Let’s break this down. Despite “significant progress … towards achieving electoral registration”, the fact is that the Socialist Alliance has yet to achieve electoral registration in five of the nation’s eight states and territories. The Victorian Socialists / Socialist Party already have registration in two states (Victoria and South Australia) and will be pursuing it in others. Therefore, punters will be treated to the spectacle of both socialist electoral projects competing against one another to get electoral registration.
As for the two socialist electoral projects not running against each other and working towards joint upper house tickets, the prospects don’t look good. The Socialist Alliance has already precluded this in Western Australia, where it has announced that Sam Wainwright will stand in the WA Senate for the 2028 federal elections. Will the Socialist Alliance unilaterally announce other candidates for the 2028 federal elections, such as Sue Bolton for Wills, Sarah Hathway for Corio or Peter Boyle for the NSW Senate? If so, any prospect of socialists not running against each other may well degenerate into a race to see which project can claim electoral territory first.
The Socialist Alliance refuses to read the writing on the wall. While its membership continues to age and its numbers stagnate, the newly-formed Socialist Party has surpassed 5000 paper members, the majority of whom are young activists radicalised by Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. The new Socialist Party outnumbers the Socialist Alliance fivefold (if not tenfold). The Socialist Alliance is faced with a stark choice. It can either continue along on its current trajectory, which is effectively a road to nowhere. Or it can join the Socialist Party as an organised tendency, continue to publish Green Left and build a united socialist formation with thousands of newly signed up Socialist Party members. To those that can look political reality in the eye – the choice is obvious.
Formerly known as NSW Socialists
Undemocratic electoral laws have forced the NSW Socialists to adopt the official moniker New South Wales Soc and the awkward abbreviation NSW Soc. The NSW division of the Socialist Party was obliged to accept these options after the state Electoral Commission knocked back its first application because the name NSW Socialists “so nearly resembles” that of another registered organisation, the Socialist Alliance.
This puts the NSW Socialists at an electoral disadvantage. Being forced to mutilate the word Socialist certainly won’t help with brand recognition. And for some, the abbreviation of NSW Soc is eerily similar to Ingsoc, the totalitarian “English Socialism” that ruled the Oceania superstate in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The last image today’s socialists want to conjure up is that of Big Brother.
The launch of NSW Soc has caused a few ripples in the right-wing media. Shock jock Ben Fordham from Sydney’s 2GB Radio broke the “exclusive” story on January 21 with the headline “Notorious protester Josh Lees launches political party”. Sky News followed suit, telling its online readers that “Socialist activist and Palestine Action Group organiser Josh Lees is seeking a career change after launching a new political party in New South Wales” and topped this off with a photo montage of Lees in front of Hamas flags and portraits of Hezbollah leaders. These “exclusive” reports consisted of little more than the public notice that the NSW Electoral Commission is legally required to publish for all new electoral registration applications. But they were enough to fuel a few hours’ worth of outrage on talkback radio and online.
One disparaging online comment described NSW Soc as being “like the Greens on steroids”, to which the Victorian Socialists’ Twitter/X account responded, “‘Like the Greens on steroids’ … We’ll take it”. This witticism reveals more than its authors intended. An electoral formation based on a left-reformist program and organisational hyperactivism – “Greens on steroids” – is actually an accurate description of the Socialist Party project. Surely the goal should be a socialist formation that is explicitly Marxist, not just a more radical, hyperactive version of The Greens.