[The full agenda and other conference information is available here: https://red-ant.org/for-peace-and-liberation-a-socialist-education-conference/]

Red Ant is a new, small “start-up” socialist collective formed to put forward an anti-imperialist Marxist perspective in Australia. We started out just as a website, but now have collective members in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and overseas. At the end of August we will have our first national meeting in Sydney – For Peace and Liberation: A Socialist Education Conference.

The “anti-imperialist Marxism” that we want to develop and discuss with other like-minded people comes from the point of view that the global division between rich and poor nations is fundamental to all political questions and important modern social struggles.

We agree with Lenin’s view that,

“Imperialism is characterised by the fact that the whole world is now divided into a large number of oppressed nations and a very small number of oppressor nations that are enormously rich and strong in the military sense.”

Lenin made that same point over and over. He also argued this division of the world was the underlying reason for the division of the socialist movement inside the imperialist nations into two camps: one revolutionary and another that sided with its “own” capitalist class. Fighting imperialism, Lenin argued, is the key to overcoming that division too – and making a revolution at home.

This general situation has not changed. Today in Australia, so long as the majority of working people accepts, remains indifferent to, or supports the imperialist system that chains down the majority of people on earth – the same system that crowns Australia as one of the few nations with immense material privilege – the Australian working class will not be capable of organising the huge changes needed in our own country.

Solidarity with all oppressed and exploited people is crucial for a deepening commitment to change here.

And so much change here is needed. First Nations people continue to be oppressed and marginalised and still die in custody. Working people are forced into more and more casualised jobs and made to stress for longer and in more convoluted ways to earn a living as the gap between rich and poor grows wider. Workplace democracy is zero. Women still earn less than men for the same work and women still die from domestic violence. The threat of environment destruction worsens every day, including the threat of global warming to the earth itself. There is a long list.

Strengthening the struggle against all these injustices and threats is impossible without a deepening commitment to solidarity with all the oppressed and exploited, alongside an understanding of how the global system of oppression and exploitation works. And there is another reason for deepening that understanding: so that we can all fight more effectively against the wars that imperialism needs.

Finding the ways to challenge, and to start to turn around, the current situation is the urgent task that faces us at our first national discussion.

All sessions at For Peace and Liberation on August 27 and 28 are free of charge and will be open to anyone from the public interested in exploring these ideas. We encourage you to come for the whole weekend.

The full agenda and other conference information is available here:
https://red-ant.org/for-peace-and-liberation-a-socialist-education-conference/