Australia's 1975 Constitional Coup: Can Corbyn or the CWI Learn Lessons From Reformist Failure?
The Problem with the CWI’s (and Corbyn's) Charming Faith in the Parliamentary Road
Introduction: When Symptoms Become Solutions
The CWI (Committee for a Workers’ International) recently released an analysis of the 1975 Australian constitutional coup. It develops similar themes in an article for the 45th anniversary. The CWI correctly identifies the dismissal of Gough Whitlam as a crucial historical event with lessons for revolutionaries. But the conclusions drawn reveal something more concerning than mere historical incompleteness: they exemplify how revolutionary organizations can mistake symptoms of capitalist state power for its actual sources, and consequently propose institutional reforms where revolutionary transformation is required.
This problem is not unique to today’s CWI. In 1974, members of Militant (which founded the CWI in 1973) identified virtually the same error in the British organisation’s approach. In a remarkable letter renouncing their support for Militant, these comrades wrote:
“For ‘Militant’, revolutionary activity, yesterday, today and tomorrow, consists overwhelmingly in a struggle around the programme of a future Labour Government, a contest with the Labour bureaucrats taking place inside the Labour Party itself... ‘Militant’ is unable to combat social-democratic ideology even on its own chosen ground—the internal Labour Party struggle.”
The Militant members identified the core problem: reducing working-class struggle to parliamentary competition accepts social-democratic ideology about what the state is and can do. They wrote that revolutionaries must instead “fight for new forms of organization and struggle adequate to the task—Councils of Action, committees for organizing production, workers’ self-defence, and so on.”
The CWI’s analysis of Australia 1975 reveals the same problem in contemporary form. Having correctly identified that working-class mobilization was contained by reformist parties and state power overrode electoral outcomes, the CWI concludes the solution is abolishing the monarchy. This represents the same error the Militant critics identified in their organization: mistaking institutional form for the actual source of power, and proposing reform of state institutions where the task is building independent working-class power.
We do not write this polemic out of sectarian impulse but from conviction that clarity about actual dynamics of state power is essential for building revolutionary movements. The CWI’s analysis, well-intentioned though it is, contains a fundamental strategic error that could misdirect working-class energy toward constitutional reform at the precise moment revolutionary organization is most needed.
The error, stated plainly: The CWI identifies the monarchy as the mechanism of capitalist counter-revolution in Australia, and therefore concludes that abolishing the monarchy must form part of revolutionary strategy. In doing so, they mistake a tactical instrument of the bourgeoisie for the actual source of class power, and propose an institutional solution where only independent working-class organization offers genuine revolutionary possibility.
Part I: What the CWI Gets Right (And Why It Makes Their Error More Serious)
The CWI piece contains several analytical insights that must be acknowledged:
First, the CWI correctly identifies that the Whitlam government implemented genuine reforms under pressure from working-class struggle. Free higher education, universal healthcare, equal pay legislation, Aboriginal land rights, Vietnam War withdrawal—these were real concessions won by Australian workers and social movements. The CWI is right to insist that these were “only won through working-class struggle” and therefore represent working-class power exercised.
Second, the CWI correctly observes that the constitutional coup revealed the limits of electoral politics. When the Senate blockade and budget crisis forced a decision, it was not resolved through parliamentary procedure but through the Governor-General’s unilateral action. The CWI recognizes this as demonstrating state power independent of electoral outcomes.
Third, the CWI correctly notes that working-class mobilization erupted immediately following the dismissal; 400,000 workers in the streets of Melbourne, massive strikes across the country. The CWI identifies this as genuine revolutionary potential.
Fourth, the CWI correctly identifies that the Labor leadership “refused to do anything to organise this mass movement against the coup.” They recognize that the traditional working-class organizations failed to build on the mobilization.
These insights are important. They establish that the CWI understands several key elements: genuine working-class power exists; the parliamentary system has structural limitations; leadership matters; working-class mobilization can be misdirected.
But it is precisely because the CWI grasps these elements that their strategic conclusion is so revealing of reformist institutional thinking.
Part II: The Fundamental Error—Mistaking the Tool for the User
Having correctly identified that state power overrode electoral outcomes, the CWI concludes:
“The monarchy is a weapon of the ruling class which is usually kept relatively sheathed. But she gives royal assent to all legislation. MPs and the armed forces do not swear allegiance to parliament; they swear it to the queen...The monarchy is a powerful ideological and legal tool for capitalism. It can be used quickly, as these events show, to prop up the profit system against workers’ struggle. As such, the abolition of the monarchy must form part of a broader programme for socialist change.”
This conclusion contains a category error that must be addressed directly. The CWI identifies the monarchy as a “tool” of capitalism, which is correct. But they then move from “the monarchy is a tool of capitalist power” to “abolishing the monarchy is part of the revolutionary program.” This is where analysis breaks down into institutional reformism.
The Logical Problem
Consider the actual sequence of events in Australia 1975:
Working-class struggle erupts (strike wave of 1974)
This frightens the Australian bourgeoisie
Electoral procedures begin to produce outcomes the bourgeoisie dislikes (Labor elected in 1972, re-elected in 1974)
The bourgeoisie needs to remove an elected government
They possess an institutional mechanism available to them: the Governor-General, the monarchy connection, vice-regal powers
They deploy this mechanism to achieve their class objective
The monarchy was not the source of the decision to remove Whitlam. It was an available mechanism for implementing that decision. The Australian bourgeoisie did not wake up one morning and think, “How can we use the monarchy today?” Rather, they thought, “We need to remove this government—what mechanisms are available to us?”—and the monarchy was one such mechanism.
The proof of this is comparative history. Consider:
Chile 1973: The bourgeoisie removed Allende using the military, not a monarchy. There was no king available; the military sufficed.
Portugal 1974-1975: The bourgeoisie used military interventions and party manipulation to contain revolution, not monarchical mechanisms (though Portugal had a president functioning similarly to a monarchy).
Britain 1945-1979: When the British bourgeoisie faced Labour governments they disliked, they did not deploy the monarchy to remove them. They waited for electoral cycles, used media manipulation, deployed party bureaucracy, undermined from within. Why? Because working-class mobilization had not reached the scale that required such dramatic interventions.
USA: Having abolished the monarchy centuries ago, does the American bourgeoisie therefore lack mechanisms to defend capital against democratic procedures? Obviously not. They possess the military, the judiciary, the FBI, constitutional procedures, party bureaucracies, media monopolies.
The actual pattern is this: The bourgeoisie deploys whatever mechanisms are available and necessary to defend capital, depending on the scale and militancy of working-class struggle.
The monarchy in Australia was not uniquely powerful. It was simply what was available. If Australia had written a republican constitution the day before November 11, 1975, the bourgeoisie would have found another mechanism: perhaps military intervention, perhaps judicial intervention, perhaps more intensive party manipulation. The form changes; the class logic remains.
What This Means for Revolutionary Strategy
The CWI’s conclusion—that revolutionaries should prioritise the abolition of the monarchy—represents a strategic miscalculation of the first order.
If revolutionaries in Australia today prioritise the campaign for republican reform, they accomplish the following:
They accept the CWI’s premise that the form of state power is the problem
They propose an institutional solution to what is fundamentally a power problem
They channel working-class energy toward constitutional reform rather than revolutionary transformation
They implicitly accept that if only the monarchy were abolished, the state apparatus would become genuinely democratic
They invite the bourgeoisie to grant this reform (as they have in numerous countries) and thereby defang revolutionary sentiment
This is precisely the logic of institutional reformism. It mistakes a symptom of capitalist state power (the availability of non-parliamentary mechanisms) for the disease itself (the existence of a capitalist state whose function is to defend capital).
A republican Australia with a directly elected president would still possess a bourgeois state. That state would still deploy military, judiciary, police, party bureaucracy, media monopoly against revolutionary working-class movements. The only difference would be that the mechanism for dismissing elected governments would look slightly different.
The real lesson of Australia 1975 is not that the monarchy must be abolished. The real lesson is that the capitalist state—in whatever constitutional form—cannot be captured by reformist parties and transformed into an instrument of working-class power. Revolutionary change prioritises building independent working-class power outside and against state institutions, not reforming state institutions.
Part III: The CWI’s Charming Faith in the Parliamentary Road—How Militant’s Error Became an International Organization’s Framework
From National Error to International Framework
The trajectory of Militant to the CWI is instructive precisely because it demonstrates how organizations can contain critiques of their fundamental approach without actually resolving them. This is not merely about the CWI making an error about Australia in 2020. It reveals a structural problem: institutional reformism became embedded in an international organization’s DNA.
The story unfolds across decades:
1974: The Moment of Clarity That Was Never Fully Resolved
In 1974, comrades inside Militant in Britain identified their organization’s core problem. In their remarkable renunciation letter, they explicitly connected Militant’s approach to social-democratic ideology:
“It is not a false belief in the sincerity of Harold Wilson or Tony Benn which holds back the working stage. It is the belief held by many workers that the capitalist state is an adequate instrument for breaking the power of the capitalists which holds them back. Once again, ‘Militant’ capitulates to social-democratic ideology and disarms the workers’ movement.”
This was not a minor criticism. These comrades were arguing that Militant had fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the capitalist state. The organization believed that if only a genuine left-wing Labour government took office and implemented radical policies, working-class power could be advanced through state institutions. This, the critics argued, was precisely social-democratic ideology—the belief that the state form (who controls it, what policies it implements) determines its essential function (defending capital or serving workers).
The Militant critics offered an alternative: “Revolutionaries must fight for new forms of organization and struggle adequate to the task—Councils of Action, committees for organizing production, workers’ self-defence, and so on.”
This was a fundamental strategic disagreement. Not a tactical dispute about how to build the Labour Party left, but a disagreement about what working-class power actually requires.
The Organization’s Response: Internationalization Without Resolution
Rather than Militant resolving this critique and genuinely transforming its approach, something different happened. The organization expanded internationally. It became the CWI. And in becoming international, Militant reproduced itself globally—carrying the same institutional thinking with it.
This was not accidental. When organizations avoid resolving fundamental contradictions, expansion can actually prevent resolution. International organization-building becomes new work that substitutes for resolving fundamental problems. The CWI became the institutionalization of the very institutional thinking its British members had critiqued.
1975: The Simultaneous Crisis That Revealed the Error
Consider the timing: In Britain in 1974-1975, Militant was making its parliamentary/electoral mistakes. In Australia in 1975, the exact moment the Militant critics were renouncing the organization’s approach, the Australian working class was erupting in the most massive mobilization since the post-war period. Over half a million workers struck. Hundreds of thousands rallied.
The Militant organization (in Britain and internationally) was incapable of learning from Australia because it hadn’t actually resolved the problem the British comrades identified. The organization didn’t have a framework for understanding what independent working-class power in crisis actually requires.
2020: The Error Persists, Now Dressed in Forty-Five Years of Accumulated Practice
When the CWI analyzed the 1975 Australian crisis decades later, published in The Socialist (the British newspaper that is Militant renamed), the organization proposed exactly what institutional reformism would propose: abolish the monarchy.
This wasn’t a new error. It was the same error the 1974 Militant critics had identified: accepting social-democratic ideology about state power, proposing constitutional reform as the solution to crisis rooted in absence of independent working-class organization.
By 2020, this error had crystallized into the organization’s international practice. The CWI didn’t merely get Australia wrong in 2020. The CWI had spent forty-five years systematizing an approach based on institutional thinking, applying it globally, and building organizational structures around it.
What the CWI Didn’t Understand About Its Own History
The CWI’s analysis of Australia 1975 suggests the organization has not grasped the implications of its own founding critique. In 1974, the Militant critics had written:
“A general strike involves a struggle against the centralized power of the state. Revolutionaries must fight for new forms of organization and struggle adequate to this task.”
This statement is fundamental. It says: working-class power in crisis requires building new organizational forms—not capturing state institutions, not proposing constitutional reforms, but building Councils of Action, factory committees, workers’ defense organizations.
Yet in 2020, analyzing precisely such a moment (400,000 workers mobilizing, massive strikes), the CWI proposed abolishing the monarchy. This is not what the 1974 critics meant by “fighting for new forms of organization.” It is precisely what they warned against: accepting the CWI’s logic that the problem is the form of state institutions rather than the absence of independent working-class power.
The Structural Problem: How Institutional Errors Become International Organization
This raises a deeper question: Why does institutional thinking persist in revolutionary organizations even when they claim to have broken from social democracy?
The answer lies in how organizations reproduce themselves. When Militant became the CWI, it didn’t merely expand geographically. It exported its organizational framework, its approach to struggle, its analytical method. Members joining the CWI learned to analyze struggle through the lens Militant had developed: parliamentary competition, electoral strategy, state reform.
This framework is seductive precisely because it offers immediate work and apparent strategic clarity. Revolutionaries can focus on Labour Party struggle, electoral campaigns, constitutional reform. These are concrete, visible activities. There are victories to celebrate (a more left Labour government, a constitutional reform, an electoral advance).
Building independent working-class power—Councils of Action, factory committees, workers’ self-defense organizations—offers no such immediate validation. It requires patient work over years, often in isolation from mainstream political activity. It requires accepting that revolutionary organization may be numerically small and politically isolated for extended periods.
Militant chose the path of institutional visibility. It became the CWI and applied this approach internationally. The organization attracted cadres, built presence, expanded influence. All while carrying unresolved the fundamental question the 1974 critics had raised: What is the nature of capitalist state power, and what forms of organization are actually capable of challenging it?
The Contemporary Significance: How This Pattern Repeats
Understanding the Militant-to-CWI trajectory is essential for understanding why the contemporary left keeps reproducing similar errors. Organizations grow, expand internationally, build presence, all while avoiding resolution of fundamental questions about state power and working-class organization.
The question becomes: Are there contemporary left organizations making similar errors—proposing institutional solutions (electoral strategies, constitutional reforms, party-building within reformist structures) while lacking genuine independent working-class organization?
The answer is yes. This is precisely what Red Mole’s analysis of contemporary left organizational crises has repeatedly shown. Organizations achieve visibility and influence while remaining trapped in frameworks inherited from social democracy. They make real contributions to working-class struggle while simultaneously limiting that struggle by channeling it into institutional directions.
What the CWI’s Error Reveals About the Left’s Strategic Weakness
The CWI case is particularly instructive because it shows institutional thinking becoming embedded not through conspiracy or malice, but through the normal operations of how organizations reproduce themselves.
The 1974 Militant critics were arguing for a genuine break with social-democratic ideology about state power. But the organization they critiqued didn’t dissolve or transform. It expanded. And in expanding, it created CWI structures and practices that reproduced institutional thinking on a global scale.
This suggests that breaking genuinely with institutional thinking requires more than theoretical clarity. It requires:
Building organizational structures that embody independent working-class power rather than channeling it into state institutions
Creating internal cultures where fundamental questions about strategy get revisited, not merely inherited
Accepting that sometimes organizational contraction (focusing resources on building independent working-class power rather than expanding internationally) is more revolutionary than expansion
Distinguishing between numerical growth and strategic deepening
The CWI grew. It expanded internationally. It built presence. But it never genuinely resolved the fundamental question the 1974 Militant critics had raised, leading to the long fragmentation of the organisation.
This is the lesson for contemporary revolutionaries: growth without resolution of fundamental strategy can become a barrier to revolutionary transformation, not a contribution to it.
Part III-C: The CWI’s Missing Link—Revolutionary Aspiration Without Revolutionary Method
More recent CWI analysis reveals the organization’s problem even more starkly. In a 2014 article republished in 2025, Conor Flynn for the CWI correctly identifies fundamental truths about the Whitlam period:
“While socialists fight for every possible reform under capitalism, we recognise that, unless the fundamental structure of society is transformed and power is taken out of the hands of big business, progressive reforms will never be permanent.”
This is theoretically sound. It’s precisely what the 1974 Militant critics were arguing: you cannot solve working-class problems through managing capitalist state institutions. You need fundamental transformation.
But then Flynn’s article stops. It invokes the destination without explaining the journey:
“Major sectors of industry need to be brought into public ownership and under democratic control. On that basis a sustainable plan of production could be introduced by a workers’ government that acted in the interests of the majority.”
How do workers actually achieve this transformation? The CWI article doesn’t say.
This is where the CWI’s institutional thinking reveals itself most clearly. The organization holds revolutionary theory about what needs to happen. But it lacks a concrete analysis of the forms of working-class organization actually capable of making it happen.
The Gap Between Theory and Practice
Compare the Flynn article’s conclusion with what actually happened in Australia November-December 1975:
What the Flynn article says should happen:
Fundamental transformation of economy
Major sectors into public ownership under democratic control
A workers’ government acting in majority interests
This can only happen through working-class power, not capitalism
What actually happened in 1975:
400,000 workers in the streets, massive strikes
Working-class power erupted spontaneously
Labor/ACTU contained it toward electoral outcome
Electoral defeat demobilized the movement
No alternative working-class organizations existed to sustain struggle beyond the electoral arena
The missing explanation:
The CWI’s theory says workers need to build independent power. But the CWI’s practice doesn’t explain how workers actually build this power when the moment arrives. The theory identifies the destination (socialism, democratic control of industry, workers’ government) but leaves the journey completely blank.
This gap is precisely where institutional thinking thrives. In the absence of clear theory about how working-class movements build revolutionary organizations capable of transforming society, institutional reform becomes the default response: it’s concrete, visible, achievable. You can campaign for it. You can win it. It feels like progress.
But it’s not revolutionary progress. It’s the substitution of institutional visibility for revolutionary capacity.
Why This Pattern Repeats
The CWI could have written an analysis saying: “In 1975, Australian workers demonstrated enormous capacity for mobilization. They organized 400,000 workers on strike, held massive rallies, forced the Australian bourgeoisie to resort to constitutional coup. What they needed was not a different constitutional form but independent revolutionary organization capable of sustaining struggle beyond electoral defeat. This requires building today the organizations that can offer alternatives when the next crisis arrives.”
Instead, the 2020 CWI analysis proposes abolishing the monarchy. Why? Because the CWI lacks the theoretical framework to explain how working-class movements build revolutionary power in the absence of spontaneous crisis. So they retreat to what is intellectually manageable: constitutional reform.
The Flynn article, written six years earlier, shows this same organization asserting that fundamental transformation is necessary while remaining silent on how workers actually build the power to achieve it. The institutional thinking isn’t accidental. It fills the gap left by absent revolutionary methodology.
This reveals a structural problem: when revolutionary organizations cannot explain how their own theory actually becomes practice, they default to institutional solutions. Institutional reform becomes a placeholder for revolutionary methodology. The organization can point to something concrete and say, “This is what we’re fighting for”—without having to explain how working-class power actually builds itself.
The Question the CWI Cannot Answer
If workers need to transform society fundamentally, if major sectors need to be brought into public ownership under democratic control, if a workers’ government acting in the majority’s interest is necessary—then what organizational forms make this possible?
The 1974 Militant critics gave an answer: Councils of Action, factory committees, workers’ self-defense organizations, strike committees, regular assemblies where workers collectively decide strategy. In other words, revolutionary forms of working-class organization built independently of state institutions.
The CWI’s 2020 answer appears to be: abolish the monarchy.
This is not an answer to that question. It is an evasion of it.
The evasion is telling. It suggests that the CWI, despite possessing revolutionary theory, has never worked through the actual organizational questions that revolutionary transformation requires. They know what the endpoint should be. They understand that it can’t be achieved through parliamentary means. But the intermediate questions—how does independent working-class power actually build itself? What organizational forms does it take? How does it move from spontaneous mobilization to sustained revolutionary challenge?—remain unanswered.
In the absence of answers to these questions, institutional reform moves into the space where revolutionary methodology should be. It becomes the thing the CWI can point to, the concrete demand they can organize around, the visible marker of progress in the absence of invisible revolutionary work.
This is the deepest problem with the CWI’s analysis. It’s not that they’re wrong about needing fundamental transformation. It’s that they haven’t thought through what building that transformation actually requires.
Part IV: The Labor Bureaucracy—Active Containment, Not Passive Failure
The CWI states that the Labor and trade union leaders “refused to do anything to organise this mass movement against the coup.” This characterization, while not entirely wrong, is analytically insufficient and strategically misleading.
It suggests that the Labor leadership simply failed to act. The more precise and damaging truth is that the Labor leadership actively organized the containment of working-class mobilization.
What Labor Actually Did
The CWI correctly notes that 400,000 workers struck in Melbourne. But what was the Labor leadership’s response to this explosion of working-class power?
The Labor leadership framed the political situation not as a class attack requiring revolutionary response, but as a constitutional violation requiring electoral restoration. They denounced the Liberal-Country coalition as “a band of thieves and putschists.” They channeled massive working-class anger into a single demand: vote Labor back into office in the December election.
This was not passive “refusal to organize.” This was active political redirection of working-class energy. Every union official who said to workers, “Don’t continue wildcat strikes; save your energy for the December election” was actively containing the movement. Every Labor politician who framed the coup as “unconstitutional” rather than “a class attack by capital” was actively misdirecting political consciousness.
Why This Matters
The CWI’s characterization as “refusal to do anything” allows them to treat the Labor bureaucracy as incidental to events. But understanding the Labor bureaucracy’s active role in containing working-class militancy is essential for revolutionary strategy.
Here is the crucial point: Reformist parties, even when representing working-class electoral support, function during crisis to absorb and redirect working-class militancy back toward parliamentary procedures.
This is not a failure of individual Labor leaders. This is the structural function of reformist parties during revolutionary moments. A reformist party cannot lead working-class revolution—that would contradict its fundamental nature as an organization committed to managing capitalism rather than overthrowing it. But a reformist party can prevent working-class revolution by:
Channeling working-class anger into electoral competition
Framing state power in terms of “who governs” rather than “what is the nature of the state”
Offering apparent victories (electoral restoration) that demobilize revolutionary consciousness
Absorbing revolutionary cadres into party structures, where their energy is devoted to party building rather than independent working-class organization
When the Labor Party lost the December 13 election, the movement collapsed precisely because it had been mobilized around an electoral outcome, not around independent working-class power. There was no basis for continuing struggle once the electoral avenue had been exhausted.
The lesson is not that Labor leaders were inadequate or cowardly. The lesson is that reformist parties, by their very nature, will function to contain revolutionary possibilities during crisis. Revolutionary strategy cannot be based on the hope that reformist parties will “do the right thing” at the crucial moment. Revolutionary strategy must be based on building independent working-class organization capable of acting independently of, and against, reformist parties.
Part V: The Real Organizational Problem—And Why Institutional Solutions Won’t Address It
Now we reach the core analytical difference between the CWI’s approach and what revolutionary strategy actually requires.
The CWI identifies several real problems:
The bourgeoisie retained state power independent of electoral outcomes
The working class mobilized magnificently but was contained by labor leadership
The movement collapsed after the electoral defeat
No revolutionary party was present to offer an alternative
From this analysis, the CWI concludes: “The abolition of the monarchy must form part of a broader programme for socialist change.”
But the actual problems revealed in Australia 1975 had nothing to do with the monarchy. They had to do with:
The absence of independent working-class organization capable of acting outside trade union bureaucracy and reformist parties
The absence of revolutionary political theory connecting immediate working-class struggles to systematic analysis of capitalist state power
The absence of revolutionary leadership capable of offering working-class movements an alternative frame for understanding events
The structural function of reformist parties in absorbing and redirecting working-class militancy
None of these problems would be solved by abolishing the monarchy. A republican Australia with directly elected presidents would still face all four of these problems.
The Institutional Illusion
The CWI’s proposal reveals a persistent problem in some sectors of the revolutionary left: the illusion that changing the form of state institutions somehow changes the nature of state power.
This illusion takes many forms:
“If only we had a written constitution...”
“If only we abolished the monarchy...”
“If only we had proportional representation...”
“If only the Senate were abolished...”
“If only the judiciary were more democratic...”
Each of these proposals contains a grain of truth: yes, these institutional forms can be more or less congenial to working-class organization. But they all share a fundamental error: they assume that the problem is the form of state institutions, when the actual problem is that the capitalist state, whatever its form, exists to defend capital against working-class power.
The primary task is not to reform these institutions. The task is to build independent working-class power outside and against these institutions, with the ultimate aim of smashing them and replacing them with workers’ councils, factory committees, and other forms of direct working-class democracy.
What the Australian Working Class Actually Needed
What would have changed the outcome of Australia 1975? Not the abolition of the monarchy. Rather:
Revolutionary organization independent of the Labor Party and trade union bureaucracy, capable of:
Offering immediate political analysis of the coup as a class attack, not a constitutional violation
Proposing that workers continue and escalate strikes, not demobilize for an election
Building from spontaneous strike committees toward more permanent workers’ councils
Recruiting revolutionary cadres within the movement
Working-class leadership from below, rooted in:
Factory committees and workshop organization
Strike committees with rotating delegates and accountability to the working class
Defense organizations capable of protecting the movement from police and employer violence
Regular assemblies where working-class members could collectively decide strategy
Revolutionary political theory explaining:
Why the capitalist state cannot be captured and reformed by electoral means
Why reformist parties will contain working-class militancy during crisis
Why working-class power requires independent organization outside state institutions
What workers’ power would look like (workers’ councils, factory control, mass assemblies)
Preparation before the crisis, so that revolutionary organization existed before the moment of mobilization, rather than attempting to build it during crisis
These are not institutional reforms. These are tasks of revolutionary organization. And they require decades of patient work building independent working-class organization, not campaigns for constitutional change.
Part VI: The Corbyn Parallel—And What It Reveals
The CWI includes this remarkable statement:
“The Socialist Party (CWI England & Wales) warned Jeremy Corbyn of this. In the event, the right wing of Britain’s Labour Party intervened to protect big business before there was even a chance of forming a pro-reform Labour government.”
This passage is worth examining closely because it reveals how the CWI’s institutional logic leads to analytical confusion.
The CWI appears to be suggesting that if Corbyn had won the 2017 election and taken office, he would have faced a “Kerr-style” constitutional coup. The implicit message: this is what happens to reformist governments that threaten capital.
But this analysis confuses two fundamentally different situations:
Australia 1975: A reformist government in office, with working-class mobilization reaching crisis proportions (400,000 in the streets, massive strikes), with the bourgeoisie desperate to remove it through any available mechanism.
Britain 2015-2019: A reformist candidate, never in office, defeated through party bureaucracy, media manipulation, and establishment pressure—all applied before he could take power. No constitutional coup was necessary because quieter methods sufficed.
Why the difference? Because working-class mobilization in Britain never reached the scale necessary to force dramatic state interventions. The British ruling class did not need constitutional drama; they possessed sufficient control of party bureaucracy and media to prevent Corbyn from ever taking office.
The Strategic Implication the CWI Misses
The comparison actually suggests something quite different from what the CWI intends:
The scale and militancy of working-class mobilization determines the form of bourgeois counter-response.
Small, controllable movements get managed through party bureaucracy, media, judicial harassment
Larger, more militant movements provoke more dramatic interventions (constitutional coups, military threats, police violence)
Truly revolutionary movements facing organized bourgeois power lead to civil war
This means the strategic task is not to prepare for constitutional coups (which are a symptom of working-class strength, not weakness; they mean capital is desperate enough to risk dramatic interventions). The strategic task is to build independent working-class organization at a scale and militancy that forces the bourgeoisie into dramatic interventions, and to be prepared with revolutionary alternatives when those moments arrive.
The CWI’s warning to Corbyn appears to assume that if only he understood the “constitutional coup” danger, he would avoid it somehow. But this reveals reformist illusions: no amount of understanding or preparation will allow a reformist government to overcome the fundamental contradiction of trying to manage capitalism while working-class militancy threatens capitalist profitability.
The choice is not between “being prepared for constitutional coup” and “avoiding it.” The choice is between:
Building independent working-class power capable of acting independently of reformist governments when those governments prove inadequate
Remaining dependent on reformist governments and being contained when they inevitably capitulate to capital
The CWI’s Corbyn analysis suggests they might lean toward option 1. But their Australia analysis suggests otherwise—they seem to believe the problem was institutional form (monarchy) rather than lack of independent working-class organization.
Part VII: The Comparative Analysis—What It Actually Reveals
The CWI’s article would be stronger if it engaged in genuine comparative analysis. Let’s briefly examine what the international experience actually shows:
Chile 1973: Military Coup in Context
The Chilean bourgeoisie removed Allende through military coup, not monarchical mechanism. Why? Because:
Working-class mobilization was reaching revolutionary proportions
The military was the available mechanism
Dramatic intervention was necessary because the working class could not be managed through quieter means
The lesson: Not that militaries are the problem, but that when working-class power reaches certain scales, the bourgeoisie will deploy whatever mechanisms are available and necessary.
Portugal 1974-1976: Revolutionary Possibility Briefly Realized
In Portugal, working-class mobilization created opportunities for genuine revolutionary transformation. What distinguished Portugal?
Not superior Portuguese institutions (Portugal had no monarchy advantage)
Rather, the presence of revolutionary organizations actively building workers’ councils and soldiers’ councils
Revolutionary parties capable of offering political alternatives to reformist parties
The revolutionary process was ultimately contained by the Socialist Party and Communist Party, but the presence of revolutionary organization created genuine revolutionary possibility. This is the opposite of what the CWI’s analysis suggests should be the focus.
Britain: Quiet Containment Without Dramatic Intervention
In Britain, the ruling class prevented Corbyn from taking office using party bureaucracy, not constitutional coups. Why?
Working-class mobilization in Labour Party membership was substantial but not at the scale of Australia 1975
The ruling class possessed sufficient institutional control to manage the situation through quieter means
No constitutional drama was necessary
The lesson: The form of capitalist counter-response depends on working-class strength, not on the availability of monarchical institutions.
What the Comparative Analysis Actually Shows
Across all these cases, the pattern is identical:
Working-class struggle is contained or defeated not by constitutional mechanisms but by the absence of independent working-class organization capable of acting independently of reformist parties.
In Chile, military coup succeeded because the working class lacked revolutionary organization
In Portugal, revolutionary possibility emerged precisely when independent working-class organization began to develop
In Britain, bourgeois prevention succeeded because working-class mobilization, while significant in party membership, never translated into independent mass organization
In Australia, mobilization was tremendous but was absorbed and redirected by Labor bureaucracy
In none of these cases was the problem the specific constitutional form of the state. In all these cases, the problem was the absence of revolutionary organization capable of acting independently.
Part VIII: What Revolutionary Strategy Actually Requires
Let us be direct about what the Australian crisis required—and what it requires today for any working-class movement facing similar circumstances:
Before Crisis
Build independent working-class organization in workplaces and communities, not dependent on trade union bureaucracy or reformist parties
Develop revolutionary cadres through study and practical experience, grounded in theory connecting immediate struggles to systematic critique of capitalism
Create spaces (study groups, factory committees, discussion forums) where revolutionary ideas can develop and spread
Prepare analysis of how reformist parties function during crisis, and what independent working-class power would require
During Crisis
Analyze events through framework of class power, not constitutional procedure
Offer immediate political alternatives to reformist party’s framing
Build organizational structures (strike committees, workers’ assemblies, defense organizations) that can sustain struggle beyond electoral cycles
Recruit from the movement people capable of becoming revolutionary leaders
Explicitly argue against reliance on reformist parties and for independent working-class power
After Immediate Crisis
Consolidate organizational gains from the crisis period
Integrate lessons into broader revolutionary project
Prepare for next crisis, expecting that reformist parties will again attempt containment
The Role of Constitutional Reform
Constitutional reform—including abolition of monarchy, changes to electoral systems, written constitutions—can be tactical demands that working-class movements advance during struggle if doing so builds movement confidence and organization.
But constitutional reform cannot be strategic focus. The strategic focus must always be building independent working-class power capable of overthrowing capitalist state institutions, whatever their constitutional form.
Conclusion: Institutional Thinking as a Barrier to Revolutionary Organization
The CWI’s analysis of Australia 1975 falls into a trap that repeatedly captures revolutionary organizations: the substitution of institutional reform for revolutionary organization.
It is easier to argue for abolition of the monarchy than to build independent working-class organization. It is easier to propose constitutional reform than to do the patient work of developing revolutionary cadres and building workplace committees. It is easier to critique existing institutions than to build new ones.
But revolutionaries cannot afford the luxury of ease. The stakes are too high.
The CWI correctly identifies that the Australian working class mobilized magnificently in 1975. The CWI correctly identifies that the Labor leadership contained this mobilization. The CWI correctly identifies that the outcome was working-class defeat.
But then the CWI concludes: the problem is the monarchy; the solution is abolition of the monarchy.
This conclusion is not revolutionary. It is institutional reformism dressed in revolutionary language. It mistakes a symptom of capitalist state power for the disease itself.
The Persistence of This Error: Why It Matters
The CWI’s error is not anomalous. It reflects a broader problem in post-war revolutionary organizations: they have not fully broken with the institutional thinking they inherited from social democracy, even as they claim to have transcended it.
The trajectory from Militant to the CWI demonstrates this concretely. In 1974, comrades inside Militant identified their organization’s fundamental error: accepting social-democratic ideology about state power. Rather than the organization genuinely transforming in response to this critique, it expanded internationally while carrying the same institutional thinking with it.
By 2020, when the CWI analyzed Australia 1975, the organization proposed exactly what institutional reformism would propose: constitutional reform. Forty-five years after Militant members had critiqued this very approach, the now-international CWI reproduced it on a global scale.
This suggests that understanding how organizations can expand while avoiding resolution of fundamental contradictions is essential for building genuinely revolutionary movements.
What This Means for Movement Building Today
The Militant members’ 1974 letter ended by stating:
“For the above reasons, the comrades signing this letter have renounced their support for ‘Militant.’”
Their renunciation was not merely a personal break. It was an attempt to redirect revolutionary energy from institutional struggle to independent working-class organization. They argued for building Councils of Action, factory committees, workers’ defense organizations—not competing to control state institutions.
The question for revolutionaries today is: How do we learn the lesson that the 1974 Militant critics were attempting to teach, without waiting another forty-five years?
The actual problem revealed in Australia 1975 was the absence of revolutionary organization capable of offering working-class movements an alternative to reformist containment. The actual solution is to build such organization now, before the next crisis arrives.
This requires:
Patient work building independent working-class organization in workplaces and communities
Development of revolutionary theory grounded in working-class struggles
Creation of spaces where working-class members can develop as revolutionary leaders
Explicit argument against reformist illusions about parliamentary power
Preparation to offer revolutionary alternatives when reformist illusions shatter
This is difficult work. It requires years of preparation before payoff. It requires accepting that revolutionary organization may be numerically small and politically isolated for extended periods. It requires commitment to principle when institutional politics offers apparent shortcuts.
But this is the only strategy that has any hope of leading working-class movements from contained mobilization toward genuine revolutionary transformation.
The Australian working class showed what it could do in November-December 1975. They mobilized at scale and with militancy that frightened the Australian bourgeoisie sufficiently to provoke a constitutional coup. What they lacked was not a republic instead of a monarchy. What they lacked was revolutionary organization offering them an alternative to Labor containment.
Building that organization—not abolishing the monarchy—is the lesson the Australian crisis offers to revolutionaries today.
On Theoretical Clarity as Prerequisite
We make this polemic not out of hostility toward the CWI but from conviction that clarity about how working-class revolution actually occurs is essential. The CWI contains comrades committed to working-class revolution. But commitment to working-class revolution is not sufficient; clarity about the nature of state power and the forms of organization actually capable of challenging it is essential.
The CWI’s analysis of Australia 1975 suggests they have not yet fully thought through the implications of their own observations. They see working-class mobilization. They see it being contained by reformist parties. They see it being defeated. But then they propose a solution (abolish the monarchy) that would not have prevented any of those outcomes.
This suggests that the CWI, despite their revolutionary intentions, has not yet fully broken with institutional thinking—the illusion that changing state forms can substitute for building revolutionary power.
We offer this polemic as a comradely contribution to that breaking-through, in hope that the CWI and similar organizations will redirect their energies from campaigns for constitutional reform toward the patient, difficult work of building independent working-class organization capable of revolutionary transformation.
The stakes demand nothing less.
References
Griffiths, Phil. “Strike Fraser Out: The Labour Movement Campaign against the Blocking of Supply and the Sacking of the Whitlam Government, October-December 1975.” Paper submitted to APSA Conference, October 2000.
Arkwright, Joanne, et al. “Letter Renouncing Support for Militant.” International Press Correspondence, January 25, 1974.
INPRECOR (International Press Correspondence), No. 39, December 4, 1975. Analysis of Australia, Portugal, Spain, international recession.
INPRECOR analysis of reformist crisis across advanced capitalist countries, 1974-1976.
Fourth International strategic documents on state power and working-class revolution, 1970s-1980s.
CWI article: “Australia’s 1975 ‘constitutional coup’: Queen’s correspondence surrounding dismissal of Labour PM released,” July 20, 2020, The Socialist.
Appendix: On Lenin, and why democratic demands won’t build working-class power
The prioritization of building class consciousness and workers’ power over the singular pursuit of democratic demands—such as the abolition of the monarchy—stems from Lenin’s fundamental understanding of the nature and limitations of democracy within a capitalist society.
While revolutionary socialists must relentlessly champion “every manifestation of tyranny and oppression” and link the struggle against capitalism with the “fight for the widest democracy”, democratic demands alone are considered ineffective at fundamentally building working-class power for several key reasons:
1. The Inherent Limitations of Bourgeois Democracy
Lenin’s central argument is that even the most complete democratic achievements are constrained, corrupted, and undermined by the power of capital.
• Formal vs. Real Power: Democratic demands often lead to rights that are “realisable only to a very small degree and only relatively” under capitalism. Although socialists must struggle for democracy, this struggle is not capable of diverting the proletariat from the socialist revolution; rather, full democracy is impossible without victorious socialism.
• Capture by Capital: Universal suffrage, government by elected officials, and freedom of the press are structures that are continually “captured, corrupted, limited and undermined by the power of capital, and even more so by the power of imperialist finance capital”.
• Atomization of the Class: Bourgeois parliamentary democracy tends toward the atomization of the working class, counting individual voters rather than consulting social groups or classes. This political structure reinforces the idea that individuals, rather than collective class forces, hold power, especially as capitalist society promotes individual consumption habits (like television and cars) that privatize leisure and reinforce this atomization.
2. Failure to Challenge the Bourgeois State Apparatus
Democratic demands, unless linked to a revolutionary programme, fail to address the necessity of destroying the existing capitalist state structure, which is the key obstacle to working-class power.
• The State’s Class Character: The bourgeois state apparatus, even in its most democratic forms, is built by the bourgeoisie for its own purposes and corresponds by its very structure to the power of the bourgeoisie.
• The Need for Destruction: The core problem is that the proletariat cannot establish new social relations or consolidate long-term gains without smashing the backbone of capitalist domination—the state—and replacing capitalist property with public and social ownership. The seizure of political power is the necessary culmination of the struggle, and unlike the bourgeoisie which developed economic and social power before the revolution, the proletariat can only become the dominant class after conquering political power.
• Statist Illusions: Focusing on political rights within the existing framework fosters a “statist culture” where the masses delegate power to the state (”let the state pay,” “let the state find the solution”), which contradicts the goal of working-class self-management.
3. Insufficiency for Building Class Consciousness
Working-class power relies on developing class consciousness beyond spontaneous economic struggle, which democratic demands cannot achieve effectively.
• Spontaneity is Limited: Working-class political consciousness does not arise spontaneously from the factory floor; it must be brought “from outside the sphere of relations between workers and masters”. Unconscious working-class activity is permeated by the ideology of the ruling class.
• The Problem of Reformism: Struggles limited to reforms, including democratic ones, risk becoming movements of “bourgeois social reform”. Reformist leaderships, who prefer the “parliamentary tribune” or “trade union bureaus,” often dampen revolutionary energy and ultimately side with the counter-revolution when faced with decisive mass pressure. For instance, focusing on constitutional means or parliamentary measures led to tragic defeats when the moment for revolutionary action arrived.
• Need for Transitional Demands: To raise consciousness to the necessary revolutionary level, socialists utilize a system of transitional demands. These demands start from immediate needs but cannot be integrated into the capitalist system, forcing a confrontation over ownership or control, such as demanding the prohibition of sackings or workers’ control over production. This accumulation of experiences, which destabilizes the system, demonstrates the working class’s capacity to run society and indicates another possible economic and social organization.
In summary, while socialists support democratic demands (such as abolishing the monarchy) because they are vital conquests to be defended and deepened, they prioritize building power through class-conscious mass action and self-organization (like soviets or workers’ councils) because only this path can overcome the fundamental political, economic, and ideological barriers erected by capitalism. The democratic arena, although necessary to engage, is ultimately a mechanism of bourgeois rule that limits the self-emancipation of the working class.
This analysis is so insightful, it makes me truly wonder what radicaly different outcomes might have emerged had the CWI ever really debugged the core structural issues of state power instead of just patching over its symptoms.