Benjamin Solah, Marxist-Trotskyist

Hi, my name’s Benjamin Solah. I’m a young Marxist revolutionary from Sydney, Australia. More accurately, I’m a Trotskyist without allusions in electoral socialism or socialism in one country.

I became involved in politics in 2004 when I became interested in Australia’s refugee movement (Australia mandatorily detains all asylum seekers while their cases in pending, which is in direct breach of international law and results in massive abuses of human rights.) I was also in my final year of school at the time and through Legal Studies and Modern History, I took a further interest in politics. It was when I became involved in Left-wing activism generally, that I became involved with Socialist Alternative. They’re a small Trotskyist group based mainly in Melbourne with branches all around Australia, including Sydney.

I became open to Marxist politics because it seems to me that the reason this world is so fucked up is because it’s driven by profits for a minority and everyone else gets pissed on. The US seems to have this fetishism over blowing up countries to help their own pockets, and that’s not helping the people in the States, but the government and the CEOs. I also got involved with Marxist politics because I don’t believe voting in a party with the right ideas will change anything because you don’t elect everyone. You don’t elect all the executives who decide what products to produce and at what cost, and how much you pay your workers and you’re electing someone to run a system that’s fucked up. And if you want to change the world, you have to change the system. You have to destroy capitalism.