Another watermelon -- A Trotskyite, by the sound of it



GREENS MP for Melbourne Adam Bandt has defended comments he made on a Marxist student website 15 years ago, in which he denounced capitalism and labelled the Greens a "bourgeois" political party that could be used to push a socialist agenda.

The comments, made in a two-page memo written by Mr Bandt on March 4, 1995, while he was a student activist at Murdoch University, first surfaced on Victorian political blogger Andrew Landeryou's website VexNews.

As Mr Bandt and Greens leader Bob Brown continued discussions yesterday with Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Treasurer Wayne Swan about the formation of the next federal government, the memo raised questions about Mr Bandt's student politics and his views of the Labor Party, which he referred to in the 1995 memo as "almost as right-wing as the US Democrats".

In the 1995 memo, Mr Bandt said he was "towards an anti-capitalist, anti-social democratic, internationalist movement".



Identifying himself as a member of the Left Alliance, Mr Bandt said, "the parliamentary road to socialism is non-existent". He called the Greens a "bourgeois" party but said supporting them might be the most effective strategy.

"Communists can't fetishise alternative political parties, but should always make some kind of materially based assessment about the effectiveness of any given strategy come election time," he wrote in the 1995 memo.

The Greens leader said there was absolutely no need for Mr Bandt to publicly distance himself from his remarks in 1995.

Mr Bandt, a former industrial relations lawyer with Slater and Gordon, made history last weekend by becoming the first Greens candidate ever to be elected to the House of Representatives in a general election.

SOURCE

3 comments:

  1. I sometimes wonder why these shitheads don't just emigrate to Cuba and live the dream.

    Then, there's China.

    There used to be the old Soviet Union, but it fell in a heap, but now there's Venezuela, and of course, Peru. Why do these people waste their lives dragging their arses around a worhless, capitalist shithole like Australia, when there is so much Marxism out there for the taking, if only they'd take that first step.

    I think it's because they're happy to accept the benefits of a free and democratic society, while they fantasise about some utopian, benevolent dictatorship, (as if that could ever exist), based on the ravings and rantings of a 19th century lunatic, i.e. Karl Marx.

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  2. Lots of undergrads flirt with Marxism as a two-fingered salute to authority. Most grow out of it. (Rupert Murdoch used to proudly display a bust of Lenin in his English digs.)
    Landeryou himself hardly has a squeaky clean reputation as a student politician -- and an unhealthy continuing obsession with the subject.
    As a Laborite Melbourne Uni student president, Landeryou was removed from office under claims of mismanagement by a broad alliance with members ranging from the hard Left to Young Liberals, including future MP Sophie Mirabella.
    Mirabella is so proud of her role in Landeryou's dismissal that she tabled it in Hansard.

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  3. I always wondered why Landeryou carried on with such fulsome praise for Mirabella on his blog. Well, the old blog at least...

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