At its founding conference in August, the Red Ant Collective established a group of Red Ant supporters called Friends of Red Ant. The following statement is an appeal for supporters to join it.

Dear Friends and Comrades,

We are writing to you as somebody who has expressed curiosity, interest or solidarity with Red Ant, perhaps as a result of reading our articles and statements on red-ant.org.  

As you will have seen, Red Ant is a very new collective of people committed to building a socialist grouping in Australia. Red Ant wishes to grow large enough to become a strong campaigner today for social justice, full democracy, environmental sustainability and a racism-free Australia.

While winning such campaigns will be crucial, there is a need to go further. Namely, we need to win a majority of people to the goal of socialist transformation and to carrying that out.

Red Ant is also of the view that neither major reforms under the current system, nor a socialist transformation, can be achieved without understanding Australia’s place in the global power structure and the consequences of this for the Australian people: the working class.

Australia is a member of a small club of rich nations who have gained a dominant place in the world flowing from their history as colonial powers. Today these countries – the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the countries of Western Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – maintain their position by defending with all their resources a monopoly of the most advanced science and technology. 

They use this monopoly to super-exploit all the countries of the Global South, old and new. Any serious challenge to their dominion – politically, ideologically, commercially or militarily – is met with whatever counter-offensive the imperialist club assesses as necessary – from war to coup to economic embargoes and sanctions.

We thus emphasize the importance of campaigning to explain Australia’s position in this system and to defeat the policies of the Australian state that flow from this. One current campaign that Red Ant supports is the campaign against the AUKUS agreement for Australia to buy long range nuclear submarines.

There is a necessity to explain and publicize among Australian people, the inspiring struggles of the peoples of the Global South against their exploitation and oppression by imperialist interests. That is an essential duty – to be in solidarity with such struggles. If we are to erode and defeat racism, xenophobia and chauvinism among the Australian people, solidarity, indeed comradeship, with the peoples of the Global South is fundamental.

Even this short summary indicates an ambitious perspective. There is a lot to do. And we are just starting as a group. We are still very small and sometimes borrow from the bourgeoisie’s vocabulary and call ourselves a “start-up” group.

We don’t intend to stay small. We want to grow and have already started growing.

We are a small start-up group with big ambitions for contributing both to the struggle for reforms and advances now and for socialist transformation as soon as that is possible. We face a demanding challenge requiring a significant commitment of head space, time and energy. We are sure that the number of people, especially young people, who will want to do that will steadily grow.

However, we are aware also that there will be perhaps many others whose current circumstances, whether relating to work, health, family commitments etc., despite wanting to make the commitment at a higher level, simply can’t.

We need the support of all such people also.

To bring our supporters closer, the Red Ant Collective has formalised a grouping called Friends of Red Ant. To join, the commitment is to:

1. Be in agreement with the spirit of Red Ant’s Statement of Principles and Perspectives. (https://red-ant.org/2022/09/22/red-ants-founding-statement-of-principles-and-perspectives/)
2. Pay monthly dues of any amount the Friend of Red Ant nominates.
3. Endeavour to attend or support Red Ant’s public activities.
4. Friends would not need to attend internal organisational meetings or other internal activities like the organising of public events – although such help is always welcome. As such, Friends would not be a part of Red Ant decision-making processes.

If you have time and energy, JOIN RED ANT and help to build this new group.

If you are in agreement, but your circumstances place limitations, BECOME A FRIEND OF RED ANT.

If you are not sure which is best for you – contact us and we can chat.

Starting anew is sometimes necessary. We are very excited to have made a start and to take the next steps.

In solidarity
The Red Ant Collective