En Passant

  Writing in Solidarity magazine about anti-politics and the left James Supple, among other things, says: What these examples show is that the mood of disillusionment with the political system is not coherently anti-capitalist or anti-system, and can be drawn behind left reformist political parties or movements. This is because the mood is not simply […]

The fact that over 100000 people turned out across Australia to demonstrate against this Government should give us hope that we can continue the fight and build a mass movement against Abbott and neoliberalism. Let’s try anyway and see what happens.

Gerard Henderson might not be as bright as your average gibbering idiot, but his pug-faced sanctimony is still damned annoying wrote Corey Oakley in Red Flag last week. So giving him an open paddock in which to kick around tired clichés from the culture wars does not exactly count as doing the world a favour. Which is why Morris Schwartz’s Saturday Paper has a lot to answer for.

Why is there so little choice in Australian politics? The neoliberalism of all the parties is the surface answer; lack of class struggle the underlying answer.

Orwell was a committed socialist who wrote not to decry revolution, but to warn against its corruption

For refugees, tomorrow is too late. We need action now, not in a few years time.

Greens, threaten to bring the government down over its cruel and inhuman treatment of asylum seekers. Organise mass civil disobedience to close all detention centres.

Bring your members and supporters onto the streets in their hundreds of thousands to demand the end to mandatory detention. Show some spine for a change.

The battle against injustice is universal. In Australia it is the struggle against our own rulers and the injustices they perpetrate and perpetuate here and overseas. More power to the left of the Greens in their battles for justice, not just for Palestinians but for Australians too.

So why did Labor lose? Neoliberalism. The ALP is one of the two parties of neoliberalism, the idea that the market delivers the best outcomes for society.

The way to break out of the cycle of hope and disillusion is to build a socialist alternative, an organisation committed to a new society in which the cartels of capital no longer rule.

Nick Dyrenfurth is a leftist caricature. In an article in the Weekend Australian called ‘Still meaning left in old idea of the political spectrum’,  Dyrenfurth and tag team mate Tim Soutphommasane conclude that the labels Left and Right (read Labor and Liberal) still have meaning. ‘There is a difference’ they doth protest.  Well yes and […]