A Radical Life: A Memoir by Jim McIlroy

When the youth radicalisation of the 1960s and 1970s swept through Australia and the rest of the world more than half a century ago, I was convinced and inspired to join in with a large section of my generation. I became an activist against the Vietnam war and a committed Marxist and socialist revolutionary.

I joined the Socialist Youth Alliance/Socialist Workers Party (later Democratic Socialist Party), and became a full-time organiser and journalist for the socialist newspaper Direct Action and later for Green Left Weekly. I was a founding member of the Socialist Alliance when it was formed in 2001.

Along with Coral Wynter, I became deeply involved in the international solidarity movement for the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, visiting several times and living for a year in Caracas in 2006.

This book is a memoir, and a documentation, of my life and times. It is the story of someone who dedicated himself to the struggle for socialism as a life-work and a career.

As capitalism enters its final crisis, as an existential threat to humanity and the survival of the planet, the question of ‘socialism or barbarism’ is posed ever more starkly. In my opinion, there is nothing more worthwhile to do with one’s life right now than struggle for an ecosocialist future.