Tag Archives: Protectionism

China, Public Housing, Social Democracy, Unions

None of the Parliamentary Parties Defend Workers’ Interests – FOR MILITANT WORKING-CLASS RESISTANCE!

Photo above: Sydney bus drivers picket during their December 2021 strike action against poor wages and conditions following privatisation.
Photo credit: AAP

None of the Current Parliamentary Parties
Defend Workers’ Interests

FOR MILITANT CLASS STRUGGLE
AGAINST AUSTRALIA’S CAPITALISTS!

Capitalist Rulers’ Hostility to China is Due to Their Hatred
of Her Public Ownership-Based System

STAND WITH SOCIALISTIC CHINA TO
STAND FOR WORKING CLASS INTERESTS!

25 April 2022: Working class people are sick of the Morrison government. They are angry that while their rich bosses are looting ever greater profits, their own wages are barely rising, even while prices skyrocket. Many young people, women and migrant workers in particular are frustrated that they are stuck in casual positions with no job security. Meanwhile, Aboriginal people and Asian, African and Middle Eastern communities can’t help but notice that nine years of right- wing government has seen Australian society become even more racist and hostile towards them.

Yet the Labor Party (ALP) “alternative” is hell bent on proving to the big business owners, the people who really hold the power here, that an ALP administration will enforce capitalist interests as reliably as the Coalition does. Albanese’s ALP even proclaimed that a Labor government will not increase the paltry JobSeeker payments. So, at the upcoming elections, no vote should be given to either the Coalition or the ALP and Greens “alternatives” and obviously not to the racist One Nation or the other nationalist far-right outfits like the United Australia Party. Instead, we need hard-fought strikes and other mass actions by the workers movement and its allies to turn back the capitalists’ exploitation of workers, to resist their oppression of Aboriginal people, women and coloured ethnic communities and to oppose “their” regime’s military buildup. The more that the working class understands that their position will not be advanced through supporting any of the current parliamentary parties, the more determined they will be to build the mass struggles needed.

THE DEAD END OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY’S APPROACH TO
“SUPPORTING” WORKERS RIGHTS

The ALP does raise issues of concern to the masses. The problem is that because ALP leaders are so in awe of the economic power and capacity to swing public opinion of the tycoons (the likes of the Murdochs, the Lowys, Kerry Stokes, Andrew Forrest, Gina Rinehart, Anthony Pratt and Bruce Gordon), the ALP does not dare anger these oligarchs by even merely promising the measures actually needed. Thus, the ALP’s rental affordability plan will not increase badly needed public housing but rather promises funds for just a modest increase in “community housing”, notorious for its private operators who skimp on repairs and shun the most hard-up would-be tenants. Similarly, even as the ALP promises higher wages and secure jobs they commit to maintaining nearly all the anti-strike laws that restrict workers ability to fight for these needs.

With no program to secure jobs through struggle against the bosses, the ALP resorts to policies favouring procurement (ie buying) from businesses owned by local capitalists. Such measures will inevitably provoke countermeasures by trade partners overseas to favour their own firms over Australian exporters. In the end, rival protectionist schemes end up with workers in no country better off. What they do “achieve” is to make workers mistakenly side with the interests of the very local bosses that exploit them. This harms the building of union resistance against the bosses. Moreover, such protectionist agendas set local workers against their counterparts abroad. This is totally against what the 1st of May international workers day is based on: the truth that only by fighting as one worldwide class can the interests of workers everywhere be advanced.

The ALP kowtows to the capitalists most cravenly on external issues. Thus, the ALP backs Morrison’s anti-China military buildup. ALP leaders even criticise him from the right for not bullying enough the Solomon Islands into renouncing their security cooperation with China. In backing the Western imperialists’ Cold War against socialistic China, the ALP is acting completely against the interests of its working class base. Mutually beneficial cooperation between China’s state-owned firms and countries like PNG, Fiji, Solomon Islands and East Timor has allowed Pacific peoples to gain more independence from the Australian capitalists that have long looted their resources. This has enraged the corporate bigwigs here because it has made them lose some of the super profits that they were looting in the Pacific. Yet this is good news for the working class as it weakens the bosses of Australian multinationals and makes them less able to face down union action here. Similarly, while Western capitalists are terrified that the successes of China’s socialistic system will inspire workers in their own countries to fight against capitalism, any true partisan of the toilers should want precisely such “Chinese influence” here in Australia.

PROMOTING THE GREENS MEANS OBSTRUCTING
THE CONSTRUCTION OF WORKING CLASS RESISTANCE

Given how similar Labor’s agenda is to the Liberals, some support the Greens. They do promise some progressive policies like increasing public housing. However, to implement such reforms, let alone any decisive anti-poverty measures, requires defying the capitalists. The Greens cannot do this because they reject a class struggle outlook. In fact, the Greens actually embrace capitalists in their party. Thereby lacking both the will and ability to confront capitalist power, any Greens MPs in government will inevitably bend to the demands of the powerful capitalists. In the early 2010s, when The Greens ran Tasmania alongside Labor, they cut nursing positions and public housing repairs. Today, they are part of the capitalist class’ drive to strangle socialistic China. Indeed, while opposing the nuclear submarine plans, The Greens are even more rabid than the Liberals in spewing the lying “human rights” attacks on China that “rationalises” such military escalation.

Despite this, The Greens are backed by parts of the Left – such as the Socialist Alliance. After all, such reformist socialists share not only The Greens’ better positions but many of its worst ones; such as their support for anti-communists attacking the Chinese workers state – like the pro-colonial, rich kid rioters in Hong Kong. Pro-Greens socialists do acknowledge The Greens’ capitalist essence. However, they say we need to “support the lesser evil.” Yet, backing The Greens actually means supporting another form of the same evil – the tyranny of the capitalists. Moreover, those advocating a vote for The Greens are undermining class struggle by promoting the false notion that a wing of the capitalists – represented by The Greens – can aid the workers’ cause. This is as harmful to the building of militant unions as the idea sometimes heard in workplaces that workers should focus on helping supposed “nicer” managers rise to become the head henchmen of their firm’s exploiters.

LET’S BUILD A PARTY TO ORGANISE MILITANT CLASS STRUGGLE
RESISTANCE AGAINST THE CAPITALIST EXPLOITERS

The current mass workers party, the ALP, is selling out its base. But we still need a workers party! But completely unlike the ALP, it should be built to organise class struggle against the capitalist ruling class. Recent nurses and transport strikes show the potential for such resistance. However, the current pro-ALP union leaders see such actions as supplementary to the parliamentary game. The new workers party must have the inverse perspective: class struggle is its main game. Such a party would not limit its program to what the capitalists can accept but will doggedly fight for what the masses actually need: big wage rises, a huge increase in the dole, the conversion of all casual jobs into ones with all the rights of permanency and the abolition of anti-strike laws. It would struggle for a massive increase in public housing and completely free medical and dental care. It would champion the cause of oppressed women workers through demanding equal pay and free childcare.

To be able to win in struggle against the powerful capitalists, the workers movement must draw alongside it all the oppressed by standing with the Aboriginal people’s struggle against racist state terror, by championing women’s rights and LGBTQI+ rights and by defending persecuted ethnic minorities. Our side also needs maximum unity to win. That means anything that undermines workers unity like protectionism and the scapegoating of migrants must be rejected. The working class and our unions must demand all the rights of citizenship for all refugees, guest workers and international students.

Whenever we demand decent wages and job security, the bosses threaten that this will cause job losses. We must respond by demanding the banning of all job cuts by any firm making a profit and laws to force them to increase their hiring at the expense of their profits. When they scream that this will cause economic collapse, the new workers party would respond: if your system cannot provide secure jobs for all then the economy needs to be immediately ripped from your hands and brought into socialist, state ownership under a state run by the workers. The workers party that we need must be a revolutionary party.

Advancing towards the overturn of capitalism requires defending already achieved anti-capitalist conquests. That means defending the Chinese workers state – despite its bureaucratic deformations – that was created by the Chinese toilers through their 1949 anti-capitalist revolution. So down with the lying propaganda war against socialistic China! Australia’s imperialist rulers: Hands off the Pacific! Down with the anti-China AUKUS alliance! Not one submarine, not one missile, not one soldier for the Australian military – a force that only serves the interests of Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer, Andrew Forrest and their ilk.

Western rulers’ hostility to Russia is of a very different character to their enmity to Red China because Russia is a capitalist country just like them. But their anti-Russia campaign is aimed at suppressing an emerging competitor so that they can continue to exclusively dominate and exploit most of the world’s peoples. If their campaign succeeds it will embolden them to further attack the rights of workers and other oppressed at home and bully still more arrogantly the people of the Pacific. So down with U.S., Australian and other Western arms shipments to Ukraine! Lift all sanctions on Russia!

The way that the U.S. and its allies provoked the Ukraine War and then pour oil onto an already burning conflict that pits their ally against their rival nuclear power shows just how dangerous the Western capitalist rulers really are. These rulers could not protect “their” vulnerable populations from the terrible COVID carnage. What chance do they have then of making an effective response to the threat posed by climate change?! More immediately, rampant inflation in their countries is threatening a new global capitalist crisis that will impoverish billions – just like the late noughties Great Recession did.

With every passing day, the urgency of opposing the capitalist “order” becomes ever clearer. However, the masses are held back by the mainstream consensus that privatisation, submission to the tycoons and suppression of wage rises are what is needed. However, events in the world’s most populous country are proving that things don’t have to be this way. In China, the state has been rapidly increasing wages, massively boosting public housing, forcing companies to guarantee gig workers at least the minimum wage and suppressing greedy billionaires. Far from privatising, the Chinese state has maintained public ownership of banking, ports, major construction and all other key sectors. And despite an incomplete transition to socialism, their system works. Let us be inspired by this to resist the class war that the capitalists have been waging against us. They have been winning because the Laborite heads of our movement have accommodated them rather than been at the forefront of a militant resistance against the exploiters. We need to change this! Let us wage class war back against the capitalist class! Let us slash away the illusions in salvation through parliament that are restraining a truly powerful working class fightback!

Anti-Capitalism, Unions

强制企业使用他们膨胀的利润来增加雇佣员工!

为所有劳工都有稳定的工作而斗争：

强制企业使用他们膨胀的利润来增加雇佣员工!

2021年3月1日： 公司老板们在利用瘟疫流行来削减劳动力，并强迫仍然在工作的员工更艰苦劳碌…只是为同样的薪水(或有时甚至减少薪水!)。 所以，那些公司尽管狂热的砍掉工作岗位，它们自己的赢利却扶摇直上。莫里森的自由党政府继续公款派钱给富有的资本家企业主。 

 然而，为工作者争取工作不是要促进老板们的利润，而恰恰相反： 强迫企业主保留比他们在获得最大的利润时更多的工作岗位。 我们需要集体斗争，包括劳工运动，来停止企业削减工作! 让我们团结有工作的和没工作的工人们一起来要求：

  • 不管企业大小，只要有利润，就得禁止裁员。
  • 任何公司如果他们的CEO年度总收入超过$1百万，那么禁止裁员。
  • 强制要求任何有利润的公司如果每季度（三个月）有每一百万元的利润增加必须新增至少二十五名全职工作者。
  • 所有签证工作者、国际学生和难民都享有公民的权利(包括失业救济金和无限制的工作小时的权利)。
  • 所有临时工作者给予永久工作岗位。 临工者必须成为永久员工，并给予可保证的最低工作时间，小时工资和有薪假期。
  • 禁止所有的把工资和轮班补贴从瘟疫流行前的水平降低的行为。
  • 违犯这些措施中的任一项的企业要被没收和转成公有财产。
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做为对自由党公开的反劳工议程的回应，工党和绿党以及赞成工党领导的我们中的大部分工会长期要求通过一个把签证工作者排除在外和反对进口以保护本地企业的保护主义议程来促进本地就业。但近几个月来，签证工作者不能入境，并且进口物品变得更困难。 但本地老板们仍然随意解雇员工，他们让劳工来支付大流行的代价! 保护主义议程没有保护到任何人的工作。 它只把本地工人和他们真实的盟友分割开来： 世界上所有其他劳工。 同时，它非常错误地使劳工们相信他们与他们“自己“的贪婪的本地老板们有着共同的“国家利益”。

所以我们需要一个新的议程指引我们的工会和更加广泛的工人阶级。 一个基于理解只有赢取对资本家剥削的斗争才能为所有工人获得稳定工作的议程。 指导这个进程的是这样的事实 ： 和强大的资本家进行这场斗争，我们的工会运动必须与所有那些因被资本家控制的“秩序”所受伤的群众团结起来 – 深受严重种族迫害的土著人，严重缺乏稳定工作的妇女劳工，没有公民权利的签证工作者和国际学生，华人，其他亚裔，穆斯林和受到猛烈攻击的非裔。当资本家剥削者喊道强迫他们雇佣超过他们所想要的员工数量会导致经济滑坡，我们必须这样回应道：如果你们的体系不能包容为所有工作者力求稳定工作的必要而且明显的措施，那么你们的资本主义体系就应该直接滚蛋!

Anti-Imperialism, Anti-Racism

“Australians First” Economic Nationalism Fuels Racist Hostility to Refugees and People of Colour

“Australians First” Economic Nationalism Fuels Racist Hostility to Refugees and People of Colour

It was a video so openly racist that even right-wing senator Derryn Hinch said it “could be an ad for the Ku Klux Klan.” This ALP video saying that it would “Employ Australians First” had visuals where nearly all the Australians shown were white Anglos. The ad which was released two months ago had an unmistakeable racist message: white people had to be supposedly protected from having their jobs taken away by non-white people. Like the Turnbull government’s moves to make citizenship harder to get based on the racist premise that a migrant’s allegiance to values such as respect for women is more doubtful than an existing citizen’s – even though the horrific level of violence against women here is actually much higher than that of many countries like China where migrants are coming from – Bill Shorten’s video can only engender antagonism to refugees and people of colour. Meanwhile, that the ALP chose not to even include Aboriginal people in its image of “Australians” highlights not only the despicable nature of the ad but also the deep oppression that this country’s first peoples suffer under.

The ALP’s advertisement that shamelessly dog whistled to racism. Even when made less blatantly than in this ad, any demands that call for putting the interests of (mainly white) Australian workers over (overwhelmingly coloured) lower paid workers from “Third World” countries will inevitably appeal to and reinforce White Australia xenophobic attitudes as well as “First World” arrogance.

 

No doubt aware that the Labor Party retains support from working class people from various “ethnic” backgrounds, ALP frontbencher Anthony Albanese called the ad a “shocker.” However, even if the ALP’s “Australians First” video had several people of colour in it, the ad would still be a shocker. For one, given that this country is still majority white in composition and that the majority of visa workers are people of colour, any counterposing of local peoples’ interests against those of foreign workers necessarily incites racist hostility to non-white people from Asian, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander, African and Latin American backgrounds – whether those people are foreigners or Australians. Moreover, setting up local citizens as job market rivals of foreigners inevitably creates resentment towards guest workers, refugees and international students. Such xenophobic hostility then flows on towards Australians from coloured “ethnic” backgrounds. Economic-based prejudice is, indeed, the main stem of the noxious weed of racism that is currently overrunning Australia. It is the completely unfounded fear that refugees, migrants and guest workers will take up scarce jobs and affordable housing and use up dwindling public services which is at the root of the racist problem. Such resentment is consciously promoted by the capitalist bigwigs, the media that they own and the mainstream political parties that do their bidding. This exploiting class seeks to divert the masses from identifying them, the filthy rich big business owners, as the real cause of the people’s economic difficulties.

After his video was attacked, it was easy for Shorten to shrug it off by saying “the lack of diversity” in it was “a bad oversight.” However, for many coloured people, such nationalist ravings translate into being vilified and physically attacked on the streets. A report released today by Charles Sturt University detailed 243 verified cases of racist attacks on Muslims in just a 14 month period. Those reported incidents form just a tiny fraction of actual cases. Showing the link between racism and misogyny, the study found that more than two-thirds of those attacked were women.

Although Australia is especially racist, hostility towards minorities and refugees is growing in all capitalist countries. The more their economies falter, the more the rulers promote racist and protectionist “solutions.” Meanwhile, increasing rivalries between the capitalist powers – seen, for example, in heightened trade tensions between the U.S. and the German-led European imperialists – further stoke reactionary nationalism. Yet, even in “Third World” capitalist countries like India racist incidents are on the rise – in the case of India involving Hindu-chauvinist attacks. Indeed, our planet’s one large country not plagued by rampant racist attacks is a socialistic one: China.

Down With Economic Nationalism!

Fight for Jobs For All By Standing Up to the Job-Slashing Capitalists!

The notions behind “Australians First” agendas simply don’t stack up. Refugees and guest workers all spend money here and pay taxes. They, hence, create as many jobs as they occupy. As long as the current social order prevails, no matter how few people there are in the country there will always be a significant rate of unemployment. This is because the rich business owners will – if they are allowed to – only hire as few people as maximises their profits. Whenever unemployment falls these bosses are less able to keep wages down and less able to threaten workers with the sack, making them reluctant to hire any more which in turn pushes unemployment back up. Moreover, the notion that guest workers are the cause of joblessness is ludicrous given that they make up much less than 1% of the workforce! It is true that bosses seek to use severe exploitation of foreign visa workers – as they do with vulnerable local workers like apprentices and casual workers – to undercut overall working conditions. However, that only underscores the need for the union movement to fight to ensure the highest wages, union coverage and, crucially, full rights of citizenship for all guest workers, refugees and overseas students.

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Asylum seekers caged up by the Australian regime in its Manus Island detention centre. Economic nationalism helps fuel the popular prejudices that provide support for this savage treatment of refugees.

 

As well as calling to “Employ Australians First,” the Donald Trump-like ALP ad also promised to “Build Australian First and Buy Australian First.” Such measures won’t save local jobs! For just as politicians can push such schemes here, their counterparts abroad can respond with similar measures which would then hurt Australia’s exports. Indeed, all agendas that counterpose the interests of Australian workers to guest workers or to goods produced by workers abroad actually harm the fight for workers’ jobs. For by dividing workers and by diverting them from struggle against the capitalist bosses they undercut the one fight that can immediately win more jobs – a trade union struggle to force bosses to increase hiring. Yet, such a struggle that impinges on the fundamental “rights” of the capitalists is alien to the ALP and most of our current, pro- ALP union leaders. The ALP seeks to satisfy its working class base by merely extracting modest concessions from the capitalists while seeking acceptance from the latter. That is why it is left with little to offer on jobs except divisive protectionism. When the Turnbull government, with much fanfare, announced a slashing of the guest worker program, sadly many of our union leaders demanded the measures go further rather than mobilising actions to win equal rights for these workers.

Nationalism from the Labor Party and pro-ALP union leaders is especially harmful since it is they who currently lead the working class – the one class which has a consistent interest in opposing both racism and nationalism since both undermine the unity so crucial to any successful struggle for workers rights. Yet, national chauvinism is far from the preserve of the social democracy. The right-wing Turnbull regime – pushed ever further by Tony Abbott’s hardliners – fiercely oppresses refugees. Then there is the extreme racism of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, the anti-Muslim tirades of Jacqui Lambie and the fervent protectionism of the Nick Xenophon team.

Now the Greens have at least correctly called out some of Labor’s economic nationalist appeals as dog whistling to racism. However, the Greens push their own fervent protectionist schemes including calling for crackdowns on the guest worker program and restrictions on overseas-made steel. Even much of the Far Left acquiesces to economic nationalism. Both the Socialist Alliance group and Socialist Alternative– who have both been active in the refugee rights campaign – and the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) backed Australia’s largest demonstration to keep out foreign workers: the July 2012 “Local Workers First” rally in Perth. The CPA also parrots the “local content” demands of pro-ALP union leaders. Of course, these socialist groups and the Greens advocate a “clean” protectionism which rejects conscious dog whistling to racism. However, there is no “clean” protectionism! Any policy that calls for putting the interests of (mainly white) Australian workers over (overwhelmingly coloured) lower paid workers from “Third World” countries will inevitably appeal to and reinforce White Australia xenophobic attitudes as well as “First World” arrogance. And all protectionist demands divert workers away from the struggle that is actually needed – the one against the job-slashing capitalist exploiters – while pitting local workers against their natural allies: the working class people of the world.

That is why Trotskyist Platform is on a campaign to oppose all forms of economic nationalism. We are seeking to win those involved in the refugee rights movement and the anti-fascist movement to also take up this struggle. Until economic nationalist ideas are purged from the union movement and the Left, anti-racist movements will face serious obstacles. And so will the struggle for workers rights.

We fight to replace the ALP’s nationalist, co-operate-with-the-capitalist program currently ascendant in our unions with a militant class struggle perspective that relies on and values workers’ unity. That means a union movement that would fight for freedom and asylum for imprisoned asylum seekers, full rights of citizenship for all refugees and guest workers and liberation for brutally oppressed Aboriginal people. Rejecting bogus protectionist “solutions,” the union movement that we fight for would mobilise its industrial muscle to stop job slashing by bosses and force profitable companies to increase hiring at the expense of their fat profits. When the greedy capitalist bosses scream that this will cause their economy to collapse, the revolutionary, internationalist party of the working class that we need will respond: if you big business owners cannot run the economy in a way that guarantees secure jobs for all workers then we working class people will rip the economy out of your hands and place it into our own able collective hands. Such a socialist economy based on working class rule is what we need! In such a system, the material basis for racism will wither away as there will be no more exploiting class trying to divide exploited masses and no more scarcity and unemployment fueling rivalries between workers of different colours and ethnic backgrounds. Workers of all countries unite!

Positive! National Union of Workers (NUW) organisers speak at a Fair Go For Migrants rally in Melbourne on 27 August 2017. They opposed immigration laws that prevent many NUW members from gaining access to permanent residency or citizenship rights. The interests of the workers movement demands that it both strongly opposes all racist laws against migrants AND stands against economic nationalism.

Anti-Capitalism, Unions

TP 2016 May Day, International Workers Day Statement

DON’T ACCEPT THE ELECTION’S MISERABLE “CHOICE” WE NEED MILITANT CLASS STRUGGLE TO SMASH ALL ANTI-UNION LAWS AND WIN JOBS FOR ALL WORKERS

1 May 2016 – Last month the building industry authority launched legal action in the Federal Court against the NSW Branch of the CFMEU construction workers’ union and ten of its officials. Their supposed “crime”: organising strike action, necessarily including action to stop scabbing, in order to force the reinstatement of a union delegate who was sacked by the bosses at Sydney’s Barangaroo site. In launching the legal action, the Australian state’s building industry authority boasted that it now has 108 CFMEU officials before the courts! All these attacks on workers’ rights are being unleashed under the cover of anti- worker laws introduced by the openly anti-union, Abbott/Turnbull government, right? Well, actually no! This repression against the workers’ movement is being conducted under the provisions of the Fair Work Act introduced by the Labor government in 2009. That act formally replaced John Howard’s hated Workchoices but retained nearly all its draconian anti-strike provisions. Meanwhile, the construction sector’s industry “watchdog” that is today feverishly persecuting CFMEU and other union members is the body formed by the previous Labor government: the Fair Work Building and Construction (FWBC) authority. FWBC replaced the Liberals’ notorious ABCC. However, while a few of the most extreme powers of the ABCC were taken away, the FWBC retained the ABCC’s central purpose – to use prosecution to attack struggles for workers’ rights in the construction industry and to obstruct union officials entering worksites. This purpose the FWBC has carried out with crusading zeal, often invoking the star chamber powers that it retained from the ABCC to force trade unionists called before it to answer questions under threat of six months’ jail.

It is not simply that the existence of an openly anti-working class Liberal-National government has given the FWBC and the courts the impetus to attack staunch trade unionists. During the reign of the previous Labor government, authorities were also carrying out legal action against trade unions left, right and centre. In mid-2013, the Federal Court found the CFMEU guilty of contempt of court for its picket lines blockading Grollo construction sites during its August-September 2012 struggle against that company’s atrocious disregard of workers’ safety. It was this court ruling and the civil litigation launched by the FWBC – both during the reign of the Gillard ALP government – that paved the way for the Victorian Supreme Court fining the CFMEU a massive $1.25 million the following year.

All this highlights the miserable “choice” that working class people face at the upcoming elections. On one side are the Liberals who would kick working class people in the stomach and then smirk at workers. Their rivals, the ALP, like to whisper sweet words in workers’ ears. But when the capitalists prod ALP leaders in the back signalling that “it’s time,” they will – like obedient little children – turf the toiling masses into the mud then quickly – with false remorse and fluttering eyelashes all wet with crocodile tears – turn back to these same workers they only just betrayed and beg for forgiveness. This not a “choice” that we need to accept! There is another road! The road of militant industrial action and class struggle to not only stop the return of the Liberal’s ABCC but to smash the ALP’s own FWBC, to demand the repeal of all anti-strike laws and all restrictions on union access to workplaces and to fight to stop bosses retrenching workers. Such a fight must unite with the struggle of all of the downtrodden. It must unite with the struggle against the forced closure of remote Aboriginal communities and must mobilise mass action to defend Aboriginal people against racist police violence and mass incarceration. We must demand free, 24-hour childcare to open the road to women’s full participation in economic life, we must fight for a massive increase in public housing and we must smash all attacks on the poor like cashless welfare and compulsory “income management.”

SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IS A DEAD END

FOR MILITANT CLASS STRUGGLE TO WIN GAINS NOW AND PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE REVOLUTION

There are a few differences between the parliamentary parties. The right wing conservatives launched the union-busting Royal Commission into the unions. The ALP did not support this but it has, treacherously, supported the ensuing legal proceedings against unionists for taking militant action to defend workers’ rights. This is hardly surprising! Victorian ALP leader, Daniel Andrews, hailed the persecution of the CFMEU over the 2012 Grocon dispute, branding the construction workers’ struggle as “appalling.” And, although it has been the Coalition that has plotted for a cut to Sunday penalty rates for workers, the ALP again betrayed working class people when Bill Shorten recently announced that a future ALP government would not try to reverse such a cut if the Fair Work commission ruled in favour of it. Indeed, because it accepts the capitalist system, the ALP shares the Coalition platform on key issues. Both parties are for draconian anti-strike laws, both accept the “right” of capitalists to retrench workers whenever that is necessary to maximise profits, both support the cruel incarceration of asylum seekers. Furthermore, both support the Australian capitalist  rulers’ militarisation campaign. This build up is essentially aimed at supporting the international capitalist drive against China, a country which, despite dangerous capitalist inroads, remains a socialistic state dominated by socialistic state-owned enterprises –  a huge gain for its people.
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For their part, The Greens promise some progressive social reforms and oppose several aspects of the war on refugees. Yet, The Greens reject the idea of the working class organised as a separate political force independently of the capitalists. It is telling that The Greens responded to Shorten’s announcement that Labor would accept a court ruling slashing penalty rates with –   not a promise to push legislation reversing such a cut – but merely a promise to “consider” such legislation adding – with the typical “even handedness” of their middle class base – that they “will wait to see the commission’s ruling.” It is notable, too, that The Greens support the Australian capitalist military’s recent huge purchase of 12 new submarines.

To seize on tiny offerings from the ALP and The Greens as an excuse to campaign for them at the elections as a “lesser evil” can only breed defeatism amongst the masses. It amounts to telling the working class and all of the oppressed that we must simply support whoever promises that they will punch us less hard. Yet the working class united with all of the downtrodden actually has the industrial and social power to challenge the capitalist exploiters because it is workers’ collective labour that is the source of capitalist profits and the whole running of the economy. This power needs to be made conscious of itself and unleashed against the capitalist exploiters. Illusions in salvation through parliamentary elections undermine this self- awareness and, instead, encourage the masses to be passive and dependent upon the mythical “good Samaritans” working in the enemy’s political administration. That is why it is not enough for those who understand this to simply ignore the elections. We cannot ignore them because there are millions of working class people who do have illusions that their road to a better life is through electing the ALP or The Greens (while no class-conscious worker is going to support the Liberals, of course). We need to organise actions that will help convince the masses that support for any of the pro-capitalist, current parliamentary parties is completely counterposed to the class struggle. Every time a class conscious worker is convinced not to vote – either directly or through preferences – for any of the current parliamentary parties because she or he subscribes to a class struggle path instead, the working class is better prepared to organise struggle to oppose the attacks of whichever party is elected to administer Australian capitalism.

Belief in salvation through the ALP is a big part of what is disorienting the union movement right now. Even while they are sometimes personally persecuted by anti-strike laws, the current pro-ALP union leaders are resigned to largely playing by these bosses’ rules and looking to “progressive” parliamentarians for salvation. Accepting the straightjacket of these laws and of the pro-capitalist framework of the ALP, the current outlook dominating our unions is to recoil from the idea of industrial action to prevent bosses from retrenching workers. Instead, many of our unions hope to protect jobs by calling on bosses to favour “Aussie workers” in hiring instead of overseas workers and by proposing schemes to “save Australian jobs” by favouring Australian companies over their overseas rivals. Apart from harmfully pushing workers into an alliance with their own local exploiters, such schemes do not save jobs. As a workers’ movement in one country calls for local bosses to favour them over overseas producers, workers abroad also start demanding the same. In the end all that happens is that workers are divided and greedy capitalists everywhere are laughing all the way to their respective banks. Especially when we are facing ever more draconian attacks, workers’ unity is indispensable. We must be aware that the capitalist rulers are seeking to divide our side by intensifying racist attacks against Aboriginal people and against Muslim and other coloured ethnic communities. That is why the workers’ movement must mobilise in defence of these embattled communities, must demand freedom for the refugees and must mobilise to decisively crush the violent far right racist groups.

Today is international workers’ day. Basing ourselves on its spirit doesn’t mean just repeating nice sounding platitudes about international workers’ unity on one day of the year only to then put out the call to favour Australian workers over overseas workers the rest of the year! Instead, it means standing as one with our overseas and guest worker sisters and brothers in a common fight for improved wages and jobs for all workers. The way to fight for jobs is to prevent companies from laying off workers and to fight to force wealthy capitalist bosses to increase hiring by accepting lower profits. Of course, they will not do this willingly. We will need to force them and their governments to accept such concessions through militant class struggle. That means we need a union movement that is prepared to build up forces to defy the anti-strike laws and unleash the full power of the united workers’ movement in the face of the bosses, their governments and their anti-worker laws. The capitalists will scream like bloody murder that any loss of profits that results from being forced to hire more workers will inevitably lead to economic collapse. We must then be ready to reply that if you capitalists are incapable of stably running the economy in a way that provides jobs for all then we workers will take the running of our economy into our own hands by confiscating the industries, mines, banks and communication networks from you and putting it all into the collective hands of the people in a socialist economy under workers’ state power.

This is actually the crux of the question – capitalism or socialism? In the end the current parliamentary parties are against the masses’ interests not just because of their respective ideologies but because they all accept capitalist rule. The demands of the capitalist system simply require any party administering it to continually seek to increase the rate of profit sweated out of working class people. Look at what has happened in Greece. A radical left-talking, nominally socialist party, Syriza, was elected to government. Yet, once in office, it has proceeded to administer the brutal austerity demanded by the capitalists who still hold the reins of state and economic power. Whether in Greece, Australia or any other capitalist country, any party no matter how much it pledges commitment to working class people must necessarily betray these same working class people if it assumes office in such a capitalist society. No matter who win elections they will be merely administering state institutions – courts, commissions, police, prisons and the military – that are tied to the wealthy capitalists by a thousand threads. That is why we should be aware, too, that any gains we make today through class struggle will not be secure as long as the capitalists retain state power. Yet the struggles of today are the indispensable preparation for the future revolutionary struggle for the working class seizure of state power. That is provided that today’s struggles are waged in such a manner that they always teach our side to trust only our own united power and never any of the parties and state institutions of the capitalist exploiters. Today, that means fighting to convince the most class conscious workers to reject any electoral support for any of the current parliamentary parties and to, instead, organise militant mass struggles based on unity with all of the oppressed and genuine unity with our overseas working class sisters and brothers.