Rely on Class Struggle Not Campaigning for ALP/Greens Governments. Unleash Industrial Action Now to Reverse Three Decades of Attacks on Working Class People.

3 July 2014 – Over the last four months, tens of thousands of people have been marching in large rallies protesting against the right wing Abbott regime. The first budget of the Liberal-National government has rightly enraged working class people, students and leftists. In measures that will hurt the working class, retrenched workers and the poor the most, Treasurer Hockey’s budget has slashed funding for public hospitals and will make people pay a $7 fee for each doctor’s visit. The latter measure is likely to be the thin edge of a wedge aimed at slicing up any semblance of universal health care. Resources for Aboriginal services will be slashed, public funding for universities will be cut by 20% and graduates will have to pay their tuition fee debts back when their incomes are lower. People on the Disability Support Pension are to face nerve-wracking “re-assessments” of their eligibility for the pension. Most cruelly, unemployed people under the age of thirty are to be thrown off payments for six months a year. This will surely lead to even more homelessness, poverty and youth suicide.

Sensing public sentiment, opposition parties have come out against several budget measures. Even greedy tycoon Clive Palmer and his conservative party have stated their intention to vote against some measures. ALP leaders have tried to restore their battered credentials with their working class base by denouncing the unfairness of the budget to low and middle income people. But let us not forget that the previous government, for the most part a de facto Labor-Greens coalition, also made life harder for the poor. The former ALP/Greens government cruelly drove 84,000 low income single parents mainly single mothers – into extreme poverty when they threw them off the parenting payment onto the much lower Newstart Allowance. Furthermore, the last government undermined public housing. In 2010, then housing minister Tanya Plibersek a supposed “Left” who today is Labor’s main spokesperson at anti-Abbott rallies worked together with the then state ALP government to plan the sell-off of public housing from NSW’s biggest public housing estate at Claymore. Plibersek’s program, which saw a large number of public dwellings sold off, is now being carried through further by the present state Liberal government.

Labor and Labor/Greens governments are not fundamentally better than conservative governments because, while the ALP leaders would like to appease their working class supporters and the Greens have a kind of liberal-progressive ideology, they are both committed to maintaining the capitalist order – the root cause of the anti-working class attacks. This capitalist system requires that more and more gets squeezed out of the working class masses to satisfy the profit demands of the filthy rich corporate owners.

The worsening of the position of working class people began not with the election of Abbott but three decades earlier. This corresponded with the worldwide assault on workers and the poor associated with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher’s anti-union offensive and Cold War anti-communist drive against the former USSR. In this country, the Bob Hawke and then Paul Keating Labor governments that came to power in 1983, privatized the Commonwealth Bank and Qantas, ended free education for tertiary students, straightjacketed the trade unions through an anti-strike “Accord” and smashed the militant BLF union that dared to defy the Accord. From Hawke onwards every new government has heaped new hardships upon the masses. The Keating Labor government divided and weakened the union movement by opposing industry-wide bargaining in favor of Enterprise bargaining. Howard then followed with his notorious attacks on unions, Aboriginal people and “ethnic” communities. The subsequent Labor government maintained most of Howard’s right-wing measures and introduced new ones too. The Gillard and Rudd governments not only continued Howard’s racist policy of quarantining 50% of the social security payments received by Aboriginal people in the NT but even extended the draconian measure to poor people of all ethnicities in others areas including Bankstown in Sydney and the Brisbane suburb of Logan. The Rudd government Mark II also detailed a plan to slash over 5,000 public service jobs – a measure so severe that even the staunchly Laborite leadership of the CPSU public service workers union, for a couple of weeks last August, suspended campaigning for Labor. And now we have Abbott’s gang in office threatening still more vicious cuts to public sector jobs and social services.

The Coalition’s program will not be defeated by campaigning for an ALP or ALP/Greens government. Beholden to the demands of the capitalist system, such a government would likely maintain similar policies to the Liberals albeit with less aggressive language and at best a slightly slower pace of new attacks. The only way that attacks on working class people and the poor will be defeated is through mass struggle centred on strike action by the trade unions. By hurting the profits of the corporate bosses, such action could force the capitalist elite to tell their government to back off its anti-working class reforms. When the Fraser government sought to dismantle the Medibank universal health insurance scheme – the predecessor to Medicare – unions launched industrial action culminating in a national general strike on 12 July 1976. Unfortunately, the impact of these powerful actions was deflected by the pro-ALP, ACTU leaders who refused to follow up the general strike with further action. Nevertheless, the effect of the strikes was to deter Fraser from implementing the full suite of neo-liberal attacks that he was planning. Today, as seen in the 30,000 strong June 12 union rally in Melbourne, there exists the working class anger at the budget to launch powerful strike action against it. Such action must not only oppose the Budget but must fight to smash the full range of attacks working class people are facing – from the Royal Commission witch hunt against the unions, to the sell offs of public housing, to the planned job cuts at the CSIRO, ATO and other public sector areas and to the impending further electricity privatization in NSW.

A REVOLUTIONARY PROGRAM VERSUS A SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PROGRAM

Many are hoping that decisive sections of the budget will be blocked by the Senate. Any blocking of reactionary measures by opposition parties reacting to mass outrage would be welcome. However, in the absence of decisive class struggle action that forces all the pro-capitalist parties to retreat from the planned measures, any parliamentary moves against the budget will only be partial. Already, last month, the ALP and Greens voted for the first budget supply bills – bills that included the curbing of rises in the aged pension and the slashing of legal aid services for low income people. If it is not mass action that ultimately destroys the budget then an ALP leadership that opposes Coalition attacks when in Opposition today could, once in government, push through identical measures by using its union connections to demobilize mass resistance. It is worth noting that the ALP actually opposed the Howard government when it first started slashing payments to low income single parents only to then drastically extend the cutbacks once in office. For their part, the Greens have spoken out against privatization but as part of the recently deposed governing coalition with the ALP in Tasmania, the Greens openly supported the privatisation of electricity distribution. Meanwhile in France, the ALP’s social democratic counterpart (and a more left-talking one at that) the Socialist Party when in opposition campaigned on an anti-austerity platform. Yet, today the administration of Socialist Party president, Francois Hollande, is not only overseeing an official unemployment rate above 10% but implementing Abbott-like cuts to public services and public sector jobs while slashing taxes for big business. In fact, the unpopular policies of France’s social democratic administration have created conditions for the rapid rise of dangerous far-right forces.

In contrast, if it is class struggle action that defeats the reactionary Budget measures then it could open the way to struggles to turn back the three decades of attacks on the working class and then lead on to a fight for what working class people really need. Class struggle action beginning with a fight against Abbott’s budget attacks should move on to demand truly free public healthcare (including free specialist and dental visits), a huge increase in funding for public hospitals alongside measures to ensure that those resources don’t flow into the pockets of private contractors, the abolition of all anti-strike laws, the removal of tertiary education tuition fees and fee-debts and a massive increase in low-rent public housing. To these demands the enemy will respond: where will the money come from? The ALP and Greens cannot deal with this question because they accept as a given the current, social structure where a small number of wealthy capitalists dominate the economy. The ALP and Greens in office limit progressive measures to what is acceptable to the capitalist order and at best try to fund social programs with budget deficits – deficits which cause inflation that erode workers’ wages and pave the way for future austerity attacks on the working class. In contrast, we Marxists say that the money for the public services that working class people need should be ripped out of the hands of the greedy corporate bosses – ripped away from those who have extracted their wealth by plundering workers’ labour. The combined wealth of Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forest, the Pratt family, Frank Lowy, James Packer, Clive Palmer and the other of Australia’s 200 richest business owners alone is an astounding $177 billion. That’s nearly 150 times more than what the government will save over four years from its starvation budget cuts to payments to younger unemployed people!
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To lead the necessary class struggle fightback the working class badly needs a leadership that will refuse to submit to the demands of capitalism. Although seeking to ride on anti-budget protests to promote the ALP’s electoral fortunes, the current ALP leaders of the workers movement are stifling industrial action. Pro-ALP union leaders have bureaucratically suppressed calls for industrial action from rank-and-file union militants. We should never forget what happened to the struggle against Howard’s Workchoices industrial legislation. In 2005 and early 2006, hundreds of thousands of workers risked their jobs to participate in industrial action against these anti-worker laws. But then the ACTU leaders wound down the industrial campaign in favour of an electoral strategy, turning the slogan “Your Rights at Work Worth Fighting For” to “Your Rights At Work Worth Voting For.” However, the resulting Labor government then went on to retain most of the Howard laws, including the anti-strike provisions, in its own industrial laws. Instead of Workchoices being thoroughly smashed through strike

action we ended up with Workchoices Lite – that is, with an industrial relations system significantly worse for workers than in the pre-2005 Howard days.

The anti-capitalist perspective that must become dominant in our unions includes the necessity to stand by all those downtrodden by the same system that exploits workers. For example, right now, the union movement must mobilise contingents to support the brave activists in the Redfern Aboriginal Tent Embassy in their struggle to oppose developer and government plans to re-develop Redfern’s Block without any provision for affordable housing for Aboriginal people. The fighting union movement that we need would also demand asylum in Australia with full citizenship rights for all refugees who are headed here. Only by actively opposing attempts of the exploiting class to blame refugees, Aboriginal people and “ethnic” communities for the social ills caused by their rotten capitalist system can we weld the working class into the united force that can defeat the capitalist rulers.

ALLOWING EVERY YOUTH A REAL CHANCE TO “LEARN OR EARN” MEANS STANDING UP TO THE CORPORATE BIGWIGS

The ideology “justifying” Abbott’s plans to drastically restrict payments to young unemployed people and Gillard’s equally cruel slashing of payments to low income single mothers is the notion that these measures would force these supposedly unwilling people to either “Learn or Earn.” This is a despicable slander against unemployed workers and single mothers. The reason people are unemployed is simply because there are not enough jobs available and in the case of single parents also because there is a lack of available childcare that could enable a single parent to work.

The reason there are inadequate jobs is solely the fault of the greedy, big business bosses and the governments that serve them. The profit-obsessed exploiters would often rather cut back production – and thus employ less workers – and sell their produce at a higher price than boost production and reduce prices to sell the added output. Furthermore, the corporate bigwigs are always looking to cut jobs and make those that work toil harder. Last December, one of the subsidiaries of the Seven Group, heavy machinery supplier WesTrac, retrenched 630 workers even after the corporation announced a $486 million profit for the financial year. Why? So that its main owner, billionaire Kerry Stokes, can gain more profits to lead a still more extravagant lifestyle. More recently BMA, the mining company 50-50 owned by Australian giant BHP Billiton and Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi announced it was laying off over 230 workers as part of productivity “improvements” with more retrenchments expected. All this despite BHP announcing in February an 83% jump in its half yearly profit to a spectacular $US8.1 billion and Mitsubishi recording a full year profit of $US3.8 billion. Unfortunately, the current pro-ALP union leadership obscures the bosses’ responsibility for job losses by saying that local jobs can be saved through calling for financial support to local corporations to help them compete against overseas rivals. However, what we need is not to line up workers behind calls to support local bosses but to mobilise struggle against these greedy corporate thugs in order to stop them laying off workers. We should not let the likes of tycoon Kerry Stokes and the filthy rich big shareholders of BHP get away with retrenching workers. The response of the workers movement to Abbott and Hockey’s pledge to make everyone “Earn or Learn” should be to say: We are going to fight for people’s right to “Earn” by mobilizing industrial action to force companies planning job cuts to retain their workers at the expense of their profits and by demanding free and fully accessible, round-the-clock childcare. And we are going to ensure that young people truly have the choice to “Learn” by fighting for free tertiary education with a full living wage for all students.

In order to end unemployment, we should mobilise a class struggle campaign to demand laws that force profitable companies to increase hiring at the expense of the size of their profits. As we fight for such demands, the capitalists will of course scream that this will drive them out of business. To this we must respond: if you cannot operate enterprises in a way that provides jobs for workers – and it is clear that you can’t – then you should not be allowed to own these enterprises. They need to be ripped out of your hands and brought into public ownership so that production can be planned to provide jobs for all. However, not only are all current parliamentary parties hostile to the idea of confiscating the factories, banks, transport systems and mines from the capitalists, any party that did attempt to do so would face fierce resistance from the judiciary, police, army and top echelons of the bureaucracy, all of which have been built up for the very purpose of serving the exploiting class. That is why for our struggles to triumph they must culminate in the working class leading all of the oppressed in a revolutionary movement to sweep away the current capitalist state and to build a new workers state that will implement a socialist system based on collective ownership of the economy.

Workers, retrenched workers, Aboriginal people, “ethnic” youth, students and leftists: we are at a crossroads. After three decades of mounting assaults on our rights, the severity of the recent Coalition budget shows that we are facing the spectre of the drastic cutbacks to public services and public sector jobs that the masses in other capitalist countries like Greece, Spain, Italy, France and Brazil have endured since the global financial crisis. In those countries, the austerity measures have been implemented by right wing and social democratic governments alike. If the Australian masses have not experienced the same level of trauma it is only because China’s booming, public sector-dominated, socialistic economy has kept Australia afloat by purchasing a huge amount of Australia’s produce. Yet, China’s demand for Australian exports will ease as Beijing moves to rebalance its economy towards services and high-end manufacturing. How are we then going to respond to the threat of extreme austerity measures here? The social democratic program of minimising class struggle action and subordinating it to the goal of electing social democratic governments has been an abject failure. It has allowed the capitalist exploiters to weaken our unions, casualise the workforce and undermine the public services that working class people most need without any serious resistance. When social democrats gain office they have always betrayed their working class base in the quest to gain acceptance from the capitalist class who really run society. This has been true both in Australia and in every other country with a significant social democratic party. Inevitably, this causes such frustration and demoralisation amongst the masses that social democratic governments often pave the way for governments that are even further to the right than those governments that the social democrats had originally replaced when taking office.

It is high time for the workers movement to take a new road. The road of militant class struggle, of the workers movement championing the cause of all of the oppressed and of rejecting divisive protectionism. A road where the working class will not be diverted by any dead end paths of seeking to administer the existing capitalist state. A road that will end with the working class toppling the decrepit capitalist order and building a socialist society. Such a new society, instead of driving youth and the vulnerable into destitution under the guise of “Learn or Earn” will truly enable every person to “Earn or Learn” by guaranteeing jobs for all as well as free education and free 24-hour childcare. Let us get on to that path by building a concerted campaign of industrial action and mass struggle to smash Abbott’s Budget. We must start to roll back the three decades of attacks against the toiling masses with whose collective hands the future socialist society will be built.