En Passant

The tolerance of violence in sport is a symptom of a far greater malaise involving a largely unseeing society, I write in Independent Australia.

In Independent Australia on Tuesday I discuss the recent tragedies of Orlando and the Jo Cox murder and the systemic violence behind these and other violent incidents.

The real extremists sit in Canberra and in the board rooms across the country. It is not Karen who invaded Iraq, or Afghanistan. It is not Karen who is bombing Syria. It is not Karen killing black men and women in custody. It is not Karen driving Aboriginal people off their land to open it up for big mining companies. It is not Karen killing women in relationships or doing very little about it. It is not Karen increasing inequality and poverty in Australia. It is not Karen attacking Medicare. It is not Karen attacking penalty rates and wages. It is not Karen who is stopping equal love. It is not Karen locking up and abusing thousands of innocent people on Manus Island and Nauru.

The capitalist media reports and emphasises or spins things that reinforce a capitalist world view. To seriously report, let alone investigate, police violence against medics, or domestic violence, might undermine two key pillars of capitalist society – the police and the family.

To fight back against the violence of the system is not assault; it is not violence. It is self-defence. The best self-defence our class has against the bosses’ violent system is to withhold our labour. Stop work to stop the bosses’ budget.

Is there an alternative to this system of violence? Yes. Our class smashing theirs.

The contradiction for the system is that the more profit alcohol companies make through workers drinking more the less fit the working class may be to produce profits for the rest of capital. So capitalism regulates that consumption to some extent.

The more workers who go on strike against the boss, the more class struggle generalises itself across society, the less isolated do workers, including young workers, feel. The struggle can become their drug.

Of course, to overcome the alienation that class society imposes upon workers and the violence, alcoholism and drug dependency that goes with it, we would have to overcome the society that produces it. That is what socialist revolution is about – liberating humanity from its alienation and restoring us to our own humanness.