Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy as a whole or certain social hierarchies. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as a belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished through radical means that change the nature of the society they are implemented in. According to emeritus professor of economics Barry Clark, supporters of left-wing politics "claim that human development flourishes when individuals engage in cooperative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive differences in status, power, and wealth are eliminated."
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an orthodox Marxist, a revolutionary Marxist, and a Bolshevik–Leninist as well as a follower of Marx, Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Liebknecht, and Rosa Luxemburg.
Socialist Alliance is a socialist political party and activist organisation in Australia, founded in 2001 as an alliance of various socialist organisations and activists, initiated by the Democratic Socialist Perspective and the International Socialist Organisation.
Socialist Alternative (SA) is a Trotskyist organisation in Australia. As a revolutionary socialist group, it describes itself as aiming to organise collective struggles against oppression and inequality while promoting the need for a revolutionary movement that could one day overthrow capitalism. Its members have organised numerous campaigns and protests around LGBT rights, climate change, racism, refugee rights and more. The organisation also intervenes in the trade union and student union movements. It has branches and student clubs in most major Australian cities and publishes the fortnightly newspaper Red Flag.
Socialist feminism rose in the 1960s and 1970s as an offshoot of the feminist movement and New Left that focuses upon the interconnectivity of the patriarchy and capitalism. However, the ways in which women's private, domestic, and public roles in society has been conceptualized, or thought about, can be traced back to Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and William Thompson's utopian socialist work in the 1800s. Ideas about overcoming the patriarchy by coming together in female groups to talk about personal problems stem from Carol Hanisch. This was done in an essay in 1969 which later coined the term 'the personal is political.' This was also the time that second wave feminism started to surface which is really when socialist feminism kicked off. Socialist feminists argue that liberation can only be achieved by working to end both the economic and cultural sources of women's oppression.
Sheila Rowbotham is an English socialist feminist theorist and historian.
Solidarity is a Trotskyist organisation in Australia. The group is a member of the International Socialist Tendency and has branches in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide and Perth. The organisation was formed in 2008 from a merger between groups emerging from the International Socialist tradition: the International Socialist Organisation, Socialist Action Group and Solidarity.
Rick Kuhn is an Australian Marxian economist, political analyst and reader at the Australian National University in Canberra. He is best known for his biographical study on Henryk Grossman, for which he won the Deutscher Memorial Prize in 2007. Chris Harman of the British Socialist Workers Party and editor of International Socialism described the biography as "a valuable addition to our theoretical armour." Kuhn is of Jewish origin and is a member of Jews Against Oppression and Occupation. He was the convenor of ACTNOW, the umbrella anti-war organisation in Canberra, formed in response to the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. He is also a long-term member of the Trotskyist organisation Socialist Alternative and was a founding editor of the online journal Marxist Interventions. Kuhn has published articles in Socialist Alternative, International Socialist Review, Socialist Worker, New Matilda, Monthly Review, ZNet, The Canberra Times and various academic journals and edited collections.
Tom O'Lincoln was an American Marxist historian, author and one of the founders of the International Socialist Tendency in Australia. He attended UC Berkeley in 1966 and joined the International Socialists who had participated in the Free Speech Movement two years earlier. He has produced first-hand accounts of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the Philippines after the downfall of Ferdinand Marcos, the USSR under Mikhail Gorbachev, and the upheavals against Suharto in Indonesia. He was a member of the Trotskyist organisation Socialist Alternative, as well as its electoral alliance party Victorian Socialists, and an editor of the online journal Marxist Interventions.
Liz Ross is a long-term socialist activist and author based in Melbourne, Australia. She has campaigned for Women's Rights and Gay Liberation since 1972 and was a union delegate in the Department of Social Security for ten years during the Hawke era. Notably, she has contributed detailed accounts of industrial struggle in Australia, with militant workers in both defunct the Builders Labourers Federation and the Royal Australian Nurses' Federation. She is also a member of the Trotskyist organisation Socialist Alternative, as well as its electoral alliance party Victorian Socialists and a founding and life member of the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives.
Tom Bramble is a socialist activist, author and retired academic based in Queensland, Australia. He taught Industrial Relations at the University of Queensland for many years and has authored numerous books and articles on the Australian labour movement. He is a member of Socialist Alternative.
The Fourth International (FI), founded in 1938, is a Trotskyist international. In 1963, following a ten-year schism, the majorities of the two public factions of the Fourth International, the International Secretariat (ISFI) and the International Committee (ICFI), reunited, electing a United Secretariat of the Fourth International.
The Socialist Party is a Trotskyist political party in England and Wales. Founded in 1997, it had formerly been Militant, an entryist group in the Labour Party from 1964 to 1991, which became Militant Labour from 1991 until 1997.
The International Socialist Organization (ISO) was a Trotskyist group active primarily on college campuses in the United States that was founded in 1976 and dissolved in 2019. The organization held Leninist positions on imperialism and the role of a vanguard party. However, it did not believe that necessary conditions for a revolutionary party in the United States were met; ISO believed that it was preparing the ground for such a party. The organization held a Trotskyist critique of nominally socialist states, which it considered class societies. In contrast, the organization advocated the tradition of "socialism from below." as articulated by Hal Draper. Initially founded as a section of the International Socialist Tendency (IST), it was strongly influenced by the perspectives of Draper and Tony Cliff of the British Socialist Workers Party. It broke from the IST in 2001, but continued to exist as an independent organization for the next eighteen years. The organization advocated independence from the U.S. two-party system and sometimes supported electoral strategies by outside parties, especially the Green Party of the United States.
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a far-left political party in the United Kingdom. Founded as the Socialist Review Group by supporters of Tony Cliff in 1950, it became the International Socialists in 1962 and the SWP in 1977. The party considers itself to be Trotskyist. Cliff and his followers criticised the Soviet Union and its satellites, calling them state capitalist rather than socialist countries.
Workers' Power is a Trotskyist group which forms the British section of the League for the Fifth International. The group publishes the newspaper Workers Power and distributes the English-language journal Fifth International.
The International Marxist Tendency (IMT) is a Marxist and Trotskyist political international founded by South African political theorist Ted Grant and his supporters after they broke with the Committee for a Workers' International in 1992. The organization's website, Marxist.com or In Defence of Marxism, is edited by Alan Woods. The site is multilingual, and publishes international current affairs articles written from a Marxist perspective, as well as many historical and theoretical articles. The IMT is active in over 40 countries.
Orthodox Marxism is the body of Marxist thought which emerged after the death of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the late 19th century, expressed in its primary form by Karl Kautsky. Kautsky's views of Marxism dominated the European Marxist movement for two decades, and orthodox Marxism was the official philosophy of the majority of the socialist movement as represented in the Second International until the First World War in 1914, whose outbreak caused Kautsky's influence to wane and brought to prominence the orthodoxy of Vladimir Lenin. Orthodox Marxism aimed to simplify, codify and systematize Marxist method and theory by clarifying perceived ambiguities and contradictions in classical Marxism. It overlaps significantly with Instrumental Marxism.
The International Socialist Tendency (IST) is an international grouping of unorthodox Trotskyist organisations espousing the ideas of Tony Cliff (1917–2000), founder of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Britain. IST supporters are sometimes called "Cliffites". It has sections across 27 countries; however, its strongest presence is in Europe, especially in Britain.
