Photo Above:Palestinians inspect the damage to buildings that were attacked by the Israeli army in the refugee camp of Tulkarm in the north of the West Bank on 12 September 2024. While carrying our a genocide of the Palestinian people of Gaza, the U.S. and Australian imperialist-backed Israeli regime has been escalating its attacks on the people of the West Bank. Photo: Nidal Eshtayeh/Xinhua
STAND WITH PALESTINE! STAND WITH THE CFMEU!
RESIST OUR COMMON AUSTRALIAN CAPITALIST ENEMIES!
19 September 2024 – Nowhere are the Palestinian people safe in their homeland. Israel is massacring Gaza’s people in Israel’s own designated “safe zones” and in schools turned into shelters – even the ones run by the UN. Israel has also escalated its assaults in the West Bank. From its assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Iran to its deadly air strikes on Syria to its bombings of Lebanon’s people, Israel’s terror is expanding. The only reason that Israel’s rulers are able to do all this is because of the massive support that they receive from the U.S., Australian and British imperialists. Let us not be fooled when these imperialists call for “ceasefire now”! They are just trying to limit the damage to their battered, self-appointed, “pro-human rights” image. They truly only want a “ceasefire” that’s based on greater Israeli control of Gaza.
Their puppets are also playing a criminal role. The exploding pagers that killed dozens of Lebanese people were made by a Taiwanese firm. Given that Taiwan’s rulers have long been rabid Israel backers, it is likely that Taiwanese ruling class actors were part of the plot. During South Africa’s Apartheid era, the Taiwanese, Israeli and Apartheid regimes formed an unholy alliance that assisted the Apartheid and Israeli regimes to acquire nukes. This Taiwanese firm is especially suspicious. For its CEO’s claim that they had not made the pagers but only sold its trademark overseas has been proven to be a bald-faced lie! The “manufacturer” that the Taiwanese boss blamed was found to be a trader with no manufacturing facilities!
Yet despite all these powerful forces arrayed against them, Palestinian forces are heroically resisting. And not only in Gaza. Following on from July’s China-brokered unity agreement that brought together Fatah, Hamas, PFLP and others, Palestinian forces are fighting in the West Bank in a more united way. We have a huge responsibility to stand by this resistance given that we live under one of the regimes facilitating Israel’s tyranny. We must escalate our actions standing by the Palestinian people! Let us stand with Syria and Iran against Israel and the Western capitalist powers supporting them! Let us stand with Lebanese and Yemeni people resisting genocide! Let us demand: Israeli troops and fascist settlers get out of all of Gaza and the West Bank! Stop the Australian regime’s participation in Israel’s genocide!
A destroyed house and car in the southern Lebanon village of Chamaa where a mother and her three children were killed when an Israeli warplane fired four air-to-ground missiles at the house on 1 August 2024. In the last few days, Israel has further escalated its terror against the people of Lebanon. Photo: Ali Hashisho/Xinhua
FOR A PRO-PALESTINE MOVEMENT THAT IMPLACABLY OPPOSES THE AUSTRALIAN RULING CLASS THAT IS PARTICIPATING IN GENOCIDE!
Huge numbers have joined weekly Sydney marches organised by the Palestine Action Group. Alongside global protests, these actions have exposed the Western regimes behind Israel and thus compelled them to make concessions – prodding Israel to murder Gaza’s people at a lower speed than it would like to. But we should not be satisfied! A slower genocide is still a horrific genocide! We must realise the Palestine movement’s potential to have a much greater impact! Now!
The problem with the movement is not that “we need to get more creative with our organising”. Indeed, the organising has been fantastic. The sole flaw of the movement that we must correct is its political direction. Actually, there are promising aspects about this. Rally chants have become more hard-hitting – especially ones like Labor Party you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide! Yet there is simultaneously a different message coming from the protests: an appeal to Australia’s rulers to support the Palestinian cause. To appeal to the ruling class as a potential friend is actually completely counterposed to condemning them as a genocide-enabling enemy that we are demanding to back off from their support for Israel. Yet, currently these two lines are co-existing in the movement. But Australia’s imperialist rulers will never support the Palestinian cause. For they are backing Israel because it is in theirown predatory interests – and not just those of their U.S. allies. Australia’s capitalists not only exploit local workers but plunder even more ruthlessly the peoples of the South West Pacific and Southeast Asian region. To guarantee this neo-colonial rape, Australia’s ruling class allies with the U.S. superpower. So for the sake of their own tyranny in this region, Australia’s imperialist rulers need U.S. power to be maintained, which is why they want to protect the USA’s Israeli attack dog in the strategic Middle East.
The biggest problem with appealing to Australia’s rulers is that it makes the pro-Palestine movement far less able to arm-twist the ruling class into retreating from their support for Israel. For if the capitalist rulers are not being opposed as an implacable enemy, the movement is doing the ruling class far less political damage than it could. Such political damage is not the same as electoral damage. Sure, the ALP tops would be upset if they lost the next election. But ultimately, the main feature that defines ALP politicians and those from all the current parliamentary parties is their loyalty to the filthy rich owners of Australia’s mines, construction firms, factories, banks, agri-businesses, the power sector, tech firms and big retailers – who are the ultimate power in Australia. What would most damage this capitalist class (who can be of any race but in Australia are mainly white Protestants) and their political servants is if there is a growing movement that brands them as an unambiguous enemy and mobilises actions against them. The Palestine movement needs to urgently transform into such a movement. It is partly there. But it needs to remove all appeals to Australia’s capitalist rulers from its agenda.
Among those pushing appeals to Australia’s rulers to “act” for Palestine are the pro-ALP, ACTU union leaders. Saying that the government “should do more”, the ACTU tops call for Australia to put sanctions on Israel. This seemingly pro-Palestine slant disguises a treacherous intent – to provide an alibi for their ALP parliamentary mates. By saying that the government “should do more”, they are hiding the truth that not only is the ruling class here doing absolutely nothing to defend the Palestinian people, they are instead doing much harm: from helping operate the U.S.-Australia Pine Gap spy base that is directing Israel’s missiles, to participating in the Red Sea military operation against Yemeni opponents of Israel, to providing military supplies to Israel. Two days ago, the Australian regime joined the U.S., British, Ukrainian, South Korean, Israeli and other Western-aligned regimes in refusing to support a UN motion to end Israel’s occupation that was voted for by two-thirds of the world. True support for Palestinian people would not make futile appeals to the enemy that prettify its nature but would demand that the Australian capitalist enemy withdraw from their participation in genocide. It would demand: Close the Pine Gap spy base! U.S./Australian/British troops get out of the Red Sea! Stop Australian military supplies to Israel!
Within the Palestine movement, this diversionary, “the Australian government should do more” line is pushed by the Greens. For, although individual Greens politicians have powerfully condemned Israel’s genocide, the Greens do not consistently oppose Australian ruling class support for Israel. During the early phase of this latest Israeli war, the Greens officially took a nauseatingly, “even-handed” “condemn both sides” stance. Today, they retain elements of this stance. Moreover, ultimately, the Greens uphold the imperialist domination of the world that underpins Israel’s tyranny. They supported NATO’s 2011 “regime-change” war on Libya and imperialism’s proxy war against the not-obedient-enough Syrian government. Just a year ago, they fed into the U.S.-led war drive against Iran by pushing for the imperialist Australian regime to more harshly sanction Iran – which is very different to supporting an explicitly anti-imperialist, pro-working class opposition to the women-oppressing, Iranian capitalist regime. Today, the Greens back all the Western-backed forces seeking to undermine socialistic rule in China. For the Greens are ultimately a party that also represents the capitalist class – albeit its liberal-progressive wing, as well as the pro-capitalist sections of the progressive-minded affluent professionals. Thus, although much of the capitalist class is angered at Greens leaders speaking at pro-Palestine events, at the same time, however, the capitalist rulers remain largely reassured by this. For the movement’s links to the Greens prevent it from becoming a consistent force against Australian imperialism and the Australian capitalist ruling class. We need to urgently liberate the Palestine movement from loyalty to the Greens!
FOR FULL-SCALE CLASS WAR AGAINST AUSTRALIA’S CAPITALIST EXPLOITING CLASS!
If the Palestine movement is able to transform into a movement of irreconcilable opposition to the Australian ruling class it would be able to intersect with the widespread fury at these rulers over unaffordable rents, rising living costs and racist scapegoating of migrants and refugees. Many from Asian, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander and African backgrounds are also angry about Western neo-colonial depredations in their homelands. Right now, workers are especially furious at the regime’s takeover of the militant CFMEU union. Every genuine supporter of the Palestinian people must support worker resistance to this attack on the CFMEU as this has the potential to bash the genocide-enabling Australian capitalist class onto the back foot. We must connect the pro-Palestine movement with the resistance to this union-busting attack. Already, some speakers at Palestine rallies have proclaimed solidarity with the CFMEU. That is a start. However, the ruling class will not feel threatened unless the movement as a whole declares opposition to the regime takeover of the CFMEU. That means slogans like “Hands Off the CFMEU” must become part of the official slogans for each Palestine action and must be included on the front main rally banner alongside opposition to Israel’s genocide. However, to do this is a big political step. For one, taking such a stance implicitly means abandoning the strategy of appealing to the capitalist rulers. Secondly, taking such a clear side in the class war will necessarily put off the small number of capitalist and other strongly pro-capitalist individuals attending Palestine rallies. But so be it! Australian ruling class support for Israel’s genocide must be stopped! The Palestine movement must be turned into one that can compel the capitalist enemy here at home to end its participation in this atrocity! This is the only way.
If we do this, then pro-CFMEU actions could also take on an explicitly pro-Palestine character and pro-Palestine contingents could be arranged to join CFMEU worker strike rallies and vice versa. However, for this to be fully realised and for worker outrage at the attack on the CFMEU to turn into a powerful indefinite strike action, something else needs to happen. There needs to be built a new, militant leadership of our unions and a new workers party connected to it. This is made possible by large numbers of working class people now turning away from the ALP at disgust at both its attack on the CFMEU and its support for Israel’s genocide. However, if this support goes to the pro-imperialist and capitalist-accepting Greens, it will not be a step forward. What we must build is a workers party that will support militant class struggle and oppose every one of Australian imperialism’s actions – including its acts against Palestine. Such a party would understand that positive change will not come from gaining office to administer regime institutions serving the imperialist, exploiting class. Rather, it will come through class struggle and other progressive actions. Let’s build such a revolutionary workers party to organise this struggle. Let’s transform the Palestine movement into a force of uncompromising opposition to Australia’s imperialist rulers! Let’s build joint resistance to the war on Palestine and the war on the CFMEU!
In addition to the above articles contained in the print version, the following important articles below also form an integral part of Issue 27. All these articles had been published as leaflets and mailed out to subscribers in the period before Issue 27 appeared in print form. They were not included in the print version only to allow space for newer articles given the large volume of articles issued in this period:
As Chinese Premier Arrives for Australia Visit, Rally Demands that China’s Pro-Working Class Housing Policies Be Implemented Here in Australia
Campaign Activates to Drive Down the Unaffordable Rents in Australia
16 June 2024: Literally millions of Australia’s working poor, old-aged pensioners and unemployed workers are being driven into hardship by soaring rents and house prices. Therefore, to re-activate with new urgency a campaign to drive down Australia’s unaffordable rents, a rally and march was conducted yesterday to demand the measures needed to drive down rents. The action called for a massive increase in public housing and for the measures needed to release into the housing supply the vacant homes of the ultra-rich. The protest was organised by Trotskyist Platform and the Australian Chinese Workers Association.
Many of the measures needed here are being successfully implemented by the socialistic Peoples Republic of China to ensure adequate housing for her lower-income workers, younger workers and aged and disabled pensioners. That is why yesterday’s rally was timed to coincide with the visit to Australia of China’s premier, Li Qiang. As the call-out for yesterday’s rally put it:
“We demand that instead of delivering hypocritical lectures to China over `human rights’ and spending huge resources in a provocative military buildup targeting China, the Australian regime starts implementing China’s pro-working class housing policies. Australia’s super-rich ruling class are happy to take huge amounts of China’s money from their exports to China, we demand that they also take China’s `Houses are for living, not for speculation’-policy home!”
Yesterday’s action began with an introduction by rally emcee, Yuri Gromov, who is also the editor of TheSpark – the journal of Trotskyist Platform. The following were his introductory remarks (all the speeches quoted in this article have been edited for publication):
“We are gathering here today on the stolen land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation to fight against the unaffordable rents and house prices in Australia.
“The housing affordability crisis indeed highlights the intense current and historic racist oppression that Aboriginal people face. The last census showed that the rate of homelessness for First Nations People was eight times higher than for the rest of the population.
“The lack of affordable housing and rental accommodation is hurting nearly all working class people. According to the Australian census in 2021 more than 122,000 people were officially homeless. Everyone can see from observing the streets that homelessness has surged since then. For every homeless person and for many more on the verge of becoming homeless, skipping meals and postponing essential medical and dental consultations is commonplace. Parents are faced with a terrible choice: not pay for a child’s school excursion or not to pay rent.
“The Sydney median rent is now $770 per week – 87% of the minimum wage for a full-time worker! Many younger workers are not able to get full-time work and so can’t afford rent. The rental crisis is also hurting older working class people. Many who are now living in caravans and cars are middle-aged and older single women.
“The lack of affordable accommodation is causing more domestic violence against women – many women in abusive relationships have no choice but to remain where they are to just keep a roof over their (and their children’s) heads.
“This crisis is a result of the failure of the so-called `free-market’ system. Profit-driven developers know that they can make more profit building extravagant homes for the wealthy than homes affordable to the poor. So, while the rich have many homes to buy up for themselves, there is a huge shortage of homes that working class people can afford to rent or buy.
“That is why we need public housing. Which is exactly what Australian governments of all stripes have been busy selling off. The proportion of people in public housing in Australia is now less than 3%. This proportion is half what it was 25 years ago. And this privatisation of public housing has been taking place whether it is the Liberals, the ALP or an ALP-Greens coalition in office.
“With so little public housing left, private landlords can jack up rents because tenants have nowhere else to go. So, we are here today to demand an end to all selloffs of public housing and, instead, call for a massive increase in public housing. With Australia’s capitalist government only serving the big end of town no matter which party is in office, we know that the only way we are going to win these demands is through mass struggle. Today’s rally is part of building for the type of mass class-struggle action that we need.
“With the rental crisis so severe, people need immediate relief even before more public housing can be built. Therefore, we call for measures to force the super-rich to release their vacant homes into the housing supply. The last census showed that 10% of Australia’s dwellings were unoccupied. Many of these are homes the super-rich keep just for speculation or as multiple vacation homes. Such housing speculation by the wealthy is encouraged through generous tax concessions that the government gives for negative gearing and capital gains. We say that these tax concessions should be ended and the public money that’s saved should be diverted into public housing. We demand a ban on people owning more than three homes. That way the ultra-rich will be forced to release many of their vacant homes into the housing supply.
“Ruling class commentators say that such restrictions on the `free market’ and a focus on public housing is impractical. They say that it is outdated and that it goes against the laws of economics. However, there is a huge problem with that kind of argument. For Australia’s biggest trading partner and the number one economic success story of the 21st century, that is the Peoples Republic of China, actually does have a focus on public housing and measures to reduce housing speculation. Indeed, the official name of China’s housing policy is: `Houses are For Living, Not for Speculation.’ Under this policy many parts of China restrict the amount of homes that the wealthy can own. In her capital Beijing, for example, only residents of the city can buy homes and are restricted to owning two homes per individual or family plus an additional home in the far outer suburbs.
“Moreover, socialistic China has focused on providing public housing for her lower-income people. More than one out of every four homes in China is now public housing. By contrast, just one out of every 36 homes in Australia belongs to the public housing stock.
“In just a few hours time, the Chinese premier Li Qiang will land in Australia for a high-profile visit. In the lead-up to the visit, the Australian media have been attacking China over supposed aggression and supposed `human rights violations’. We demand that instead of making such lying attacks on China, Australia’s capitalist rulers implement China’s pro-working class housing policies here. Working class people in Australia desperately need this.”
Rally emcee Yuri Gromov (who is also editor of the Trotskyist Platform Journal, Spark) introduces the 15 June protest action against unaffordable rents
The rally was then addressed by Chairman of the Australian-Chinese Workers Association, David Chen:
“The Australian Chinese Workers Association is proud to be one of the endorsers of this action to fight for lower rents and lower housing costs. I want to acknowledge that we are gathering here on the stolen Aboriginal land of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation.
“Rents have now reached unbearable levels for working class people. Even in working class Granville in Western Sydney, an area that I am familiar with, the median rent for a two bedroom apartment is now $500 per week. That is nearly 60% of the minimum wage for a full-time worker! Like our fellow working class Australians of all ethnicities, ethnic Chinese workers in Australia have been suffering under these increasingly unaffordable rents and housing costs. Like many other workers in this country, many Australian Chinese workers are not using heaters during the cold winter to be able to pay rent.
“The solution to these problems is obvious. We need to force governments of all stripes to massively increase public housing. Secondly, we need to release into the housing supply the huge number of homes that the ultra-rich keep unoccupied for speculation. To do this, we must insist that the super-rich be banned from owning more than three homes.
“Do not let politicians and media tell you that this is not practical. I want to share our experience as immigrants from China. In our home country, the government has focused on public housing over the last sixteen years. Moreover, to ensure that homes go to those who need them rather than being kept by the wealthy for speculation, most parts of China have policies restricting how many homes the rich can own. For example, in Guangzhou, the biggest city in the southern Guangdong province that I am from, people can own at most two homes. Moreover, in this mega-city, more public housing is now being built than private housing.
“So, such measures are indeed very realistic. But with Australian governments serving only the ultra-rich big end of town, they are not going to implement the policies that we need to lower rents unless we force them to. So Australian working class people of all ethnicities must unite to fight for a massive increase in public housing and a ban on people owning more than three homes. We in the Australian Chinese Workers Association pledge to do all we can to support this crucial struggle.
Rally emcee Yuri Gromov then provided additional detail on socialistic China’s pro-working class housing policies:
“China’s push on public housing began around 2008 and saw the state provide 70 million new public housing dwellings in the space of a decade. This included both low-rent public rental housing and low-cost public housing which was sold to lower-middle income occupants for a 70 year period and which the occupants could only sell back to the state.
“Today, China is making a renewed push to increase the amount of public housing. Most of the new public housing will be public rental housing. According to the 2021-2025 Five Year Plan, which China is ahead of schedule to meet, 6.5 million new public rental housing dwellings are being provided to house 20 million people. Even accounting for China’s big population, this is a further huge boost to public housing in China. Proportionate to population it is the same as if 375,000 people were to be granted public housing in Australia within five years. That is dozens of times more than what the Albanese government is even promising to provide.
“Notably, a recent Chinese government announcement made a few weeks ago stated that Chinese local governments and state-owned enterprises would begin aggressively buying up excess private housing and turning them into public housing. This is the direct opposite of the privatisation of public housing that Australian governments have been ruthlessly engaged in.
“China’s policies to stop housing speculation go beyond just the restrictions on the number of homes that people can buy. For example, China’s banks are not allowed to providing housing loans to people who already own two homes. Moreover, depending on the city, laws are made to discourage the purchase of second homes. Thus, in China’s biggest city, Shanghai, people seeking to buy a second home must pay a 35% deposit on the price, much higher than the deposit needed for people buying a first home.”
Next to address the demonstration was Trotskyist Platform central committee member, Samuel Kim. He has personally felt the sharpness of Australia’s rental affordability crisis, with his landlord recently putting up his rent by around 25% in one hit. Samuel Kim began his speech by detailing the suffering caused by rising rents: “Sisters and brothers, today over 400,000 women over 45 are at risk of homelessness according to the Housing for the Aged Action Group.”
The Trotskyist Platform representative then outlined a class-struggle strategy to fight for lower rents:
“Let’s make the rich sell off their excess homes! Housing is for living in, not for speculating! Australian billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes owns $350 million worth of property – consisting of several unoccupied lavish mansions and holiday homes. That is why we in Trotskyist Platform demand that any dwelling owned by a household with more than five million dollars worth of property assets, and is unoccupied for more than two months within a year, should be confiscated and turned into public housing.
“But how are we going to win these demands? The Liberals, Far-Right parties and Teals/independents openly serve rich property speculators. Many of these politicians themselves own multiple properties. The ALP for its part always bows to this big end of town. And these ALP politicians also own multiple properties – Albanese personally once owned four properties and Tony Burke and Linda Burney both own five properties. The Greens do offer more for renters. But the Greens’ plans are not exclusively for public housing but will see public money handed over to private landlords for so-called “affordable housing”– money that should be used to build up public housing. Moreover, because the Greens accept the dominance of the capitalist economy, the Greens never deliver on their progressive promises.
“The only way we are going to win the measures needed is through mass struggle that can force the ruling class to grant us concessions. We must especially mobilise the industrial power of the union movement in this struggle. When governments attempt to sell off public housing this should be stopped through protest occupations – like the 6 August 2017 occupation of a block in Millers Point by leftists, trade unionists and other supporters of public housing. Similarly, we should build towards mass direct actions to requisition the unoccupied housing of the ultra-rich into the public housing stock. We should build a true workers party to organise such militant struggles and to build a class struggle fight for the conversion of all gig jobs into secure, permanent ones.
“If we are to succeed in such struggles, we must oppose the ruling class’ attempts to scapegoat migrants. It is a complete lie that migration is to blame for rising rents. After all the steepest rent rises were in 2021 when there was absolutely zero migration due to COVID travel restrictions. To stop the ruling class getting itself off the hook through diverting people’s frustrations onto others, we must go out of our way to defend the targeted groups. We must call for the full rights of citizenship for all migrants, refugees and international students. We must demand that the refugees imprisoned in PNG and Nauru be brought here and freed. And we must oppose all racist scapegoating of Aboriginal people.
“Sisters and brothers, the right to housing is one of the most basic of human rights. Yet the capitalist regime in this country, which poses such a threat to this right, also claims to be the guardian of `human rights’. In the lead-up to the Chinese premier Li Qiang’s visit, which will begin shortly, the ruling class media and politicians have been calling on Albanese to attack China forcefully over `human rights’ when he meets Li Qiang. But Albanese has no right to! For socialistic China does a far better job in ensuring housing for its masses than the capitalist rulers here. Thus, to ensure that the homes built there go to the masses, many parts of China have restrictions on the amount of homes that the rich can own. For example, in China’s biggest city, Shanghai, families and individuals are restricted to owning at most two homes. Furthermore, China has focused on providing public housing for her lower-income people. Today about 2.5% of housing in Australia is public housing, whereas in China it’s over 25%.
“So, actually, we say that it is Li Qiang who should be condemning the Australian regime for its appalling human rights failure – its failure to provide housing for all its people. And while he is at it, he should also demand that Australia’s capitalist rulers stop participating in Israel’s genocide of Palestinian people, stop its state forces from killing Aboriginal people in custody and free Australia’s four political prisoners.
“The differences in housing policy between Australia and China indeed highlight why our rulers constantly attack Australia’s biggest trading partner. For Australia’s capitalist rulers fear that the working class masses here will be inspired by socialistic China’s policies to start demanding China-style, pro-public housing policies in this country … and eventually to demand socialism as well!
“To be sure, pressured by a capitalist-dominated world and by the existence of capitalists within China, China’s transition to socialism is still unfinished, uncertain and deformed. Recently, under pressure from struggling privately-owned developers, Chinese cities have loosened, somewhat, anti-speculation policies. We say that there must be no loosening. Instead, the remaining major capitalist developers should be nationalised. There is no room for profiteers in a sector so connected with people’s well-being. This must be part of a broader program to further strengthen China’s socialistic public sector.
“For working class people here, it is important that China’s pro-working class housing direction and public sector-dominated economy remain in place. For the existence of that socialistic system strengthens our struggles for a housing and economic system in Australia that will finally look after working class people’s needs. That is why it is in the interests of working class people in Australia to oppose all the political, propaganda and military attacks against socialistic rule in China. Let’s oppose the U.S. and Australian regimes’ massive military buildup targeting China and its provocative naval missions in China-claimed waters in the East and South China Seas.
“It is important to know that Red China is able to provide large amounts of public housing for her people not only because of her policies. Her state is able to fund public housing because her economy’s most profitable sectors like energy, finance and mining are in public hands rather than being owned by wealthy tycoons. And because the majority of China’s big developers are state-owned, rather than profit-centred, public housing budgets actually go into providing public housing rather than into the pockets of wealthy capitalist contractors. Meanwhile, the fact that all China’s major banks are publicly owned means that these banks readily provide credit for public housing projects. So, a key part of fighting for the massive increase in public housing that we need here is to fight for the nationalisation of the banks and for the confiscation of Australia’s big construction and mining companies and their transfer into public hands. That in turn poses the need to struggle for an overall system based on collective ownership of the economy under the control of a workers government.
“The struggle for such a system that will meet the needs of all and not just the wealthy few will be built up through mass struggles for what working class people need right now. So, sisters and brothers: let’s work hard to build up a class struggle fight for a massive increase in public housing, for a ban on the ownership of more than three homes and for the confiscation of the unoccupied homes of the ultra-rich.”
Protesters then conducted a lively march through the streets of Sydney from Chinatown to the QVB. During the march we chanted: “More Public Housing!”, “Houses Are for Living – Not for Speculation!” and “Public Housing for You and Me – Just Like in the PRC!”.
15 June 2024: Demonstrators march through the streets of Sydney in opposition to unaffordable rents. Protesters demanded a massive increase in public housing and advocated particular measures that will forcibly release the vacant homes of the ultra-rich into the housing supply.
Outside the QVB Building, in front of a large bronze statue of Queen Victoria, that symbol of brutal British colonial power, rally emcee Yuri Gromov reiterated that the lack of affordable accommodation in Australia has nothing to do with immigration:
“The ruling class and the politicians, the media and the commentators who serve them are trying to get their capitalist system off the hook by blaming migrants. But more migrants means more people to build homes and more people to pay taxes to pay for building new homes. Migrants are not to blame for the housing crisis. Our working class sisters and brothers from all around the world are part of the solution. The rental crisis is caused by the failure of the capitalists and their so-called `free market’ system to meet the housing needs of the multicultural masses. The blame sits squarely on the shoulders of the pro-capitalist, pro-speculation policies of our governments and the massive selloff of public housing undertaken by successive Australian governments of all stripes.”
The final speaker at the action was activist Peter Butler, who has been fighting for decades for affordable rents and housing justice as a community worker, researcher and as a tenant himself. Peter Butler outlined how he saw the consequences of when local public housing estates around Campbelltown began to be sold off to private developers around the 1990s. He described the terrible effect this selloff had on many tenants, who then had nowhere to live. This was the result of neo-liberal policies, when housing became a source of profit, rather than a basic human right necessary for people’s security. Since then, things have gotten worse, with homelessness increasing, along with rental costs and shortages. Sydney is now the second-most expensive city in the world!
Now, a volunteer at a community food van, Peter Butler described the impact he has seen Australia’s rental affordability crisis have on many of his clients, with increasing pressure, especially on the most vulnerable. By comparison, in China, public housing is a common government provision.
Peter Butler noted that on the way to the rally, he saw several homeless people in the cold and rain, begging on the streets. He asked rhetorically: “Where would you rather live – in a secure apartment, even if it was small, or out on the streets?” Peter Butler insisted: “We need to return to more government provision of public housing for these people, instead of the emphasis of housing for the profit of a few.”
In his concluding remarks, rally emcee Yuri Gromov explained that: “the only way that we are going to win the housing policies that we need is through mass, class-struggle action. Today’s rally was aimed at building towards the type of action needed.” Indeed, the June 15 rally received much sympathetic interest from bystanders and passersby – many of whom stopped to pick up leaflets and listen to speeches. The demonstration was also sympathetically covered by an article in the Australian Chinese-language newspaper Sydney Today and re-published in Chinese-language news sites in Canada and China.
Buoyed by the spirited nature of the June 15 demonstration and the impact that it had, Trotskyist Platform and the Australian Chinese Workers Association have vowed to intensify their campaign to fight for lower rents. We intend to organise follow-up actions to demand a massive increase in public housing, a ban on the ownership of more than three homes and other measures to forcibly release into the housing supply the multiple homes kept vacant by the ultra-rich.
Photo Above: The act of charity that has seen the Australian regime disgustingly jail 68 year-old Chinese-Australian Di Sanh Duong for two years and nine months. At the height of COVID, Duong donated more than $37,000 to the Royal Melbourne Hospital to help it purchase pandemic response materials. Duong made the 2 June 2020 donation which was collected from his Oceania Federation of Chinese Organisations for Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in a ceremony involving then immigration minister Alan Tudge. Photo credit: James Ross/AAP
Free Di Sanh Duong!
Free the Three Cold War Political Prisoners in Australia!
29 February 2024: Australian citizen of Chinese descent, Di Sanh Duong, today became the first person jailed under Australia’s “Foreign Interference” laws. The Australian regime sentenced 68-year-old Duong to two years and nine months jail for making a charitable donation to a Melbourne public hospital during the height of the pandemic. Yes, you read that right! The act for which Doung has been jailed is the making of a public donation to the Royal Melbourne Hospital in a ceremony with then immigration minister, Alan Tudge. The Australian regime and its courts deemed this to be illegal in a largely secret trial. Their allegation boils down to a claim that by giving himself a good name through the donation, Duong was “preparing” to in future advance the interests of the Communist Party of China (CPC) – the party that administers the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). What Duong is really being punished for is the fact that although he is certainly no leftist (Duong was actually a long-time member of the Liberal Party!), the group that he led, the Oceania Federation of Chinese Organisations for Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, has signed (from a Chinese patriotic point of view) public statements showing some sympathy for the PRC. By jailing Di Sanh Duong, Australia’s capitalist regime is seeking to threaten others, especially members of this country’s Chinese community, that they should not express any positive views about the PRC. They are also demonising Duong in order to try and create an anti-communist, anti-China hysteria amongst the population. The Australian ruling class wants to justify to the masses its rabidly enthusiastic participation in Western imperialism’s all-sided political, economic and military campaign to destroy socialistic rule in China.
The charge under which Duong has been jailed is so ridiculous that Duong was not even convicted of “foreign interference”. Instead, he was convicted of “preparing to commit an act of foreign interference”. As we explained in an article titled, “Resist the Cold War Repression” that was written a few months before Duong’s trial late last year:
“Federal prosecutors claim that Duong’s donation to the hospital charity was a means for him to `interfere’ with then immigration minister Tudge – presumably by presenting Duong in a good light to the minister. Yet if that logic is followed consistently, there would literally be tens of thousands of other donors being arrested: for every single person who makes a donation to a charity in a public way is doing it to win themselves credibility with others and gain the influence which that brings. Yet the Australian regime is fine with nearly all others who make public donations to charity. Indeed, when a billionaire tycoon publicly donates to a charity a tiny fraction of the wealth that they have leached from the masses, the regime gushes with praise. But when the leader of a Chinese organisation that is somewhat sympathetic to the PRC makes such a donation, Australia’s regime screams that that this is a sinister act of `foreign interference’ on behalf of the CPC. Such a claim is a crystal clear example of McCarthyism. McCarthyism, the name given to the 1950s anti-communist witch-hunt in the U.S. and Australia, is based on the premise that those who either support communism or are even mildly sympathetic to a socialistic state should be treated with suspicion and denied the rights accorded to others … in this case even the right to publicly donate to a local public hospital!”
Yet even when compared with the hysterical zealotry of the 1950s McCarthyist witch-hunt, today’s lengthy prison sentence handed down to an elderly man – who suffers from glaucoma and cataracts as well as diabetes and high blood pressure – for merely making a public donation to a hospital to aid their pandemic response comes off as especially fanatical. Today’s sentencing judgement by judge Maidment was full of vitriolic denunciations of the Chinese Communist Party and it’s supposedly “pervasive foreign influence program”. Basically the judge has decided that an Australian person, who has even vague links to organisations associated with the Chinese Communist Party, who advocates a political position and happens to take the same stance as the Chinese Communist Party is definitely engaging in “foreign interference” rather than that person happening to share the same belief on an issue as the PRC government that is led by the Chinese Communist Party. Moreover, the Cold War extremist judge’s sentencing judgement practically insists that anyone who has any relations with people who are members of the Chinese Communist Party and who does not declare those associations before making any political advocacy is engaging in “a significant breach of trust” using “covert methodology”. Do Australians who have friends in, or links with, the Liberal or Labor or Greens or One Nation parties here – or say the Republican or Democrat parties in the U.S. – always declare their friendships or connections with those parties every time that they advocate something to a political figure or community organisation?
Despite the sentencing judge’s rantings, the truth is that the Communist Party of China conducts almost no direct interference in Australia’s politics. The foreign state that interferes in Australian political processes the most is the USA. But even U.S. influence operations on Australian politics are today of secondary importance. By far the biggest interferers in Australia’s “democracy” are the wealthy capitalist tycoons and the corporations that they own. These ultra-rich capitalists make very public charity donations to gain a positive reputation in order to influence political decisions according to their agendas – as Di Sanh Duong is alleged to have done – but on a scale far, far bigger and wider than a person like Duong collecting from members of his grassroots community organisation would ever have any hope of doing. This big end of town uses far more direct and potent methods to control political life in this country to an extent that is in great disproportion to their small size. They do so through direct donations to political parties, through the corporate and bosses organisations that they fund, through the corporations that they own being able to entice politicians and high-ranking bureaucrats with the prospects of future lucrative careers in their companies, through using their control of the economy to effectively hold government and other state institutions to ransom; and through the lobbyists that they hire, the media that they own and the NGOs and “independent” think tanks that they establish (like the Lowy Institute, the Institute for Public Affairs and the Australia Institute). Many of these influence operations involve truly “covert methodology” with their media and think tanks making the completely false, lying claim that they are “independent”, unbiased publishers of news and opinion. And while some of their direct political donations are reported – albeit usually many months after they first make them thus diminishing the impact of the disclosure – much of it is concealed through paying big payments to attend super-expensive fundraising dinners or through being funnelled through third parties. Yet none of these corporate bigwigs and their henchmen are even threatened with imprisonment for engaging in such interference in this country’s political system! That is of little surprise – the ruling capitalist class always intended Australia’s “democracy” to be a “democracy” that is controlled exclusively by their class, making sure that their so-called “democratic” system was organised and administered in such a way that would be most conducive for the political interference of the rich in it to continue unabated and largely unhindered.
Resist the Cold War Repression!
Di Sanh Duong’s sentencing judge has slapped a very severe jail term on a person who has had no prior convictions for a supposed “offence” that involved no violence, had no victim and was not even alleged to have done any damage unless you believe that helping hospitals treat COVID is damaging! By contrast, last ANZAC Day when a Brisbane man shouting racist abuse against Chinese people assaulted several Asian-Australians fishing on a pier, he was not only not given a jail term but he was not even given a criminal conviction. He was, instead, merely given a small civil fine. This is despite the fact that his assault using a metal object as a weapon could have been fatal had he succeeded in knocking one of the victims into the water after debilitating them through a blow with his weapon. That slap on the wrist to a violent anti-Chinese racist when contrasted with Duong’s outrageously heavy sentence shows the extreme anti-communist and racist bias of Australia’s legal system and judiciary.
Sunny Duong, as he is affectionately known, has today become Australia’s third Cold War political prisoner. Of the other two current political prisoners, one is pilot Daniel Duggan who has been imprisoned for the last sixteen months under harsh conditions for merely training Chinese pilots to fly more than ten years ago! The Australian regime is seeking to extradite Duggan to the U.S. to face charges as nothing he did is illegal by Australian laws. Meanwhile, Alexander Csergo has been jailed for the last eleven months accused of violating Australia’s “foreign interference” laws for merely looking up open source politics and defence affairs articles on the internet and passing their contents over to a Chinese think tank!
The anti-China hysteria surrounding all this Cold War repression – especially the persecution of ethnic Chinese Di Sanh Duong – will only further inflame anti-Chinese racism in Australia. It is a call out to all the filthy racists. It will lead to more people of Chinese appearance being abused in public transport and shopping centres, being bullied at school and being physically attacked on Australia’s streets. Moreover, these Cold War prosecutions have helped produce such a “national security” obsession that it is being used to intensify the repression of those targeted for matters not directly related to the Cold War. Thus, there is no doubt that the repressive political atmosphere created by the new McCarthyist witch-hunt has contributed to the prosecution of whistle blower, David McBride. McBride was convicted last November of “unlawfully disclosing Commonwealth documents” after he gave to the media information detailing the horrific and very widespread war crimes that were being committed by the Australian regime’s forces during their participation in the NATO occupation of Afghanistan. Now, he too faces imprisonment. The entire Left and all genuine defenders of democratic rights in Australia must demand: Drop the Charges against David McBride! Free Di Sanh Duong now! Free Daniel Duggan and Alexander Csergo! Scrap Australia’s draconian “Foreign Interference” laws! Down with the new McCarthyist witch-hunt!
21 September 2023, Eastwood, Sydney: Leftists and progressive members of the Chinese community rally to oppose the Cold War Witch-Hunt in Australia and the stigmatisation of Australia’s Chinese community that has accompanied the ruling class’ Cold War drive against socialistic China. The action was initiated by Trotskyist Platform and the Australian Chinese Workers Association. Below: One of the slogans carried at the action called for the scrapping of Australia’s new McCarthyist, “Foreign Interference” laws.
As part of their Cold War drive to destroy socialistic rule in China, the Australian and other imperialist ruling classes seek to attack the PRC over “human rights”. However, the truth is that unlike Australia’s capitalist regime the PRC does not jail people for donating to public hospitals! We should stress that the imprisonment of Di Sanh Duong here has very little in common with the former imprisonment of Australian citizen, Cheng Lei, in China and the current jailing of another Chinese-Australian in China, Yang Hengjun. Cheng Lei was jailed for illegally supplying state secrets overseas – a form of spying. Notably, Cheng Lei confessed to the crimes – although she has tried to walk back and obscure her confession after returning to Australia after serving her sentence. For his part, Yang Hengjun was found guilty of espionage. It is important to understand that not only were Cheng Lei and Yang Hengjun convicted of offences that would be considered very serious in any country, from the point of view of the interests of the working class of Australia and the whole world their actions truly are crimes. For they weaken and undermine a workers state – a workers state in the form of socialistic China. Their actions are as abusive towards the working class masses as a person who crosses a picket line to scab on a strike but with potentially even more damaging consequences. Unlike the Cold War political prisoners that Australia has imprisoned here, Cheng Lei and Yang Hengjun were not jailed for merely donating to a public hospital or teaching people (apparently civilian pilots) how to fly planes or passing on the results of Google searches!
Today, the claims of the Australian and other Western capitalist rulers that they stand for “human rights” are being thoroughly exposed by their active support for Israel’s heinous war on the Palestinian people. Through hosting and jointly operating the joint U.S.-Australia spy base at the Northern Territory’s Pine Gap – which pinpoints a large number of Israel’s air and artillery strikes on Gaza – and through joining the U.S.-led Red Sea operation against Yemeni actions in support of Gaza, the Labor Party-administeredAustralian regime is directly participating in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. This shows that whether administered by the right-wing Liberal-Nationals, the social democratic ALP or any other party, Australia’s capitalist-serving state will use the cruellest means possible to protect the interests of this country’s ruling class – that small but powerful class of people that obtain their massive wealth through exploiting the labour of others. And that includes putting people sympathetic to Red China who publicly donate to hospitals in jail!
Today’s imprisonment of Di Sanh Duong underscores the importance of the demonstration that Trotskyist Platform and the Australian Chinese Workers Association conducted in Sydney’s Eastwood last September that called to “RESIST THE COLD WAR WITCH-HUNT!” That action also opposed the marginalisation of Australia’s Chinese community that has accompanied the ruling class’ Cold War drive against socialistic China. During the protest march, we loudly chanted, “Resist, Resist, the Cold War Witch-hunt!” and “Di Sanh Duong, Drop His Charges Now!” We now need to urgently build on that action and grow and strengthen the movement. We need to build a mass united-front movement of anti-Cold War leftists, pro-PRC members of the Chinese community and the most advanced sections of the workers movement to demand: Free Di Sanh Duong! Free Australia’s three Cold War political prisoners! Scrap Australia’s draconian “Foreign Interference” laws! Down with anti-Chinese racism! Down with the Western capitalist ruling classes’ Cold War offensive against socialistic China that is the root cause of this repression!
Photo Above: Houthi fighters on board a helicopter seize the Galaxy Leader, when the ship owned by Israeli capitalist billionaire, Abraham Ungar was passing through the Red Sea. It is in the service of Israel’s rich capitalist exploiting class, whom Ungar is part of, and their counterparts in the U.S. ruling class that the Netanyahu regime is waging its genocidal assault on the people of Gaza. Photo credit: Houthi media centre
Support the Pro-Palestine Actions of Houthi Rebels!
U.S. and Australian Militaries: Get Out of the Red Sea!
Close the Pine Gap Spy Base that’s Helping Direct Israel’s Genocidal Hellfire
10 January 2024:Israel’s rulers would not be able to massacre Gaza’s people without the support of the U.S. and Australian capitalist regimes. Even while pretending to care about “minimising Palestinian civilian deaths”, the U.S. is sending Israel huge new weapons caches. For its part, the Australian regime greatly assists Israel to direct its air and artillery strikes through helping operate the NT-based Pine Gap ground station for U.S. spy satellites. Most recently, the U.S. and its allies are insisting on “stopping the conflict from widening”. Their lying media make this seem like a “peace” initiative. But it is the very opposite! The Western powers want to protect the Israeli onslaught by preventing actions in support of the Palestinian people. The “widening of this conflict” through non-Palestinian forces supporting the Palestinian resistance is precisely what is needed! We say: Urge the intensification of attacks on the Israeli military by the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iraqi pro-Palestine groups! Welcome socialistic North Korea’s supply of weapons to the resistance! Hail the acts in solidarity with Palestine by Houthi rebels!
Houthi attacks demanding an end to Israel’s onslaught have disrupted Israel’s trade. When the Israeli rulers are massacring Palestinian people, such economic sabotage is 100% justified. For although they hurt ordinary Israeli people, they also block supplies to the Israeli military and hit the profits of Israel’s capitalist class – the class behind the genocidal regime in Israel. It is possible that some Houthi actions have inadvertently targeted ships not travelling to or from Israel. And it is bad that the resistance acts do put at risk the lives of workers on ships. However, such unwanted consequences are what inevitably happens when brave but poorly-armed resistance forces take on a much more powerful oppressor. Moreover, by forcing several Western shipping firms to redirect shipping from the Red Sea to the much longer route around the tip of Africa, Houthi actions are causing Western company owners to lose big profits. When the regimes that serve these Western capitalists are participating in the Gaza genocide, such blows against Western capitalist profits are what is needed.
To crush Houthi resistance, the U.S. has sent military forces to the Red Sea. The ALP government is dispatching eleven soldiers to back this anti-Palestinian action. We must demand: U.S./Australian military, get out of the Red Sea! We call on all maritime workers unions to refuse to load or crew any ships that shipping lines schedule to traverse through the Red Sea. This is necessary both to support the pro-Palestinian Houthi acts and to protect workers aboard the ships.
The Norwegian-flagged tanker, Strinda. On 12 December 2023, Houthi fighters damaged the tanker with an anti-ship missile after the vessel rejected several warning calls from the rebels. No crew were injured but the ship suffered significant damage. The Strinda was passing through the Red Sea to unload its cargo and then pick up oil or chemicals from a Mediterranean port for scheduled delivery to the Israeli port of Ashdod on January 4. Four days after the attack on the Strinda, the Hong Kong-based Orient Overseas Container Line, owned by one of China’s socialistic state-owned enterprises, COSCO Shipping, announced that it “will stop cargo acceptance to and from Israel with immediate effect until further notice”. The Houthi actions have affected the import of some supplies for the Israeli military and by making Israel’s imports more expense and disrupting Israel’s trade have hurt the profits of Israel’s capitalist class – the class behind the country’s mass murdering regime.
What the Australian Government’s Refusal to Send a Warship to the Red Sea Means and Doesn’t Mean
Although the ALP government is sending troops to the anti-Houthi operation, it declined Biden’s request to send a warship. Some have welcomed this as a sign of the government asserting “independence” from the U.S. and retreating from support for Israel. However, as it explained itself, the government only declined to send the warship because it wanted to concentrate its forces in this region – especially in the South and East China Seas. In plain speak, the Australian regime wants to focus on squeezing socialistic China. This is hardly a noble agenda! Nevertheless, it is good that the warship was not sent. That weakens the anti-Palestinian operation. But Albanese deserves no credit! The credit should go to Red China. For, inadvertently, socialistic China has drawn the fire of the Australian military and that has weakened the Red Sea operation. This is a symptom of a momentous change that is taking place in the world. That is that the rise of a socialistic power in China is challenging the global tyranny of the Western imperialists. Although China’s compromise-seeking rulers do not themselves want to overthrow imperialism and although China’s transition to socialism is wobbly, the successes of her system based on public ownership of key sectors and working-class state power inevitably threatens the hegemony of the Israel-supporting capitalist powers. And the imperialists know this! That is why all those on the side of the people oppressed by the Western capitalists – from the masses of the Global South to the Palestinian people to the working classes and subjugated First Peoples within the West – must unconditionally defend socialistic China. We must demand: U.S and Australian imperialists, stop your provocations against China and get out of the South and East China Seas! Down with the propaganda against China that is used to justify the war drive against her – from the slanders against her highly successful COVID response to the lie that she is persecuting Uyghurs.
Rafah, 14 December 2023: Palestinian children look through the rubble of a building destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah. On that day alone at least 111 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks on Gaza. Israel would not be able to carry out this genocidal terror without the massive support it is getting from the U.S., Australian, British and other Western capitalist ruling classes. Photo credit: Khaled Omar/Xinhua
For Class War against the Australian Capitalist Ruling Class That is Participating in Israel’s Genocide!
The greatest force that can topple the imperialist “order” that is massacring Palestinians is the world’s working class. Here, the working class has the power to undermine the Australian regime’s participation in Israel’s massacre through waging class war against the ultra-rich capitalist class that is behind the regime. Mobilising such struggle is possible because the Israel-supporting capitalist class is driving many workers into poverty by slashing real wages, jacking up prices and putting up rents. The fact that many trade unionists and other wage workers have been energised by the huge pro-Palestinian marches – a movement that has brought together Palestinians and other Arabs with Aboriginal people, Asians, Africans, anti-Zionist Jews and anti-racist whites – provides an important platform for building the type of actions needed.
However, for our pro-Palestine movement to be able to push the Australian regime back,we must change its direction. To be sure, there have been terrific speeches at the events – especially by Aboriginal activists – that have indentified Australia’s capitalist rulers as an enemy that needs to be defeated. However, other speeches and slogans have instead sought to win over Australia’s ruling class. Although this latter agenda is still very critical of the rulers, it blames the regime’s stance on the particular stripe of the government or on the government’s lack of courage to resist the U.S. rulers and the pro-Israel lobby. Therefore, according to this latter political line, through either appealing to the humanity of the rulers and beseeching them to show greater resolve to resist harmful influences, or through threatening to change the stripe of the government, the Australian regime can be pulled over to a more humane stance. It is this latter political line that is overall dominant at the pro-Palestine protests. The problem with this agenda is that it is not based on reality. The truth is that Australia’s capitalist ruling class – and all the parties bidding to administer their system – is inherently loyal to Israel. Hence the capitalist rulers cannot be won over. Rather, they must be compelled to retreat. However, as long as the Palestine movement appeals to them as if they could be future, at least partial, allies, the ruling class will not feel threatened by the movement … and hence will not be forced to step back from their pro-Israel stance.
Let us examine some of the flaws in our movement that need correction. Some slogans have appealed to Albanese to “grow some balls” or “get a spine”. The message is that he should follow his own “conscience” rather than being pressured by Washington or the Israel lobby. However, although those pressures exist, the reason that Albanese supports Israel is because that is what is in the interests of Australia’s capitalist class. Australia’s capitalists back Israel because Israel is the USA’s enforcer in the oil-rich Middle East. And Australia’s capitalists need U.S. dominance to be protected because they need U.S. power to both underwrite their imperialist exploitation of PNG, East Timor and other South Pacific and Southeast Asian countries and to lead the charge against socialistic China. Although the ALP has a working class base, the Labor party’s program is to bow to the capitalists on key questions. When Albanese backs Israel’s tyranny, he is merely doing what he does on all other crucial issues – serve Australia’s capitalist exploiting class.
After Canberra voted at the UN for a “humanitarian ceasefire” four weeks ago, some hailed this as the government being dragged into finally taking a more humane stance. Especially pushing this narrative is Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi – who takes a more pro-Palestine position than the Greens’ overall line which is to (despicably) equally condemn Hamas and Israel. But the truth is that the government’s December UN vote does not represent any shift towards a more humane line. Not while the regime has not pulled back one bit from directing Israeli strikes on Gaza through the Pine Gap spy base! And not while Australian troops are taking part in the Red Sea operation! The government’s UN vote was rather an attempt to protect the regime’s “human rights credentials”. They worry too that an escalation of Israel’s massacre could further expose the true colours of Western capitalism and, moreover, provoke such resistance that it destabilises Zionist rule. As both their words supporting Israel’s agenda to drive out Hamas and their actions in Pine Gap and the Red Sea show, in as much as the Albanese government actually wants a ceasefire, they want it to be on Israel’s terms.
Some speakers at the Palestine rallies have vowed to oppose Labor at the next elections. We sure agree with that! At the last elections, unlike the rest of the Left, we in Trotskyist Platform opposed a vote for any of the parties currently in parliament – whether it be the Liberals or the ALP or Greens. But many now rejecting the ALP suggest supporting the Greens. But the Greens, who embrace capitalists amongst their ranks, are just as committed to upholding the rule of the capitalists – the class whose interests lie with supporting Israel. Thus, just like their German counterparts, if the Greens were actually in government they would likely also end up backing Israel. Moreover, when the Australian ruling class sees the Palestine movement today advocating support for the Greens, it reassures them that the movement will not resist their class rule. And that gives them confidence that they do not need to retreat from their support for Israel.
Pro-Greens influence is part of the reason why the Palestine movement has thus far not made opposing the Pine Gap base a central slogan of the protests. Subconsciously in part, leading activists know that highlighting how Australia’s rulers are actually participating in Israel’s genocidal war undercuts their current agenda of trying to win overthrough pressure sections of the ruling class. They would rather be appealing to the regime to “stand up for humanity” than condemn it as the enemy. However, as we have stressed, as long as Australia’s ruling class do not see the movement opposing them as their enemy, they will not be compelled to retreat. Moreover, if we are not taking a stand on Pine Gap and the Red Sea operation, we are failing to oppose the regime here’s main role in the war on Gaza. Therefore, we make the following appeal to our fellow pro-Palestinian activists: Come to the protests bearing signs demanding the closure of the U.S.-Australia Pine Gap spy base and the removal of all U.S. and Australian forces from the Red Sea! Convince others to also carry such signs! Advocate support for the rise of socialistic China that is threatening the Israel-supporting imperialist order! Expose the Australian government’s con job with its UN “humanitarian ceasefire” vote! Expose illusions in the Greens! Work hard to turn our pro-Palestine movement into a pro-working class movement of irreconcilable opposition to the Australian ruling class that is participating in Israel’s genocide! Support the downfall of murderous Zionism by relentlessly shaking the Western imperialist branches on which it is perched!
Photo Above: Tens of thousands of people again marched in Sydney on 3 December 2023 to protest Israel’s genocidal attack on the Palestinian people of Gaza. Photo credit: Dean Sewell
Long Live the Palestinian Resistance! Don’t Be Fooled by the Powerless UN Vote! The Australian Regime is Still Participating in Israel’s Slaughter in Gaza.
Down, Down Israeli, U.S. and Australian Regimes!
Resist Imperialism through Workers Struggle and Supporting the Rise of Socialistic China!
13 December 2023: Israeli forces are continuing to massacre children and other Palestinian civilians. They have already seized large parts of Gaza. Yet the far-right Israeli regime and their Washington senior partners want to subdue through terror Palestinian people even further. That is why the U.S. vetoed last week’s UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire. Now, the UN General Assembly has just voted overwhelmingly for a ceasefire in a non-binding resolution. The only governments to oppose or abstain on the vote were those of the U.S. and some of its most obsequious allies, like Britain, Lithuania and the Ukrainian regime that is waging the U.S.’s proxy war to subdue Russia. Also refusing to back a ceasefire are a majority of those regimes that are so servile to imperialism that they recognise the rogue, Western-propped up Taiwanese regime rather than the Peoples Republic of China as the legitimate rulers of China. These include the regimes ruling Paraguay, Guatemala and Nauru as well as those running Palau and Marshall Islands, both of which are Pacific countries where the U.S. has control of their defense arrangements under a colonial-style “Compact of Free Association”, as they do with Micronesia, which also failed to vote for a ceasefire. Also refusing to support a ceasefire are most of the openly far-right governments, like those running Italy, Hungary and Argentina.
Among those that voted for last night’s ceasefire resolution were not only governments known to have a pro-Palestine position – like those of Russia and socialistic China – but even some of Israel’s staunchest backers. This includes the liberal government of Canada, the right-wing government of New Zealand and the Labor government of Australia. With much of the world horrified by Israel’s heinous cruelty, these governments knew that maintaining public opposition to a ceasefire would expose their own brutality and the hypocrisy of their claims to be guardians of “human rights.” With Australia’s capitalist rulers (and “like-minded” ruling elites) only too aware that dishonestly wielding the club of “human rights” is a vital component of their strategy to achieve their main foreign policy goal – to crush socialistic rule in China – they felt compelled to gloss up their soiled “human rights” credentials by voting for a ceasefire. However, although the Australian government had previously opposed a ceasefire, their recent vote should not be seen as a weakening of their support for Israel’s occupation. Indeed, the Australian regime also voted for a failed U.S. amendment that put the blame for the suffering on Hamas. After the vote, Australian regime representatives decried that the U.S. amendment – that aimed at whitewashing the brutality of Israel’s 75 year-long occupation – was not included in the resolution.
What most makes the Australian government’s UN vote such a cynical, window-dressing ploy is the fact that the Australian ruling class continues to militarily back Israel. Not only does the Australian regime maintain military ties with Israel, the Pine Gap U.S.-Australia joint spy base is playing a MASSIVE role in Israel’s assault on Gaza. Operated by U.S. and Australian military personnel, the base near Alice Springs downloads information from U.S. spy satellites about targets in Gaza which are analysed and passed on to Israel. This enables the Israeli military to pinpoint its missiles and artillery so that they strike actual human targets rather than empty land or structures. In other words, the Albanese Labor government is doing more than supporting genocide. Through hosting and jointly operating Pine Gap, they are actually committing genocide! And they continue to do so! No symbolic vote for a non-enforceable UN resolution will change that! Just like Netanyahu and Biden, Anthony Albanese and foreign minister Penny Wong are war criminals.
Above: The U.S.-Australia joint spy base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs. Receiving data from U.S. spy satellites monitoring the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, U.S. and Australian personnel at the base then analyse the data and pass on to Israel the geolocations of targets. This enables Israel to pinpoint air and artillery strikes to ensure that Israeli missiles, rockets, shells and bombs hit human targets rather than vacant space or empty structures. Below: Apartment blocks – and no doubt many of the Palestinian people living in them – are destroyed by yet another Israeli air strike on Gaza City.
The huge pro-Palestinian rallies have had some impact in making even Israel’s staunchest backers want to appear like they are concerned for Palestinian civilians. In Sydney, the weekly protests have had some powerful Palestinian and progressive Jewish speakers. The highlight has been many of the speeches given by Aboriginal activists. At last Sunday’s (December 10) Sydney protest, the Aboriginal speaker was especially impressive as he insightfully connected the oppressions of Aboriginal and Palestinian people and attacked capitalist rule in Australia and its window-dressing schemes. We in Trotskyist Platform encourage people to join in these weekly Sydney pro-Palestine marches organised by the hard-working Palestine Action Group (in which the Socialist Alternative group plays a prominent role). Wealsocondemn those nominal defenders of Palestinians who are discouraging participation in the protests. After all, those seeking to demoralise activists by saying that their participation is “meaningless” are only playing into the hands of the likes of Albanese, Peter Dutton and premier Chris Minns, who have all sought to sabotage the PAG-organised actions.
At the same time, the longer that this Israeli onslaught goes, the more that the current flaws in the political strategy of the PAG limits the impact that the protests can have. Thus, while many of the slogans that rally organisers have promoted correctly take an unambiguous stance in support of the Palestinian resistance – like “Intifada, Intifada” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free!” – some take an “even-handed” position. Chief among the latter is the call for “Ceasefire Now!” To be sure, many defenders of the Palestinian people call for a “ceasefire” because what they are seeing now is a one-sided slaughter. When they demand “ceasefire”, they mean that Israel should stop firing. However, as last night’s UN vote by the likes of Australia and France shows, when Western imperialist regimes call for a “ceasefire” they mean something very different. This was made clear after the vote. Foreign minister, Penny Wong, reiterated Australia’s support for “Israel’s right to defend itself” and Australia’s UN representative, James Larsen, ranted that “Hamas must be defeated and dismantled.” In plain speak that means that they are calling for supporting the Israeli military, which is precisely what the Australian ruling class are doing! Australia’s capitalist rulers want a “ceasefire” on Israel’s terms and are working to strengthen Israel’s military campaign so that any “ceasefire” will end up as favourable to Israel as possible. They, however, worry that further Israeli murder of civilians could provoke such broad resistance that Israel and its occupation ends up weakened. Indeed, a big part of why the Australian –and several other imperialist – regimes are now calling for a ceasefire is because they believe that Israel has already sufficiently strengthened its occupation over these last two months: by landing blows against the Palestinian resistance and by annihilating Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. We must not shout slogans that can accommodate such anti-Palestine agendas! And we certainly must not pressure the Palestinian resistance to “ceasefire”! Instead, we must give 100% support to the Palestinian resistance. Hail the courage of Palestinian resistance forces and their Yemini Houthi allies! Socialistic North Korea and other countries providing arms to the resistance: increase your supply of arms! Other non-Western countries: start sending arms to Palestinian fighters – especially to those secular and leftist groups that are taking part in the Hamas-led resistance! Let us demand: Israel out of Gaza! All Israeli troops and racist settlers out of all of the West Bank. For the complete right of return of all Palestinian refugees and their descendants!
Take Mass Action against the Australian Ruling Class that is Participating in Israel’s Onslaught!
Another problem with the “Ceasefire” chant is that it makes pro-Palestinian rallies come off as half-neutral. That makes the actions less offensive to the Israeli regime and its backers and thus far less likely to compel them to retreat. It will actually take an enormous amount to compel the regimes that facilitate Israel’s terror to back off. The U.S. imperialists prop us Israel in order to have a reliable enforcer of their predatory interests in the strategically-located and oil rich Middle East. Australia’s capitalist rulers in turn back the Israeli attack dog of the USA, because they want U.S. power to be upheld. For it is U.S. power that underwrites Australian capitalists’ plunder of South Pacific and southeast Asian countries. And it is U.S. might that Australia’s rulers hope will squeeze socialistic China so tightly that she will no longer be able to obstruct imperialist exploitation of poorer countries through mutually beneficial cooperation with them. Against such over-riding self interest, we can only compel Australia’s ruling class to retreat from their participation in the Gaza slaughter if we can seriously threaten their class interests. The PAG-organised rallies are not yet doing this. For the overall line of the actions – some particular excellent speeches excluded – while rightly very critical of the Australian government, do not brand the Australian ruling class as an enemy. Thus, when the Australian ruling class see rallies mainly opposing their Israeli and U.S. allies they are angered but not politically frightened. However, if they were to instead hear tens of thousands of people saying not just “Down, Down Israel, Down, Down USA” but shouting, “Down, Down Israeli, U.S. and Australian Regimes!”, they would be truly alarmed. And, thus, far more likely to back off!
What will especially frighten the Australian ruling class is workers’ political strike action in support of the Palestinian people. With working class people suffering under falling real wages, soaring rents and unaffordable prices, there is a definite opportunity to combine opposition to capitalist profiteering by the ruling class with opposition to its participation in the massacre of Palestinian people. We support the attempted port blockades – with union approval – of Israeli Zim shipping. At the same time, we say that blockades and industrial action would be far more effective if they directly target the interests of the Australian capitalists and their regime. After all, Israel is far away. The amount that its ruling class would be frightened by action in Australia targeting Israeli companies is limited. In contrast, if actions hurt the profits of big-time Australian capitalists at home or caused their regime’s operations to be disrupted, Australia’s ruling class would be terrified. Let’s build workers industrial action – supported by pro-Palestine pickets – to target the Australian ruling class and demand: Stop Pine Gap’s participation in the Gaza massacre – Close Pine Gap! No Australian arms exports to Israel. End Australian military ties to Israel! The fact that huge numbers – including many compassionate, intelligent youth spurred into political activism for the first time – have joined the weekly rallies can provide a crucial stepping stone for building the type of actions needed. But the step up must be made! Through the placards that we carry and the leaflets that we distribute at the protests, Trotskyist Platform has been working hard to turn the rallies into a Palestine movement that is unequivocally opposed to the Australian ruling class – the type of movement that has the potential to compel the Australian capitalists to retreat from their role in the Gaza slaughter.
The reason that the PAG leadership has not sought to turn the movement in such a direction is because, no doubt with many misgivings, they are currently betting on an alternative strategy – one that seeks through pressure to win over the Australian regime. While rightly denouncing the Albanese government’s stance, PAG leaders promote the notion that that through pressure the ALP government can be partially won over; or that greater numbers for the Greens in parliament could change the regime’s stance. However, the reality is that the Australian regime’s support for Israel’s terror flows naturally from its own essence. Capitalist Australia was formed out of genocidal massacres of this country’s First Nations peoples. No amount of window dressing can cover up the fact that Australian regime forces continue to kill Aboriginal people in custody and continue to remove Aboriginal children from their families. Moreover, while today facilitating Israel’s crimes, the Australian military, earlier, directly committed war crimes during its participation in the occupation of Afghanistan. There, Australia’s elite SAS troops massacred onion farmers, executed civilians and slit the throats of children. The problem is that no matter which particular parties control parliament, the current Australian regime has been designed to serve the capitalist class. In wealthy Australia, this class – which consists of wealthy business owners of all ethnicities but in Australia is mostly made of white Christians with just a small percentage of Jewish capitalists – not only exploits workers in this country but exploits workers and plunders natural resources at an even greater rate in the South Pacific and beyond. This class has calculated that its interests lie very much with supporting its U.S. godfather’s Israeli henchman. Therefore, this Australian capitalist class, which is the ultimate power in this country that all governments must serve, will always support Israel as long as the capitalists rule this country.
Even if the Greens win office, the Australian regime will continue to support the subjugation of Palestinian and Aboriginal people and will continue to enforce the exploitation of workers. This is especially true given that the Greens include capitalists in their ranks and refuse to stand for class struggle against the capitalist class. To be sure, the Greens appear a lot better on Palestine than the ALP and the right-wing Coalition. They at least condemn Israel’s war crimes. But their support for Palestine is limited. Feeding into the imperialist narrative that downplays the impact of Israel’s brutal 75-year-long occupation of Palestine and denying the fact that Hamas’ October 7 attack included heroic blows against the Israeli military (alongside some wrong attacks on civilians that were, however, dwarfed by the Israeli military’s killing of its own civilians through carpet bombing of contested sites during the Hamas-led incursion), the Greens harmfully equate the October 7 attack with Israel’s war crimes. Thus, an October 16 Greens statement, stated that:
“We all watched in horror at the brutality and callousness of Hamas’ October 7th attacks on innocent civilians. The State of Israel’s siege and destruction of Gaza continues the cycle of violence. It is civilians in both places paying the price.
“The Greens reject and condemn all forms of violence, especially against civilians. We again call for an immediate ceasefire between the State of Israel and Hamas, an immediate halt to the forced removal and transfer of Palestinians in Gaza, a release of hostages, and an end to the military siege.”
Of course, as sly politicians looking for votes, Greens politicians make sure that they sound a lot more pro-Palestinian than their official position when they speak at pro-Palestine protests. But if one wants an idea of how the Greens in government would actually act, one should look at the governments that their overseas counterparts are part of. In Germany, Greens foreign minister Annalena Baerbock is a hardline supporter of Israel’s onslaught and is part of a coalition government with the Social Democratic Party that has banned pro-Palestine protests. In Austria, the Greens, in coalition with a conservative party, are part of a government that voted against last night’s UN ceasefire resolution from an extreme pro-Zionist standpoint. It is telling too that, reflecting the interests of Australia’s capitalist class, the Australian Greens, for their part, only call to “renegotiate” the U.S.-Australia alliance rather than to scrap it.
What we need to do to support Palestinian and Aboriginal peoples and all the downtrodden of this country is to wage mass struggle againstAustralia’s capitalist rulers with the aim of forcing them into retreats. Any illusions that the regime can be persuaded to take a more progressive stance or that it will fundamentally change if the Greens gain a greater stake in parliament obstruct such struggle. PAG leaders are hardly alone in having such illusions. False hopes in the potential future benevolence of the Australian regime and in the Greens in particular are also widespread amongst the ranks of those joining the protests. Given the weight of propaganda and nationalism, the hardest ruling class to oppose in any imperialist country is always the ruling class in one’s own country. It is far easier to brand only the Israeli and U.S. regimes as enemies, while referring to the Australian regime as a currently deviant entity that can, however, be won over. Yet such a strategy will not be effective in restraining the Australian regime’s participation in the Gaza bloodbath. The change in direction in the movement must be made! The leap in the political consciousness of the activists participating in the movement must be achieved. With the horror of Israel’s terror and the depth of Western imperialist support for it pushing many to rethink their political perspective, such a leap in consciousness is possible. Therefore, at this time, those that understand the need to turn the pro-Palestine movement into one that is unequivocally opposed to Australia’s imperialist rulers have an extra special duty to bring that understanding to their fellow activists.
Australia’s Labor prime minister, Anthony Albanese meets U.S. president Joe Biden at the White House in late October 2023 as Israeli missiles and bombs are massacring the people of Gaza. Albanese reiterated the Australian regime’s support for its U.S. ally’s Israeli henchmen in its genocidal onslaught against the Palestinian people.
Photo credit: Michael Reynolds/EPA
“Threaten” the Global Tyranny of the Imperialists who Prop Up Israel – Support the Rise of Socialistic China!
Israel’s subjugation of Palestine is set to become even more brutal. That is why supporters of Palestine must learn key lessons from these last ten, intense weeks. One lesson arises from the reality that the capitalist rulers of various Arab and Muslim majority countries – like those of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – have at this crucial moment refused to do more than lip-service to stand by Palestinian people. Indeed, especially in the case of Egypt, with its restriction of supplies to the resistance, they have even been complicit in the Israeli onslaught. All this proves the Marxist doctrine that exploiting classes ultimately act in their own material interests rather than complying with notions of ethnic or religious solidarity; and, moreover, the political imperatives of these ruling classes are what shapes religious doctrines … and not the other way around. These countries will start standing by the Palestinian people only when their toiling classes take state power and totally free these countries from the grip of Western imperialism.
The most vital lesson for activists in Australia to learn from these last weeks is that Israel is only able to get away with its terror because it has the support of the U.S. and US imperialist allies like Australia. Therefore, truly standing with the Palestinian people means opposing the Western imperialists in every battle that they are engaged in. That means that we must stand for the defence of Russia – despite its reactionary, also-capitalist rulers – against the U.S., NATO and Australian imperialists and their Ukrainian proxies. Indeed, an indication of the, at-bottom, pro-imperialist nature of the Greens is that the Greens rabidly support the U.S.-led imperialists in their proxy war against Russia. These avowed “pacifists” even support Australian arms transfers to Ukraine! Harmfully, so do two left groups that far more sincerely support the Palestinian struggle than the Greens – Socialist Alternative and Socialist Alliance.
The biggest state challenge to imperialism comes from socialistic China. This is despite the currently unfinished and precarious nature of China’s transition to socialism. The U.S. and Australian imperialists know that if China continues to succeed in socialistic development, this will not only obstruct their subjugation of the Global South but could eventually encourage their own masses to fight for socialism and thereby topple them from power. If this were to happen, Israel’s tyranny over Palestine will collapse. That is why all supporters of Palestine and all anti-imperialists must defend socialistic rule in China. In doing so we must draw another crucial lesson from the events of the last ten weeks: that is that the Western capitalist rulers and their media are masters of deceit. And given that while protecting Israel is an important tactic that the U.S. and its allies have for buttressing their power, crushing socialistic China is their main strategic goal, it follows that the imperialist rulers and their media are even more biased against Red China than they are against Palestine! This is indeed the case! For example, their claim that China is persecuting her more European-looking, Muslim Uyghur population in China’s northwest is a lie cut out of whole cloth. This claim has been rejected by almost every Muslim-majority country and is largely only promoted by the regimes that today support Israel’s terror.
That imperialist propaganda against the Chinese workers state is even more intense than it is against Palestine makes it much harder to stand by socialistic China than it is to stand by Palestine. Indeed, several of the groups active in building solidarity with Palestine – including the Socialist Alternative, Socialist Alliance and Solidarity groups – ape Western propaganda against China, even while opposing some of the anti-China military build up. In 2019, these groups stood with Union Jack-carrying, pro-British colonial Hong Kong expatriates in anti-communist rallies encouraged by the Australian ruling class. A year ago, these same groups hailed the small, Western-backed, “A4 protests” in China over her COVID response that were incited by overt anti-communists. In contrast, we insist that to truly oppose the imperialists, one must have the fortitude to defy the propaganda vilifying the main “threat” to their global tyranny – socialistic China. Let us demand: U.S., British and Australian imperialists (and their lackeys in the far-right, Ferdinand Marcos Junior government in the Philippines), stop your provocations against China in the South and East China Seas! Down with Western support to the anti-communist Taiwanese regime! Down with all the Western-backed forces threatening socialistic rule in China –from anti-communist, Hong Kong rich kids to the “A4” COVID conspiracy-mongers.
Hebron, 21 October 2023: Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron protest in support of the people of Gaza. Protesters carried portraits of the leader of socialistic North Korea, Kim Jong-Un. This was in honour of North Korea’s provision of arms to the Palestinian resistance and her verbal support for the Palestinian liberation struggle. Many Palestinians see North Korea as a symbol of defiance of the Western imperialists who so brutally subjugate the Palestinian people. North Korea and especially her socialistic neighbour and ally, the Peoples Republic of China are the main targets of the imperialist powers.
When the working classes and all the downtrodden of the U.S., Germany, Australia, Britain, Japan and other imperialist countries seize state power and join China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Laos on a socialist path, brutal national and colonial oppression – like that of Palestinian, Aboriginal, Tamil, Kashmiri and Kanak peoples – will have no powerful backers. Indeed, it will have no reason for existence. We look forward to such a world. Let’s work tirelessly and unflinchingly towards its realisation. In doing so, we will never forget the horrific suffering that Palestinian people have borne over the last 75 years and especially over the last ten weeks. We look forward to the day when Netanyahu, Biden, Anthony Albanese, Penny Wong, Annalena Baerbock and Rishi Sunak will face war crimes tribunals and be given the appropriate decisive punishments. We look forward to the day when the Palestinian people will be truly free and living happily in a socialist Palestine together with their Jewish sisters and brothers.
Above photo: Lebanese cucumbers selling for all most $12 a kilogram at a Woolworths supermarket in an Inner West Sydney suburb on 22 July 2022. Food prices in Australia and other capitalist countries have been surging, while wage increases have been small. Photo credit: Trotskyist Platform
REVERSE THE PLUNGE IN WORKING CLASS PEOPLE’S LIVING STANDARDS!
FIGHT FOR HUGE WAGE RISES, THE RIGHTS OF PERMANENCY FOR GIG WORKERS, A BIG INCREASE IN THE DOLE AND A MASSIVE INCREASE IN LOW-RENT PUBLIC HOUSING!
IMMEDIATELY PUT THE GREEDY OIL, GAS AND POWER FIRMS UNDER PUBLIC CONTROL!
15 July 2022: Food prices are surging. The price of lettuce has more than doubled over the last year. Beef is 12% dearer. And then there are the skyrocketing electricity and fuel costs. Yet while everything is getting more expensive, wages have barely risen. That means that even while the rich business owners extract ever more exorbitant profits from their workers’ labour, workers’ living standards are plummeting. It is of zero comfort to Australia’s working class masses that bankers, corporate bosses, politicians and media “experts” celebrate that the economy is undergoing a “strong expansion” when their own lives are getting ever harder.
Prime minister Albanese stated that it was “absolutely welcome” that the “Fair Work Commission” (FWC) recently set the annual increase in the minimum wage at 5.2%, basically matching the official inflation rate. It is true that unlike the former government, which refused to back a pay rise, the ALP government did call for a minimum wage rise that matched official inflation. Yet not only does the 5.2% increase not make up for the fact that this minimum wage had not kept pace with inflation in the preceding period, it will not match price increases in the coming period, which even the Reserve Bank has conceded will reach 7%. Moreover, as FWC president Iain Ross admitted, the prices of non-discretionary items like food are rising much faster than official inflation, especially hurting those on low incomes. Most low-paid workers are renters and Australia’s rents soared by 9.5% over the last year. Therefore, the actual cost increases endured by low-income workers are closer to 10% and rising fast. In other words, last month’s FWC ruling cheered by Albanese actually means a sizable cut to the real income of minimum wage workers. And other workers will suffer an even bigger cut. The FWC only gave award workers a 4.6% increase – less than even official inflation. Meanwhile, public sector workers are being hit still harder. The right wing NSW government has restricted public sector wage rises to just 3%. Gig workers are suffering the biggest cut in real income. Especially for food delivery workers and taxi and Uber drivers, surging petrol costs are ripping away their net incomes.
WHAT IS CAUSING WORKERS’ LIVING STANDARDS TO PLUNGE AND HOW CAN THIS BE REVERSED?
Australia is not alone in having soaring living costs. This is happening throughout the capitalist world. A poll found that one in six Germans are now skipping meals to get by! In the U.S. the annual inflation rate is 9.1%. Moreover, the crisis extends to the poorer countries. In India, inflation is over 7%, in Brazil it is nearly 12%. In Turkey, the inflation rate is nearly 80%!
So what is causing this crisis? When capitalist countries plunged into the late noughties’ Great Recession, governments found that they could only make their economies recover through flooding them with cheap credit and debt-financed spending. Even after that crisis waned, capitalist economies were so fragile that governments were never able to take their economies fully off of these life-supports. Then after COVID hit, capitalist governments dialled up the intensity of such pump priming “solutions”. The problem is that in the capitalist system, where the economy is in the hands of profit-driven bosses, excess money supply leads the corporate bigwigs to drive up prices. To ensure that the resulting increased revenue flows into their own pockets and not that of their workers, business owners avoid increasing wages knowing full well that soaring prices means that they are effectively slashing their workers’ pay. As a result, workers’ real wages in Australia are now 8% lower than they were six years ago!
This increasing exploitation has been going on under Liberal, Labor and Labor/Greens governments alike. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data show that bosses are now exploiting their workers 22% more than they were 36 years ago. As a result, ABS figures show that for every $100,000 of value added by workers – that is after all material, property and interest costs have been paid – at a capitalist business (one using hired labour) about $50,000 is gouged by the business owners as profit and only $50,000 is given back in wages! And given that the ABS classifies the fat salaries of CEOs and managers as “wages and salaries”, the reality is that, on average, workers in Australia are now receiving back as wages far less than half of the fruits of their own labour.
Therefore, the measures needed to defend workers’ living standards must be based on drastically increasing the share of the fruits of workers’ labour going back to workers at the expense of the amount that is leached away by the capitalists as profits. For starters that means that the workers movement must fight for huge wage increases. We must also specially defend the most precariously employed workers by demanding guaranteed wages, holiday pay and all the other rights of permanency for all those currently employed on a casual or gig basis. To make it easier to unleash the trade union industrial action needed to win such gains, we must demand the abolishing of all anti-strike laws and all laws restricting union access to workplaces.
Whenever workers demand improvements in their wages, the capitalists scream that this will cause job losses. But such job cuts will only occur if we let these exploiters carry out retrenchments and if we let them retain as few workers as is necessary to maximise their profits. Instead of doing that, we must force the capitalist bosses to hire more workers than they want to at the expense of their profits.We must demand a ban on job cuts by all profitable firms and must demand that all companies making a profit be required to increase their number of full-time, permanent employees by at least twenty-five workers for every one million dollars of quarterly profit.
The already most poverty stricken people are being hardest hit today. Due to entrenched gender inequality, sectors where women workers predominate have especially low wages. It is crucial that the workers movement as a whole demands equal pay for equal work for women workers. Meanwhile, unemployed workers are having to make do with cruelly low social security payments. This is not only driving unemployed workers into extreme poverty but has made the prospect of losing one’s job so scary that it is helping bosses to intimidate some employed workers into avoiding joining workers’ rights struggles. That is why it is especially important to fight for a doubling of the Jobseeker payment. Surging prices also mean that, even though old-age pensioners receive higher payments than unemployed workers, many working class pensioners are facing homelessness. The current system where a meagre pension is combined with individual superannuation carries into old age the inequality that workers faced when at working age. CEOs receive huge superannuation while low-paid workers receive little and gig workers and the unemployed nothing at all. Our unions must demand that the current superannuation system be replaced with one where bosses pay super into a common fund that will be used to help equally pay all a pension equal to the minimum wage.
MASSIVELY INCREASE LOW-RENT PUBLIC HOUSING!
What is making plunging living standards especially unbearable for many working class people is the lack of affordable rental accommodation. Even in the lower income, Western Sydney suburb of Auburn, the median weekly rent for two bedroom units available for lease is right now $435. That’s well over half the minimum wage! And given that so many are working in casual jobs where they receive far less than the minimum full-time wage, it is clear why so many people are only able to pay rent by skipping meals and avoiding using the heater right now at the height of winter. Moreover, there are very few affordable properties available to lease. So people struggling with rising costs are not even able to move into rougher but cheaper dwellings to get by.
The capitalist “free market” is failing to make available enough affordable accommodation – providing such housing is simply not profitable enough for wealthy investors and real estate speculators. What is therefore needed is much more low-rent public housing. Instead, Liberal, Labor and Labor/Greens federal and state governments have overseen a big public housing sell-off over the last few decades. Some of that involves governments handing over public housing to private operators and passing off the resulting “community housing” as also being part of “social housing.” However, the private operators of such “community housing” are notorious for skimping on repairs and skewing their allocations towards higher-rent paying tenants at the expense of the most hard-up. Thus, the proportion of tenants paying more than a quarter of their income in rent is almost eight times as high in “community housing” as it is in public housing.
Even over the last five years, governments have eroded public housing to the extent that the proportion of Australian dwellings that are public housing has been slashed by a further 10%. Today, just one out of every 34 dwellings in Australia belongs to public housing of some form. Yet governments are still continuing on the same course. Let’s stop all sell-offs – let’s fight for a massive increase in public housing instead! And for all public housing properties to be properly repaired! Let’s stop governments from driving tenants out of public housing by allowing properties to become so neglected that they become unfit for habitation!
FOR A NEW, CLASS STRUGGLE AGENDA TO LEAD THE WORKERS MOVEMENT
Many working class people hoped that with the despised Morrison government finally gone, their needs would be addressed. However, the new ALP government also has no commitment to the measures needed to reverse the decline in working class people’s living standards. This was clear even before the elections. To reassure the big end of town that it would not be taking decisive moves to redistribute income from the rich to the poor, the ALP announced that it would ape the conservatives in refusing to lift dole payments. They also made clear that they would not abolish anti-strike laws. That is little surprise. Nearly all these laws had been accepted by previous ALP governments and a few of the rules – such as the Keating government’s 1993 measure restricting strike action to limited bargaining periods – were actually first brought in by Labor. Meanwhile, the ALP’s housing affordability plan will not increase public housing but rather promises funds for just a modest increase in privately-operated “community housing”.
To be sure, ALP leaders would like to improve the lives of their working class base. However, the ALP social democrats are unwilling to seriously challenge the power of the capitalist bigwigs who use their enormous wealth and ownership of the media and economy to thoroughly dominate political life and state institutions. Given their acquiescence to these oligarchs and given that the interests of these capitalists and those of its working class base are counterposed, the Labor Party always ends up betraying its base. Meanwhile, although more progressive on social questions, the Greens too accept the domination of the capitalists. For unlike even the ALP, whose ranks are largely workers, the Greens include significant numbers of actual capitalist exploiters in their ranks and is politically dominated by upper-middle class elements loyal to capitalism.
This means that plunging workers’ living standards are not going to be reversed by the agenda of either the new government or by any of the parties currently in parliament. The way that working class people can advance their interests is through mass action, especially through strikes and other class struggle action by our trade unions. It is through such struggle that working class people have won whatever rights they still have today. In recent months, there have been strikes by NSW train and bus drivers, nurses and teachers that give a small taste of the kind of struggle needed. However, the current pro-ALP union leaders see such actions as supplementary to their main strategy of herding workers into supporting the election and maintaining of Labor governments that they hope will uphold workers’ interests. As we have outlined, this is a losing strategy.
Therefore, we need a new agenda to guide our workers movement. One that rather than seeking collaboration with the capitalist class by limiting demands to what is tolerable to them, will mobilise the working class in an all out struggle against the capitalist exploiters to fight for what the masses actually need. That means not only unleashing struggles for secure jobs for all and big pay rises but also demanding free provision of the social services most needed by the masses. Despite ruling class politicians constantly congratulating themselves about the existence of Medicare, truly free healthcare does not exist in Australia. Currently, the out-of-pocket expenses that a sick person has to cover for specialist fees above what Medicare reimburses can be debilitating. And as governments increasingly underfund the health system, these out-of-pocket expenses are growing. Meanwhile, the lack of Medicare coverage of dental expenses means that large chunks of the working class simply avoid going to the dentist until their teeth deteriorate to the point of an emergency. Similarly, many are foregoing needed specialist visits. This is all the more damaging because COVID in 2022 has been killing people in Australia at the highest rate during this pandemic and hundreds of thousands are suffering Long Covid. Moreover, the inequality of healthcare is so large that those who cannot afford private insurance must wait long periods to receive treatment for debilitating conditions. For example, the current median wait time for a public patient who needs knee replacement surgery to enable them to walk properly again is around eight months!
That is why we must demand truly free health care – that means that Medicare should fully cover all specialist visits, all surgeries, all essential medicine and all dental care and that there should be no long waiting times. Similarly, we need to fight for free education, which means no fees and no HECS debt for TAFE and university. We must also demand free, 24-hour childcare. This is not only a crucial cost of living measure but would help enable women’s full participation in economic life. That in turn is vital for advancing women’s economic independence, without which many women being battered by violent, or otherwise abusive, partners could be coerced by financial necessities into remaining with such abusers.
Striking nurses march in Sydney. NSW nurses, rail workers, bus drivers and teachers have held a series of stop works and strikes over the last several months to demand increased hiring to cope with excessive workloads and to defend their wages and conditions.These actions give a small taste of the kind of militant class struggle needed to reverse the plunge in working class people’s living standards. Photo credit: Tim Swanston/ABC News
SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA DRIVE UP FUEL PRICES – WESTERN POWERS’ ANTI-RUSSIA PROXY WAR HARMS THE MASSES’ LIVING STANDARDS
A major reason for the cost of living crisis are the surging fuel prices. These prices are being driven up by the sanctions imposed on Russia by Washington, Canberra and other U.S. allies that back Ukraine in its war with Russia. We must oppose these sanctions! This is necessary not only to protect our living standards. For the Ukraine war has become a proxy war of the Western imperial powers to unjustly drive their would-be Russian rival down to the subordinate condition that she had been in during the first fifteen years after her devastating 1991-92 capitalist counterrevolution. Australian governments have sent Ukraine’s authoritarian regime hundreds of millions of dollars of military equipment, including howitzers (long-range artillery) and dozens of armoured vehicles, to add to the billions of dollars of increasingly heavy and sophisticated weapons sent to Kiev by Washington and its European allies, including anti-aircraft batteries, advanced long-range anti-ship missiles, drones, tanks and advanced HIMARS multiple-launch guided rocket systems. Although Russia is also ruled by an ambitious capitalist class, her lack of economic strength means that it is the U.S, British, Australian, German, Japanese and other Western ruling classes and not, for the most part, the Russian one that are superexploiting and often simply steamrolling through brutal military power (as they did in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Somalia) the peoples of Asia, the Pacific, Africa and Latin America. That is why if the Western proxy war on Russia is defeated it would be great for the peoples subjugated by imperialism. Such a serious setback to the authority of Australia’s capitalist rulers can only strengthen the ability to resist them. So we must demand: No military aid to Ukraine! Lift the sanctions on Russia!
However, the sanctions on Russia are not the only cause of soaring fuel and energy prices. Although the majority of Australia’s petroleum is imported, Australian corporate oil producers contribute to the high pump prices by selling fuel at the obscenely high world price. This is quadruply so with gas, which Australia is a major exporter of. Greedy Australian energy giants are selling gas at such a high price that it is not only sending residential heating costs through the roof but is driving up manufacturing and electricity prices that are flowing through the rest of the economy as well as pushing up home electricity bills. Meanwhile, power cuts have been threatened because profit-driven generator companies are trying to avoid selling electricity at the capped price when their fuel costs are so high. That is why all oil, gas and electricity corporations must be immediately placed under strict public control. Fuel and power costs must be driven down at the expense of the profits of energy corporations!
BRING THE ECONOMY INTO PUBLIC OWNERSHIP UNDER WORKERS RULE
The bulk of Australia’s energy sector is owned by super-rich, Australian shareholders. Among them is Mike Cannon-Brookes who owns the largest stake in electricity and gas giant AGL. Australia’s third richest tycoon with a $28 billion fortune, Cannon-Brookes is known for his obscenely extravagant lifestyle. Four years ago, he paid the highest amount ever for a house when he bought a Sydney estate for $100 million! The fact that we need to take control of energy industries away from the hands of such people inevitably poses the question: why should these filthy rich capitalists be owning such key sectors at all? We should fight to confiscate the oil, gas and power sectors from their big shareholders and place them into public ownership. Similarly, we need to bring all the key social service sectors into public ownership. Part of why we are being hit with such high out of pocket health costs is that so much of the Medicare budget goes into the pockets of the rich tycoons owning private hospitals, pathology and radiology services and pharmacies – like Sonic Healthcare big shareholder, Michael Boyd, and billionaire Chemist Warehouse owners, Jack Gance and Mario Verrocchi. As a result, the service outcomes produced by each dollar of public money that’s spent is severely truncated. The same applies to childcare, where government subsidies end up feeding the profits of the companies that operate the sector. In public housing too, a good part of the budget ends up in the bank accounts of the owners of construction firms and maintenance contractors – including corporate giants like Downer and Ventia. So let us struggle to ensure that all parts of the operation of healthcare, education, public housing, childcare and aged care are brought into public ownership.
To ensure that all these social services are provided for free, more public funds do need to be allocated to them. But where will the money come from ask neoliberal apologists. It will come from confiscating the most profitable sectors of the economy from the capitalists, starting with the mining industry. Mining profits are so huge that the wealth of just the five richest of Australia’s mining billionaires increased by a staggering $19 billion in just the last year – more than three and a half times what all governments spent on public housing! However, to bring the mining, energy and social service sectors into public ownership requires taking on the tyranny of the oligarchs that own these sectors – oligarchs like Cannon-Brookes, Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest – who leverage their enormous wealth to keep state institutions under their control and who disproportionately fund political advertising, political parties, think tanks and lobbyists. Therefore, to bring substantial sectors into the collective hands of the people requires the working class to sweep away the whole capitalist-dominated bureaucratic and political machinery and to construct a new workers state. Based on democratically elected working class people’s councils, such a state would bring all significant parts of the economy into the people’s common, that is socialist, ownership and thereby enable the building of a society that would guarantee secure jobs, improving living standards and free quality social services for all. In doing so it would lay the economic basis for dissipating the inequality faced by women and minorities.
We have living proof that such a socialist system indeed works. For in the world’s most populous country, the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), socialistic rule has ensured that she is the one large country whose masses have not been hit by rising food prices. Although China’s transition to socialism is incomplete and deformed and threatened by intense hostile capitalist pressure, the fact that all her major oil and gas, power, food processing and warehousing, shipping, banking and stevedoring firms are under public ownership has enabled her to not only have an inflation rate of just 2.5% but to have actually falling food prices. And even while ensuring that her people have a COVID death rate per person that is 112 times less than Australia’s, the PRC’s socialistic system has ensured that, unlike here, her workers’ real wages have continued to rise during the pandemic. Indeed, for the last 15 years, the PRC has been enjoying the world’s fastest growing real wages. She has ensured that the proportion of her population suffering homelessness is much lower than in Australia through giving her people eight times greater access to public housing than we who live here in Australia. By curbing capitalist pre-school and tuition firms and replacing them with public and non-for profit childcare and children’s leisure activity services, the PRC has reduced her masses’ financial costs of raising children.
Yet, these achievements of socialistic rule and the fact that China continues to gradually lift herself up from the terrible poverty of her pre-1949 capitalist times is what terrifies the world’s capitalist powers. For not only are they enraged that the PRC’s cooperation with developing countries is impeding their economic rape of these countries, the capitalist powers fear that the PRC’s course will eventually incite their own working classes to demand that their economies also be brought under social ownership. Yet that is precisely why the working class in Australia and the other capitalist countries must stand with socialistic China. Let’s advance the struggle for working class ownership of the economy here by defending the existence of such a system in the world’s most populous country! Let’s oppose the U.S./Australia military build up against socialistic China! No to the lying “human rights” propaganda attacks on the PRC over Uyghurs, Tibet and Hong Kong!
If we can protect the PRC’s advance on the socialist course set by her 1949 toiling people’s revolution and if we can popularise knowledge of the benefits provided by her socialistic system, even in the partial form that it exists in, we can promote the need for a system based on public ownership in this country. The plunging living standards, unaffordable housing and lack of economic security of the capitalist system is pushing the masses to seek anti-capitalist solutions. However, in response, capitalist ruling classes are spreading racism to divide and divert the masses that they exploit. That is why racist far right forces have been growing in the U.S., Germany, India and here. To build the inter-racial unity necessary to fight the powerful capitalists, we must consciously oppose racist influence by mobilising the working class in defence of targeted ethnic groups. For union action to support Aboriginal people’s struggle against racist state terror and all-sided oppression! For workers’ struggle to demand the rights of citizenship for all guest workers, international students and asylum seekers! Bring the long-suffering Nauru refugees here! For united mass action of our workers movement and people of colour communities to crush violent white supremacist forces! Let’s also reject those who say that we can protect living standards by favouring Australian businesses over their overseas rivals. Such agendas only set local workers against their worker sisters and brothers overseas while obscuring workers from the truth that they can only defend their conditions by struggling against the local bosses that exploit them. Let’s understand that the main call of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, “Workers of All Countries Unite”, remains as crucial today as it was when the Manifesto was first issued.
Another famous line of our Manifesto – that “the spectre of communism” is haunting the capitalist world – also rings loud today. The escalating economic crisis in the capitalist world, the social decay of capitalist societies, the capitalist powers’ horror at the successes of socialistic rule in China and the terrifying extent to which the imperialist regimes are willing to risk World War III by waging a proxy war on fellow capitalist Russia in good part because they want to weaken her ability to obstruct their war plans against Russia’s socialistic Chinese, friendly neighbour proves this. The Communist Manifesto’s main agenda is to replace the rule of the capitalist class with the rule of the working class. We have made good progress in this task in countries that make up one in five of the world’s people. But we have much work to do! We need to speed up the completion of the Manifesto’s tasks because it is increasingly clear that decaying capitalism not only threatens the masses’ living standards but humanity’s very existence.
The Communist Manifesto made clear that the seizure of political power by the working class is preceded by a period of “more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society” where the working class “now and then” are victorious in defending their living standards against the capitalists but the “the real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers”. To build the unity, strength, self-confidence, organisation and political awareness that’s needed so we can advance towards the working class rule that we so badly need, we must, right now, mobilise militant class struggle to fight for huge wage rises, the rights of permanency for gig workers, a massive increase in low-rent public housing and the nationalisation of the oil and gas, power and social service sectors. Let’s build a party to spearhead the fight for this Communist Manifesto agenda! As Marx and Engels pronounced at the end of their famous tract: Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Above photo: Thousands marched in Sydney on July 2 in protest at the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of abortion rights in America and to demand free, safe, legal, abortion on demand in Australia. The vigour and determination of the protesters reflected their understanding that those attacking abortion rights were not only opposing an absolutely crucial right for women but were attacking women’s very right to decide what they do with their own bodies and how they lives their own lives. Photo Credit: Reuters
FOLLOWING MASSIVE U.S. ATTACK ON WOMEN’S RIGHTS, MOBILISE THE WORKERS MOVEMENT TO FIGHTBACK
FROM THE U.S. TO AUSTRALIA: FOR FREE, EASILY ACCESSIBLE, ABORTION ON DEMAND!
1 July 2022: The U.S. regime struck a savage blow against women when its Supreme Court overturned its nearly 50 year old Roe vs Wade ruling that had tenuously given American women a degree of abortion rights. Now, 26 of America’s 52 states are set to deny women those rights or to severely restrict them. It will be low-income women – and because of intense racist discrimination that often means black women as well as other women of colour – who will be hit hardest. Since a women’s decision to seek an abortion is often an economic one, the majority of women who had been getting abortions in the U.S. were those below or just above the poverty line. Yet this is precisely the same group who will now find it extremely difficult to pay for the travel and accommodation – often while suffering loss of income from taking time off work – to travel to states where abortion is legal.
To make matters worse, the majority of black women, the women most hurt by the Supreme Court overturn ruling, live in the very same southern states that are now outlawing abortion. For many such black and low-income women, the stripping of abortion rights will mean that they will either be forced to continue with pregnancies that they do not want, which could well consign them and their children to further immiseration, or will be compelled to seek dangerous backyard abortions that could result in their death, or if they get caught, imprisonment. Trotskyist Platform insists that women must have the right to safe, free and widely accessible abortion on demand. We also say that there must not be any restriction on women accessing abortion care in even the later stages of pregnancy. Moreover, women must not be forced to undergo compulsory “counseling” which only adds to the stress of what can often already be an anxious time for her, when she may have to deal with pressure from husbands, boyfriends and family as well as ignorant stigma from broader society. We demand the right to abortion that is completely on demand for women in the U.S. and for women everywhere, including here in Australia.
Right now in Australia, women generally have more of the right to choose than in the United States. In recent years, important victories have been won here. In October 2019, a law came into force that finally decriminalised abortion in NSW. This is not the result of the benevolence of its pro-capitalist parliament but a product of a decades-long struggle by abortion rights activists and supporters of women’s rights, including from sections of the trade union movement. However, women are far from having the full right to abortion on demand in Australia. For example, if a woman wants a later term abortion in NSW, that is after 22 weeks of gestation, whether they will be able to go ahead is out of their hands. That decision lies with two medical practitioners who must decide whether the practice is “appropriate”. In Tasmania, such restrictions come into force after just 16 weeks of gestation. Meanwhile, Western Australia has this country’s most draconian laws. After 20 weeks gestation, abortion is basically banned, with a women only able to access services if two doctors out of a panel of six find that she or the foetus has a severe medical condition. Before this period, women can only access abortion care after first going through a “counseling” session with a doctor different to the one providing the services. We need to fight here to remove all these serious curtailments to the right to abortion in Australia. There needs to be a major struggle to ensure that whatever rights to abortion that do exist are actually accessible for working class and rural women – and especially for Aboriginal women who are often forced to live in poverty in rural areas. Many of the abortion services that are currently available are privately run and thus the procedure is often out of reach of lower income women. Thus, ensuring women’s true right to choose means not only winning the full right to abortion on demand but also requires ensuring that the procedure is a free and widely available service provided by the public health system; and it also means ensuring that lower-income women are lifted out of poverty.
Hundreds march for abortion rights in the city of St Petersburg in the U.S. state of Florida. There have been spirited and massive pro-choice demonstrations in the U.S. following the Supreme Court’s savage blow against women’s right to choose. Photo Credit: WFTS
Women’s Rights Are Workers Rights
The abortion rights in the U.S. provided by Roe vs Wade had always been partial. Indeed, Texas and Oklahoma had effectively banned abortion even before the recent court ruling by passing laws enabling civil lawsuits against women getting abortions. A notorious late 1970s law passed in the time of Democrat president, Jimmy Carter, called the Hyde Amendment, prevents federal funding for abortion. Therefore, many low-income women simply could not afford an abortion even in the time when Roe vs Wade stood. Nevertheless, the recent court decision is a huge setback for women’s rights. In response, women in the U.S., joined by men who support women’s rights, have held huge protests. Trotskyist Platform stands in urgent solidarity with those fighting on the streets of America for women’s right to choose what they do with their own bodies.
The Supreme Court decision was condemned by senior U.S. Democrat Party members including president, Joe Biden. The Democrats have been, with success, taking control of the mass protests and saying that people need to vote for them in order to push back against the attacks on abortion rights spearheaded by the reactionary Republicans. However, the Democrats’ commitment to abortion rights is at best half-hearted. Biden himself has for decades been a strong supporter of the notorious Hyde Amendment that denied women access to federal funding to pay for abortion care. He only changed his position before the 2020 presidential elections after being attacked for his stance. Meanwhile, there have been many times where there has been a Democrat president and a Democrat controlled congress, yet the party has stubbornly refused to legislate the right to abortion on demand, despite this right long being supported by a sizable majority of Americans. Although most of those on American streets marching for abortion that have illusions in the Democrats or are rank-and-file Democrat members are sincere in their support for abortion rights, many rightly suspect that many a Democrat leader is half happy at the court ruling since it enables them to win votes from the right-wing Republicans on the promise of upholding abortion rights.
The very partial nature of the Democrats’ commitment to abortion rights flows from the fact that no less than the conservative Republicans, the Democrats are a party dominated by capitalists. The capitalist system in turn is tied up with an obsession on insisting that everyone conforms to the traditional family structure, in particular as a family economic unit. The wealthy capitalists have an attachment to this structure because they are fixated with passing on their property to, usually male, heirs. However, so as to be sure that their wealth isn’t claimed by the patriarch of another family, they want their property to be passed on to heirs who are indisputably theirs. This obsession with handing down their property to their own heirs and, thus, with ensuring that their wives do not bear children to other men drive rich propertied males’ compulsion to socially – and, thus, economically – isolate their wives. Yet the capitalists want everyone else to also adhere to the same structure that serves their needs, even the working class who own no commodity-producing property. This is because capitalists see the division of the masses into separate family economic units as being useful to, on the one hand, preventing workers from uniting against them and on the other hand with helping them to instill discipline and conservative values in the next generation. Moreover, greedy capitalist ruling classes do not want to actually pay people to conduct the essential tasks of housework and child rearing. And so it is held incumbent upon women to, without any pay, conduct these important social functions; work that in original human civilisations – including those of most of Australia’s Aboriginal nations – had humanely and quite rightly been carried out as the collective responsibility of whole communities. Given that the capitalists’ interests are in forcing everyone into economic units based on the traditional family structure, they view with hostility anything that deviates or challenges this, whether it be independent women empowered by the right to decide what to do with their own bodies, lesbian and gay relationships or trans people. Thus, women in leading positions in the Democrat party, which given the nature of the party means that they are either directly from the ruling class or are otherwise pro-capitalist in their politics, are torn between wanting their own personal freedoms and rights as female human beings on the one hand and, on the other, as capitalists, wanting to do everything possible to herd everyone into nuclear family units through measures that necessarily oppress women.
Yet for the same reasons that even progressive-minded women from the capitalist class are limited in their ability to stand for women’s rights, it is the united working class – in which history has destined working class women to play the lead role – that has a strong interest in spearheading the struggle for women’s emancipation. The workers movement needs working class women to have the right to control their bodies so that they will be feisty and independent and can, thus, play a leading role in uniting all their class to struggle for workers rights against the capitalist exploiters. Or as the peak trade union body in the north-eastern U.S. state of Vermont, the Vermont State Labor Council AFL-CIO, put it: Women’s Rights Are Workers Rights! Moreover, through their power to turn on and off production, the workers movement has not only the interests to stand up for women’s rights but the power to force the ruling class to concede rights to women through strike action and other mass actions. However, industrial action necessarily hurts the profits of all the capitalists, whether they are open right-wing reactionaries or supposed “progressives.” That is why the struggle to mobilise working class power in support of the struggle for women’s liberation will be a struggle that must be waged against all wings of the capitalist class – even its most progressive members. The extent to which working class power in the U.S. can today be unleashed in the urgent fight for abortion rights depends on the extent to which the workers movement can be unchained from its present subordination to the capitalist Democratic Party.
Here, mobilising the workers movement to support women’s full right to choose and to support the broader struggle for women’s emancipation requires breaking the stranglehold of the Labor Party – and pro-ALP and pro-Greens agendas – on the workers movement. Although most individuals in the ALP support abortion rights, the party’s stance is half-hearted given that it includes staunch anti-abortion elements within its leading layers. As a party that seeks to reconcile workers’ interests with those of the capitalist exploiters, the ALP parliamentary and union tops seek to restrict industrial action to being a supplementary add-on to their main parliamentary game rather than fighting for a program that fully unleashes the power of our unions in an all out struggle for workers’ and women’s rights. Meanwhile, although more progressive on social questions than the ALP, like the ALP the Greens are also congenitally opposed to a program of militant class struggle. For unlike even the ALP, whose ranks are largely workers, the Greens actually include significant numbers of actual capitalist exploiters in their ranks and this party is politically dominated by upper-middle class elements loyal to capitalism.
Anti-abortion politician Claire Scriven is a cabinet member in the South Australian Labor government and the state’s Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development and Minister for Forest Industries. On July 2, Scriven joined politicians from the Liberal Party and the hard right Family First party in an anti-abortion propaganda training seminar. The event was held five days before South Australia’s law decriminalising abortion in the state finally goes into force and provocatively went ahead after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling gutting already limited abortion rights in America. The fact that the ALP includes such hardline opponents of women’s right to choose shows that it is an obstacle to mobilising the workers movement in support of women’s rights. Photo Credit: South Australia ALP website
What Do You Mean That America is a “Liberal Democracy”?
The overturning of the already limited abortion rights in the U.S. has made a mockery of the U.S. ruling class’ claim to be the bastion of “liberal democratic values.” Of course, this was always a lie. Both the U.S. and Australia are neither truly “democratic” nor “liberal.” Their “democracies” are dominated by capitalist oligarchs who own and control the media, use their wealth and ownership of the economy to control state institutions by thousands of threads and use their billions to dominate political narratives by disproportionately funding political parties, paying for political advertising, establishing think tanks and “independent” NGOs and hiring lobbyists. As for “liberal values”, the U.S. has the world’s largest prison population and jails its people at a rate six time higher than in China. Moreover, both the anti-abortion Republicans and the more “progressive” Democrats supported the U.S. training and arming – and now hailing as valiant war heroes – of Ukraine’s ultra-right wing Azov Regiment, which along with other violent fascist groups there, have not only attacked Roma, leftists, Jews and pro-Russia activists over the last eight years but have conducted violent assaults on Ukraine’s LGBTIQ+ community and women’s rights activists; including simultaneously attacking, in several cities of Ukraine, participants in the 2018 International Women’s Day rallies. Meanwhile, here, the capitalist regime kills Aboriginal people in state custody, imprisons refugees in hell-hole camps and in Afghanistan committed horrific racist war crimes.
The claims of Washington and Canberra to be champions of “liberal democracy” are mainly used to justify their meddling in countries around the world and especially to sell their intensifying Cold War drive against socialistic China. However, undermining the mantras of Western governments is the fact that China has one of the most liberal abortion laws in the world. Article 19 of the Population and Family Planning Law of the People’s Republic of China grants the unrestricted right to contraception and abortion and Article 21 stipulates that these rights should be enjoyed for free.
Anti-communist propagandists have long sought to denigrate China’s liberal anti-abortion laws as merely a means to enforce a one-child policy. However, that policy was long ago abandoned and China is now actively trying to increase the country’s birth rate. Yet the liberal abortion laws remain. China’s liberal abortion laws were, indeed, confirmed in an amended version of her Population and Family Planning Law that was passed just ten months ago. There are, however, two small autonomous parts of China where abortion on demand does not exist: that is in Macau and in Hong Kong (as well as in the rogue capitalist Chinese region of Taiwan). This is a legacy of laws brought in by the former Western “liberal, democratic” colonial rulers of these territories. In both these regions, abortion is considered a crime which is only allowed as an exception when two doctors determine that there is a serious risk to the physical or mental health of a woman (the Macau law is stricter than the Hong Kong one). As a result of lingering influence of Christian churches and Christian schools from the British colonial times, there is often a terrible stigma against Hong Kong women obtaining abortion care. Furthermore, in Hong Kong it is hard to access abortion services from public providers, meaning that the right to choose is out of reach for lower-income women. For these reasons, many Hong Kong women travel to Mainland China to access abortion services. Unfortunately, because the Beijing government has accommodated the Western imperialists and the local capitalists dominating Hong Kong and Macau by granting these regions a high degree of autonomy under a “one country, two systems” formula, it has not thus far moved to overturn the colonial-era restrictions on abortion in these regions. We call on the Chinese government not to bend to the sensibilities of those demanding the “two systems” part of “one country, two systems” and to instead move to bring the right to free abortion on demand overwhelmingly enjoyed by women in the socialistic mainland of China to the regions of Macau and Hong Kong.
It is telling too that the biggest ever blow to a women’s right to choose – even greater in scale than what has just happened in the U.S. – occurred as a result of a triumph of “liberal democracy”, by which the Western powers really mean capitalism. In her socialistic days, women in Poland had enjoyed the right to abortion on demand. However, soon after Poland became the first country in the former Soviet bloc to be swept away by capitalist counterrevolution, women’s right to choose became severely restricted in 1990. Today, women in Poland can only obtain abortion care if their physical health is seriously endangered by continuing the pregnancy or if she is raped – and even in the latter case she can only have the abortion up to 13 weeks’ gestation.
June 1987, Poland: Right-wing then pope, John Paul II very publicly gives his blessing to the then leader of Poland’s anticommunist forces, Lech Walesa. Walesa’s anti-secular, capitalist counterrevolutionary movement known as Solidarnosc (“Solidarity”) was also rabidly backed by the then conservative leaders of the U.S. and Britain, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as well as by the Hawke Labor government in Australia. Upon seizing power and restoring capitalist rule, the new Solidarnsoc government followed through on its reactionary platform and wasted no time in carrying out mass privatisations and overturning the liberal abortion rights that women had previously enjoyed during the period of socialistic rule in Poland. The triumph of Poland’s Pope-backed capitalist counterrevolutionaries, which Western capitalist regimes had dubbed “a victory for liberal democracy”, was in fact the greatest setback to women’s control over their own bodies in any country since World War II (now, the recent U.S. Supreme Court has made the U.S. the country to have the second biggest rollback of those rights). As the chant popular with women standing for abortion rights goes: “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries!” Photo credit: Arturo Mari/AFP
The Terrifying Rise of Far-Right Reaction in the Capitalist World
Right-wing forces wildly celebrated the court decision overturning Roe vs Wade. The momentum that these forces have been given could threaten women’s right to choose in even those American states that currently allow abortion. This terrible setback to women’s right to choose is indeed closely related to the growth of hard-right forces. The Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe vs Wade had been stacked with hardline conservative judges by racist former Republican Party president, Donald Trump. Trump celebrated the court ruling as did his estranged ex-vice president, Mike Pence. Now with the Democrat administration overseeing plummeting workers’ real wages and rampant inflation, the increasingly right-wing Republican Party is leading in polls for November’s mid-term congressional elections. Here too in Australia, far-right forces have been gaining ground. Along with the ever clearer right-wing trajectory of the Liberal Party, signified by the ascendancy of racist hardliner, Peter Dutton, to its leadership, forces even further to the right have increased their influence. At the recent federal elections, such far-right parties increased their votes by almost 60%, allowing them to gain almost one in eight votes. As well as the senate seats retained by One Nation, the United Australia Party, led by greedy billionaire Clive Palmer and rabid right-wing former Liberal Parry politician, Craig Kelly, was able to win a senate seat in Victoria after having won no seats in the previous elections.
Moreover, the growth of parliamentary based far-right parties has inevitably been associated with the strengthening of violent fascist gangs on the streets. Let’s remember, that it was less than a year and a half ago when far-right mobs incited by Trump tried to stage a right-wing coup in America. Then, just six weeks ago, a white supremacist, shouting racial slurs, shot dead ten black people in a mass shooting at a supermarket frequented by predominantly black people in New York state’s Buffalo. In March 2019, an Australian neo-Nazi, raised in Australia’s racist environment, murdered 51 Muslim people in a shooting rampage at two mosques in New Zealand’s Christchurch. Meanwhile, every day in Australia, violent bigots and those incited by them harass, abuse and physically attack Aboriginal people and people of Chinese background, as well as other people of colour and those from LGBTIQ+ communities. Emboldened by the recent U.S. court ruling, the growing Australian right-wing extremist forces are now likely to unleash more intense harassment and violence against women entering abortion clinics.
So why, in the 21st century, is all this bigotry rising in places like the U.S., Australia, France and Germany? In short it is because of the increasing decay of the capitalist order. To understand how capitalist decay spawns right-wing reaction, one needs to examine the social base of the Far Right. The stronghold of extreme right-wing forces is amongst economically insecure layers of the self-employed middle class – which includes farmers, self-employed tradies and contractors, owner truck drivers and small business owners (in short the class that we Marxists refer to as the petit bourgeoisie) – as well as smaller-scale members of the actual capitalist exploiting class. Now when the working class moves powerfully to challenge the capitalist exploiters, the best of the petit bourgeoisie will identify their interests with those of the workers movement. However, when the workers movement is on the back foot, the most insecure and reactionary members of the self-employed middle class, the petit bourgeois, will be manipulated by capitalist demagogues to turn their frustrations against those doing it harder than them. Instead of seeking to join with the working class to jointly seize the best parts of the cake stolen by the big end of town they will be mobilised to fight against the rest of the masses for the crumbs. In this way, sections of the self-employed middle class are being manipulated to obsess about maintaining their social position one or two rungs above the working class by seeking to push down those from the working class seeking to expand their rights – especially if they are from its most downtrodden layers like Aboriginal people, women workers seeking equal pay, unemployed workers and people of colour. Since the self-employed are essentially small businessmen, divided by the reality that everyone else operating in their market is an economic rival, they can easily fall prey to divisive racist rhetoric. Since they share the capitalists’ same pre-occupation with passing on productive property to male heirs – and sometimes they are even more obsessive about this than the big capitalists given that their businesses are much smaller and, thus, all the more precious and precarious – the insecure self-employed can easily fall for extreme “family values” agendas and, consequently, anti-abortion ones. Moreover, not brought together with others at the point of production like wage workers and hopelessly dependent on both the elements (the weather in the case of farmers) and big capitalist-generated market forces beyond their control, the isolated and precariously operating petit bourgeoise is especially susceptible to the influence of rabid religious forces.
So why then is middle class reaction becoming ever stronger. There are three closely related reasons. For one, the size of the self-employed layer has actually increased in countries like the U.S. and Australia over the last few decades. Theoretically, this should not be happening. Smaller scale production of goods and services is usually less efficient than large-scale production. However, the capitalists artificially propped up the size of this class by laying off workers from maintenance, courier, trucking, cleaning and other jobs and rehiring these workers as contractors. The corporate bosses made these moves because, although the new arrangement led to a loss of technical efficiency, it undercut union organising. So the social class on which right-wing reaction is based has actually grown in the U.S., Australia and other capitalist countries.
However, this would not have automatically led to such a rise in right-wing reaction if the workers movement had been active and determined enough to fight for its rights so decisively that it drew in the self-employed behind it. That this has not thus far happened is the fault of the social democratic current leaders of the workers movement, which in Australia means the ALP. Meanwhile, the reason that sections of the insecure middle class have moved from supporting traditional conservative politics to backing aggressive far-right agendas, is that the decay of the capitalist system and its repeated economic crises have increased economic insecurity. Today, it is surging fuel and other raw material prices that are buffeting the self-employed layers as they are all the masses. Furthermore, the more that the capitalists need to exploit to keep their system afloat, the more that its representatives promote racism, bigotry and extreme religion to divide the masses that they exploit.
What all this means is that even though the U.S. Democrats and the Australian ALP – and still more strongly the Greens – reject the agendas of the Hard Right, their loyalty to the capitalist order means that they uphold the very system that is spawning right-wing reaction. That is why one cannot resist the Far Right by supporting the Democrats in the U.S. or the ALP and Greens in Australia. After all, it was eight years of the relatively liberal Obama administration which, incapable of providing economic security to the masses, created the conditions for the rise of right-wing reaction that led to Trump’s ascendancy. Similarly, if Albanese’s ALP is allowed to carry out its pro-capitalist agenda, it will allow Dutton or others even more extreme to eventually gain the ascendancy. This is doubly so since right now the masses’ living standards are plummeting and there are even signs that we are headed towards yet another deep global capitalist economic crisis.
The force that can resist right-wing reaction and the socio-economic conditions which breed it is the multi-racial working class. However, it can only do this by opposing all the representatives of the capitalist class in unleashing struggles for secure jobs for all through forcing bosses to increase hiring at the expense of their profits and by stopping rampant inflation through winning the confiscation of the greedy oil, gas and power corporations and their transfer into public ownership. At the same time the workers movement must oppose the turning of its ranks into self-employed contractors by fighting for contractors and gig workers to be hired – and often rehired – by companies into jobs with high wages and all the rights of permanency. When the working class decisively challenges the capitalists in this way and fights for additional measures that are both in the interests of themselves and those of the middle class – like nationalising the banks and lowering power prices – then it can draw in the self-employed middle class behind them and make the latter realise that it is possible to fight against the exploiters above them rather than cowardly kicking those in a social position below them. Recent strike action by NSW nurses, rail and bus workers and teachers give a small taste of the potential for working-class resistance. However, to unleash the power of the workers movement requires replacing the pro-ALP social democratic leadership dominating the working class and its unions with one that stands for uncompromising opposition to the capitalist order.
The revolutionary party of the working class that we need, in which women and people of colour will necessarily play a dominant role, would champion the cause of all the oppressed. It would unite with all the oppressed in mobilising mass action to physically defend Aboriginal people, targeted ethnic communities, LGBTIQ+ people and abortion clinics from violent right-wing forces. It would also struggle for the complete liberation of women through fighting for women’s complete economic independence. This means standing for equal pay for equal work, guaranteed permanent jobs for all, a massive increase in low-rent public housing and free around the clock childcare. We also fight for a system that will deliver free pre-school education, free school lunches at all schools and after-school sports, music and cultural activities provided for free by the state alongside free transport from school to and from these activities. The struggle to implement and provide the resources for all these measures poses the need to strip the economy away from the filthy rich capitalist exploiters and place it into socialist, public ownership under a workers government. When such socialist revolutions place economies into the collective hands of the masses on a global scale, the capitalist decay and economic insecurity that breeds far-right forces will be done away with and racist, male chauvinist and homophobic bigotry will finally be consigned to the dustbin of history.
Photo Above: 15 May 2022, Ramallah, West Bank, Occupied Palestine: Thousands of Palestinians protest on Nakba (the Catastrophe) Day, the 74th anniversary of Israel’s murderous ethnic cleansing of three quarter of a million Palestinian people from their homes. Photo Credit: Ayman Nobani/Xinhua
DEFEND THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!
OPPOSE THE U.S. & AUSTRALIAN REGIMES BACKING ISRAEL’S TYRANNY!
RESIST THE WESTERN IMPERIALIST DOMINATION OF THE WORLD UNDERPINNING THE SUBJUGATION OF PALESTINIAN PEOPLE
12 May 2022: Yesterday, the Israeli military demolished several homes of Palestinian residents in the Masafer Yatta region south of the West Bank city of Hebron. This atrocity is part of Israel’s plan to evict some 1,000 residents from the area. If Israel is able to get away with this, it would be one of the biggest single expulsions of Palestinians since Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. Palestinian families are being driven from homes and lands that they have lived, farmed and herded on for generations – going back long before Israel’s murderous ethnic cleansing of Palestinians was unleashed in the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe). Simultaneously, Israel is accelerating the construction of Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank in order to further displace Palestinian people and undermine their just demands for statehood. Today, the regime announced that it would be building an additional 4,300 Jewish-only housing units in the West Bank.
The U.S. and Australian-backed Israeli regime is subjugating Palestinian people in an ever more brazen way. During the recent Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Israeli forces repeatedly carried out violent raids on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest sites. They injured hundreds of Palestinian worshippers as they unleashed volleys of rubber bullets, tear gas cannisters and stun grenades. Israeli state forces are being encouraged to commit ever more cruel acts by increasingly active fascist groups amongst the Jewish “settlers” that have gone to colonise the West Bank. These fascist mobs have not only spearheaded the attacks on Al Aqsa and threateningly marched on Palestinian villages but have beaten and murdered Palestinian residents, torched their homes and cut down their food crops. Israeli forces have murdered over 50 Palestinian people in 2022 alone.
The working class and all oppressed of Australia and the world and all opponents of national oppression must stand with the persecuted Palestinian people. We must demand: Israel and its far-right “settlers” get out of all of the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza! For the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their pre-Nakba homes and lands! Let us support the Palestinian resistance against the murdering Israeli security forces and the fascist “settler” groups!
MOBILISE THE WORKERS MOVEMENT IN SUPPORT OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE’S RESISTANCE
Israel is only able to subjugate Palestinian people because it receives massive military, economic and diplomatic backing from the U.S. imperialist superpower and the Americans’ closest allies, like Australia, and because of the complicity of the other Western imperialist powers likes Britain, Germany and Japan. That is why supporters of Palestinian rights in Australia must oppose the Australian rulers’ backing of Israel and must fight against the Australian ruling class’ support for the U.S. juggernaut that underpins Israel’s terror. Down with Canberra’s military cooperation and diplomatic backing of Israel! U.S. troops out of Darwin! Close the Pine Gap spy base and all the joint U.S.-Australia military bases in Australia! Down with the ANZUS Alliance! Down with AUKUS – Down with the new Cold War drive against socialistic China!
Although there are powerful pro-Israel lobbies in the U.S. and Australia, this is not the main reason why Washington and Canberra uphold Israel’s persecution of Palestinian people. The U.S. and Australian capitalist ruling classes uphold Israel’s tyranny because this is in their own class interests. The ultra-rich owners of the U.S. and Australia’s mines, banks, factories, agribusiness, transport operations and service sector firms not only exploit workers in their own countries but also exploit workers at an even more intense rate in the ex-colonial countries of the Middle East, Asia, the Pacific, Africa and Latin America where they also loot the natural resources and seize control of markets. To enforce this tyranny, these imperialist powers use not only their own militaries but also those of various “deputy sheriffs” who they back to enforce their interests in return for a share of the imperialist loot. Israel is the Middle East deputy sheriff of U.S. imperialism. Along with the Saudi regime, Israel was built up as the enforcer in the oil-rich Middle East of the imperialist powers’ drive against the USSR-led socialistic bloc during the Cold War. Today, Israel is both a strategically located ally of Western imperialism in their new Cold War drive against socialistic China and a henchman against local forces that dare not bow down enough to the Western imperialist tyrants, whether they be groups in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq or “disobedient” countries like Syria and Iran. For playing this role, Israel’s powerful U.S. godfathers are happy to uphold its subjugation of Palestinian people and to turn a blind eye (or more cynically, give meaningless, gentle slaps on the wrist) to its most heinous atrocities. This is similar to how Washington covers up the Australian ruling class’ horrendous oppression of Aboriginal people and its brutal persecution of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African refugees in recognition of the crucial role that the Australian rulers play as America’s deputy sheriff in the South Pacific.
Given the interests that Australia’s imperialist ruling class has in propping up Israel’s tyrannical role in the Middle East, it is unsurprising that all the pro-capitalist parties in Australia, which includes all the parties currently in parliament, defend Israel. To be sure The Greens, unlike the right-wing Liberals or the ALP, do call out Israel’s worst atrocities. However, their position of “condemning violence on all sides”, which disgustingly equates the violence of the Israeli oppressors with the just resistance of a subjugated people, is far from genuine solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. Moreover, while Greens politicians do attend pro-Palestinian rallies in Australia, one can be suspicious that this is mostly a vote gathering practice, given that nowhere in The Greens official foreign policy election platform – that is in what they present to everyone as opposed to what they promise to known Palestinian supporters – do they even mention support for the Palestinian national liberation struggle. Instead, while they call to “renegotiate” Australia’s alliance with the U.S., they nevertheless uphold this alliance, and thereby uphold a pact that strengthens the U.S. imperialist superpower that props up Israel.
Alongside the geostrategic interests that the U.S., Australian, Canadian and New Zealand ruling classes have in backing Israel, all these capitalist rulers feel a connection with Israel’s rulers because, like the latter, their own rule was also founded on the colonial dispossession and murderous subjugation of the peoples living on the lands that they now lord over. If one sees the way that Australian state forces brutalise Aboriginal adults and children in custody and then cover up these crimes – like how a racist white police officer killed an unarmed Aboriginal man Kumanjayi Walker by shooting him three times at close range yet was two months ago acquitted of murdering the Aboriginal teenager by the Northern Territory courts – it has many similarities to Israel’s heinous persecution of Palestinian people.
Given their ideological affinity with the Israeli ruling class and more significantly, the interests that they have in upholding Israel’s strength, it is impossible to make the capitalist rulers of the U.S. or Australia an ally of the Palestinian people. However, what we can do is to force these imperialists to back off their level of support for Israel. Such a perspective is, however, undermined to the extent that many supporters of Palestinian rights continue to believe that it is possible to win over Australia’s ruling class to the side of the Palestinians. For the latter notion falsely implies that what we need to do is to appeal to Australia’s capitalist rulers when what we must do is the very opposite: we need to punish the ruling class for their backing of Israel’s reign of terror. One cannot appeal to the conscience of Australia’s capitalist class as they are not driven by conscience but by the drive to expand profits and to shape the world order in such a way that their profits both at home and abroad are secured and maximised. Instead, we must threatenthe profits and political authority of Australia’s capitalist rulers to such an extent that the harm that they would thereby suffer outweighs the geostrategic benefits that they gain from upholding the Israeli, Middle East deputy sheriff of their American godfathers. The key force for achieving this perspective is the organised workers movement. Trade union political strikes here in protest at the Australian regime’s support for Israel would hurt the profits of Australia’s capitalist rulers and could, therefore, arm-twist them to dial back their support for Israel.
Union action against Israel’s tyranny is possible because not only is such struggle vitally needed it is also in the very interests of the workers movement. By striking economic and political blows against a key deputy sheriff of U.S. and allied imperialism, the workers movement would be landing punches against the U.S. and Australian imperialist ruling classes themselves. In other words they would be weakening the very same capitalist rulers who at home are driving down workers’ real wages, jacking up rents and prices, pushing ever more workers into precarious gig and casual jobs and who in their efforts to prevent the masses uniting to resist their ever greater exploitation of working class people are scapegoating Aboriginal First Peoples and people of Asian, Muslim, African, Middle Eastern and Islander backgrounds. Any damage done to the strength of the Australian ruling class by weakening its international position will necessarily aid the struggle against exploitation and racism at home.
A small number of the left-wing led unions have indeed shown some solidarity with the Palestinian cause by attending pro-Palestinian rallies in Australia. However, such acts are undercut by the fact that the workers movement in Australia is currently led by the Labor Party, a party that from its support for anti-strike laws, to its fulsome backing of the Cold War drive against socialistic China to its defence of Israel is determined to prove to Australia’s ruling class that it is as reliable a defender of the capitalist class’ key interests as the right-wing Liberal-National Coalition are. The struggle to mobilise the working class in support of the Palestinian people is thus closely bound up with the struggle to reorient the workers movement onto a new truly anti-capitalist agenda – an agenda that is needed to not only ensure working class support for oppressed peoples like Aboriginal people and the Palestinians but which is essential to the fight for the working-class’ own rights.
STANDING WITH THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE MEANS OPPOSING WESTERN IMPERIALISM’S MASSIVE BACKING FOR ITS UKRAINIAN PROXY IN EUROPE’S LATEST WAR
An example of just how emboldened Israel is right now to crush the Palestinian people was seen yesterday when the Israeli military murdered American-Palestinian, Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in a targeted assassination. Of course this is hardly Israel’s first murder of journalists and certainly not of Palestinian people more generally. However, Abu Akleh was not only a Palestinian journalist but a citizen of the United States, the main country that is propping up Israel. Moreover, unlike American student Rachel Corrie who was a leftist opponent of U.S. imperialism when she was murdered by the Israeli military in 2003 while courageously helping to protect Palestinian homes in the Gaza strip from demolition, Abu Akleh worked for a news organization that while covering Palestinian issues more fairly is overall a rabid promoter of U.S. imperialism – from its support for the Western imperialist agenda in the Syrian and Ukraine Wars to its retailing of anti-China, anti-communist propaganda.
Part of the reason why the Israeli regime thinks it can now get away with acting even more brazenly than in the past has to do with the context of the Ukraine-Russia War. In order to prevent Russia emerging as a potential capitalist competitor and to push her back down to the humiliated position that she had in the first decade after the destruction of the USSR, the U.S.-led Western imperialists are throwing huge amounts of arms, money and propaganda into supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia. The Western imperialists are so driven by this agenda that they are more than willing to abandon any minor disputes they may have had with any force that contributes to this anti-Russia campaign. For example, the Western mainstream media had in the past occasionally reported on the influence in the Ukrainian state of brutal fascist paramilitary groups like the white supremacist Azov Battalion. Even as the U.S. military trained the Azov forces, Washington was worried that too open support for such avowed neo-Nazis would constitute a bad look. However, today such misgivings have been totally abandoned. Western regimes and media openly hail the “resistance” of the Mariupol-based Azov regiment and completely whitewash both its ultra-racist, Nazi character and its torture and murder of pro-Russia civilians. Similarly, in the past, the likes of France and Germany had made mild criticisms of the extreme hostility to dark-skinned refugees, persecution of LGBTIQ+ people and authoritarian repression of dissent by the hard right government in Poland. The EU powers were worried that the openness of these repressive policies was undermining the EU’s claims to uphold “democracy.” However, today as the Polish government has put itself up as an extreme frontline opponent of Russia, these mild rebukes of her by her Western allies have softened into total silence. Israel is now also a crucial part of the anti-Russia campaign. Not only do the far-right infested Ukrainian and Israeli regimes enthusiastically support each other, Israel has also recently played a headline role in the propaganda campaign against Russia by accusing Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine and by fanatically attacking Moscow’s basically correct point (albeit distracted by her foreign minister Lavarov’s false and hurtful claim – for which Putin later apologised – that Hitler had Jewish roots) that just because Ukrainian president Zelenskyy is Jewish does not change the fact that the neo-Nazis play a significant role in the Ukrainian regime. Aware of its importance to the anti-Russia campaign of its Western imperialist backers, Israel knows that its allies will tolerate it acting in an even more heinously cruel manner than usual. And the Palestinian people are the victims of this.
Unfortunately, the murdering Israeli regime’s calculation has thus far proven correct. It was striking how the U.S. State Department responded to the questions about the impartiality of the “investigation” into the murder of Abu Akleh announced by Israel. State Department spokesman Ned Price kept on insisting that Israel has the “wherewithal and the capabilities to conduct a thorough, comprehensive investigation” and rejected calls for an independent probe. In other words, the U.S. imperialists are willing to accept the whitewash of the murder of their own citizen by the Israeli regime even though she worked for a thoroughly pro-Western news organisation in Al Jazeera. Earlier, as anti-Russian propaganda ramped up in the tense days leading up to the Ukraine-Russia War, the Australian government further boosted its support for Israel by outrageously designating Hamas in its entirety to be a “terrorist” organisation (in contrast to the previous stance that only recognized the group’s military wing as such).
Some pro-Palestinian groups in Australia, like the Socialist Alternative group, claim that the West is not being consistent by supporting Ukraine against Russia while refusing to support the Palestinian cause. However, the truth is that the Palestinian people’s completely justified resistance against Israeli occupation has very little in common with Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. For one, a major trigger of the Russian intervention was Ukraine’s brutal persecution of Russian-speaking people living in the eastern Donbass region of Ukraine over the last eight years. The post-2014 Ukrainian regime threatened these peoples’ language and cultural rights. When the Russian-speaking people protested, they were brutally attacked by fascist Ukrainian paramilitary groups that have many similarities to the far-right settler groups in the West Bank. In the eight years prior to the current escalation of the conflict, Ukrainian state forces and their fascist paramilitaries killed around 10,000 of the Russian speaking people in the Donbass who were struggling for their self-determination. In that sense, it is more Ukraine rather than Russia that has been mirroring the oppressive terror of Israel. To be sure, in sending Russian forces into Ukraine, Moscow’s agenda is more than merely defending the persecuted Russian-speaking populations in the East and South of Ukraine and pre-emptively pushing back NATO’s threatening eastwards expansion to her borders. Moscow also seeks to quench the capitalist thirst for ever greater access to guaranteed markets by grabbing more territory and simultaneously advancing her quest to become a new imperial power. However, by violently resisting the wish of many Russian-speaking people in the south and east of Ukraine to either join Russia or have closer ties with her, the Ukrainian regime is also driven by the capitalist push to maximise their own country’s territories.
The Western imperialists say that Russia’s intervention into Ukraine is “threatening the rules-based international order.” But this order is a brutal, oppressive one where the U.S. ruling class and its allied counterparts in the likes of Britain, Australia and Germany set the “rules” which they then make everyone else follow … except themselves! This “rules-based” order has seen the U.S., British and Australian imperialists brutally invade and ravage Iraq twice, devastate Afghanistan during a cruel twenty year occupation, NATO destroy Libya through a bloody 2011 regime change invasion, the devastation of Syria in a Western proxy war, the killing of large numbers of Pakistani people in U.S. drone strikes, the brutal U.S./Australian colonial occupation of Somalia, the 1999 NATO terror bombing of Yugoslavia, the bloody Western-backed Saudi war on Yemen, etc, etc. Moreover, it is this Western imperialist-dominated “rules-based world order” that sustains Israel’s brutal oppression of Palestinian people.
The significance of the Ukraine-Russia conflict to the Western-dominated “world order” and therefore to the Palestinian cause has grown markedly over the last two and a half months. When the Russian troops first intervened, the Western powers, while supporting Ukraine, shied away from providing her with the heavy weapons needed to really take on Russia. However, drunk with their own war propaganda, the Western imperialists have now drastically increased their level of military support to Ukraine – including the provision of heavy weapons, direct training of Ukrainian soldiers and the actual presence of Western special forces’ advisers in Ukraine. Having now invested far more in this conflict than they previously had, the outcome of this war will in turn affect far more the U.S., Australian and other Western imperialists. Should their Ukrainian allies triumph it would embolden Western imperialism and thus intensify the subjugation of Palestinian people, increase the Cold War threats to socialistic China and North Korea, increase the dangers faced by “disobedient” countries like Iran, Venezuela and Syria and intensify Western imperialist exploitation of the developing countries. On the other hand, while a Russian military victory would encourage reactionary nationalism within Russia and boost the authority of Russia’s capitalist exploiting class, it would weaken the U.S., British, Australian, German, Japanese and other Western imperialists who have so avidly backed the other side. This would be a good thing for all those subjugated by Western imperialism and its proxies, including the Palestinian people. Therefore, while Russian anti-capitalists would have to oppose their own ruling class while explicitly opposing NATO and refusing to ally with pro-Western pacifists, opponents of imperialism and capitalism in the rest of the globe, especially in the Western imperialist countries themselves, must campaign for the defeat of the Western imperialist-backed side in this war and oppose the growing intervention of the U.S., Australian and other imperial ruling classes into the conflict. That is why we in Trotskyist Platform say: Let’s oppose all the economic sanctions on Russia! Let’s campaign to stop all Western military supplies to the Ukrainian military! Let’s undermine the Western-imperialist controlled “world order” that underpins Israel’s brutal subjugation of the Palestinian people!
Unfortunately, most of the rest of the Left in Australia have taken the opposite position. The Socialist Alternative, Solidarity and Socialist Alliance groups are all backing the U.S., Australian and Israeli-backed Ukraine side in this war. The Australian Communist Party (ACP) formally takes a position of opposing both sides in the conflict but by proudly stating that “the ACP condemns the attack by the forces of the Russian Federation on Ukraine” the ACP in practice gravitates towards supporting imperialist-backed Ukraine. Although the members of all these groups sincerely hold their support for the Palestinian cause, by backing the side of the Western imperialists in the Ukraine-Russia conflict they are supporting the forces that uphold Israel’s tyranny over Palestine. Most of these groups – in particular the Socialist Alternative, Solidarity and Socialist Alliance groups – similarly backed the side of Western imperialism during the Syrian war when they supported imperialism’s Syrian proxies against the Syrian government; and in doing so also put themselves in a de facto military bloc with the Israeli regime that launched hundreds of airstrikes against Syrian government positions.
We insist that true solidarity with the Palestinian people and all those suffering under the direct and indirect tyranny of Western imperialism means slashing back at the U.S., Australian, British, German, Japanese and other Western imperialist ruling classes in every single field where they extend their claws. That means that as well as opposing Western imperialist intervention into the Ukraine conflict and their support for Israel, we must stand for: All U.S. and allied forces out of Iraq, Syria and all the Middle East! Down with the imperialist threats to Iran! Down with all imperialism’s proxies in Syria! U.S. troops out of the Korean Peninsula! Australian imperialist rulers: Get your bullying hands off the Solomon Islands and the rest of the South Pacific! Down with the cruel imperialist-driven sanctions against North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Afghanistan!
STANDING WITH PALESTINE MEANS STANDING WITH SOCIALISTIC CHINA!
The U.S., Australian and other imperial ruling classes see a far greater threat to their domination of the world than the one posed by their would-be Russian competitor. And that is the threat to imperialist domination of the world posed by the rise of China. Unlike Russia, which is today just another capitalist country, China is a workers state formed when the toiling classes grabbed state power in a giant anti-capitalist revolution in 1949 and which continues to have an economy centred on socialist, public ownership of key sectors. Of all the main powers in the world, including Russia, the Peoples Republic of China currently takes the strongest position in support of Palestine. However, China’s support remains far below what it should be. China’s compromising leaders take a narrow, national-centred approach to foreign policy where they seek to build socialism only in China while trying to ensure “peaceful coexistence” with the capitalist world by avoiding any aggressive involvement in any issues abroad that do not very directly affect China’s interests. This policy is a flawed response to the immense hostile pressure that China faces from the capitalist powers. China’s leaders hope that should they avoid threatening capitalist interests abroad, the capitalist powers will in turn avoid attacking China. However, this policy has been a failure. Whereas, China indeed does little to actively promote anti-capitalist struggle abroad, the imperialist powers are doing everything possible to strangle socialistic rule in China. However, should greater solidarity with Red China from working class people around the world arise, stauncher communists within China would get a greater hearing when they push for China to take a much stronger stance in opposing capitalism and imperialism abroad. This can only be a good thing for the Palestinian people.
Moreover, even though the current Beijing leadership does not seek to challenge Western imperialism’s domination over the world, the mere existence of China as a socialistic power is slowly undermining the grip of imperialism over the ex-colonial countries. China’s mutually beneficial cooperation with the Global South is allowing countries in the Pacific, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America to access capital, modern technology, training and a large market in China without having to subordinate their country to the imperial powers or their agencies like the IMF. This is what is driving Australia’s capitalist rulers mad as countries in the South Pacific like the Solomon Islands and Fiji slowly exert greater independence from their Australian imperialist overlords. Eventually, some Arab countries may even finally start exerting greater independence from Washington and its allies, which can only be a good thing for the Palestinian struggle.
Furthermore, the capitalist powers are terrified that even though Beijing does nothing to explicitly promote socialist revolution, the mere example presented by the most populous country in the world continuing to adhere to a socialistic course, while successfully lifting her people out of poverty and providing rapidly rising real wages, wide access to low-rent public housing and ever improving infrastructure, public transport and cultural opportunities for her masses, will encourage working class people in the capitalist world to themselves start agitating for socialism. That is why the Western ruling classes see the rise of socialistic China as an “existential threat.” Of course, if their worst fears are indeed confirmed and the working classes in the West, inspired by socialistic China’s successes, overturn capitalist rule in their own countries that could very quickly open the road to the liberation of Palestine.
More immediately, if solidarity from the masses around the world is able to protect socialistic China such that she is allowed to continue to rapidly rise, this will inevitably loosen the grip of the U.S., Australian and other Western imperialists over the world. That will in turn naturally weaken the Washington-propped up Israeli regime and bring more opportunities for the Palestine liberation cause as well as for the struggles of all people living under the tyranny of the imperial powers. Therefore, all consistent supporters of the Palestinian struggle, all opponents of imperialism and all supporters of working class interests must stand for the unconditional defence of the Chinese workers state against imperialist threats and internal pro-capitalist forces. Down with the lying propaganda war against Red China over Taiwan, Uyghurs, Tibet, Hong Kong, the COVID response and the Pacific! U.S./ British/Australian navies get out of the South China Sea! Oppose the Australian capitalist regime’s anti-China military build up: no to nuclear submarines, no to missiles! For the right of the Solomon Islands and any other country to engage in military and economic cooperation with Red China to the extent that they see fit!
Occupied East Jerusalem, Friday, May 13, 2022: Israeli police horrifically attack mourners as they carry the casket of slain Palestinian-U.S. journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was shot dead during an Israeli military raid in the West Bank town of Jenin last Wednesday. Under the cover of the war in Ukraine, the brutal, occupying ethno-nationalist Israeli regime has been given the green light from its big brother in Washington to even more brazenly attack the long suffering Palestinian people and their brave struggle of resistance. Working class people of all colours, nationalities and religions must join together with all oppressed peoples to resist the bloody, U.S.-led capitalist world order & extend sororal & fraternal comradely hands of friendship and encouragement to the workers state in China which – despite capitalist encroachment into her economy and imperialist pressure from abroad – remains, alongside the international working class, the only world power that can truly stand up to the imperialists and stop the dead hand of Washington and Canberra et al dragging us all into an ever broadening, greed-driven downwards spiral of oppression, poverty and racism.
ISRAEL = DEADLY OPPRESSION OF PALESTINIAN PEOPLE + NO FUTURE FOR JEWS EITHER
Recent weeks have confirmed that while Israel spells murderous subjugation for Palestinian people it cannot even deliver on the main promise that Zionist leaders use to sell Israel: that it will be a secure homeland for Jewish people. The building of an ethno-religious state through murderous ethnic cleansing of another people and through ongoing murderous terror against the dispossessed people inevitably provokes resistance and violent responses. Most of the Palestinian armed resistance takes the form of completely justified blows against the Israeli security forces and fascist settler groups. A small number of desperate Palestinians also lash out in pointless and harmful to their cause attacks on Israeli civilians. That is the byproduct of the brutal Israeli subjugation of Palestine. Although far more Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli security forces, 19 Israelis have also been killed in 2022 in occupation-connected violence including several police officers, a security guard, two Israeli troops killed in an accidental attack by a nervous fellow soldier and several civilians. Moreover, although massive backing from Washington allows Israelis to enjoy a higher standard of living than neighbouring peoples, life in an ethnic supremacist garrison state is not exactly great: youth are required to undergo long periods of forced military conscription and the reality of Israel’s brutal subjugation of Palestinian people means that Israelis are sometimes consigned to life in bomb shelters to protect themselves from counterattack. Yet Israel’s capitalist ruling class does not have the interests of the Jewish masses as their real concern… and never did! What they really want is a guaranteed market and a state compacted together by extreme nationalism that will allow them to exploit the labour of fellow Jewish, Hebrew-speaking people and to con such Jewish working-class people into feebly accepting this exploitation out of nationalist devotion to the ethno-religious state. Indeed, Israel’s most dramatic intervention into the Ukraine-Russia War has confirmed how little its rulers are truly devoted to the well-being of Jewish people. In slamming Moscow for pointing out that Ukrainian president Zelenskyy’s Jewish heritage does not prevent neo-Nazis from playing a significant role in the Ukrainian state, the Israeli regime covered up the large presence of neo-Nazi groups like the Azov and Aidar regiments in the Ukrainian paramilitary forces and inhabitation of virulently anti-Semitic, fascist individuals in parts of Ukraine’s military and police top brass; while whitewashing the reality that the Ukrainian state glorifies as national heroes two Nazi-collaborating, anti-Soviet, Ukrainian World War II paramilitary groups (Stepan Bandera’s UPA and OUN). During World War II, the UPA and OUN between them murdered tens of thousands of Jewish people and over 100,000 Polish people, while helping their Nazi allies to carry out the Holocaust.
It is crucial that a far-sighted section of the Jewish working class in Israel sees the futility and injustice of the Zionist project and comes over to the side of the subjugated Palestinian people. There are some brave Israelis who do protest the worst excesses of the regime’s anti-Palestinian terror but these individuals need to come over fully to opposing the Israeli state and to standing squarely in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s resistance. They must see that the implicitly ethnic supremacist ideology of Zionist nationalism serves to obscure the fact that Jewish working class people in Israel are being exploited by Jewish capitalists and that Israeli capitalism has left the masses with a poor welfare system, the single highest rate of poverty in the OECD and unaffordable rents and house prices (which the regime has cynically manipulated to encourage people to become West Bank settlers with the promise of cheap land in a strategy typical of all settler colonialist regimes). What is needed is for a slice of the Jewish working class to break from Zionist nationalism and unite with the Palestinian people in toppling the Israeli capitalist state. Such a socialist revolution would produce a binational workers state that would ensure equal rights for people of all ethnicities, would annihilate the fascist Settler forces and would guarantee the right to return of all Palestinian refugees.
Given the national chauvinism that currently infects much of the Israeli population, such a solution presently remains distant. By allowing them a relatively privileged economic position in comparison with neighbouring Arab peoples, massive imperialist aid to Israel has tied much of its masses to the illusions and prejudices of Zionism. But any weakening of Western imperialism and its domination over the world would cut the ground from under the feet of Israel’s capitalist rulers and necessarily stir upheavals amongst the Israeli masses. So let us relentlessly resist the Western imperialist domination of the world that underpins Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinian people! Down with all Western imperialist military aid and sanctions over the Ukraine-Russia War! Stand with socialistic China against imperialist threats and anti-communist forces! Oppose the ANZUS and AUKUS alliances that strengthen the imperialist powers that back Israel’s tyranny! For workers’ industrial action to oppose U.S. and Australian backing for Israel! Let’s resist the U.S. and Australian regimes that support Israel’s terror! Let us make the nest of Zionist expansionism fall by vigorously shaking the imperialist branches on which it is perched and which give it support!
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