Aarons' father, Sam, joined the CPA and became a prominent figure in the party's local activities and in the mid-1930s travelled to Spain to volunteer for the International Brigade formed to assist the Spanish Republic resist Francisco Franco's ultimately successful uprising against the elected Popular Front Government.
He spent three years studying in China and upon his return he developed a fundamentally different approach to party education that was only partially implemented, due to resistance from older members of the CPA leadership.
During this period he not only was closely engaged in trade union and community organising activities but also began to review the history of communism, both internationally and domestically, to try to come to terms with the re-appraisals that were taking place in Moscow and apply those lessons to the Australian experience.
In response to these and other events, the two Aarons brothers, together with a wider group of younger communist leaders (including John Sendy, Bernie Taft, Rex Mortimer, Alec and Mavis Robertson, among others) slowly evolved towards an anti-authoritarian version of socialism.
Ironically, in light of the long years the Aarons brothers, Sendy and Taft had spent in China, the first major catalyst for this new direction was the Sino-Soviet dispute which began to openly emerge in the late 1950s.
Mao was equally determined to reaffirm Stalinism and apply its methods in China, together with an extreme left position internationally which downplayed the dangers and horrors of nuclear war and urged “revolutionary” action irrespective of the realities in specific countries.
When Mao launched an international offensive to split communist parties around the world a small group of pro-Chinese CPA members emerged around Melbourne leader, Ted Hill.
Aarons then played a major role in helping to develop new theoretical frameworks to try to make the CPA more relevant in the rapidly changing world of the 1960s, especially looking at the impact on modern capitalism of the explosion of scientific and technological advances.
Aarons and the other members of the new national leadership became acutely aware from the mid-1960s onwards that both Chinese and Soviet authoritarian methods were highly damaging to the cause of communism in advanced democratic countries such as Australia.
Lifelong friendships were irrevocably destroyed as both sides launched a huge organising effort in preparing for the CPA's 22nd Congress in 1970, at which the membership overwhelmingly endorsed the positions taken by Aarons and the other leaders.
In 1972 he found the time to read and study philosophical developments and trends and that year saw not only his first major sculpture exhibition but the publication of his book Philosophy for an Exploding World: Today’s Values Revolution.
During the 1970s a further deep division emerged between most of the Sydney-based leaders (including the Aarons brothers) and those in Melbourne grouped around Bernie Taft and John Sendy, who advocated a much more moderate policy towards the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries as well as a less antagonistic attitude towards “reformism” and the ALP.
Although this division did not result in a split during the six years that Eric Aarons was joint CPA National Secretary, the Taft-led group eventually left the party in 1984 and led a large proportion of the Melbourne membership into the ALP.
In the last 25 years of his life, Aarons lived in the bush to the south-west of Sydney on the site of the CPA's education facility that he did so much to build up and turn into a vibrant centre for reading, debating and discussing revolutionary theories and practice.