The authors of this book have been involved in radical politics for between 30 and 40 years, for most of that time as members of Marxist organisations, Socialist Alternative and its forerunners. Apart from a brief period in the early 1980s, when Rick was in the ALP, our relationships with the Labor Party have been from the outside. Because the ALP is a large and powerful organisation, historically associated with the left, it has affected the course and potential of all our political activities. This has taken different forms. As Labor has long been committed to managing Australian capitalism we have been highly critical of the Party. We opposed Labor governments in the late 1980s when they destroyed a militant trade union, the Builders' Labourers' Federation, and today we actively support campaigns against the Gillard government's treatment of asylum seekers, gays and lesbians, construction workers and Indigenous people. On the other hand, because Labor seeks to appeal to a working class voting base, and because a sizeable number of people believe that the Party is dedicated to achieving progressive social reform, we have also worked alongside ALP members and responded to initiatives of Labor leaders in various struggles against particular odious manifestations of the capitalist system. In recent years, these have included campaigns against WorkChoices, the invasion of Iraq and the Howard government's attacks on refugees.