SOCIALIST GROUP ACTUALLY QUITE ENTERPRISING

5 August 2026

CANBERRA — The Emancipation Current, a Marxist organisation committed to the abolition of private property, has reported a surplus equal to 22 per cent of revenue. No income tax is payable. The surplus will be reinvested in expanded capacity for next year’s Socialist Futures Convention.

The structure followed tax and charity advice obtained in 2019. Counsel advised that a political party would carry no exemption, that a company limited by guarantee was preferable to an incorporated association, and that the charity subtype of advancing public debate was available following Aid/Watch. As that subtype requires the change promoted to further another charitable purpose, the objects clause was redrafted to tie the abolition of private property to the relief of poverty. On the same advice, the words “by any means necessary” were removed from clause 2. An application for endorsement as a deductible gift recipient is pending.

National convenor Declan Roe said the organisation’s platform included a two per cent wealth tax on net assets above five million dollars, a top marginal rate of 75 per cent, the reintroduction of federal death duties, and a gift and transfer duty to prevent avoidance of the death duties. He said generations of extracted advantage now sat compounding in trusts and companies and would have to be unwound.

“The rich do not evade tax. They structure,” Mr Roe said. “They pay a professional to find the space between the words, and the space is always there, because the people who wrote the words were advised by the same professionals.”

Mr Roe called for a general anti-avoidance rule directed at purpose rather than form, with no safe harbours, and said there should be no such thing as a lawful arrangement entered into for the dominant purpose of reducing tax.

Mr Roe said the organisation’s own exemption was different in kind, because its purpose was charitable. He accepted that the abolition of private property was not charitable in the classical sense, but said the objects clause recorded that poverty cannot survive the abolition of property, and that the relief of poverty is among the oldest charitable purposes known to law.

“It is the most complete relief of poverty available,” Mr Roe said. “There is no poverty where there is no property.”

Mr Roe salary packages a portion of his stipend, including rent, under the fringe benefits tax rebate available to the organisation as an employer.

Mr Roe said allocation by price was the mechanism by which the poor are denied medicine, shelter and education.

“Rationing by price is violence,” he said. “Nobody is ever turned away from us for want of money.”

Admission to the Socialist Futures Convention is accordingly free. Entry is by donation.

Capacity constraints arising from strong demand required donations to be banded. A supporter donation of $780 carries reserved seating and access to the supporters’ reception. A standard donation of $310 carries a seat. A worker concession donation of $95 is standing room. Bands moved in three stages across the booking window.

The convention is also streamed free on YouTube. The stream carries advertising.

The magazine Emancipation is distributed by members on commission, with sellers retaining 30 per cent of cover price.

Branch seller Nadia Okonjo said venture backed platforms had arrived carrying billions in subsidy, undercut every business that paid wages, and then reclassified their workforce as independent contractors, shedding leave, superannuation, minimum rates and the whole award system in a single stroke. She said the same firms resisted union coverage on the ground that there was no employment there to organise, and that a handful of founders had become billionaires on the savings.

“They call it flexibility,” Ms Okonjo said. “It is a wage cut with better branding. And the moment you are not an employee, you are not anything.”

Ms Okonjo is classified as a volunteer. No superannuation is payable and no minimum rate applies.

She said she cleared about $140 in a good week and hoped to reach the higher commission band, which applies above forty copies.

Treasurer Imogen Slade said accumulation was the engine of immiseration, and that surplus reinvested to extract further surplus was not a neutral process but a compounding one.

“Nobody earns a billion dollars,” Ms Slade said. “It is taken.”

Reserves accumulated from the organisation’s activities are held on term deposit pending deployment. The interest is not assessable.

Ms Slade confirmed the organisation maintains an Etsy store, on which it pays a listing fee and a percentage of each sale to the platform. The magazine’s essay collection on platform rentierism is available on the store for $24.

The best selling item is a shirt bearing the Korda photograph of Che Guevara. Ms Slade said the margin was the strongest in the range because no royalty is payable.

“It is a Cuban photograph of a revolutionary,” she said. “There is no owner. It belongs to everyone. That is rather the point of it.”

Cuba was not party to the Berne Convention until 1997. The photograph became the most reproduced image in the history of photography and Alberto Korda was paid nothing for it.

Merchandise is printed in the People’s Republic of China. Ms Slade said the choice reflected the organisation’s solidarity with a workers’ state, and that the quotes received from that supplier had also been the lowest. The organisation has separately asserted rights in its own logo against a former member selling similar shirts.

Convention advertising was placed on Instagram and targeted by postcode, age and household income bracket. The highest income brackets returned the strongest response and the greatest share of spend was moved to them.

“Nobody knows where the proletariat is,” Ms Slade said. “There is real hardship in the wealthiest postcodes in this country. We do not means test consciousness.”

An internal membership survey conducted in 2024 recorded that 71 per cent of members had attended independent schools and that the most common parental occupations were medical specialist, barrister and company director. Eleven members disclosed an expected inheritance. The survey was not published.

Four members of the Adelaide branch share a house in Prospect. The head lease is held by Callum Vestey, who sublets the three remaining rooms.

Mr Vestey said rent was theft. He said land was produced by nobody, that a landowning class had been permitted to stand between other people and shelter and to charge for passage, and that the tax system had armed that class with public money to bid against the very people it extracted from.

“A landlord is not a business,” Mr Vestey said. “A landlord is a toll.”

Mr Vestey said his own position was not comparable.

“I’m just the person whose name is on the lease. Someone has to be.”

Rent under the head lease is $920 a week. The three sublet rooms return $1,120. Rent on the smaller rooms is set below market and rent on the larger rooms above it, in order to cross subsidise.

Mr Vestey said the difference was not a profit but an allowance for risk. He said he remained liable to the landlord whether or not the rooms were occupied, and that a vacancy could run for weeks.

“If a room sits empty it comes out of me,” he said. “I’m not being paid for owning anything. I’m being paid for carrying the risk.”

Mr Vestey is applying the difference towards a deposit on a unit in Bowden, assisted by a contribution from his parents. He intends to occupy it initially and then let it, in order to preserve the main residence exemption under the absence rule.

“It is the only way anyone my age gets out,” he said. “I don’t agree with the system. I just have to live in it.”

The Daily Cartland is an anarcho-syndicalist collective. The role of editor rotates weekly, subject to a two thirds majority for external matters. This publication is a parody, as is the collective.