More than 300 people gathered at Brunswick Town Hall in Melbourne on Friday evening to launch the Victorian Socialists’ campaign for the federal election.
The party will contest four lower house seats in Victoria in the election on 3 May and run Jordan van den Lamb, aka purplepingers, for the Senate.
Hundreds of people have already been involved in the campaign, either by attending forums in Melbourne and regional towns or by helping to distribute letters, yard signs and socialist arguments to working-class people across the state.
Friday’s launch brought some of these people together, and many new faces, to hear our socialist platform for the federal election.
Kath Larkin, candidate for Cooper in Melbourne’s inner north, spoke at the launch about rising inequality and poverty. It’s an indictment that, in one of the wealthiest countries on Earth, demand for food banks and homelessness services is increasing.
The major parties don’t care about this pain; they’ve helped facilitate it. Under federal Labor, we’ve seen a massive transfer of wealth to the richest at the expense of workers’ living standards. 
Victorian Socialists are fighting to increase taxes on big businesses and the ultra-wealthy to take back what they’ve stolen and to pour that money into cost-of-living relief and public housing, healthcare and education. 
The housing crisis is the sharpest edge of Australia’s cost-of-living crisis. Evidence for this is the popularity, both online and at campaign forums, of van den Lamb, who has tapped into widespread discontent among renters with his “shit rentals” videos targeting dodgy landlords and developers. Speaking at the launch, he outlined a socialist solution to the housing crisis:
“We’re not here to beg for crumbs. We’re here to demand housing for all. We’re here to demand the empty homes be taken off speculators and distributed to the people who need them ... We’re here to fight for an end to this system that treats our homes like poker chips in a casino.” 
It’s this fighting anti-capitalist approach to politics that sets Victorian Socialists apart. We need to see more of it in parliament, not another do-nothing, pro-capitalist moderate.
Omar Hassan, candidate for Scullin in Melbourne’s outer north, spoke about the rise of the far right globally and the response we need in Australia. Labor is sucking up to Trump, while Dutton and the Liberals are seeking every opportunity to blame migrants for the problems we face. 
“It’s only socialists who know how to fight right-wingers, the far right and fascists”, he said. “All around the world we’re seeing that the mainstream cannot defeat the far right. Vote socialist to fight that scum—whether in the White House, or here in Australia.”
Despite the economic and political challenges, the mood was not despair but hope—and determination to fight for something better. 
“We know that society can be better”, said Jasmine Duff, candidate for Fraser in Melbourne’s west. “We can live in a world that puts people before profit. And that’s because working-class people have at their core the empathy and sense of solidarity that can make that world possible.”
Most hopeful of all is the feeling of standing alongside hundreds of people who aren’t going to accept the current state of politics. We’re going to fight in this election and beyond to force a much-needed socialist perspective into Australian politics that puts people before profits—on doorsteps, voting booths and wherever else we can get that message.

James Gallagher

‘We know that society can be better’: Victorian Socialists launch federal election campaign

No matter who wins the federal election on 3 May, most of us will lose. This election is about the rich vs. the poor, and both major parties are firmly in the camp of the former.
Since the Albanese government took office in May 2022, Australian workers have suffered their steepest decline in living standards in modern history. Household disposable income has dropped by 8 percent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Every cent of real wage growth made in the 2010s has been obliterated. Property website Domain’s rental reports show that the median rent for a house in a capital city has increased by 26 percent. Those who took out the average mortgage for a new home were spending $2,218 to $2,694 on monthly repayments back in 2022—now they’re spending $4,096, according to ABS data.
Food is more expensive. Bills are more expensive. Clothes, shoes, flights, coffee, petrol, brunch: everything is more expensive.
Some, however, have done very well for themselves over the last three years. The 200 parasites who grace the Australian Financial Review’s Rich List have increased their combined wealth from $520 billion to $625 billion. That $105 billion is enough to wipe all outstanding HECS debt and have enough left over to raise the rate of welfare payments to $88 a day, lifting 2.3 million people—including 840,000 children—out of poverty. 
Instead, Australia’s billionaires have hoarded their wealth, grown their share portfolios and expanded their property holdings. An article about the luxury property market on the National Australia Bank website sums it up well: “Despite broader economic uncertainties, the high-end property segment remained largely insulated due to resilient demand in high-net-worth individuals”.
The Labor government has done basically nothing to try to rectify this startling rise in inequality. It handed out tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich and has refused to touch the generous concessions provided to landlords. “We’re not trying to bring down house prices”, Labor Housing Minister Clare O’Neil declared on ABC radio in November. At least she’s honest. Albanese’s solution to the housing crisis? Purchase a $4.3 million clifftop mansion with timber-lined cathedral ceilings and sparkling ocean views. 
Labor has allowed supermarkets, airlines and energy companies to price-gouge while dismissing calls to hit them with a super profits tax. The minuscule increases it has made to poverty-inducing welfare payments have been eaten up by inflation.
And there is no illusion that the Liberals would do anything differently. Peter Dutton proved where his loyalties lie when he flew to Sydney to attend a lavish fundraiser hosted by billionaire pub-and-club boss Justin Hemmes as Cyclone Alfred approached his hometown of Brisbane. A new mural hanging in the reception of Australia’s top billionaire Gina Rinehart’s Roy Hill mine depicts a banquet on her 70th birthday with Dutton seated next to the mining magnate herself. 
Now that the election campaign is well underway, what are the major parties offering to entice our vote? For Labor, it’s a $5-per-week tax cut. For the Liberals, it’s 25 cents off a litre of petrol. That’s the extent of the choice we have in this election.
While it’s pennies for us, billions are spent on the most odious industries. Both major parties have committed to doubling military spending, from about $50 billion in 2022 to $100 billion by 2034. Federal subsidies to fossil fuel companies totalled $14.5 billion in 2023-24, an increase of 31 percent on the $11.1 billion recorded in 2022-23, according to the Australia Institute think tank. 
We deserve much better than this. It’s no wonder that combined support for the major parties has been steadily falling over the last twenty years—in 2022, a third of all votes went to candidates not from Labor or the Coalition. But we also deserve better than what’s on offer from the existing minor parties and independents. 
A small chunk of the vote is going towards crackpot right-wingers who’d love to see a MAGA movement in Australia. The Teal independents are, broadly speaking, “lapsed Liberals” targeting the wealthiest electorates with a conservative economic framework and girl-boss energy. 
Then there’s the Greens, who had their best run yet in 2022. Across the board, their policies are better than Labor’s, and they’ve done some heavy lifting in calling out the government on the housing crisis, renters’ rights and Israel’s genocide in Gaza. But despite having the numbers to block shitty Labor policy in the Senate for the last three years, they’ve waved through some of the worst—from do-nothing housing programs to climate policy that ensures the continued destruction of the environment. 
Recently, the Greens announced that ending native forest logging will be a key demand put to Labor in negotiations to form a minority government following the upcoming election (no other “key demands” have been raised). Worthy as this is, it hardly gets to the heart of the assault on living standards, the fossil fuel industry, Labor’s brutal refugee policy or rising militarism. 
We need a socialist political alternative that takes on the major parties and fights for a world that puts people before profit. In Victoria, this means a vote for Victorian Socialists in selected lower house electorates, the Socialist Alliance’s Sue Bolton in the seat of Wills and Jordan van den Lamb (aka “purplepingers”) in the Senate. Elsewhere, vote socialist where possible. 
But we also need to get organised beyond the federal election—socialist activism is not a once-in-three-years activity. If the last three years has taught us anything, it’s that no-one is coming to save us but us.

Eleanor Morley

Labor and Liberals rule for the rich—we need a socialist alternative

1. Because the super-rich in Australia are taking the piss—and the piles of cash 
Back in 1983, the wealth of the hundred richest people in Australia totalled $3.2 billion. If that wealth had increased in line with inflation, today it would be nearly four times more—an obscene $12.5 billion. 
But this would be viewed as chickenfeed by today’s super-rich. The wealth of the one hundred richest people last year was 163 times greater than that of the richest 100 in 1983, according to the Australian Financial Review—an extraordinary $524 billion. 
If we include the AFR’s full annual “Rich List” of the 200 wealthiest people in the country, we get to $624 billion, 24.7 percent of Australia’s annual gross domestic product. 
To call this wealth “stratospheric” is a massive understatement. If piles of $100 notes were stacked up to the value of $624 billion, they would reach 878 kilometres into the sky: the stratosphere runs out after about 50 km. And as Red Flag
has <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/annual-rich-list-200-ugly-faces-australian-capitalism">pointed out</a> in the past, the wealth of the billionaires is only the very public tip of the iceberg of wealth that the capitalist class accumulates from the labour the rest of us perform.
If Gina Rinehart and Twiggy Forrest took a month off, or a year, their money would continue to accumulate. This is because it’s the work of others—in the mines these billionaires own, but also the vast network of communications, transport, education, finance and health, throughout the country and around the world—that creates the vast fortunes of the rich. So no-one would notice if Rinehart et al. dropped off the planet—but if enough of those workers stopped working for just a few days, the flow of wealth would stop stone cold dead. 
What’s the correct word for those who accumulate this sort of wealth from the labour of others? “Capitalists” is accurate. So is “parasites”. And it’s about time they faced a serious challenge.
2. Because the rest of us are sick of being ripped off
As Albo and his treasurer sprinkled a few crumbs on budget night to a standing ovation from Labor MPs, and most of the rest of us scratched our heads wondering just how we’ll spend our $5 weekly tax cut from the middle of next year, Victorian Socialists crunched the numbers. As our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18g2mgZsmo/">budget reply</a> stated: 
“In 1974, Australian workers (aka the people who create all the wealth) received 55.9 percent of GDP in wages. Today it's 47.9 percent. If that share increased back to 1974 levels, it would mean workers would, collectively, be $220 billion better off (more than $15,000 per employee, per year). Keep that in mind when Labor politicians are spruiking $5 a week tax cuts, 5 cents off a pint of beer, or modest cuts to HECS debts.”
And imagine what we could do with that $220 billion—equivalent to around $10 per hour for every employee. Maybe we could take a well-deserved pay raise and a greater share of the wealth we create. Or maybe we could take some of that wealth back in the form of transformative public infrastructure. A massive new hospital costs <a href="https://www.vhba.vic.gov.au/health/hospitals/new-footscray-hospital">$1.5 billion</a> to build; <a href="https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/energy-transition-will-likely-need-400b-renewables-marshall-plan-20230719-p5dph9">official estimates</a> of what the country is spending on our criminally slow transition to a renewables-powered electricity grid are currently around $10 billion per year. You can work out the maths from there. 
3. Because housing for profit means people without homes
It’s obscene, but it’s true: as far as anyone can tell, there are more empty houses than homeless people in this country. On census night in 2021, there were a million empty houses in Australia—eight times the estimated number of people experiencing homelessness. 
Of course, even during the lockdowns of 2021 some homes would have been empty due to people travelling or visiting or being in hospital. But a much more conservative 2023 <a href="https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Prosper_SpecVac11_July2024-web.pdf">estimate</a> by the think tank Prosper Australia found 27,000 houses in Victoria didn’t use any water at all for the entire year—so were almost certainly empty for the whole year. 
This pretty much matches the estimate of 30,000 people experiencing homelessness in Victoria right now. Prosper points out that another 70,000 houses appear to be entirely or very largely vacant, judging from a level of water use consistent with a couple of dripping taps, or a bit of watering from an occasional visiting gardener. 
Similarly, the Tenants Union of Tasmania has used water use data to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-29/census-finds-1-million-empty-houses-amid-affordability-crisis/101190794">show</a> that 2,000 homes in that state have been unoccupied for three years or more—pretty much matching the official homelessness figure of 2,350. 
It’s no mystery why: there’s no profit to be made from matching empty houses with people who desperately need them. 
Many investors find it more convenient to leave a house empty while the value steadily rises, rather than renting it out as a home. The law of the land allows this outrageous situation, even encourages it through tax incentives. Property—and profits—are sacred, while people are left to sleep rough (or pay through the nose for a <a href="https://www.shitrentals.org/">shit rental</a>). 
The solution? Do what Victorian Socialists candidate Jordan van den Lamb (aka purplepingers) <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DHXkKUNTkya/?hl=en&amp;img_index=7">advocates</a>: take over houses left vacant for twelve months or more and use them as homes. And we should shift Australia’s construction sector to building public housing rather than ever glitzier shopping malls.
Once we remove the profit motive and organise ourselves to do what’s needed, everything becomes a whole lot simpler.
4. Because we need more strikes
There. We’ve said it. No-one else apart from the socialists are stating this blindingly obvious fact. 
If we don’t fight, we lose. The figures from recent decades show that, over the last few decades, the less we’ve fought, the more we’ve lost.
So while the mainstream parties either denounce industrial action, or perhaps drop in to a picket to murmur some polite nothings for a few minutes, or post an Instagram or two, socialists do our best to turn up, in numbers, when it matters most. 
One example was Victorian Socialists bringing a couple of hundred members and supporters to the pre-dawn picket line at Dandenong South in Melbourne during the Woolworths strike in December last year.
Other parties see parliament as the be-all and end-all of politics. In contrast, socialists want to use election campaigns and any representation we win to build active participation by ordinary people in activities that can actually change things: protests, activist campaigns and strikes.
5. Because bigotry and oppression: capitalism counts the cash 
Some of the benefits that capitalists get from sexism, racism and other forms of oppression are staring us in the face. 
A swathe of Australian employers get a massive cash discount on wages due to the gender pay gap. If we use Australian Bureau of Statistics <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/earnings-and-working-conditions/employee-earnings-and-hours-australia/latest-release#data-downloads">figures</a> for non-managerial employees, a gender pay gap of $4.10 per hour translates to a $700 million cash discount on wages for employers every week. This is more than $36.5 billion in discounted wages each year, straight to the bosses’ bottom line, due to sexism. 
Unpaid labour in the home to raise the next generation of workers, estimated at up to half of GDP, is disproportionately done by women—another handy cash benefit for the ruling elite, flowing from the sexist oppression that affects half the population. 
Other benefits for our rulers from bigotry and oppression are harder to measure exactly, but no less real for that. For instance, it’s hard to quantify the benefit the system gets from having young men buy into the foul, blatant sexism of Andrew Tate. Tate’s gross objectification and contempt for women is the central plank of his thoroughly dog-eat-dog world view. The point of life, according to Tate, is to be out for yourself: everyone else on the planet, and especially women, are just objects to be used. It’s impossible to put a dollar value on the benefit to the rich and powerful from this perfectly pro-capitalist world view being propagated—but it’s substantial.
Similarly with racism. It’d be a difficult task to calculate the “worth” to Australia’s bosses from having <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Migrants-in-the-Australian-workforce.pdf">at least 7 percent</a> of Australia’s working class on some sort of inferior or insecure visa status, generally bound to their employers and therefore reluctant to speak up about <a href="https://www.migrantworkers.org.au/lives_in_limbo">wage theft</a>, health and safety or a punishing pace of work.
It’d be possible to put a dollar value on all the straight-up theft of land from Indigenous people (e.g. the estimated $700 million owed to the Gumatj people in the Northern Territory for a bauxite mine imposed on them in the 1960s, according to a recent High Court <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/mar/14/high-court-native-title-ruling-may-affect-compensation-claims-nationwide-experts-say">decision</a>). But it’d be much harder to calculate a figure for the value our rulers derive from the racist political campaign drummed up against Aboriginal people around the Voice referendum—which has helped Dutton drive politics in this country in a more right-wing, dog-eat-dog direction, undermining solidarity to the benefit of the capitalist class.
Which gets us to Trump.
6. Because fuck Donald Trump and the horse he rode in on 
The modern world has never seen a more blatant example of the rule of the rich. The thirteen billionaires appointed to cabinet posts by President Trump are <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-net-worth-cabinet-billionaires-b2654841.html">reported</a> to be worth US$340 billion—more than the annual gross domestic product of 169 countries, combined. 
This government by the obscenely rich, for the obscenely rich, tells us a lot about what capitalism, at its core, is all about. 
It’s about whipping up bigotry and fear. Just one example is the extraordinary US$215 million that Trump and his allies spent during last year’s presidential election campaign whipping up hatred against trans people—<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/republicans-spent-nearly-215m-on-tv-ads-attacking-trans-rights-this-election/">calculated</a> at US$143 for every trans person in the US. 
It’s about vicious anti-migrant politics and the repression of democratic rights: snatch squads from Immigration and Customs Enforcement stalk the streets of US cities, grabbing pro-Palestine activists and whoever else they can for deportation. University administrations and media outlets have rushed to drop any pretence of seeking the truth without fear or favour, in compliance with Trump’s directives.
Of course, a government of billionaires is about trashing workers’ rights: Trump’s <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/15/business/nlrb-trump-musk-workers/index.html">gutting</a> of the National Labor Relations Board is the start of rolling back the legal protections won by workers in the 1930s. This is a gift of love to Amazon owner Jeff Bezos (the second-richest person in the world), and to every other employer who has been troubled by their workers forming new unions in recent years.
And perhaps the most terrifying of all—behind the chaos of Trump’s economic and tariff policy is the cold hard logic of rebuilding US industry to rapidly prepare for war with the US’s fast-rising imperialist rival, China.
And in Australia? Billionaires like Gina Rinehart and Anthony Pratt love Trump just as much as their US counterparts. The Liberals want to copy as much of his agenda as they can. Labor can’t bring itself to make even token criticisms, sending Foreign Minister Penny Wong to applaud Trump and his billionaire sieg-heiling mates at the presidential inauguration. 
Why is this an argument to vote socialist? Because it’s only the socialists who say that every single one of these policies—and the whole system and logic behind them—have to be rejected. And it’s only the socialists who are consistent about building a politics of hope and resistance based on the one power that, throughout history, has shown itself capable of challenging the rule of the rich: ordinary people, and in particular workers—organised, mobilised and armed with radical politics. 
The world needs a socialist movement as a living, breathing, organising, fighting opposition to Trump and to the system he rode in on. 
This means plenty of hard work over the next five weeks, and far beyond. But <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/victorian-socialists-putting-socialism-on-the-political-map">putting socialism back on the political map</a> during the current campaign is an important contribution to the movement that we need.

Jerome Small

Six reasons to vote Socialist

Socialism is a state of affairs in which the working class governs society over the whole of the Earth. The people whose labour produces the vast bulk of the wealth— the people who build, operate and maintain the extraordinary productive network that spans our globe—will rule. 
As soon as we describe such a society, it’s clear that it will never come into existence by merely voting for it. Regardless of the outcome of elections, the Gina Rineharts, the Elon Musks, their political servants like Albo or partners like Trump and the totalitarian rulers of China, are not going to simply hand power to the billions of workers who work to create the wealth they control.
So if elections aren’t going to usher in socialism, what’s the point of socialists participating in them?
Measuring forces, building forces
Good ideas don’t just grow legs and start wandering around in the world, changing things for the better. History, for good and for ill, is made by organised political forces. Helping to build such a movement that can fight for socialism is one important reason for running electoral campaigns.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels talked about socialists participating in elections in order to “measure our forces”. This is good advice in general, but there’s not a great benefit in following it if our forces are small enough to fit into a single, not-very-large room. And more fundamentally, there’s something that isn’t quite captured by the idea of elections being a passive “measuring” of socialist forces or a “thermometer” of the class struggle, as Engels put it.
Part of the joy of Victorian Socialists is that the party involves enough dedicated socialist campaigners to actually win a credible vote. Most recently, we won 7.2 percent in the by-election in the Victorian state seat of Werribee, with booth results as high as 14 percent.
This matches our results from the 2022 Victorian state election. We won an average of 6.2 percent of votes in the eleven seats in Melbourne’s north (8 percent in Broadmeadows, 7.7 percent in Thomastown, and 8.1 percent in Brunswick), and 5 percent in the eleven seats in Melbourne’s west (including 6.6 percent in St Albans, 6.8 percent in Kororoit, and 9.3 percent in Footscray). In the upper house, we won more than 50,000 votes: our two main candidates won more primary votes than several successful upper house candidates in other parts of Victoria, though both of us missed out on a seat on preferences.
The fact that a socialist electoral project could win this sort of vote—the highest number of votes for a socialist outside of Labor since the 1940s—has been an important contribution to the project of hauling socialism off the margins of political life in this country and into the daily and weekly political discussions of many thousands of people.
Our federal campaign is now kicking off in earnest and is already clearly having the same effect—both through our campaign activities, and through engagement with many of those familiar with our excellent Senate candidate Jordan van den Lamb (aka Purplepingers), the scourge of every scumbag landlord through his shitrentals.org site.
All of our campaigning—letterboxing, doorknocking and talking with voters wherever we can—plays a role in normalising socialist campaigns and building support for socialist political positions. This activity also gives essential training for the campaigners themselves as we engage with all sorts of people with a listening ear and a socialist message of hope and resistance.
In other words, we run in election campaigns not just to “count our forces” but to build socialist political forces. Victorian Socialists has been quite successful in doing so, as the growth of the project—already by far the largest socialist political project in this country in decades—continues to show.
What would a socialist member of parliament do?
Victorian Socialists’ purpose in winning a parliamentary seat is not to be first in line for the daily buffet in the parliamentary dining room, nor to rain socialism down upon a grateful public. In keeping with a long-held socialist principle, our elected representatives will take only the wage of an average worker, with the rest going to build community and worker campaigns.
One of the main jobs of our elected representatives will be to build every act of workers’ struggle and collective resistance outside the parliament. And inside the parliament? We’ll be there to take on the major parties, not just to make pious speeches.
Though socialist MPs are a rarity in Australian history, we can get some idea of what’s possible from past practice.
Percy Brookfield was elected to the New South Wales parliament as the representative for the militant mining town of Broken Hill in 1917, during the greatest social and political revolt in Australia’s history. Expelled from Labor in 1919, he was re-elected as an independent in 1920 despite a statewide red scare against him.
Brookfield worked tirelessly to support the NSW general strike of 1917, and the epic eighteen-month “Big Strike” for shorter hours by 4,000 Broken Hill miners, which started in May 1919. He was outspoken in support of the Russian Revolution of October 1917 and was part of the discussions that led to the formation of the Communist Party of Australia.
In addition to building strikes and socialist organisations outside of parliament, Brookfield used his position in parliament to build the class struggle. He used parliamentary privilege to reveal how police had fabricated evidence against the IWW Twelve, members of the militant Industrial Workers of the World who had been jailed in a frame-up case.
When Labor needed his vote to stay in government after the 1920 election, Brookfield made his support conditional on Labor releasing the IWW Twelve and meeting the strikers’ demands for shorter hours in the ongoing Big Strike in Broken Hill. Both demands were achieved within six months—thanks to months and years of organising and struggle involving many thousands of people, and aided by Brookfield putting his political weight on the scales at a crucial time.
Two decades after Brookfield, in 1944 Fred Paterson became the only member of the Communist Party elected to a parliament in Australia. Paterson represented the seat of Bowen, south of Townsville, in the Queensland parliament. Bowen at this time included major coal centres, a large meatworks, sugar plantations, rail and ports—and twelve CPA branches.
Paterson was on the central strike committee of the massive Queensland rail strike, which started in February 1948, helping to coordinate the distribution of 850,000 leaflets supporting the strikers and visiting the pickets each day before attending parliament. When police tried to disperse the pickets, Paterson pointed to a loophole that allowed the pickets to remain as long as they kept moving.
The Queensland Labor government rammed an anti-strike law through parliament; they described it as the “Paterson bill” because it was designed to undermine the legal strategies he had advised. Paterson returned the compliment, describing the new law as “the greatest scab-herding strike-breaking piece of legislation ever introduced by a Labor government anywhere in Australia”.
On 17 March 1948, while observing workers being dispersed by the police, Paterson was bashed unconscious from behind by a cop. Paterson’s bashing sparked a Brisbane rally of 15,000 to 20,000 in support of the strikers. Protests, stop-works and meetings were held in Townsville, Bowen and Collinsville, and coal miners in NSW struck for 24 hours. The rail strike was settled a few weeks later, with the government conceding wage rises of 77 percent of the initial claim for trades workers and 95 percent for labourers.
Our short roll call of socialists outside of the Labor Party who have been elected to Australian parliaments should also include George Petersen. Petersen was part of a Trotskyist group when he became active in Labor Party politics in Wollongong and was elected to the NSW parliament in 1968. One of the most radical members of an Australian parliament, Petersen was an agitator for homosexual law reform, abortion law reform and prisoners’ rights. He used parliamentary privilege to expose the reign of terror exercised by guards in NSW prisons. Petersen campaigned to expose the frame-up of the alleged Hilton bombers in 1978 and was a staunch supporter of the Palestinian struggle.
Petersen worked closely with union members in the Illawarra, and his reminiscences contain plenty of thoughtful reflections. Petersen developed a political relationship with Brian Phipps, an electrician who was secretary of the Combined Mining Unions committee at Huntley Colliery in Petersen’s electorate of Illawarra. Petersen recalled of Phipps:
“He is a militant socialist and we worked together harmoniously for seventeen years promoting the cause of these workers, and, in return, receiving their total support ... I often thought that the relationship between Brian and me was the relationship I would like to have with all worker militants. That would have required me to be a member of a Leninist-type party, combining my work in a bourgeois parliament with that of fellow party members who occupied the same sort of position in the trade union movement as Brian did at Huntley Colliery. My great problem was that there was no such party to which I could belong.”
In 1987, Petersen voted against the Unsworth Labor government’s attacks on the NSW workers’ compensation scheme. Automatically excluded from the Labor caucus, Petersen contested his seat as an independent but lost despite a spirited campaign.
Of course, circumstances in Victoria in the 2020s differ in various ways from the examples above. Notably, the reformist and Stalinist political forces that dominated working-class politics for the past century have decayed or collapsed. For this reason at least, any newly elected, radical socialist MP will have to focus on building socialist political forces rather than just providing expression to pre-existing forces.
All of this lies in the future, along with the many challenges and opportunities that having a socialist MP will bring. In the meantime, no-one in Victorian Socialists plans to just sit around waiting for a socialist movement to rebuild itself. Rather, this is our central project.
Like many political campaigns and projects, Victorian Socialists includes revolutionaries (such as Socialist Alternative members) as well as non-revolutionaries who are just sick of Labor’s sell-outs, and many people engaging with socialist politics for the first time. We’re an electoral front in which no-one has to hide their politics and in which anyone who wants to help rebuild a socialist political current is welcome to join.
Our party program popularises socialist political positions—for the right to strike, for pulling out of the US alliance, for a punitive tax on billionaires to fund the services we need, for taking over empty houses to ease the housing crisis. Many of us are knee-deep in community campaigns, worker organising and other socialist political projects.
All of us are serious about fighting for the socialist future we need: joining Victorian Socialists and getting active is a positive contribution to that project.

Why do socialists run in elections?

West Australian voters have returned Labor to office in another landslide. Labor won 42 percent of the primary vote, compared to the Liberal’s 28.5 percent, making this the second largest Labor vote ever—topped only by the party’s stomping 2021 victory.
At the close of counting on election night (8 March), Labor had secured 40 of the 59 seats in the state’s Legislative Assembly. The Liberals had secured five and the Nationals four, with ten seats remaining in doubt. 
Labor is now set for a third term in office. Only in the 1980s did WA Labor enjoy such a long period of government, beginning with the election of Brian Burke and ending with the stench of the <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/6661">WA Inc. scandal</a>. 
Since the Pilbara iron ore industry came to dominate the state’s economy in the late 1960s, successive state governments—both Labor and Liberal—have dutifully served mining interests. The Cook Labor government has been no exception. Premier Roger Cook <a href="https://www.perthnow.com.au/entertainment/music/premier-roger-cook-slams-singer-peter-garrett-for-sowing-seeds-of-hatred-with-gina-rinehart-rant-c-17901693">lashed</a>
Midnight Oil singer Peter Garret for “sowing seeds of hatred” a week out from the election, after Garrett sledged Australia’s richest person, mining magnate Gina Rinehart, at a Perth Festival gig.
In 2017, Labor came into office under the leadership of Mark McGowan. In that election, the Liberals suffered a 16 percent swing, their worst <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/node-5719">electoral defeat</a>
on record. The outgoing Barnett government had presided over the largest mining boom in the state’s history. However, it had been an opportunity squandered. When the Liberals proposed to sell 50 percent of the state’s electricity corporation to pay off mounting state debt, voters gave them a drubbing.
In 2021, Labor secured nearly 60 percent of the primary vote, while the Liberals faced near <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/smashing-wa-liberals">annihilation</a>. Labor won 53 Legislative Assembly seats, the Nationals four and the Liberals just two. The Liberals faced the shame of losing their opposition party status.
<a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/mark-mcgowans-legacy-serving-big-capital">McGowan’s strategy</a> of insulating the state from the ravages of Covid-19 behind tightly controlled borders proved a winner with voters. While the measures provoked ire from Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Qantas chairman Alan Joyce, and a High Court challenge from Queensland mining magnate Clive Palmer, they were popular with mining bosses in the West. Hancock Prospecting, BHP, Woodside and Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) profited handsomely from having mine workers work the Pilbara mines non-stop without the interruption of lockdowns that had plagued industry elsewhere.
McGowan quit unexpectedly mid-term, in May 2023, handing the baton to deputy leader Roger Cook. Back in 1986, during his Murdoch University student days, Cook became the National Union of Student’s first president before becoming a staffer for various Labor politicians. In 2008, he entered state parliament as the member for Kwinana, an industrial suburb south of Perth. Cook became deputy Labor leader ten days later and held senior ministerial posts during the six years of the McGowan government.
When Cook became premier, the state’s mining industry was once again booming. In the wake of the disruption to global trade during the pandemic, commodity prices were sky high. So were mining royalties. The state recorded a $4.2 billion surplus in May 2023 and a $3.2 billion surplus last year.
Spending splurge amidst a cost-of-living crisis
With cash in the bank, the Cook government has been spending heavily on infrastructure. Last year’s budget committed $12.1 billion, including an expansion of Perth’s rail network (Metronet) and spending on healthcare and school infrastructure. 
Election promises included a major upgrade to Royal Perth Hospital, another round of student assistance payments for families with school-age children and an expansion of the school breakfast program. Property developers have been offered substantial subsidies to construct large apartment complexes to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-18/build-to-rent-scheme-western-australia-explainer/104946158">boost rental availability</a>. <a href="https://www.apimagazine.com.au/news/article/wa-premier-announces-home-equity-scheme-expansion-to-improve-access-to-property-ownership">Keystart</a>, a shared equity scheme to assist home ownership, will also receive a funding boost.
However, none of these measures have eased the spiralling costs for working-class people. Under two terms of a Labor government, house prices and rents have soared, making WA an increasingly unaffordable place to live. Since Labor was elected in 2017, <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/western-australia/wa-s-housing-crisis-in-numbers-what-s-changed-since-labor-took-office-in-2017-20250213-p5lbv5.html">average house prices</a> in WA have increased from $564,000 to $913,000. <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/western-australia/wa-s-housing-crisis-in-numbers-what-s-changed-since-labor-took-office-in-2017-20250213-p5lbv5.html">Rental vacancy rates</a> have slumped from 4.7% to 1.4%, resulting in a median rent hike from $365 to $660 per week.
Social housing unit numbers dropped in McGowan’s first term and are now barely above 2017 levels. Forty-four thousand social housing units make up just 3.7 percent of all housing stock in the state. Consequently, Perth has become one of the <a href="https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/perth-now-one-of-hardest-cities-in-the-world-to-find-a-rental-20240612-p5jl5w.html">worst cities in the developed world</a> for finding a rental, with tenants often bidding well above the advertised rent to secure an abode. 
According to <a href="https://www.shelterwa.org.au/new-figures-support-peak-bodys-election-asks-to-scale-up-on-housing-and-homelessness-solutions/">Shelter WA</a>, 61 people are turned away from emergency accommodation each day, the highest rate in the country. And more working people are experiencing homelessness: 15 percent of those accessing emergency accommodation in WA are employed, up from 10 percent five years ago. 
Liberals anti-woke agenda
Unable to differentiate themselves from Labor on economic policy, the Liberals attempted to mimic Dutton and Trump’s “anti-woke” agenda. Liberal leader Libby Mettam promised to defund the <a href="https://www.edo.org.au/our-funding/">Environmental Defenders Office</a>, stating that “taxpayer money should not be spent propping up activists”. She also <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-17/wa-liberal-leader-libby-mettam-aboriginal-flag/104829360">declared</a>
that she would not stand in front of the First Nations’ flags during media conferences. 
Mettam also <a href="https://www.waliberal.org.au/state-news/wa-liberals-will-ban-harmful-gender-treatments-for-children/">promised</a>
to “ban the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone treatments and surgical intervention for children under the age of 16 for the purpose of gender transition”.
This stance backfired spectacularly.
Several Liberal candidates found themselves in hot water for racist, sexist and homophobic comments. The Liberals’ Kimberley candidate, publican Darren Spackman, was forced to stand down after a slew of <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-20/wa-liberal-candidate-darren-spackman-withdraws-from-election/104963082">racist social media posts</a> denigrating Aboriginal people were uncovered. 
During an awkward press conference at which the Liberals were set to unveil new domestic violence policies, Darling Range candidate Paul Mansfield was <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-22/wa-liberals-endure-bruising-week-as-election-race-gets-tough/104951020">confronted</a>
with what the ABC described as “a series of derogatory social media posts, including homophobic slurs and two lewd posts about women”.
Albany candidate Thomas Brough was <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-15/wa-liberal-candiate-thomas-brough-workplace-training-lgbtqi/104090148">ordered</a>
to take workplace training with the Australian Human Rights Commission after making statements linking LGBTQIA+ people with paedophilia. The Medical Board also <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-24/wa-liberal-candidate-thomas-brough-referred-to-medical-tribunal/104975970">referred</a>
Brough, a doctor, to the State Administrative Tribunal for his comments.
Unsurprisingly, none of this helped the Liberal Party’s electoral fortunes. While Labor suffered a negative 18 percent swing, the Liberal vote was up only 7.3 percent (after the previous electoral wipeout). The National Party vote climbed only 1.1 percent and One Nation was up 2.4 percent. The Greens’ vote was up 3.6 percent, and votes for independents increased by 2.9 percent.
Labor’s Fremantle upset
Nowhere was voter discontent more starkly demonstrated than in the electorate of Fremantle, where sitting Labor member and industrial relations minister Simone McGurk faced a 22 percent swing against her. Traditionally a working-class seat, Fremantle has been held by Labor for a century—apart from a 2009 byelection upset when it was lost to Greens candidate Adele Carles. Labor regained the seat at the next state election in 2013.
Today, Fremantle is not the working-class suburb it once was. A once lively port city, its old warehouses have been converted into expensive, trendy apartments. Despite its gentrification, however, it has been the site of protests around issues such as homelessness, fracking, AUKUS ship visits and Palestine. 
Though the seat is still too close to call, it appears that McGurk is set to lose to independent Kate Hulett, a Fremantle business owner. Hulett <a href="https://www.kateforfremantle.com/priorities">campaigned</a> on climate action, expanding public and affordable housing and transparency in government dealings with industry. Hulett won support from both traditional Labor and Greens voters for advocating a statewide ban on fracking, a ban on new or expanded fossil fuel projects, the retention of Fremantle as a nuclear-free zone, and opposition to AUKUS. 
While Hulett tailed McGurk’s primary vote, she looks <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/wa/2025/guide/frem">set to win</a>
on Greens preferences. McGurk won 33 percent of the primary vote, compared to 29 percent for Hulett and 16 percent for the Greens. McGurk’s re-election prospects hang narrowly on a flow of Liberal party preferences.
A business-friendly government
The morning after Cook’s thumping election victory, the state’s business tycoons lined up to congratulate the premier and cash-in their election donations. Chamber of Minerals and Energy WA CEO Rebecca Tomkinson and Wesfarmers boss Rob Scott each praised Cook for his contribution to the profitability of their businesses. Cook’s seat of Kwinana is home to Wesfarmers’ new lithium hydroxide refinery.
Scott <a href="https://thewest.com.au/business/manufacturing/praise-for-premier-roger-cooks-storming-election-victory-comes-with-red-tape-warning-from-wa-business--c-17978740">told</a>
the West Australian he looked forward to working with the premier to ensure “competitive, reliable gas for domestic industry”.
“With a seat that covers the Kwinana industrial strip, one of Australia’s leading manufacturing hubs, the premier understands the important role that gas and WA can and will play, to support the climate transition”, Scott said.
Tomkinson <a href="https://thewest.com.au/business/manufacturing/praise-for-premier-roger-cooks-storming-election-victory-comes-with-red-tape-warning-from-wa-business--c-17978740">called on</a> the premier to unlock cheaper electricity and more land, telling the West that Cook must advocate to the federal government for policy that includes “repealing productivity-killing industrial relations reforms and changes to improve and streamline project assessment processes, enhancing environmental outcomes while eliminating duplication and providing certainty over timeframes”.
Cook has already proved his worth to the big end of town, having advocated strongly to kill federal Labor’s proposed (and largely symbolic) “nature positive” legislation that would have enabled the creation of a federal Environmental Protection Agency. In January, Cook <a href="https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/wa-premier-warns-east-coast-latte-sippers-over-nature-positive-laws-20250129-p5l83v">lashed out</a> at Labor backbenchers who continued to push the legislation, telling them:
“Your standard of living, the reason why you can afford your long mac and your lattes, is because of WA industry and the WA economy. Do not for a moment think that we will stand by idly and allow you to damage our economy because, ultimately, it will damage your standard of living. I think the prime minister is highly attuned to the issues which impact on Western Australia’s economy and Western Australian industry.” 
In August 2023, in the middle of the Voice referendum campaign, Cook <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/wa-labor-capitulates-racist-campaign-against-aboriginal-heritage-law">bowed to</a> mining and pastoral industry pressure to roll back the state’s newly introduced Aboriginal cultural heritage legislation. Acting on behalf of mining interests, the Cook government has also advocated for a watering down of already threadbare native title rights for traditional owners. The Australian
<a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/wa-seeks-changes-to-native-title-act-to-protect-miners/news-story/6a9cd1c05161397ff31818b47ac1e7e4">reports</a>
that current and former state mining ministers have written to the federal government urging amendments to the Native Title Act.
As the dust settles, Albanese will look to WA Labor’s win as an opportunity to spruce up Labor’s credentials in the upcoming federal election. However, Labor has never been and will never be a party that represents the interests of working-class people. The challenge remains to build a serious political alternative.

Nick Everett

Liberals walloped, Labor returned in WA state election

When Jordan van den Lamb, using his online pseudonym “purple pingers”, launched a website for renters to review their rental properties and real estate agents anonymously, he had no idea it would turn him into the “bane of all landlords”. Hating landlords is a big part of his life, however, so it’s a title he wears as an honour. Now, van den Lamb is taking his pro-renter, pro-worker platform to new heights by running for the Australian Senate with the Victorian Socialists in the upcoming federal election.
Shitrentals.org has become a database for renters to get information about potential rental properties that landlords don’t want prospective tenants to know about. Maybe it’s an ad that boasts a carpet floor but fails to mention that it squelches when you walk on it. Or it could be that you can’t bring your pet because a possum is living in the extraction fan. Perhaps you don’t need to bring your plants either, because there’s already one growing out of the kitchen floor. Some reviews have been so damning that landlords have offered him money to take them down—which he always refuses.
Van den Lamb started shitrentals.org for a few simple reasons. First, “the material conditions of the average renter are pretty shit, so you can just point at that and say, ‘That’s bad’”, he says. Second, “there’s really nothing in common between a renter and a member of the ruling class, so renters’ rights are something we can link to a broader struggle against the system”. 
If elected, he plans to be quite the rabble-rouser. “I would shout at so many people; I’d be really excited about that”, he says. “I’d use question time to point the finger at people ... maybe a bit of swearing. I kind of want to see what the cafeteria is like, maybe throw some food at someone. And normal politics stuff, like trying to introduce bills or whatever.” Such a lack of respect for capitalist institutions is refreshing and appeals to many people.
Van den Lamb wants to use the Senate to challenge the anti-worker politics of the mainstream parties while building a movement of renters, students and workers outside of parliament. It’s an openly socialist approach to politics, which acknowledges that real change comes, not through respecting the institutions of capitalism, but by challenging them in all spheres. “If we got a socialist elected to parliament, we could shake some stuff up”, he says.
The campaign has already begun shaking up stuff. In early December, van den Lamb and the Victorian Socialists launched the “Empty Homes Crime Scene” campaign. The campaign involves placing bright yellow stickers on empty homes, exposing them as crime scenes for sitting empty during a housing crisis. 
It got the attention of the landlords, too. The president of the Real Estate Buyers Agent Association of Australia “slammed” it as “quite extremist”. Van den Lamb is also part of the Renters and Housing Union (RAHU), where he has helped to organise empty home occupations. 
They recently occupied three Brunswick homes that had been empty for almost 25 years cumulatively. Also in December, he was on the picket line with striking Woolworths warehouse workers. These are the sorts of actions that van den Lamb would use his Senate position to make even bigger.
“Victorian Socialists isn’t like the other parties, where they ask you to vote once every few years”, he explains. “Politics is something we want you to do every day—at home, on campus, in the workplace, wherever. Get involved.”
The Pingers4Parliament campaign is travelling all across Victoria. After a large forum in Bendigo in January with socialist councillor Owen Cosgriff, the campaign is going to Geelong, Ballarat, Castlemaine, Shepparton and beyond. Van den Lamb wants to bring his left-wing platform to the entire state.
<a href="https://victoriansocialists.org.au/node/364">That platform</a> includes establishing a public builder to construct 1 million new homes, a five-year rent freeze and scrapping negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount. Other policies include putting politicians on a worker’s wage, reversing privatisation, fighting for climate justice and standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Achieving such a vision will not come simply through getting a socialist into parliament—something van den Lamb regularly emphasises. But a socialist in parliament could be a voice for the struggles of ordinary people both inside and outside of parliament. Yelling at Liberals in the Senate in the morning, speaking at a rally in the afternoon, going to an organising meeting in the evening—all in a day’s work for a socialist parliamentarian. 
These are the steps that van den Lamb and the Victorian Socialists are taking to rebuild the socialist movement in Australia.

Tom Sullivan

Pingers4Parliament: the campaign to get a socialist into the Senate

German politics has shifted strongly to the right following the federal election on 23 February. The conservative Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union alliance will now lead a coalition government, after support plummeted for the parties that formed the previous coalition government. They have vowed to introduce hardline anti-migrant policies, attacks on workers and a massive expansion of the military. Even more menacingly, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) achieved its best result ever, coming in second place with 20.8 percent of the vote.
Since the AfD formed a decade ago, parties from across the political spectrum have insisted they will never work with the far right. The conservatives recently softened this “firewall” by working with the AfD to pass an anti-immigrant bill at the end of January. For years, sections of the conservatives, particularly those in the Christian Social Union in Bavaria, have flirted with the far right, but this was a significant step in normalising the AfD in mainstream politics. The Social Democrats, along with most other political parties, have contributed to this normalisation by drawing on the same anti-migrant rhetoric espoused by the far right. 
The election results reinforce this shift. The conservatives and the AfD hold a clear parliamentary majority. The AfD is campaigning hard for the conservatives to break with the firewall and form a coalition government. The conservatives have ruled this out for now, but there is a very real possibility that it could happen in the years ahead. 
The AfD’s rise is not, however, going unchallenged. Over the last fourteen months, a movement has emerged to resist the far right. Widespread protests broke out in early 2024 after it was revealed that a secret meeting in Potsdam discussed plans for the “remigration”—deportation—of large numbers of migrants and German-born citizens from migrant backgrounds. Alongside the AfD were members of the ultra-right-wing faction of the conservatives.
Protests outside AfD offices grew from the thousands to hundreds of thousands. On 3 February, an estimated 300,000 marched in Berlin alone. By April, the German daily newspaper taz reported that more than 1,800 protests involving around 4 million people had taken place across the country. These protests were the biggest since those opposing the Iraq war in 2003, and among the largest in postwar German history. 
Once the initial wave of protests subsided, left-wing activists continued to organise and mobilise. New organisations emerged, including the Studis gegen Rechts (Students against the Right), and older anti-fascist organisations found new life as thousands of young people got involved. 
Last June, tens of thousands descended on the city of Essen to protest the AfD’s annual conference. Police were drafted from around the country to try to stop the 70,000 protesters from disrupting the event. This year, the conference was moved to the regional town of Riesa, Saxony, to try to avoid demonstrations. Nevertheless, 15,000 protesters travelled there to take a stand against the far right. 
A new wave of protests erupted after the conservatives and the far right teamed up on the anti-migrant bill. Thousands blockaded the offices of the Christian Democratic Union in Berlin. At an AfD event in Freiburg, 25,000 out of a population of 230,000 came out to protest. 
A significant section of people taking part in these protests have gravitated towards the left-wing Die Linke party. In the federal election Die Linke, which had suffered a crisis for several years, revived and won 8.7 percent of the vote. Around 30,000 new members joined the party over the last year, numbers accelerating following the conservative-far right collaboration.
Heidi Reichinnek, one of Die Linke’s parliamentary leaders, stridently attacked the Christian Democrats for “paving the way for the resurgence of fascism” in a video that was viewed more than 30 million times on TikTok. Thousands of new activists joined Die Linke’s campaign in the West Berlin district of Neukölln. They won a landslide victory for Ferat Koçak, a pro-Palestine activist with a Kurdish background. 
Die Linke did particularly well amongst young people, becoming the most popular party for those aged 18 to 24, and securing the votes of more than a third of young women. The party also came first in Berlin. 
It’s positive that the AfD’s high vote isn’t the only story coming out of the election. However, there are significant problems with Die Linke. This is not a new radical party: it has existed since 2007 and is led by veteran moderate reformist politicians. It has participated in coalition state governments in Bremen and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and it led the government in Thuringia for a decade. In these states, it oversaw neoliberal budgets and allowed refugees to be deported. 
While Die Linke positions itself as an activist opposition party, it is also open to forming a future coalition government. There has long been a Zionist wing of Die Linke. and moderate leftists like Reichinnek emphasise that they support Israel’s so-called “right to defend itself”. Last December, Die Linke expelled the pro-Palestine activist Ramsis Kilani for “bringing the party into disrepute”.
This is not a radical anti-capitalist party by any stretch of the imagination. However, despite these serious problems, the electoral support for the left, as well as the activism against the far right, reveals that there is a polarisation to the left in Germany, centred on young people, that cuts against the grain of the overall conservative shift. 
This is vital. The far right is winning ground in country after country. It can be easy to despair in the face of this, particularly when there doesn’t appear to be a spontaneous revolt against Trump and his ilk. As in the past, though, it is the actions of a radical minority that can begin the process of creating the larger left-wing opposition we need. Hopefully, that is what we are seeing amongst young people in Germany.

Jordan Humphreys

The right gains ground in Germany, but not without challenge

The next chancellor of Germany will be the former Blackrock consultant Friedrich Merz. His election comes alongside a surge in votes for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and 93 years after a similar figure, Franz von Papen, ascended to the German chancellorship. Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister, the Christian Social Union (CSU), <a href="https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2025-02/bundestagswahl-2025-wahlergebnisse-wahlkreise-live">picked up 28.5 percent</a> of the vote, more than any other party but still one of its worst results in the history of the German Federal Republic.
Germany’s former ruling “traffic light” coalition—consisting of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Greens and the economically liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP)—collapsed in November 2024, prompting this month’s elections. The former ruling parties all suffered heavy losses. The SPD received just 16.4 percent of the vote, its worst result in more than 60 years, while the FDP lost all 91 of its Bundestag seats and the Greens lost more than one-quarter of their representatives.
The biggest gains were made by the AfD, a far-right ethnonationalist party that has been <a href="https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/49924">radicalising</a> and gaining ground in regional parliaments for more than ten years. The party dominated the eastern states of the former German Democratic Republic, earning one out of every three votes there and more than 20 percent of votes nationally. The AfD is the spearhead of fascisation in Germany, pulling almost all other parties toward the right, especially on migrant and refugee politics.
In a surprise turnaround, Germany’s far-left party Die Linke soared past expectations to win 8.8 percent of the vote, buoyed by an influx of 30,000 new party members this year. It is now the strongest party in Berlin, the capital, and won its first-ever district west of the old Berlin Wall: Neukölln, the heart of the Palestine solidarity protests. 
Political polarisation
With the exception of Die Linke, the election campaign was dominated by a full-spectrum lurch to the right as parties tried to keep up with the AfD’s racism and anti-migrant politics. Underneath the official party positions, though, political polarisation has continued in German society.
A pivotal moment came at the end of January when the CDU introduced a harsh anti-migrant bill, knowing it would require AfD votes to become law. Although the bill failed to pass, the attempt broke a consensus among parties never to cooperate with the far-right party. Despite an outcry in the media, Merz subsequently <a href="https://x.com/AnAudretsch/status/1886053338052956376">made it clear</a>
that the CDU would continue to operate with the tacit support of the AfD, signalling the end of the “firewall” against fascism and, thereby, also the end of a basic binding consensus in German politics since the founding of the federal republic after the defeat of the Nazis in World War Two.
While all other parties were complicit, either by directly voting for the bill (FDP, BSW) or by implementing almost identical policies while in office (SPD, Greens), only Die Linke put forward an alternative. <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@dielinkebt/video/7465417523383799063">Footage of Linke chancellor candidate Heidi Reichinnek</a> excoriating Friedrich Merz on the floor of the Bundestag went viral, tapping into a deep wellspring of disgust with fascism and with the other parties for failing to do anything about its rise. “The firewall in this country remains us, and all of us will go to the streets”, Reichinnek declared, “to the barricades!”
Tens of thousands of young people joined Die Linke in the aftermath, forming a veritable electoral army of doorknocking activists. Despite its stunning results, Die Linke’s prior record of helping to administer austerity in regional governments, its contradictory approach to foreign policy, and the many failures of its leaders to stand with the Palestine solidarity mobilisation leave questions for the future of the party.
Germany’s polarisation proceeds according to the same dynamics as in the United States, Brazil, France, or any number of other countries today: the dynamics of class conflict.
How we got here
Germany has an <a href="https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-254-crazy-rich-germans">extremely wealthy elite</a> and high levels of inequality—the two richest German families own more wealth than the bottom half of the population. As the economy slows, the ruling class increasingly sees the path back to profitability running to the right.
The old “export model” of German international competitiveness has <a href="https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/51534/the-german-economy-is-at-a-crossroads">faced roadblocks</a> for some time, but it entered a crisis under SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s watch. The German economic model was upended by the combined effects of the Covid crisis, China’s mass exports of electric cars, and the energy price shock caused by the loss of cheap Russian gas. (Russia invaded Ukraine just two months after the traffic light coalition took office.) The country entered a recession that led to <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/be1460c6-7d10-4518-8cc3-82bda78ab179">rapidly falling industrial output</a>, layoffs in auto, chemicals and other industries, and skyrocketing energy and housing costs for residents.
Employers called for scrapping green energy transition plans and adopting traditional means of reviving the economy. Despite some <a href="https://zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/artikel/halt-auf-halber-strecke/">inconsistent social reforms</a> instituted during his administration, Scholz’s government responded to employers primarily by slashing social services and the climate fund. 
Further, despite rhetorical denunciations of Merz’s dalliance with the AfD, Scholz’s coalition was central to implementing extremely harsh European-wide anti-migrant and anti-refugee laws in the last five years through the Common European Asylum System. As the Green Foreign Minister Baerbock put it bluntly to Merz on the floor of the Bundestag: “What can you get with the AfD that we didn’t already do through the CEAS?”
The CDU and AfD are both fiercely committed to serving the wealthy. Their common program <a href="https://www.surplusmagazin.de/merz-weidel-koalition-wirtschaftspolitik/">includes</a>
lowering taxes on the rich, strictly adhering to the “debt brake” (which limits government borrowing and therefore leads to covering costs with cuts to social welfare), slashing wages and basic income protections and reasserting heteronormative nuclear families by cutting parental support subsidies and parental leave and further dismantling childcare infrastructure.
Within the CDU, Merz has been central to a shift away from former leader Angela Merkel’s “soft conservatism” towards a more far-right platform. The refashioned Christian party <a href="https://www.marx21.de/ampel-regierungskrise-rechtsruck-und-die-notwendigen-konsequenzen/">seeks</a>
to re-cement a German cultural identity centred on belonging to the homeland. It aims to get rid of asylum rights, raise the retirement age and re-equip the German military. In all of this, it follows the AfD, the ethnonationalism of which has masked its leaders’ willingness to meet <a href="https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/494120.wirtschaft-und-wahlversprechen-die-wirtschaft-w%C3%BCnscht.html">the demands of German capitalists</a> for a new employers’ offensive to restore German global competitiveness.
Although the AfD has reduced its internal disputes significantly, competing wings remain within the party. The neo-Nazi wing around Björn Höcke and Maximilian Krah is aiming to destroy the CDU and inherit its role as the largest party on the right. The market-radical wing around Alice Weidel (the AfD candidate for chancellor in this election) quickly shed its US scepticism after Donald Trump came to office and is committed to dramatically increasing military spending. As Elon Musk’s appearance at the AfD convention and US Vice President JD Vance’s outright campaign for the AfD at the Munich security conference indicate, the AfD is aligning more and more with Trump’s push to split Europe and make deals with individual countries while shifting some of the military burden.
The next government
Merz’s party has a few options to cobble together a ruling coalition, which he has promised to do by Easter, but the negotiating process will be messy. Merz has invited the SPD to talks, and a “Grand Coalition” of the two parties could technically manage a majority in the Bundestag. But as Ingar Solty has <a href="https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/kultur-vergnuegen/gruene-und-afd-sind-einander-sehr-aehnlich-auch-wenn-sie-das-nicht-hoeren-wollen-li.2293416">pointed out</a>, a CDU coalition with the SPD and/or the Greens will be effectively instrumentalised by the AfD in opposition, feeding its narrative of the interchangeability of all establishment parties.
A CDU/AfD coalition could command a majority and a largely shared program. But it is highly unlikely as it would cause massive outcry and position the CDU against the cross-party political consensus, risking defections from the more liberal upper classes. Then there is the (also unlikely) option that Merz forms a minority government supported by the votes of the AfD, which is nevertheless not formally part of a governing coalition.
Merz does not have a long-term vision. His project is to assert the short-term needs of capitalists against social majorities and the long-term sustainability of the country (and the planet). As Adam Tooze has <a href="https://www.surplusmagazin.de/tooze-globalisierung-trump-musk-merz/">pointed out</a>, Merz has no real plan for Europe when confronted with Trump’s dramatic new challenges. The CDU leader’s unswerving commitment to “balanced budgets” means any investments in infrastructure, research or other means of capitalist growth will have to be paid for by cutting spending in other areas.
As such, the CDU election platform envisioned incentives for capitalists at the cost of the environment and social welfare. A CDU-SPD-Green government may face difficulties implementing such a program, given that these were precisely the lines on which the former coalition government split. In a<a href="https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article255475792/Bundestagswahl-Merz-nennt-Koalitionsbedingungen-Scholz-will-CDU-Chef-mit-AfD-Frage-in-Bedraengnis-bringen-TV-Duell-zum-Nachlesen.html">
televised debate</a>, Merz also made agreement on attacking migrant rights a condition of entering a coalition.
Regardless of its composition, the new government will be anti-worker and anti-migrant. Any opposition to this course will come not from the other parties of a coalition government, but from the left.
Prospects for the left
Despite the bleak years to come under a conservative government, the revitalisation of Die Linke as a social force in Germany has led to at least some celebrations before the true work restarts. 
After Sahra Wagenknecht split from the party to form the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), Die Linke achieved a meagre 2.7 percent in the 2024 European elections. The BSW, by contrast, won 6.2 percent of the vote. In the intervening period, however, the BSW joined state governments in Thuringia and Brandenburg, and took on increasingly anti-migrant positions in a <a href="https://jacobin.com/2017/03/die-linke-germany-immigration-sahra-wagenknecht-oscar-lafontaine-afd-merkel">failed attempt</a> to appeal to AfD voters. In these new elections, Wagenknecht’s party fell just short of the required votes to enter the Bundestag, a result that is likely to be contested.
Die Linke’s principled stand on migration and its socialist platform allowed it to speak confidently to hundreds of thousands of Germans and become the <a href="https://www.tagesschau.de/wahl/archiv/2025-02-23-BT-DE/umfrage-werwas.shtml">strongest party</a> among young and first-time voters.
However, many challenges remain. Until now, Die Linke has operated as a left-reformist organisation with small groups of revolutionaries fighting for a movement- and worker-oriented party from within. But the parliamentary fraction and the party apparatus are dominated by careerist reformists <a href="https://www.counterfire.org/article/where-is-germany-s-die-linke-heading/">more interested</a> in participating in coalition governments with the SPD and Greens than in building mass movements to change German society. Participation in various state governments led Die Linke to implement austerity, carry out deportations, attack workers and compromise on a range of issues.
While the Die Linke stronghold in Neukölln, Berlin, has been a militant pro-Palestine presence, other parts of the party have sided with apartheid Israel; Die Linke’s parliamentary fraction voted in 2023 to stand unswervingly with Israel as well. Just like in the US, Germany’s unconditional support for Israel has created a <a href="https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-boomerang-comes-back/">boomerang</a>
of colonial violence that is coming back to the metropole in various forms. Insofar as Die Linke <a href="https://www.sozialismus-von-unten.org/ramsis-kilani-ausgeschlossen-die-linke-gegen-aktive-solidaritaet-mit-palaestina/">actively participated</a> in Germany’s severe culture of repression against Palestine solidarity movements, it <a href="https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/germany-election-afd-israel-palestine-free-speech?utm_source=post-email-title&amp;publication_id=2510348&amp;post_id=157681412&amp;utm_campaign=email-post-title&amp;isFreemail=true&amp;r=79ysj&amp;triedRedirect=true&amp;utm_medium=email">helped pave the way</a> for some of the success of the AfD.
But Die Linke shows signs of potential change. Its base is expanding from the old strongholds of the east toward the entire country. Emerging figures show that Die Linke performed well not only in large cities, but also in many smaller towns, laying the basis for party organisations to potentially re-form there. Neukölln was won by Palestine solidarity organiser Ferat Kocak, who the German press <a href="https://archive.ph/x8kq1">denounces</a> as an anti-police activist with ties to the Trotskyists. The slogan under which Die Linke campaigned during this election was “everyone wants to govern, we want to change things”, a nod towards the importance of building an opposition outside of government power.
Most importantly, the 30,000 new party members could substantially overhaul the previously stagnating inner-party life. Incorporating these mostly young members into party and movement structures is by no means an automatic process and will take a conscious effort and some time, during which a process of mutual political education can be expected. 
One thing is certain: if Die Linke has any hope of avoiding slipping back into the social democratic swamp, it will have to forthrightly articulate a mass socialist alternative to the rightward drift in Germany, including on questions of imperialism and Palestine. As many party organisers know well, it will also have to develop stronger ties to Germany’s working class and supplant the “brown neoliberalism” of the AfD with a vision and a plan for socialist internationalism and workers’ power. 
Pressured by both geopolitical shifts and the profit-making priorities of its own ruling class, the conservative politicians at the helm of the German state have limited options within their self-defined capitalist paradigm: either eliminate the restrictions on issuing new debt (which is the position of Die Linke) or succumb to the capitalists’ demands to redistribute tax revenue away from social programs towards capital subsidies and an increased military. 
If it’s the latter, the social balance that has teetered since 2022 will no longer hold. Social upheaval is coming to Germany. Whether it is organised and rooted in the working class will determine the outcome: socialism or barbarism.
Sean Larson is a member of the Tempest Collective in the US and a founding editor of Rampant Magazine.

Sean Larson

Far-right surges, but left surprises, in German elections

Victorian Socialists (VS) is the largest-scale socialist political project in Australia for decades. There is no other project in which hundreds of socialists—including members of Socialist Alternative and many others—have conversations with literally thousands of working-class people and all comers, over a period of weeks in election campaigns like the one the party just waged in the western Melbourne electorate of Werribee. 
We get some idea of how those conversations have gone by looking at the party’s vote. In the case of Werribee, it was high enough to leave pundits and rival political parties scratching their heads. What unfathomable secret, they wonder, can explain how an area with close to zero history of serious socialist political activity could deliver a very creditable 7.1 percent of the first-preference vote to VS’s Werribee candidate Sue Munro (up from 3.7 percent in the 2022 Victorian state election)? 
The final tally of 3,010 votes was fewer than 200 behind the Greens, who had the benefit of a political profile established over decades (as well as, in the case of Werribee, getting the donkey vote—the number one spot on a ballot paper listing twelve candidates in total). At a couple of booths VS scored 14 percent of all votes cast, coming third behind Labor and the Liberals. “It’s not all great for the Liberals, the socialists got a bigger swing”, the Australian Financial Review moaned in an <a href="https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15ndxHKFYj/">online headline</a>
reflecting on the Werribee result. 
Melbourne’s Age newspaper described our decent result as a “<a href="https://x.com/vic_socialists/status/1888178135075803397">surprise packet</a>”. But it’s no surprise to anyone involved with VS that a socialist message of rage, hope and resistance can strike a chord among thousands of people in the working-class heartlands of Melbourne, and beyond. 
Campaigning for Victorian Socialists gets us into conversations with rage-filled healthcare workers about the state of our hospitals and the slide to privatised health care; with voters appalled at Israel’s genocide in Palestine and Labor’s complicity in it; and with union members disappointed by the lack of fight from what should be the strongest organisations our side has. 
A minority are already committed socialists, delighted to encounter a party that takes working-class politics and working-class people seriously. Many more have never met an active socialist before but can relate to our sincerity, our political conviction and our basic propositions: that it’s crazy that billionaires keep doubling their wealth when it’s working-class people who do all the work around here; that we shouldn’t tolerate being sold out by Labor, which keeps the capitalists’ profits piling up while throwing crumbs (at best) to the rest of us; that everything is the wrong way up in this society; and though we’re not promising to solve every problem, we’re serious about helping working-class people organise and fight back. 
Our Werribee result was no one-off. In Victoria’s 2022 state election, more than 52,000 people voted for VS in the upper house and 48,000 in the lower house. You have to go back to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Victorian_state_election">1940s</a> to find a socialist electoral campaign in Victoria that got anywhere near that number of votes. As the lead VS candidate in the Northern Metro upper house region in 2022, I received just 300 fewer primary votes than the eventual winner of the final of five seats. In the Western Metro region, VS candidate Liz Walsh came even closer to being elected, though both of us missed out after preferences. 
Given how far socialist ideas have been pushed to the margins in this country, this was a real achievement—and a solid contribution to bringing socialism back into everyday political life. We built on our 2022 campaign in last year’s local council elections—winning 67,296 first preference votes, with an average vote share of 10.8 percent for each ward we ran in. Owen Cosgriff was elected as a VS councillor in Bendigo with more than 40 percent of first preferences.
Our goal in winning positions in local councils and parliaments is not to rain socialism down upon a grateful and passive public. Rather, it’s the opposite: we aim to use those platforms to promote every strike, protest and act of collective resistance, and to build the politics of intransigent opposition to capitalism and to the exploitation, wars and oppression that the system produces and feeds off. 
It’s not like we’re waiting around to win parliamentary seats to play a positive role in the resistance though. In 2022, <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/reproductive-freedom-precondition-equality-interview-liz-walsh">15,000 people</a> answered a call-out from VS Western Metro candidate Liz Walsh to rally for abortion rights after the US Supreme Court scrapped Roe v Wade. We’ve been <a href="https://victoriansocialists.org.au/campaigns/palestine">active in solidarity</a> with the people of Palestine throughout Israel’s Gaza genocide. When Woolworths workers put out a call for <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/protesters-block-entry-to-woolworths-warehouse-as-grocery-shortages-continue-20241202-p5kv0m.html">picket line support</a> during their recent strike, a couple of hundred Victorian Socialist members and supporters <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DDDp0_3Tbhm/?img_index=4">joined</a> the pre-dawn picket line at Dandenong South. 
All this activity sits alongside Victorian Socialists’ success in waging large-scale and effective electoral campaigns, as a contribution to rebuilding socialist political forces. Our next major opportunity to do this is in the rapidly approaching federal election. 
High-profile housing activist Jordan van den Lamb (aka purplepingers) has become the hero of renters and the scourge of Australia’s landlords through his <a href="https://www.shitrentals.org/">shitrentals.org</a>
website and his viral <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@purplepingers?lang=en">tiktoks</a>. Victorian Socialists is proud to have Jordan as our lead Senate candidate. Anyone across the state of Victoria can play a role in the <a href="https://pingers4parliament.com/">pingers4parliament</a> campaign. We’re also running lower house candidates in the seats of Fraser in Melbourne’s west, Cooper and Scullin in the north, and the regional seat of Bendigo.
We’ve already kicked off the campaigning. Whatever your level of experience, there’s an important role for everyone—letterboxing, doorknocking and helping organise events. <a href="https://victoriansocialists.org.au/join">Signing up to be a member of Victorian Socialists</a> is the best way to contribute and to get involved. Find an event on our <a href="https://victoriansocialists.org.au/join">website</a>
or <a href="https://www.instagram.com/vic_socialists/?hl=en">socials</a>, and bring your friends.
Anyone serious about fighting for socialism needs to take opportunities to expand the reach of socialist ideas, to inspire more resistance to capitalism and to convince more people to become active socialists. Victorian Socialists makes a valuable contribution to each of these projects—so jump on board and get active!

Victorian Socialists: putting socialism on the political map

Werribee, known for its zoo and mansion, is a booming suburb located 30 kilometres from the Melbourne city centre. Labor has represented the area at a state level since 2002, during which the population has doubled. Despite this growth, the working-class residents of Werribee have been left to rot, abandoned by the very political party that claims to represent them. 
As a social worker in the area, I have seen these issues firsthand. I have watched families struggling to survive in a system that fails them repeatedly. Whether it’s finding affordable housing, waiting months for medical care or struggling to navigate broken public transport systems, I’ve witnessed families unable to access the basics of life. I’ve seen parents break down over their inability to afford school supplies for their children or make impossible choices between paying rent and buying food. These are not isolated incidents. They are the result of a system that leaves the working class to fend for itself while the powers that be prioritise corporate profits and marginal seats.
In the lead-up to the 8 February Werribee by-election, many candidates have jumped upon the fear-mongering narrative of rising youth crime and community safety, pushing for an increased police presence and harsher laws as the solution. 
Victorian Labor has already allocated $419 million to the construction of the Cherry Creek Youth Detention Centre in Little River, part of the seat of Werribee. The original plan was to build it in Werribee South, but the location was changed after a protest by more than 3000 residents in 2017. 
The government has also funnelled $271 million into building the Wyndham Law Courts, right next to the Werribee Police Complex. The new courts, which will house a Children’s Court and a Magistrates Court, are set to become the largest of their kind in Victoria outside Melbourne’s CBD. 
While hundreds of millions are funnelled into the punishment of young people, the same cannot be said for the critical services that could help prevent crime and build a sense of community. The lack of investment in community infrastructure deepens the alienation that contributes to anti-social behaviour. Without safe, accessible spaces for recreation, education or social engagement, young people are more likely to be drawn into criminal activity and substance abuse. 
In Werribee, the Kelly Park Community Centre, one of two library and community hubs in the area, is set for demolition following a fire, despite an overwhelming majority of residents voting for its restoration. Many residents argue that the decision to demolish the centre is not necessary, but the result of poor management and official disregard for the role the centre played in the community. Before the fire, it was the heart of social life for youth, the elderly and cultural communities, offering a safe space and essential services. 
Despite its central role, the council has claimed that restoring it is financially unviable. The rebuild was estimated at $8 million—with the $690 million spent on the new detention centre and courts, the state government could build 82 new community centres and 20 new libraries. Funds are instead spent by the state on repressive measure that criminalise and isolate the very communities in need of support.
It’s the same story with other infrastructure: there is only one aquatic centre per 48,000 residents in the City of Wyndham, which takes in Werribee, compared to one per 5,000 residents in inner Melbourne. The proportion of households in the west that include children is higher than the state-wide average (52.1 percent compared to 45.5 percent), yet library access is much worse. There are only 1.48 libraries per 100,000 residents in Wyndham, compared to 5.64 per 100,000 in Stonnington in the inner east or 5.46 in inner city Yarra.
The issue of chronic underfunding goes beyond libraries and community centres. It also extends to health and education. Mercy Hospital Werribee is smaller than most metropolitan hospitals and has the longest emergency wait times in the state, 60 percent of patients not being seen within the recommended time frame. 
There are likewise only two public high schools in Werribee, serving a population of 50,00. Before recent repairs of Werribee Secondary College, the schools were plagued by crumbling infrastructure, with some buildings infested with maggots and posing serious fire hazards. I’ve seen firsthand the challenges faced by teachers. They are routinely tasked with overcrowded classrooms and given limited resources to support children living in poverty, dealing with trauma and often coming from migrant backgrounds. Teachers are stretched thin, overworked and struggling to meet the needs of their students. As a result, already vulnerable children are not receiving the quality education they deserve. According to the Department of Education, the Wyndham area has one of the highest teacher vacancy rates in Victoria. 
Public transport is also woefully inadequate, the area being served by just one train line and an unreliable bus system. As a result, 80 percent of households are forced to own two cars, a significant expense made necessary by the lack of public transport.
While the government continues to funnel resources into punitive measures like new prisons and courts, it neglects desperately needed investments in housing, public transport and essential infrastructure. Property developers, meanwhile, profit from poorly planned urban sprawl that leaves working-class communities to suffer the consequences. 
The upcoming by-election will be a chance for residents to send a message to the Labor government. Victorian Socialists are contesting the seat and offer a radically different agenda to the major parties. The party’s candidate, Sue Munro, is a parent and nurse and is committed to fighting for the rights of Werribee’s working-class residents. The real change we need won’t come from the same political forces that have failed us for decades—it will come from a movement dedicated to putting people before profit and challenging the systems that takes working-class people for granted.

‘We know that society can be better’: Victorian Socialists launch federal election campaign

Labor and Liberals rule for the rich—we need a socialist alternative

Six reasons to vote Socialist

Why do socialists run in elections?

Liberals walloped, Labor returned in WA state election

Pingers4Parliament: the campaign to get a socialist into the Senate

The right gains ground in Germany, but not without challenge

Far-right surges, but left surprises, in German elections

Victorian Socialists: putting socialism on the political map

Werribee: left to rot by Labor

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