Eric Aarons

Eric Aarons (born 1919) is a member of the third of four generations of the Aarons family who played leading roles in the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). Although never a mass party like those in Italy, France or Indonesia, the CPA played many important roles in Australian political life, most notably in the Labour Movement – in which it had significant influence across a wide spectrum of trade unions – and in many social movements, anti-war and peace organisations and anti-racist activities.

Aarons played an important role in the party’s work from the mid-1940s to the winding up of the party in the early 1990s. He rose to be in charge of party education, to be a leading theorist and author, a powerful advocate for de-Stalinisation of the CPA and was one of three people who jointly replaced his older brother, Laurie Aarons, as CPA National Secretary in 1976.