Keeping the Red Flag Flying

Contrary to reports at the time, Marxism and socialism did not die in 1991. While some on the left succumbed to demoralisation, the Democratic Socialist Party saw the new situation as both a setback and an opportunity. The reports in this volume document the DSP’s efforts over a decade to expand and rejuvenate revolutionary socialism in Australia and internationally.

For more than four decades, including the period related in this volume, John Percy was a central leader of Resistance and the Democratic Socialist Party. Over many years, his widely varied political activity included work on an intended three-volume History of the DSP and Resistance. Volume 1, covering 1965-72, was published in 2005. Volume 2, 1972-92, was not totally complete when John died in August 2015, but most sections were finished, and the others contained sufficient indication of John’s intentions to allow them to be filled out and the volume published in 2017.*

No comparable manuscript existed for Volume 3. However, throughout the period 1992-2002, John regularly gave organisational reports to meetings of the National Committee and/or the DSP’s decision-making or educational conferences. Most of these reports and talks were subsequently published in the Activist, the DSP’s internal discussion and information bulletin. Based on extensive selections from those reports and talks, Volume 3 is a documentary history.

As the world confronts intensifying environmental, economic and social crises, this is a record from whose successes and failures activists today can draw lessons for their struggles.