Kia ora! A small group of us have started a new subreddit for local NZ political discussion in a pro-worker and pro-union Marxist lense, please feel free to check it out and give a follow if that's something you'd be interested in or would like to show support

https://www.reddit.com/r/t5_ape7rc/s/MVOcKSv5Rx

r/MarxistNZ

Thanks :)

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https://preview.redd.it/5jzzis3j44mb1.png?width=1448&format=png&auto=webp&s=544aa6218f9ad8e6b35715cc27a30b1f5fb18375

The high point of our Inaugural National Conference, the keynote speaker and reception is open to the public and we are thrilled to have arranged Daniel Lopez to visit from Australia. Please consider registering (https://www.socialistsocieties.org.nz/conference/) so that we can adequately cater for attendees.

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Beginning as an electoral alliance in 2018, the Victorian Socialists (VS) have since grown into a small but promising party. In the 2022 Victorian state election, VS won over 52,000 first preference votes after staging an unprecedented campaign that saw close to 1000 volunteers knock on 188,568 doors in Melbourne's north and West. Indeed, in some predominantly working-class electorates, VS won close to 10 percent of the vote, proving that it is possible to rebuild a mass audience for socialist politics. While modest, VS members regard these achievements as a powerful proof of concept and as laying the basis for future victories. However, the road leading to these successes was not a simple one, and it involved debates, splits, many votes won and lost and one expulsion. Daniel Lopez is a Commissioning Editor for Jacobin magazine and an elected member of its Executive Committee. In this keynote speech, he will give his analysis of Victorian Socialists' journey so far and hazard a few generalisations about what it all might mean for comrades across the ditch and beyond. You can read about the Victorian Socialists in Overland here and here, or in Jacobin.

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Daniel Lopez joined the left at the age of 15, after looking up "socialism" in the phonebook. Now, he is a Commissioning Editor for Jacobin magazine and a member of the Executive Committee of Victorian Socialists. Daniel is also a political philosophy lecturer at La Trobe University and his doctoral research focused on the Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukács. This formed the basis for his first book, Lukács: Praxis and the Absolute which came out with Brill in 2019 and Haymarket in 2020. Daniel's articles have appeared in Jacobin, Overland, Aeon, Historical Materialism, Thesis Eleven, Science & Society and elsewhere. When he isn't worrying about politics or philosophy, Daniel enjoys poetry and fishing.

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This event is open to the public and includes a reception with finger food, and The Loons bar will be open to purchase drinks.

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Readings for context:

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https://overland.org.au/2020/05/corbyn-sanders-and-the-australian-left/

https://jacobin.com/2018/09/victoria-socialists-australia-manifesto-elections

https://overland.org.au/2022/12/socialist-politics-after-the-elections-in-victoria/

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I feel like this year there are a lot of former Labour voters (some of who may be life long voters) who no longer trust Labour but are unsure who to vote for now.

For some NZ First might be a good compromise/protest vote, which is fair enough.

But really, it's just sad how weak the left has become in NZ and it would be great if a new party like the 90s NewLabour Party was established. But who knows maybe the material conditions will make this a reality in a few years.

The third edition of the Federation of Socialist Societies' publication The Commonweal is now available. Consider subscribing, or enjoy the online versions of our back issues over athttps://www.socialistsocieties.org.nz/the-commonweal/

New edition includes reflections of class independence & elections, public ownership & planning, the Cuban healthcare system (specifically polyclinics), as well as history, biographies, reviews and more. Over 80 pages worth!

Kia ora, we're the group that formed after this post about four months ago. Since then we've made a website, written a (draft) constitution, had in-person meetings, and elected an executive committee.

Soon after our formation, we recognised that many of us had a lack of practical experience, solid theoretical understanding, or both. Any party formed off this base would be unlikely to succeed, and without the input of existing and experienced communists, it couldn’t rightfully claim to represent Aotearoa’s communist movement. Because of this, we decided to continue as a pre-party formation with a focus on network-building and education.

Our members are encouraged to join existing organisations to build relationships with experienced comrades and hopefully gain some experience themselves, while within our own group, we’re organising an education programme based around readings, lectures, and discussions to build theoretical literacy. This is only a first step meant to help orient ourselves before we start analysing our local and national conditions and finally get onto organising in our communities.

If you’d like to get involved here’s a link to our Discord: https://discord.gg/C2q9FygWdF

Alternatively, you can sign up here on our website: https://www.communist.org.nz

Happy to answer any questions if you’ve got them

If you haven't listened to The End of History, please do! It's a monthly radio show in Christchurch, and it's all about working class culture, history, politics, etc. (from Antarctica to punk to nursing and so much more). Guests have included (among other amazing people) the historian Tony Simpson, NZNO (nurses union) President Anne Daniels, and Labour MP Duncan Webb. Always interesting, with songs and reviews, have a listen!

https://www.plainsfm.org.nz/Programmes/Prog/TheEndOfHistory

Let's look back at some memorable moments and interesting insights from last year.

Your top 10 posts:

• "“Abolish the monarchy!” Thousands in Australia protested for Indigenous rights and return of Indigenous land on its official day of mourning for the queen. Some threw red paint to protest colonial abuses: “They mourn the queen, we mourn everything her regime stole from us.”" by u/Time-Review8493
• "Discord Link for the Commision for the Creation of a Communist Party" by u/Lifesuselessdemsoc
• "Federation of Socialist Society Publication Issue #2 Available" by u/CantSocialistSociety
• "This is the declaration of the Commision for the Creation of a Communist Party(CCCP)!" by u/Lifesuselessdemsoc
• "ACHTUNG! Federation of Socialist Societies Online Guest Seminar" by u/CantSocialistSociety
• "Some updates from the Canterbury Socialist Society/Federation" by u/CantSocialistSociety
• "Organise Aotearoa Active?" by u/WaffleFrostt
• "Communist Party where you at? One of you guys need to reach out to this fella." by u/_everynameistaken_
• "Nat/ACT donations 6 times larger than Lab/Greens" by u/Jimjamnz
• "NZPFU strike this Friday - information, locations, how you can get involved" by u/TeTapuMaataurana

Hi, does anyone have any recommendations for leftist blogs, news sources or other media from New Zealand? I've tried looking myself, but only unsavoury likes of The Daily Blog seem to appear -- surely there's someone else. I'm also looking for forums, and any other information nodes like that, based in New Zealand.

Thanks.

Just curious as I was looking at the former Soviet republic flags and just started to think what Aotearoa's communist flag would potentially look like?

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Hot off the presses!

The second edition of our publication The Commonweal is now available for members, subscribers, and for purchase!

This edition is significantly longer than the first one and includes contributions from members across the country.

Topics span from the cost of living crisis, the challenges socialists may consider taking on with the election year looming, what 'family abolition' meant to early socialists and whether the contemporary expression has any similarities to it, reviews of films and books, a critique of 'The Spinoff' as a platform of comfortable condescension, a biography of Daniel Guerin and much more.

Members get copies of Commonweal as part of your membership. Everyone else - you can order a copy for $10 including postage, or subscribe to for $20 per year. New subscribers will receive a free copy of issue #1 until we run out of stock!

If you want to know more about the Federation of Socialist Societies, this is the best place to consider the reckons of some of our members. We print diverse opinions from a variety of socialist perspectives that do not necessarily represent the organisation as a whole, and encourage robust debate.

Get into it.

https://www.socialistsocieties.org.nz/ind.../the-commonweal/

https://discord.gg/xFa7rtt4DF

We need someone to Create a discord or a discussion thread so we can organize a Party hierachy and then hopefully we can move on from there.

Discord Server:https://discord.gg/xFa7rtt4DF

View Poll

1. Does it actually exist anymore?
2. Has it got a Working Website?
3. Has it got a youth wing?

Wear red and bring a sign if possible.

Details are here:

https://teu.ac.nz/news/university-strike-details-confirmed/

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This is a reminder about our first online seminar event tomorrow night (Wednesday 28th) at 6.30pm. 
We have the great privilege to be hosting Ben Lewis of Marxism Translated, a Germanist historian who has made significant contributions to the socialist movement both by translating texts from the period of the Second International (1889-1914), as well as providing analysis and accounts of the history of this period.
The Second International was a momentous achievement in our movement's history, as well as representing one of the more catastrophic failures of socialist principle when faced with the political pressure of the First World War. Nonetheless, the debates and organisation of the Second International represented a high water mark for the labour movement. The bimonthly magazine Die Gleichheit, (Equality) under the editorship of Clara Zetkin was the official publication of the international women's socialist movement, but additionally contained some of the most important writing from the movement as a whole. The German section of the International (the Social Democratic Party of Germany) alone had over one million members at its height. 

You may consider listening to the podcast from our friends at The Measures Taken where they interviewed Ben, as a way of orienting yourself to the event.

Please consider attending the event on Zoom tomorrow evening. This is a rare opportunity for supporters interested in the history of the socialist movement to hear from a highly regarded expert on the topic. 

Check out the Facebook event or follow this link to join the lecture tomorrow evening, and forward this email far and wide!

In unity,
Hamilton Socialist Society
Otago Socialist Society
Wellington Socialist Society
Canterbury Socialist Society

All of Organise Aotearoa’s social media’s have not been updated since April 1st. I have sent emails and no reply. Have they gone inactive?