May Day, the day commemorated for more than a century as the international workers’ day, began as the fight for the 8-hour day in the USA in 1886. But our socialist celebration of May Day is more than just an assertion of economic and social rights for the working class within the framework of capitalism. It’s a challenge to the rotten profit system itself. It’s an affirmation that history will not end with this racist, brutal society and that a better world is indeed in birth.

There’s an air of unreality and fakery about this election:

• The stage-managed walks through malls;
• The packaged releases of TV bites for the evening news;
• The refusal of [Kim] Beasley to really fight on the GST;
• The incompetence and repellent characters of all the main players.

Resistance, the socialist youth organisation in political solidarity with the Democratic Socialist Party, was the organiser of the impressive high-school walkouts and protests against racism and One Nation that were held around the country in July.

Hansonism – that’s now a synonym for racism and bigotry – and it has burst onto Australia’s political stage with a vengeance. It’s shameful – for us as Australians, as workers, as socialists, as human beings. We can take some cold comfort – the biggest parliamentary victims in the Queensland elections were its creators and nurturers, the Nationals and Liberals. But 23% was 23% too much!

The Communist Manifesto ushered in a new epoch in human history. It described and projected the process of change from capitalism to socialism, the coming to power of the working class. That’s a process still taking place. So it’s a thoroughly modern document.

It’s undoubtedly the most influential political document, not just of the last 150 years, but of all time. While the Magna Carta and the US Declaration of Independence marked important political victories for advancing sections of society, the Manifesto both marked a stage and projected the course for the working class and for the future of humanity as a whole.

Marx and Engels were not the first to develop and advance a vision of a classless society. As they themselves noted, earlier thinkers had developed “in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Utopian pictures of ideal social conditions; in the eighteenth, actual communistic theories… [in which] it was not simply class privileges that were to be abolished, but class distinctions themselves”.

The memorable year 1968 – a momentous year for the left and the newly radicalising young people of the time, and an almost historical, legendary year for the young rebels of today. A popular slogan was coined at the time: “We are the people our parents warned us about!” Well, they’re still the people your parents are warning you about, except for those parents who themselves were part of it at the time, who radicalised then, and kept their ideals and fire and hopes alive.

Perhaps around the Xmas dinner table this year, being quizzed by parents you haven’t seen for many months, or an aunt you haven’t seen for years, comrades have been met by a familiar refrain:

You’re a socialist? How could you be a socialist today?

Seventy-five years ago, under the impact and inspiration of the October 1917 Russian Revolution, the Communist Party of Australia was founded. 26 people attended the founding conference in Sydney on October 30, 1920. There were two main groupings, those from the Australian Socialist Party, and the “Trades Hall Reds” around TLC secretary Jock Garden, plus former IWW members and representatives from other small groups.

At the end of the 20th century we are confronted by a historical paradox. On the one hand, the economics, politics and culture of the world has become more unified than ever before, as a result of the growing domination of transnational capital. And yet, at the same time, we see an explosive growth of national struggles.