VANGUARD - Expressing the viewpoint of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
For National Independence and Socialism • www.cpaml.org
On July 4-5, the ICOR affiliated parties and organisations in the Asia region are meeting in Kathmandu, Nepal. We were unable to accept the invitation to attend, but sent this brief report on current conditions here to conference participants.
Introduction: The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) greets participants in the ICOR Asia Continental Conference. We apologise for being unable to attend in person, but please rest assured that we value highly the solidarity and mutual support of comrades across our region. We particularly express our best wishes and good health to Comrade Alik, the continental coordinator, following the heinous crime of his attempted assassination by criminal thugs supporting Hindutva fascism.
The Australian ruling class remains committed to serving the US imperialists who hold a dominant position within the Australian state apparatus. They are part of the QUAD, comprising the US, Australia, India and Japan, and of AUKUS, comprising the US, UK and Australia.
Both main parliamentary political parties – the Liberal-National Coalition and the governing Australian Labor Party (ALP) – are cheerleaders for US imperialism within our region, and actively preparing the Australian armed forces for participation in a US-led war on its rival, Chinese social-imperialism.
Domestically, there has been a shift to the right with opinion polls now showing the One Nation Party of Pauline Hanson outpolling both Liberal and Labor.
Since its inception in 1997, One Nation has been an openly racist party attacking successive waves of migration to Australia. This is part of its appeal to different class elements, including some within the working class: it professes concern for social problems hurting working people, such as the cost-of-living crisis, the housing crisis, and poverty, but channels united working class action against these evils into disunity within the very multicultural Australian working class. It hides behind its professions of concern for workers the anti-worker legislation it continually votes for in parliament. It appeals to those who feel rejected by the mainstream parties, who feel nostalgic for Australia “as it used to be”, and those who are simply racist. Once dismissed as a fringe party, its current popularity reflects the deepening crisis of Australian capitalism.
Of greater danger to attempts to build a revolutionary working class movement is social-democracy in the form of the ALP, a bourgeois liberal reformist party to which many unions are affiliated. Workers may be deeply skeptical of the ALP leaders, but most currently accept that the parliamentary path is the continuing guarantee of their democratic rights. There are some indications that sections of the working class want a more spirited and militant level of struggle for their immediate demands, but few yet embrace our call for an independent working class agenda that rejects the constraints of social-democracy and the parliamentary path.
Australia’s major trading partner is China. That creates scope for contradictions between sections of the ruling class. Among the people, there is no love lost for the social system China now represents, but not all are convinced that we should follow the US into a war with China. Among a section of the Left are those who support China as a bulwark of opposition to hegemony without realising that competing with the US for markets, raw materials and human labour power is not anti-hegemonism, but the pursuit of a rival hegemony by primarily economic and political means, while continuing to build its own military strength.
Our Party has growing concern with the militarisation of Space. This is proceeding rapidly with competition for the control of Space between the US bloc (including Australia), the European Union bloc, and the Chinese and Russians. Since earliest time, wars were fought on land; some four thousand years ago, the Mediterranean saw the development of sea-based warfare; and during World War One, the air became a new domain for conflict between countries. In recent times, two new overlapping domains have been added: cyber warfare and space warfare.
It has been said that “Space assets underpin virtually every dimension of modern military power: reconnaissance and surveillance, precision navigation and targeting, communications architecture, missile early warning and anti-satellite capabilities.” The UN Outer Space Treaty bans the deployment of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction from Space, but there are many types of weapons that fall between the cracks. This is, if you will excuse the pun, a space to watch.
Comrades, we wish this ICOR Asian Continental Conference every success.
Central Committee
Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
July 4, 2026