Adventurist Class War Rejecting the Working Class

Written by: John G. on 2 December 2025

There have been some activists putting forward adventurist strategies for direct action, for class war today.

Such ultra-left developments are understandable when there has been such a long period of relatively uninterrupted capitalist development in Australia, while there have been extensive capitalist crises creating turmoil around the globe and spurring great increases in liberation struggles outside the imperialist homelands. It also arises in conditions where Communist organisations in Australia don’t have the extent of connections and strength to be in a clear position to be the leading element in the struggles of the working class. 

The Communist movement in Australia has faced various difficulties and made errors in dealing with them. Sectarianism has been a recurring error. Sects find their justification in what differences they have from the working-class movement. The sects’ creation relies on subjective errors, basing thinking on hopes and wishes rather than the facts and material conditions. Ideologically it is founded on idealism rather than dialectical and historical materialism. 
The calls for immediate Class War and for ‘Peoples’ War are current cases where the working-class movement is a long way from the point of difference these calls represent. 

Calling the objective ‘Class War’ is actually a misnomer. These ultra-lefts actually have a justification which leads to them rejecting reliance on the working class. The call is actually for a war without the working class, for initiating petty bourgeois violence. The problem is not with Class War or Peoples War as a general maxim of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism or with power growing from the barrel of a gun, but with the call for it to be now, to be immediate, when it is so far beyond any sense in the hearts of the working class now.   

Not only do the calls isolate them from the working-class movement, they set out systematically to reject the working class and its movement. Politically and ideologically, they arrogantly declare the great mass of the working class ‘reactionary’, ‘aristocrats of labour’ as a class, traitors to the revolutionary movement.

Some identify a tiny section of destitute First Peoples workers as forces ‘ready for revolution’. So too they look at some students as ready. Some have identified some First Peoples as targets for their hollow rhetoric. Some have even put forward tactics of conning petty bourgeois elements and some workers to organise around petty bourgeois reformist politics. 

They reject the revolutionary tactics of Marx, Engels and Lenin to “any real working class movement, accept its ‘actual’ starting points as such and work it gradually up to the theoretical level by pointing out how every mistake made, every reverse suffered, was a necessary consequence of mistaken theoretical views in the original programme; they ought in the words of the Communist Manifesto, to represent the movement of the future in the movement of the present.” Engels Letter to Wischnewetsky, Marx-Engels Correspondence, Lawrence & Wishart, p. 453. 

Immediate Class War and ‘Peoples’ War advocates also reject basic tenets of Marxism, particularly Marxist political economy. Their program denies the inevitable crunch in the contradiction between the capitalist class and the working class. The working class is the leading revolutionary force because of its place in production and the relations of production in capitalist society, which Marxism exposes as inevitably leading to the working class taking up its role of leading the Australia revolution in a real class war.

This error exposes as well as failure to grasp core elements of political economy, failure to understand dialectical and historical materialism, things in their movement and change, errors in getting a grip on Mao’s On Contradiction.  These ideological and political failures represent a lack of commitment to serve the people, to work tirelessly for the mass of working people, and to protracted struggle to build the Party among the working class and other working masses step by step. 

Efforts are made to gather militants into a sect, separate to the working class in Australia. The slogan is accompanied with a wave of sloganeering and attachment to Communist giants, particularly Mao and a few renegades like Lin Biao and Tan Malaka.

Some who take up such ideas want to stand out from the masses around them, to have their politics being their point of difference, making them important people, not just ‘ordinary workers’ or ordinary activists. There can be a wish to be special, to be leaders not followers, to be organisers not the organised. 

The problem of standing out, of being above those around us, is not the same as being different in having communist political and ideological understanding and immersing yourself among the masses, bringing revolutionary politics to people as one of them. Communists must be fish in the sea of the people. Sure communists strive to be of use, to provide insights into the troubles we face as workers and people, not to be outsiders offering pearls of wisdom as outsiders, however valued these might be at times. 

And sure communists are different to those who aren’t communists. We have different ideas. The Party doesn’t shove its views on people who we work with.

We have been mocked for organising in ways that enable communists to be at one with the people they work with, with their communities. We strive to not stand out for anything but our ideas and suggestions. We don’t bark orders. We don’t tie people up in endless internal meetings and work so communists have little time for those around them. Communists must be engaged in their workplaces, unions, communities, in fighting organisations and organisations helping with difficulties people face. It is generally not glamourous, high-profile, though some is. It serves the people, brings people together, confronts their problems and their enemies. It draws lessons from success and failure. 

We also organise to advance the ideas and strategy of national independence from imperialism, for socialism. The Party circulates and applies these ideas, ideology and political program in mass work and people’s struggles.  

We walk on two legs, both integrated within the working class and other patriotic classes and elements, sharing their experiences and working with people to resolve their problems, reviewing what is wrong and right, exposing the path forward, and at the same time promoting in various forms our ideas, politics and program, and organising as a party for study, analysis, allocating tasks and developing our politics and ideology. 

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