User:Bsnowball/Love and Rage (Australia)

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This article discusses the Australian Love and Rage organisation. For the American organisation, see Love and Rage.

Love and Rage or (L&R) was an Australian leftist organisation which attempted to produce a synthesis between Marxist, anarchist/anarcho-syndicalist, libertarian socialist, autonomist and radical feminist politics between 1998 and 2003. It operated in Sydney within the student movement.

Love and Rage emerged out of the collapse of the Left Alliance faction of the Australian National Union of Students. It rapidly acquired autonomist Marxist politics due to the influential role of a number of intellectuals in the group. Throughout the life of the group there was a great deal of confusion between the radical feminist concept of autonomist organising of the oppressed and Italian style Autonomist marxism.

Throughout the majority of its existence, Love and Rage revolved around weekly meetings at the University of Technology, Sydney. These would involve a talk and discussion either about a broad political topic or, more often than not, a current campaign. Meetings would often have extensive reportbacks from members about their current activism, and meetings would almost always be followed by a drink at one of the local pubs. The political discussions at meetings provided a welcome reprieve for many members from the tedium of day to day organising, and place to discuss the relationship between their organising and their broader political vision for social liberation. Outside of meetings Love and Rage provided an informal network of social and political support for libertarian socialist activists within and across campuses. The campus student clubs of L&R were called "Red and Black" clubs and these colour themes dominated the organisation's imagery.

L&R was primarily composed of students from the University of Sydney and the University of Technology, Sydney and later, a significant number of students from the University of Western Sydney and Macquarie University. It also attracted a small periphery in Wollongong, Canberra and Newcastle.

One particularly notable success in the history of Love and Rage was the 'Log of claims' campaign the University of Western Sydney, Bankstown in 1999. A number of L&R student activists at the University of Western Sydney developed a student strike campaign around a log of claims demand. This replicated forms of student organisation seen in Mexico at UNAM, and the log of claims system used in the Australian labour movement. The successful campaign, which ended in a radical and long term occupation brought attention to Love and Rage, Autonomist Marxism and the log of claims tactic.

While L&R argued for the organisation of students at study (repeating the autonomist maxim "organising where we're at") and was mostly comprised of people involved in grassroots activism, it also invested serious amounts of organisation and time into the local student union branch elections, and the National Union of Students. Conflict over this strategy of a dual focus on basic grassroots organising and participation in social democratic structures (such as student unions) lead to tensions within the organisation at the end of 2000.

A series of disputes took place between parts of the leadership and both members in Western Sydney and those generally alienated from the strategy of engaging with student unions (including parts of the leadership). Over the course of several years L&R slowly collapsed, haemorhaging members into the general libertarian socialist scene of Sydney, or into inactivity. These disputes were heightened by the general decline in the student mobilisation on campuses from 2000 onwards, the burning out of activists through their work as full-time office bearers of student unions, lack of relevant training structures for participants, and by a lack of formal structure, allowing informal structures and strong personalities to dominate the organisation.

While the pamphlet The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman was held up as a central text of the organisation, L&R fell victim to the very weaknesses described in the pamphlet: disempowerment through lack of process, domination by strong personalities, misdirection and inability to act collectively.

Love and Rage's gentle collapse ended somewhere between 2002 and 2004. Its email list is still active. Before its collapse, the Love and Rage collective was able to publish three editions of its organ, Autonomy and Solidarity.

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Category:Australian student politics Category:Student strikes