En Passant

New polling shows that the threat to the Liberals in the Senate in the A.C.T., and indeed to the Greens and Labor, comes from well known Canberra socialist John Passant.

Australia first had Commonwealth and State income taxes in 1915. It is a special type of conservative leader who can propose taking us back a century and claim it is a visionary policy, something for the future. It is nothing of the sort. We workers shouldn’t fall for this pea and thimble trick of higher taxes or underfunded school and hospital systems. There is an alternative – tax those many big businesses avoiding tax and tax the rich. Maybe the $24 billion Turnbull is going to spend on planes that don’t work and the god knows how many billions he is going to spend on submarines could instead better fund public schools and hospitals.

Philip Clark, presenter on Canberra and region ABC Radio, 666, will interview me on Friday morning at 7.15 am about the Turnbull government’s proposal to give the States and Territories the ability to impose income tax or set rates. The details of the proposal are not yet clear.

Under capitalism profit comes before people and the bleaching on the Barrier Reef is one example of that ‘logic’. That logic traps us in fossil fuel production and for example Australian government approval of the Adani coal mine. We can save the planet, and with it the Barrier Reef, if we get rid of the underlying driver of climate change – capitalism. As climate change and its impacts accelerate, Rosa Luxemburg’s stark reminder that our choice is socialism or barbarism rings even truer.

Our bombs are the bombs of your freedom
Raining down our reign
On all, the children, women, men,
We can
Enjoy our freedom in your grave
With your missing body parts
This is our art

The Easter Rising was isolated and defeated. Though the rebels succeeded in taking over key locations in Dublin and declaring an Irish Republic, the rebellion was suppressed after six days of fighting. Its leaders, including Connolly, were captured, put on trial and executed.

But Connolly was correct in thinking that the crisis of the war could be channeled into revolt. In 1917, 10,000 workers rallied in Dublin to show their support for the Russian Revolution, and that year marked the beginning of a radical upsurge in Ireland that lasted until 1923.

James Connolly was an exceptional working-class fighter and anti-imperialist and his ideas and actions continue to be a source of inspiration today.

Richard Seymour in Salvage asks the question ‘What is your solution, then? Or, to put it another way, what if there is no solution to the Daesh massacres?’ Part of his conclusion is that ‘the unwelcome thought begins to insinuate itself — we are going to live in a world with Daesh and its massacres no matter what we do.’

Could the union movement, or rank and file unionists, organise protests in major cities on 18 April, the first sitting day back, in defence of unions and against the Australian Building and Construction Commission Bill?

With growing inequality and austerity has come growing anger, inchoate in Australia but finding a left wing political expression in places like the UK and US in the form of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders. Workers in struggle are the short term solution to the problems of capitalism. Workers in struggle are the long term solution to the problem that is capitalism.

Bernie Sanders has shown radical ideas can find a serious audience in the US. Peter Jones in Australian socialist magazine Solidarity looks at what he stands for and where his campaign for president is headed.