This episode features the universally loved Jerome Small, an organiser and educator with decades of experience in the union movement and wider socialist . We talk about why parliament is such a dead end for people trying to change the world, but why its still useful for socialists to contest elections when it’s possible. We then take a walk through the radical history of socialist MPs, from the Bolsheviks in Russia through to a certain Irish revolutionary in the 1970s who used her parliamentary immunity to punch a Tory in the jaw. The key point being that while socialism isn’t going to come about by parliamentary legislation, the process of elections - and even parliamentary debates - are a valuable space to strengthen and support class and social struggles. We also do a quick response to an article by former Brisbane Green councillor Jonathan Sriranganathan about how the greens are supposedly the same as the socialists. Unsurprisingly, we don’t agree.
Hosted by Jordan van den Lamb (@purplepingers), Anneke Demanuele and Omar Hassan. Huge thanks to our tireless editors Charlie Wardrop and our content editor Charlotte Tavan.
While we will always release our content for free, please support us on patreon if you can.
*****************
This is a podcast by members of the Socialist Party in Naarm (Melbourne). We hope to bring a radical perspective to a podcast landscape dominated by insipid liberalism (looking at you, The Daily). The pod will come out weekly, and aims to breakdown news and current events from a socialist point of view. While a lot of what’s going on in the world is fairly bleak, The Party Line will try and highlight voices of resistance and struggle.
If you like what you hear, please rate, subscribe and share with your friends, colleagues and comrades. If you are in a position to support us financially then sign up at patreon.com/thepartyline.
If you find yourself agreeing with us more often than not, please join your local branch of the Socialist Party at socialists.org.au. We need your help to build a fighting socialist movement that can take on both the far right and its centrist enablers.
(The views and opinions expressed in our show are ours and ours alone, and do not reflect on the Socialist Party or Victorian Socialists.)
This pod was produced on stolen land and we stand in solidarity with our Indigenous comrades in their ongoing fight against racism and capitalism.