En Passant

I think the alternative [to joining the Greens] is to build a left wing party based in the working class and on the struggles of today, both economic and political. Our final goal should be not like Labor or the Greens to manage capitalism but to win socialism, the democratic control of society so that production is to satisfy human need, not to make a profit. That is why I am proud to be a member of small socialist group Solidarity in Australia. So let me say to those good Labor Party members fighting for a better world against the Abbott Government and their own leadership, at least consider a socialist alternative like Solidarity. Join us on the streets and in the campaigns for refugees and asylum seekers.

  Anyone else notice a pattern here?

I cannot predict if the Australian working class will abandon Labor and create a radical left party akin to SYRIZA, although the portents are there. My task at the moment is to help build Solidarity, a small group of revolutionaries who believe that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class. If you want to be one part of building for the future today, check us out.

Refugee advocates have called on the parliamentary Labor Party not to support any Coalition legislation aimed at saving offshore processing from a successful High Court challenge. The Human Rights Legal Centre’s challenge seems to have exposed what so many felt for a long time – that offshore processing is illegal. It certainly has exploded the lie that offshore processing is the responsibility of Nauru and PNG.

On asylum seekers Labor has been hoist with their own petard. It would be laughable if it were not so serious. The time has come for Labor to abandon the stink bomb that is their refugee policy and welcome those fleeing war, rape, imprisonment and persecution. I know that will not happen. It is up to refugee activists to continue our long fight to defend asylum seekers. Instead of Labor and Liberal lies, that means, as a start and as Red Cross has shown, telling the truth about our abandoned brothers and sisters and exposing Labor and the government for the liars and criminals they are. It means pointing out too that the government (of whatever neoliberal persuasion) that is attacking workers and the poor also attacks asylum seekers. We are all in this together.

No matter how badly Abbott and co treat asylum seekers, many workers will still have insecure, poorly paid unfulfilling jobs.  Joining in the demonisation of refugees won’t change that and only reinforces and assists the very people who create the rotten system that gives us rotten jobs and enables them to worsen our conditions. While the one sided class war the bosses have waged successfully against us cannot go on for ever, mass class struggle isn’t going to break out in the immediate future. Instead we may well see Captain Crook and his listing ship Team Australia win the next election on the back of demonising asylum seekers, MUSLIM!!!!! terrorists and lifestyle choice Aborigines while a pathetic Opposition cheers them on and a cowed labour movement continues its surrender.

Given Labor’s bipartisanship (read capitulation to Abbott’s rabid jingoism, his warmongering and his cult of fear) as well as its neoliberalism, my guess is that the Liberals and the National Party will be ahead in the polls by about mid April.

I have written about the Australian Labor Party and its changing nature viewed through the Minerals Resource Rent Tax disaster. I argue basically that it is moving from a capitalist workers’ party to a capitalist party. Passant, J. (2014). The minerals resource rent tax: the Australian Labor Party and the continuity of change. Accounting Research […]

  From Dave Riley. You can find more at the facebook site of Ratbag Media

Tristan Ewins has written a piece called “Debate on tax and ‘small government’ flares again” in the ALP Socialist Left Forum, with a revised version in Online Opinion. In it he makes some sensible suggestions about tax re-jigging that could raise tens of billions from the rich and powerful although much more could be added to the program such as a net wealth tax on the top ten percent without impacting at all on the capital accumulation process. It is worth a read.