Don’t Let Our Fellow Workers Who Lose Their Jobs Become Destitute!
Unleash Militant Class Struggle

Fight for a Huge Increase in the Newstart Allowance and Smash the ALP Government’s Attackon Low-Income Single Mothers!

ALP’s Slashing of Payments to Poor Single Parents Proves Once Again that None of The Current Parliamentary Parties Should Be Supported at The Upcoming Elections

March 8, 2013: At the turn of the year, Australian billionaire James Packer and his family were enjoying first uses of their latest family toy:  a 52-metre super yacht costing over $50 million! However, for tens of thousands of low-income, single parents the reality could not be more different. They are now going to struggle, even more than before, to buy their children medicine let alone merely a $2 toy. The ALP federal government has thrown over 84,000 low-income single parents off the Parenting Payment and on to the much lower Newstart Allowance. If this isn’t bad enough, those single parents who have part-time jobs face even more savage cuts to their income as the Newstart Allowance is more ruthless than the Parenting Payment in cutting payments to those who do manage to find any part-time work.

Single parents with children over eight years old who were new applicants for income support were actually first thrown onto the lower unemployment payment in 2006 by the Howard Liberal government. However, those already receiving payments were allowed to continue to receive the higher Parenting Payment until their child turned 16. When the ALP came into office, it not only maintained the policy of dumping new applicants onto Newstart but in the 2011 budget additionally threw those still receiving the Parenting Payment with children over 12 onto Newstart as well. Now, continuing to maintain the disgusting direction first taken by Howard, it has dumped onto Newstart those with children between 8 and 12 who, previously under their old rules, had still been receiving the Parenting Payment.

Around 90% of families affected by the changes brought into force from January 1 are headed by single mothers. Even before the latest burden was heaped on them, many such families were living in crushing poverty. They often had to skip meals and default on utility payments and many didn’t even dream of going for dental check-ups. Many a low-income single mother had been faced with the choice of either foregoing buying their kids basic clothing or not paying the fee needed to allow their children to participate in a school excursion. Now, on top of all this, the latest cuts will slash their income by between $60 and $110 a week. How on earth will they get by?

The cruel blow to low-income single parents comes at a time when big business bosses have been allowed by governments to extract billions more in profits. The likes of Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer, Andrew Forrest, Anthony Pratt and the Lowy family are gaining this obscene wealth not out of their own labour but by stealing the fruit of the labour of their employees and in the case of the mining magnates, by also hoarding for themselves the natural resources of this land. Yet, through either directly owning the media or having tycoon mates own the media outlets, these capitalist parasites are portrayed as deserving, “outstanding citizens.” In contrast, single mothers who nobly battle through poverty, male chauvinism at every corner and the bureaucratic bullying faced by all the poor are portrayed by talkback shock jocks and “investigative” reporters as undeserving, “welfare mums.” This disgusting media coverage of single mothers is similar to the vicious portrayal of other oppressed groups like Aboriginal people, refugees, the unemployed and African, Asian and Middle Eastern communities. It has helped to grease the skids for the Gillard government’s savage cuts to payments for single parents which has, in turn, further reinforced hostile myths about low-income single mothers.

The slashing of payments for low-income single parents is one of many policies enacted by various Australian governments that attack the working class and the poor. The Rudd/Gillard ALP government has continued John Howard’s racist policy of quarantining 50% of the income of Aboriginal people receiving social security payments in the Northern Territory. Furthermore, it has extended this policy to people of all ethnicities in five other areas including the multiracial Western Sydney suburb of Bankstown and the South Brisbane suburb of Logan.  Liberal state governments, for their part, have been throwing workers onto welfare by slashing public service jobs. Meanwhile, federal and state governments have united to sell off public housing – such as in the Claymore area in Southwest Sydney – which is making worse the already dire shortage of affordable rental accommodation.

All these attacks on working class people are taking place whether it is the Liberal-National Coalition in government or the ALP. The only difference is that the Conservatives do it with a hostile voice while the ALP leaders sometimes claim that they are actually trying to help their working class base … at the very same moment that they’re shafting them! How far the ALP leaders truly are from their working class supporters was highlighted by the infamous attempt by ALP Families Minister, Jenny Macklin, to justify the attack on single parents. She arrogantly claimed that she could live on Newstart payments – even though these are 25 times less than the salary she receives as a minister!

This Attack on Single Mothers Can Be Defeated – But How?

When, at the start of this year, the reality hit home of just how much their family pay had been gouged, many of the affected parents were reduced to tears. However, now single mothers are each realising that they are not the only individuals suffering. They are sharing their stories with each other and are getting organised. On February 5, single mothers and their supporters rallied across the country against the government’s attack on them. This shows the potential for a fight back. The key issue now is what strategy should the campaign be based upon.

The February 5 rally, in Sydney at least, was dominated by the politics of ACOSS (the Australian Council of Social Services) and the Greens. They share a similar strategy. ACOSS, in particular, emphasises the need to lobby politicians and those in the top echelons of society like the business elite. Yet it is precisely in the interest of the corporate bosses that the slashing of payments to low-income single parents is being made. In order to continue to run, the inefficient capitalist machine constantly needs to suck more and more out of working class people. And capitalist bosses always seek to create a layer of poverty stricken people who are so desperate for work that they will accept working under the worst conditions. This can then be used to undermine workplace rights for all workers. As for the mainstream politicians, they kowtow to these big business owners who are the people really running this country.

What the Greens were offering on February 5 was a parliamentarist strategy – which basically amounts to … vote for them! They are indeed the one party currently represented in parliament that is, at least, formally opposing the dumping of single parents onto Newstart. However, the Greens have little ability to actually fight against such attacks on the poor because they accept the fundamental cause of these attacks – the ownership of the decisive sections of the economy by a small class of profit-driven exploiters. Indeed, although the Greens, as environmentalists, have a particular dislike for the mining bosses, they do not even pretend to stand for the particular interests of the working class against the capitalist bosses in general. It turns out that a good part of the Greens’ active base is the “progressive” section of the upper middle-class. As small-l liberals, people in this social layer are quite happy to complain about the aggressive right-wing stance of many of the big capitalist bosses yet are completely loyal to the social structure that those capitalists have created – a social structure that is seeing these upper-middle class “progressives” sitting very comfortably … thank you very much.  Furthermore, the Greens also directly represent a layer of the actual capitalist upper class – in particular parts of the service sector bosses and some of the non-mining, new industry big wigs. Indeed, prior to the 2010 federal elections, one such capitalist, Graeme Wood who has extracted a nearly $400 million fortune from exploiting the hundreds of employees working at his Wotif online travel company gave the Greens a whopping $1.6 million donation – the largest single donation in Australian political history.

Thus, beholden to a section of the capitalists, singing the tune of upper-middle class elements comfortable with the current social order and with no program to mobilise the working class against the rich exploiting class, the Greens in office would, just like the ALP, subordinate themselves to the needs of the corporate elite. The way that ALP politicians have dealt with the issue of the Parenting Payment provides a vivid illustration of how a “progressive” party that is unwilling to challenge the power of the capitalists behaves when in government. Would you believe that when the previous federal Liberal government stopped new applicants from getting the Parenting Payment in 2006, the ALP actually opposed the measure? Yet, once in government and thus compelled to administer the system “responsibly” in the interests of the big business bosses, the ALP not only maintained this measure but, as we now know, has made it even harsher. Given that the Greens are also committed to “responsibly” administering the capitalist order, can we be sure that even if the Greens were to become the dominant part of a new Greens-ALP coalition government – or even won elections outright – they would repeal these cruel policies? Don’t bet too much on it! After all, the Greens agreed to enter a defacto coalition with the ALP in 2010 on the basis of an agreement that said not a single word about getting Howard’s policy on the Parenting Payment repealed – nor, for that matter, anything else of substance in the interests of working class people. And goodness knows they had the power, as the fate of a hung election actually hang dangling in the balance, to extract whatever concessions they wanted from the ALP at this moment. The Greens stuck to their coalition with the ALP throughout the period when the ALP government threw a new group of single parents off the Parenting Payment in the 2011 budget and then after the latest cruel measure was first announced in the May 2012 Budget. It is only last month, some whole nine months after the Gillard government first announced that it would throw onto Newstart the single parents with children over eight still receiving the Parenting Payment that the Greens have, at least in a formal sense, ended their alliance with Labor. Furthermore, even though the attack on single mothers was mentioned by the Greens as one of the reasons for the divorce it was only noted as a secondary reason. Indeed, the real reason for the “split” was that the Greens realised that it was better for their electoral prospects to distance themselves from the ALP. Meanwhile, the Greens have promised to vote with the government on supply bills until the September election, effectively keeping the defacto alliance with Labor in place. This hardly sounds like a party truly determined to crush the attacks on low-income, single mothers!

So if a strategy of lobbying mainstream politicians and campaigning for the Greens is not the way to go, what strategy is needed? What is necessary is to mobilise a social force powerful enough to push back the rich ruling class whom the mainstream politicians serve. That force is the organised workers movement. A glimpse of the potential power of this movement to fight against injustice was seen in the campaign of strikes and demonstrations by the ASU and other trade unions during 2010-11 to fight for higher pay for community sector workers. This campaign was rightly fought as a struggle also for Equal Pay for Equal Work since the largely female community sector workers were paid considerably less than male workers doing similar work in other industries. Although the pro-ALP union officials did not unleash the kind of militant industrial action that could have delivered a real knockout victory for the campaign, the stopworks and mass rallies that did take place were enough to win a partial victory that will see the pay of community sector workers gradually increased over a number of years.

If the industrial muscle of the union movement was mobilised today alongside the determination of low-income single mothers to fight for justice, it could be the beginning of a fight back by the working class and poor against years of attacks on their rights. There is a real possibility to build such a movement because it is in the very interests of the entire working class to oppose the slashing of payments to low-income people. It only takes one decision to slash jobs by their greedy bosses and many a worker could end up in the same desperate situation that low-income single parents and those more generally on Newstart are facing. Furthermore, when workers realise how vulnerable their lives will become if they get sacked, it makes them less likely to stand up to their bosses and this undermines union organising and workers rights struggles. That is why a movement must be urgently built that will fight to not only repeal the latest attack on single mothers but will also demand a massive increase in the payments received by all low-income single parents and, indeed, all of the unemployed. This should be combined with other demands in the interests of the poor such as for a massive increase in public housing, for the abolition of all fees for public school students (including for excursions and for computer use), for free dental care, for a big increase in resources for public hospitals and so much more. Of course, faced with such demands the mainstream politicians will yell: we cannot let the budget deficit rise it will cause chaos! To this we will say: yes, that is why your masters, the capitalist bigwigs, must be made to pay for all these social programs out of the spectacular profits they have been extracting out of workers’ labour!

Fight for WORK For All on full pay!

Any struggle to fight for the rights of the poor must ultimately be connected to a struggle for jobs for all. For what unemployed people really want are not welfare payments or insulting work-for-the-dole “jobs” but real jobs with decent pay and full union protections. This has not stopped this ALP government, like previous Liberal Party governments, from insinuating that unemployed people have a problem with the work ethic. They claim that the welfare cuts they have imposed are aimed at spurring people back into work. If these arrogant ruling class politicians even believe what they are saying they must be in a state of self delusion! For almost everyone who has ever done it hard knows that the reason people are unemployed is because the jobs are just not there. And the sole reason that the jobs are not available is because the greedy corporate bosses are constantly trying to slash their labour costs to maximise profits. Just look at the companies that have announced major job cuts in the last few months. Take Origin Energy. Last financial year its owners made a whopping $980 million profit. However, that was not enough for them so this year Origin is in the process of slashing 850 jobs. Meanwhile, in the last three months, building services giant Boral made a series of announcements of job cuts that amounted to over a 1,000, this despite making a profit last financial year of $177 million.

Given the profit obsession of the capitalist business owners, it is often single mothers who find it the hardest to get into the workforce. Firstly, bosses are often unwilling to allow single mothers the work times and flexibility that will allow them to both work and look after their children which is essential given the difficulty in obtaining affordable childcare. Furthermore, capitalists, thinking only of the bottom line, are usually averse to spending the resources to train or retrain a single mother who may have spent years out of the industrial workforce while busy with the essential job of bringing up children.

The starting point for any struggle for jobs must be solid strike action backed by picket lines to defeat job cuts at places like Origin Energy and Boral. Furthermore, there must be built a broader movement – uniting all workers and unemployed people – that demands that the capitalist bosses take on and train more workers at the expense of their profits. Such a mass campaign backed by militant industrial action would fight to force the governments serving the bosses into a concession by demanding the institution of specific laws prescribing minimum required increases in labour force that profitable – or formerly profitable – enterprises must make. Now, in response to such demands, the corporate elite will surely scream: if our profits are cut we will stop investing and the economy will collapse! They will be no doubt fully backed up in this by their servants in the pro-capitalist mainstream political parties. The top bureaucrats of various government departments will also echo these “concerns.” Meanwhile, the courts would pronounce our demands “unconstitutional” and police would try to attack our strike pickets and mass rallies. However, to all of them we will respond: if your system cannot provide jobs and a decent life for all of us then it is your system that has to go! We will sweep away your fake “democratic” parliament, your bureaucratic organs and your “justice”/legal system that all serve only you – the rich exploiting class – and replace them with a new state constructed to serve working class people. This will enable us to rip the industry, mines, banks, transport systems and communications infrastructure out of the hands of the capitalists and put it all into the collective hands of all working class people. Then natural resources and the labour of workers will be used not to produce fabulous profits for a few but to finally provide for a decent life for each and everyone. In such a socialist system, unemployment would be non-existent. This is not only because an economy in the hands of the masses would want to ensure that everyone has the right to work but because in an economy seeking to maximise benefits for the people, it makes absolutely no sense to waste people’s potential for mental and physical labour by failing to find them meaningful work.
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If we don’t succeed in winning such a socialist system then the ever worsening attacks on the poor that we are seeing in Australia today will not be our greatest fear. For we will be threatened by the danger that the irrational capitalist system could undergo a catastrophic collapse that would throw a large proportion of the working class into the extreme poverty that many low-income single parents are already facing today. This is what is happening right now in several capitalist countries in Europe and elsewhere. In Greece, Spain, Portugal and other parts of Europe spiralling unemployment combined with brutal austerity measures that have slashed social programs have led to a huge increase in homelessness. In both Greece and Spain, the official unemployment rate is now over 26% (the real unemployment rate being even higher.) Right now in Greece, nearly three out of every five people under the age of 25 who want to work are out of a job! If Australia is not yet in the same situation, it is mainly because purchases by China’s booming socialistic state-owned enterprises have kept the economy here afloat. However, even socialistic China will not be able to hold up the capitalist Australian economy forever. Ultimately, only by sweeping away this capitalist system can we avoid in the long term being hit with a Greece-style collapse.

Unshackle the Working Class Movement From Ties to the ALP

For there to be a real fight back to defend the rights of the poor and the entire working class then there needs to be a radical change in the political orientation that leads the union movement. Currently, our unions are led by pro-ALP officials who subordinate the unions to the goal of assisting the ALP to get elected to office. The hope is that once in government, the ALP will deliver some benefits for working class people. However, this has proven to be an utterly bankrupt strategy. It is true that unlike the openly anti-union Liberals, many ALP politicians would prefer it if they could deliver some modest gains for their working class base. However, the logic of accepting the capitalist order means that even this they cannot deliver. Just recall the whole sad saga of the mining tax. Originally, Kevin Rudd when prime minister planned to introduce a so-called Resource Super-Profits Tax. It was very weak but a small part of the revenues from the tax was slated to be used to benefit working class people in some very modest way.  This was, however, way too much for the mining bosses and their mates in the Murdoch media. They leveraged their massive wealth to launch an expensive advertising and media campaign against the tax. ALP heavies were so spooked by this campaign and so worried that the mining bosses would sabotage economic expansion as a form of corporate protest that they dumped Rudd as prime minister even as he was preparing to buckle to the mining bosses himself! The newly-installed prime minister, Gillard, then made sure that her very first act was to completely water down the original tax. It has now turned out that the new “tax” is so diluted that in its first six months’ of operation it has allowed the owners of fabulously wealthy BHP, Rio Tinto and Xstrata to get away without, barely, paying a cent!

Today, with a federal election just six months away, the pro-ALP union officials are doing their best to downplay opposition to the cruel cutback of payments to low-income single parents. In the meantime they are working overtime to hold back any strike struggles that could disrupt Labor’s election hopes. This anti-struggle approach is disastrous to low-income single mothers, to workers facing job losses at Boral, Qantas, Origin Energy etc and, indeed, to the whole working class. That is why we in Trotskyist Platform fight to bring an understanding to working class people that none of the current parliamentary parties should be supported at the upcoming election – either openly or in a backhanded way. Of course, no working class person with any political consciousness is going to support the aggressively anti-poor and racist politician, Tony Abbott. But neither should we be supporting the ALP.  From the Rudd/Gillard government’s maintenance of the decisive aspects of Howard’s Workchoices, to the recent slashing of payments to single parents, the ALP government has proven to be an anti-working class government. As for the Greens, they may oppose some of the most extreme reactionary policies of the Liberals and the ALP, yet as defacto coalition partners with the ALP over much of the last two and a half years they bear responsibility for most of the attacks on the poor that have gone down. Furthermore, for every politically aware working class person who ends up voting for the Greens – a party that includes capitalists and does not even pretend to stand for the explicit class interests of workers – the working class degrades its understanding of the basic truth that only those who openly stand for the class interests of workers against the capitalists can even be under consideration as being worthy of any support.

In response to our policy, social democrats argue that as much as the ALP has done to harm the working class and the poor, it should be supported as a lesser evil to the right-wing Liberals. Such an argument can only breed defeatism. Imagine a school where the mass of students are facing a group of bullies who used to be their friends. However, now a new gang of bullies who came from another school is threatening to take over as top dogs. The existing bullies then say to the mass of students: support us against the new bullies because we will at least punch you in the guts softer than the new lot. Should students simply accept this – just like workers should accept voting for Labor? Or shouldn’t they say: no, we will neither support you nor the new lot! You can slug it out but we are going to organise to resist whichever bully emerges as top dog and are not going to divert from this task by getting tied up with one lot of bullies. Let’s not be despondent! Let’s get organised to resist whichever government gets elected to administer capitalism!

Reformist leftists then throw at us: if you carry out such a policy and it is a close election, the non-vote for the ALP by people influenced by your agitation could end up being the decisive factor in swinging the result to Abbott. To this we say: for every pro-working class person, who naturally hates Abbott, whom we convince not to vote for the ALP either because we’ve demonstrated that no party that submits to the capitalist order can really offer a way forward, the overall political understanding of the working class will rise. Hence, the working class will better be able to resist the inevitable attacks of whichever party does get elected in September.

It is worth noting that already there are many working class people who refuse to vote for any of the current parliamentary parties. For example, in the last federal election in the heavily “ethnic”, south-western Sydney working class seat of Blaxland (which includes suburbs like Auburn, Fairfield and Bankstown) over 14% of people who showed up to vote ended up “voting” informally ie effectively rejecting every candidate on the ballot (see the Australian Electoral Commission website for the 2010 election results.) This was more than twice the vote for the Greens in that seat! Another 10% of people risked fines by not voting at all. Notably, in the seat of Blaxland, the informal vote alone was 58% higher than in the previous election. Now, to be sure, the informal vote could represent people coming from a whole lot of directions including some who are just politically demoralised. However, it is undoubted that a proportion of informal “voters” would be politically aware workers who are suitably opposed to the Liberals but who realise too that the ALP are sell-outs of the working class. That this is the case is supported by the fact that the informal “vote” is much lower in wealthier areas. For example, in the Upper North Shore seat of Bradfield, which includes rich suburbs like Turramurra, Pymble and Wahroonga, the informal “vote” was only just over 4%.

Clearly, an authentic socialist party would seek to make a connection with those who for pro-working class reasons joined the nearly quarter of the electorate in the seat of Blaxland who either showed up to “vote” informally or did not show up at all. We will say to these people: We applaud the fact that you did not vote for any of the capitalist parliamentary parties and we are urging the same stance too. We say we should not be despondent either. We cannot rely on any of the parties running government to make working class people’s lives better but we can win gains by unleashing the industrial power of the working class in militant action. To make our struggle more powerful we need to unite the demands of the workers movement for better working conditions and against job cuts with the demands of all the poor and downtrodden like single mothers who largely depend upon government welfare for their family’s sheer survival.

Unity of working class people and the poor against the exploiting class is what we need. This unity must extend also to guest workers and to workers overseas. Unity of workers of the world is especially essential to defeat anti-working class attacks by the likes of  corporate giants like BHP, Rio Tinto and Qantas that have operations in many countries around the world. To defend against exploitation of 457 Visa guest workers and to defeat efforts to use the scheme to undermine working conditions, the workers movement must reach out in solidarity to these foreign workers. It must fight for 100% union coverage, for the guest workers to have the same working conditions as local workers and for them to have the full rights of citizens so that the threat of deportation cannot be used to intimidate these workers from standing up to the bosses.

Yet this is not at all the emphasis of the current leaders of the ACTU. They are, instead, focussed on demanding that “Aussie workers get jobs first.” This is not only divisive but violates the most basic tenet of unionism: Workers should not compete with their fellow workers for favoured treatment by the bosses. The current union tops’ strategy does nothing positive for the fight for jobs. All it does is leave workers of different countries squabbling with each other over who should get first preference while the capitalist bosses in their various countries are laughing all the way to the bank. Moreover, it harmfully makes out that the cause of unemployment is that some workers are getting the jobs instead of others when in fact the real problem is that the profit-driven bosses are slashing jobs instead of hiring and training workers. The only way we are going to force capitalist “employers” to stop cutting jobs and start hiring is through the method of class struggle. Yet the starting point for such action is workers unity – not competition for favoured treatment.    

There is another thing that is very destructive about the ACTU’s campaign for “Aussie workers first.” And that is that the campaign naturally fuels nationalism and inevitably also racism. Such nationalism and racism ranks alongside illusions in ALP parliamentarism as the greatest political obstacle to the masses fighting for their rights. For nationalism and racism divert all the masses anger at unemployment, welfare cuts, lack of affordable housing, deteriorating public services etc onto targets that have no responsibility for these problems at all – like refugees and guest workers. Meanwhile, they turn the fire away from the real culprits – the capitalist exploiters. That is why it is essential that the working class movement undercuts all efforts by the capitalists to divide and divert their ranks with racism. To do so it must positively mobilise to fight for the rights of 457 Visa guest workers, to demand freedom and full citizenship rights for refugees and to crush violent, far right racist groups.

Unleash the Class Struggle in the Fight For Women’s Emancipation

As smug ALP and Liberal/National politicians consider how much the cutting of single parent payments will affect the Budget bottom line, single parents themselves are already suffering the effects of the measure. Many single mothers are being driven into demoralisation and depression by the cuts. Many will face social isolation through not being able to afford to take part in social activities or even to afford the transport to get to events. The children in these families face falling behind at school and isolation from their peers as their parents will struggle to afford to pay school computer-use fees and fees for school excursions, let alone fees for participating in sports teams or for attending music lessons or any extra-curricular activities at all. Some of those parents in the most desperate situation may turn to petty crime to provide for their children. This could become the start of a rapid downward spiral. The rich people’s justice system that they may get caught up in is cruelly unsympathetic to the poor.

Perhaps the most dangerous effect of the ALP’s cut to single parent payments is that it could force some single mothers to enter into, or maintain, relationships with more economically secure men who happen to treat them badly – or who are even violent towards them – just to help eke out an existence. This fact makes a mockery of Julia Gillard’s pretensions to be concerned with the rights of women. Last October, when Gillard attacked Tony Abbott’s misogyny, her speech understandably received enthusiastic praise from mostly middle class women. She probably believed much of what she said. However, regardless of her subjective views the reality that she is administering capitalism means that not only does she help perpetuate the oppression of women but, as we see with her slashing of the single parent payment, Gillard is actually intensifying it.

Marxists understand that key to ending misogyny is winning women’s economic independence. This is obviously crucial on an individual level – for example, by allowing women to select their partners without being influenced by any economic compulsion. However, the society-wide effect is just as important. Only when women are fully economically independent and able to fully participate in economic and political life will attitudes to women and the way women are treated by men also change. Backward, male chauvinist behaviour and attitudes that are all too prevalent in Australian society will gradually retreat and wither away. That is why it is crucial to fight for jobs for all and for equal pay between men and women workers. We must also call for free abortion on demand and freely available access to all forms of contraception. To allow women the greatest chance to participate in economic life, we must fight for free 24-hour childcare, for free school lunches at all public schools and for after-school sports, music and cultural activities provided for free by the state alongside free transport from school to these activities. All these demands, however, clash head-on with the current system because the capitalists who control the economy are not going to want to sacrifice their profits to make these social programs and full employment possible. Thus, while we can make headway in women’s emancipation through winning concessions through struggle under capitalism, we will only fully open the door to women’s complete liberation when the capitalist system is replaced by a socialist one. A socialist society will recognise all the responsibilities and hard work that being a mother and/or a housekeeper entail and will ensure that women have complete economic independence. It will ensure that all the tasks of housework and child rearing that today are almost exclusively in the domain of women within family confines can be taken up as the collective responsibility of society. Subsequently, this will allow each and every woman the opportunity to fully participate in all areas of economic, social and political life.

However, women will not only be a major beneficiary of socialism. Working class women, who have the most to gain by ripping up this current system, will also be key drivers of the struggle to overthrow capitalism. The most powerful example of this occurred on International Women’s Day in 1917 in Russia. Then in the Russian capital, tens of thousands of mainly women textile workers walked off the job to demand bread. Their struggle sparked off a general strike and a revolt against the tsarist monarchy. The resulting revolutionary period that was opened up culminated six months later in the October Socialist Revolution. Ninety-six years later this struggle remains the shining path for the fight for women’s emancipation and for the liberation of the masses more generally.

A more modest example of the powerful role that working class women are destined to play was seen last December in the strike for better pay by Sargents Pie factory workers in the Western Sydney suburb of Colyton. Women workers at the factory joined their male counterparts in playing a prominent role in the strike picket line. Although the strike was before long called off by union officials, it gave a small taste of the potential militancy of low-paid workers. Often concentrated in manufacturing and warehousing sectors, low paid workers have the least to lose in opposing the current social order. These workers, especially when working in work sites that bring together female and male workers and workers of many ethnicities, can be the strongest living bridge connecting the organised workers movement with other oppressed sectors such as low-income single mothers, the unemployed and members of “ethnic” communities.

The cruel attacks of capitalism, exemplified by the ALP government’s slashing of single parent payments, will inevitably bring the masses into struggle. The question is: On what program will the masses respond? We must build a political organisation that will fight to ensure that the masses respond on a program that can win – a program of militant class struggle. Such a program would be based on unity of the working class with all the oppressed, the unity of workers of all nations and the busting of illusions in “progressive”, pro-capitalist parliamentary parties. Smash the ALP government’s attack on single parent payments! Massively increase the Newstart Allowance and Parenting Payment! Permanent jobs for all at full pay! For free 24 hour childcare! In fighting for these gains today, let us gain confidence for the future revolutionary struggle for a workers state tomorrow!