En Passant

Kevin Rudd is once again leader of the Labor Party writes Mick Armstrong in Socialist Alternative. But the ALP remains an absolute disaster zone. Labor is still likely to face a devastating defeat in the upcoming elections – defeat at the hands of Tony Abbott, one of the most despised Liberal Party leaders ever. If Labor can’t beat a disgusting reactionary like Abbott, whose whole social outlook is completely out of kilter with the mass of workers in Australia, then it should immediately be put out of its misery.

Women like Gillard or Thatcher running the ship of the capitalist state make no difference to the dynamic drivers of the system – the need to extract surplus value from productive workers, women as cheap carers and raisers of the next generation of workers, and all that flows from that – the second class citizenship of women, the low wages, the systemic sexism.

What has made a difference is the organised struggles against oppression, especially militant action by unions. Julia Gillard is part of the problem. Ordinary working women are part of the solution.

The ALP has lost its working class heartland, not because of who leads it but because of its rotten neoliberal policies. Abandon the neoliberal policies and personalities, Labor.

The choice for Labor is the Hugo Chavez route or oblivion. Goodbye Labor.

Although one angry student sneaking into a meeting to harass the prime minister isn’t going to change the world, it’s important to show that wherever racists, homophobes and ruling class stooges like Gillard go, they will be challenged.

The threat of contempt action against the nurses’ union is an assault not only on nurses but on every single worker in Australia, and our already very restricted right to strike. It is happening under Gillard Labor’s anti-worker ‘Fair Work’ Act. The trade union movement has the historic responsibility and opportunity to defend nurses and turn the tide in the one sided 30 year class war of the bosses against us by fighting back and defending the right to strike. When they jail a nurse for striking it’s a rich pig’s country still. Hands off our nurses, Baillieu and Gillard.

We live in an unjust society. This is a society where bosses take as their own the profits we create. Labour creates value, not capital.

The owners of capital are the real bludgers. But Gillard won’t attack them. She is, like the rest of the ALP, their servant.

Don’t cut services to the poor and workers, Gillard and Swan. Stop spending our money on subsidies to capital. Tax big business and the rich.

The paralysis of generalised capitalist reform – of neoliberalism – that this election has produced will see the ruling class force an election on the Government within the next year unless Labor can find a way to rule in their interests as a class and for particular sections of that class.

Evidently Julia Gillard has the interests of working people and retirees at heart.  So I ask her to explain her role as Employment and Workplace Relations Minister and Deputy Prime Minister for almost 3 years in addressing the gender pay gap? Under Labor it actually increased to 18.2%. So apart from platitudes, what will Prime Minister […]