En Passant

Tim Ginty has written an important and thoughtful article in defence of Labor Party social democracy. (A tale of two campaigns: The Spanish and Australian elections compared. If the ALP wants to avoid a fate similar to the Labor type Socialist Workers Party in Spain (and SYRIZA, the equivalent in Greece, I would add), and avoid losing most of its support base and being outflanked by new more radical political groupings, Tim says Labor ‘must rebuild itself as a genuine party of the left. ‘ Can Labor be rebuilt? This is my reply.

While I think it is fantastic that the likes of Jeremy Corbyn are raising a whole range of issues from taxing the rich to re-nationalising public goods, from cutting billion from defence spending to supporting refugees and recognising Palestine, and by doing that giving hope to the millions disenfranchised by the tweedledee and tweedledum of neoliberal politics, we need to be clear that the real problem is capitalism, not just who manages it and how they do so. In the long term the only way we can win a better society is by us, the vast majority, uniting to overthrow capitalism and organising production democratically to satisfy human need.

The support for Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign is a very good sign but British Labour isn’t the answer, argues Charlie Kimber, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Socialist Worker UK

The reform impasse arises because the essential social democratic desires of the working class, born of the necessity to sell our labour power to survive, conflicts with the needs of capital to extract even more surplus value from us in the form of profits and the like, a profit which we create but which the bosses purloin as our unpaid labour.

According to Oxfam: The combined wealth of the richest 1 percent will overtake that of the other 99 percent of people next year unless the current trend of rising inequality is checked, Oxfam warned today ahead of the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. This is the logic of capitalism. It is irreformable. Revolution […]

If you want to join the fight against the barbarities of capitalism, if you want to fight the system that breeds injustice and inequality, war, racism and homophobia, that sends vulnerable asylum seeks to rot in PNG, or even if you just want to find out more given that Labor is not an option, then you should consider one of the revolutionary socialist groups in Australia like Socialist Alternative.

So while the reality may be, as I have argued elsewhere, that it makes no difference which Labor leader is selling us the shit sandwich of neoliberalism, in the short term it does. The swing to Labor under the newly recycled Rudd expresses workers’ hopes for a better world. Time, and the reality of capitalism, will destroy that illusion but at the moment many of us appear spell bound by the magician whose tricks give us hope.

It is false hope to be sure but it will take workers time and the experience of Rudd in power for longer than a few weeks second time round to understand that.

I have a suggestion for Labor. Abandon neoliberalism. Adopt a radical program like that which Chavez put forward. Tax the rich to improve the lives of the 2.2 million Australians in poverty and fix up the 17% gender gap. Use this money to negotiate a treaty with Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

That of course would just be the opening salvos of a radical program to fundamentally challenge the rule of capital.  It would involve nationalising the banks, mining companies and the other big battalions of capital and massively increase spending on public health, education, transport and social payments and develop a real program to address climate change.

That of course would just be the opening salvos of a radical program to fundamentally challenge the rule of capital.  It would involve nationalising the banks, mining companies, and other big battalions of capital and massively increase spending on public health, education, transport and social payments and develop a real program to address climate change.

Is there an alternative to the failure that is Labor? The need now for a revolutionary socialist workers’ party is great. But we cannot hurry history. Workers will have to learn the lessons of struggle and history, with input from the revolutionary left where we can to patiently explain the way forward and our view of the world.

Labor might be gone but the struggle continues.

Our task is to make the ideas of socialism more widely known, through our propaganda and most importantly though our actions in the campaigns and struggles of the day. This way we can show that the best and most consistent reformers are we revolutionaries.

This gives us the opportunity to put forward to those who are interested in fighting back the reasons why all the different struggles are linked and can only ultimately be won in any real and lasting sense through the overthrow of capitalism.