For most of my life I have been interested in politics but in recent years I have found it more and more difficult to relate popular Australian political parties and their stories to my world view, spiritual practice and personal values. I doubt that I would have even been attracted to the SEP story had I not already been “spiritually liberated” in a way that I believe Marx and Trotsky would approve of.

My belief is derived from the compassion I find within Marx’s “opium of the people” statement wherein he recognises the human being’s right to cling to “spirit” in a “spiritless situation” and to “heart” in a “heartless world”. And in the declaration made by Trotsky in 1938, when celebrating the founding of the Fourth International: “We are not a party like other parties. … Our aim is the full material and spiritual liberation of the toilers and exploited…” Of course I can only speculate that the likes of Marx and Trotsky would approve of my particular kind of “spiritual liberation”. I do so because it has little or nothing to do with the established oppressive religions that these two great political leaders so rightly condemned.

Unfortunately, Marxism has confused the established religions with “spirit” and thereby unintentionally turned millions of people away from the economic and social analysis necessary to clarify and change their situation.

My “spiritual liberation” was arrived at via the objective observance and celebration of planet Earth’s orbit around the Sun and its spin around an axis both of which result in planetary seasonal moments known as the Solstice and the Equinox. Added to this is a contemporary scientific understanding of my place and sense of belonging within a seamless Universe experienced as an Earth based “spiritual liberation”.

After reading regular updates of the WSWS for about a year I decided the SEP was for me the only plausible political story and party I could now relate to and be inspired by. After making a modest financial donation to the WSWS, I was encouraged by a member of the SEP to attend a public meeting in Sydney as part of the 15 year review and celebration of the WSWS. During this meeting I was further inspired by the main speaker David North, so much so that I have decided to join the SEP and to support the party to the best of my ability.