Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

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The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) (CPA(ML)) is a minor political party in Australia, which advocates a form of communism based on the writings of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong. The party describes its ideology as Marxism-Leninism, and does not use the term "Maoism" which is commonly applied to it by others.

The CPA(ML) was founded in 1964, following a split in the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). The split was a result of the rupture in the early 1960s between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of China (see Sino-Soviet split). The leading figure in the breakaway group was Ted Hill, a Melbourne barrister who had been Victorian State Secretary of the CPA. Other noted figures were Paddy Malone and Norm Gallagher of the Builders Labourers Federation, Clarrie O'Shea of the Tramways Union and Ted Bull of the Waterside Workers Federation.

At its foundation the CPA(ML) was believed to have several hundred members. Its membership has been a closely guarded secret ever since, but it is unlikely to be more than a hundred. The CPA-ML regards itself as the nucleus of a revolutionary vanguard party, and does not admit new members unless they meet its rigorous ideological standards.

During the early 1970s the CPA(ML) attracted some following among radical students at some Australian universities, notably Monash University and La Trobe University in Melbourne and Flinders University in Adelaide. The CPA(ML) operated on university campuses through "front" organisations such as the Worker-Student Alliance (WSA) and the Monash Labor Club. Its most notable student leaders were Albert Langer and Jim Bacon (Bacon later renounced communism and became Labor Premier of Tasmania). Some academic figures, such as the historian Humphrey McQueen, also supported CPA-ML policies, even if they did not become party members.

Until the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 the CPA(ML) followed the Chinese Communist Party's "line" with absolute loyalty. The party paper Vanguard reprinted Chinese statements verbatim and lauded every alleged achievement of the Chinese regime. During the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s the CPA-ML echoed the ultra-revolutionary rhetoric of the Chinese media, calling for immediate world revolution and railing against the "modern revisionists" of the Soviet Union and the pro-Soviet parties such as the CPA, which they described as "the Aarons revisionist clique."

Nevertheless the CPA(ML) immediately supported the sudden change in Chinese policy in 1972, when United States President Richard Nixon visited Beijing and established a Sino-American alliance against the Soviet Union. This, however, caused major disaffection among the party's student following. The Worker-Student Alliance collapsed in 1973 and the party lost its leading position on the far left of student politics.

Following this change of "line" the CPA(ML) and its remaining student followers abandoned Maoist rhetoric and began to promote "Australian independence" rather than revolution, forming new fronts such as the Australian Independence Movement and using the blue Eureka Flag rather than the red communist flag. This eventually led a split in the party, with those opposed to the new "nationalist" line leaving in 1978.

After Mao's death, the arrest of the leading Maoists (see Gang of Four) and the restoration of a market economy in China under Deng Xiaoping, the CPA(ML) ceased to support the Chinese Communist Party, switching support to the ultra-Maoist regime of Enver Hoxha in Albania. The consequent loss of financial support from China caused a considerable restriction in the party's activities. With the fall of communism in Albania in 1991, the CPA(ML) was left with no country it could look to as a model of socialism. Various dissidents left the party or were expelled, founding transient Maoist groups such as the Red Eureka Movement. What remained of the party continued to advocate the Chinese "line" of the late Mao Zedong era.

During the 1980s and 1990s the founding "old guard" of the CPA-ML died or retired. Ted Hill's retirement in 1986 and death in 1988 left the party with no recognised public figure. Its last prominent trade unionist, Norm Gallagher, was jailed for corruption. The current Chairperson of the CPA(ML) is Bruce Cornwall. The party continues to publish Vanguard but otherwise conducts little visible political activity.

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