Marxist interventions 3, 2011

Contents

Financial fault lines Ben Hillier abstract | article (PDF)

Contributors

Ben Hillier is a member of Socialist Alternative. He is a contributor to sa.org.au and Marxist Left Review.

Brian Roper teaches Politics at the University of Otago, is a founding member of the International Socialist Organisation (NZ), and has been a political activist in New Zealand since the early 1980s. His most recent book is Prosperity for all? Economic, social and political change in New Zealand since 1935, Thomson, Southbank, 2005). He is currently working on a book entitled The history of democracy, for Pluto Press.

From the editors

This is the third edition of the second version of Marxist Interventions. It began as an archive compiling articles that dealt with capitalism and struggles in and around Australia, over a decade or so. Many of these articles would have been otherwise unavailable to more than a tiny circle of readers. That first version of MI was very useful, but the flow of material largely dried up about five years ago. In response, we re-launched the site as a journal. This allowed us to take initiatives in soliciting material, and to publish two annual editions with articles on a range of important topics, including Australia's peculiar reaction to the global financial crisis, historic industrial struggles, the 1999 Australian intervention in East Timor, and a debate on building socialist organisations.

Over the past year and a half we have endeavoured to sustain this flow of articles but with only modest success. The two articles we are publishing as the third edition, on the interaction between struggles against oppression and over wages and conditions, and the global financial crisis, are valuable. But our inability to secure additional material of a similar standard and usefulness indicate that the journal cannot currently be sustained as an outlet for studies whose main goal is to assist expansion of practical Marxist politics in Australia. At the same time, many writers and potential writers are attracted to another journal which we also support, Marxist Left Review. We believe the most constructive next step is to contribute to that publication.

We thank all the contributors to MI for their efforts and congratulate them on what they have achieved.

Abstracts

The fire last time: the rise of class struggle and progressive social movements in Aotearoa/New Zealand, 1968 to 1977 Brian Roper
A dramatic upsurge in working class struggle, surpassing in magnitude the rise of the Red Feds from 1908 to 1913 and the 1951 Waterfront Front Lockout, took place in New Zealand from the Arbitration Court’s nil general wage order in June 1968 to the union movement’s defeat of the Muldoon Government’s attempted wage freeze in 1976. This article describes and analyses these struggles and their impact on progressive social movements, particularly the anti-war, women’s liberation and Maori protest movements. full article (PDF)

Financial fault lines Ben Hillier
A review of Martijn Konings (ed.) The great credit crash, Verso, London , 2010. full article (PDF)