photo of Darp taking photos

*Fixed*

hmmm, look at photo no.11 (i think), does the communist party of australia realise the the USSR (they have a hammer sickle flag) was one of the most racist regimes on earth, basically deporting or killing every minority in russia (chechens, jews, ainu people and others) while massaring the rest of the russian population anyway. ihave no problem with communists, just stalinists.

Eh. I *think* the australian communist party are Maoist rather than Stalinist actually. Not entirely sure.

either way , theres only like about ten of em, and there all senile.

or something.

Maoist and Stalinist are pretty much the same thing.With the exception of some technicalities.But yeh, neither of which are Communism.
The hammer and sickle doesn't have to be to do with USSR.

"The Party was formerly known as the "Socialist Party of Australia", but changed its name to "Communist Party" at the 8th National Congress in October, 1996.

The Socialist Party of Australia was established by a "Conference of Communists" held on December 4 & 5 in 1971. In the main, participants in the conference were members of the former Communist Party of Australia up to that time, but were dissatisfied with the direction the former CPA was taking."

Briefly, dying Maoist sect with very small presence in select unions. Crazier than a shithouse rat.

Oh, and Duck, you forgot their dog.

Nice pix btw!

any organization who claims they are maoist/stalinist are a bunch of lunatics.

Well done guys, wish I could have made it.

For more photos see:

http://machinegunkeyboard.com/?p=172#more-172

I found a map of em all! Bound to be wrong by now but still interesting.
http://www.broadleft.org/au.htm

I met some people from SPA once and I'd have to agree with @ndy about the crazy bit. They grabbed the name after the old CPA folded.

There's also an nz table which seems roughly correct.
http://www.broadleft.org/nz.htm

raz

I heartily agree with Comrade Kamkov that Maoists are pretty much Stalinists on crystal meth, and I have no time for either of them. There's a particularly wacky Maoist-Stalinist sect in New Zealand which recruits big among students because they combine fire-breathing radical rhetoric with a complete withdrawl from fighting any real-world battles.

As a revolutionary Marxist myself, though, I don't use the hammer-and-sickle for two reasons:

1) it's irretrievably tainted with the crimes of Stalin and imperialist oppression of the Baltic States etc, as PIMJ says correctly above (although deporting all minorities is a bit of an exaggeration);
2) originally it stood for the unity of workers (hammer) and peasants (sickle), and there are fuck-all peasants where I live. The old East German emblem updated it a little, being hammer (for the industrial workers) crossed with compass (for the technical workers), but it was fuckin' ugly.,

Freemason influence? All part of the conspiracy.

Although it sounds delightfully german, being that technicality and precision is something the germans are , rightfully, somewhat proud of. I'd like to see that insignia.

Cool. ta.