The statements on these
pages reflect the position of the CPA (M-L) on many of the issues currently
confronting the Australian people. More detailed explanations and arguments can
be found in the Party Programme and Resolutions of the 13th
Congress, which are available on the internet at www.vanguard.net.au
US
alliance and military bases
US imperialism is the main
instigator of imperialist wars for the control of resources, markets and for
its monopoly capital investments across the globe. The new US imperialist
military expansion and provocations in the Asia Pacific region are a threat to
peace and national sovereignty of countries and people in the region. Australia’s
military integration into the US imperialist war machine assists the US to wage
predatory wars against people and nations. The CPA (M-L) seeks to build active connections with the broad
united front movement to kick out all foreign military bases and troops from
Australia and across the Asia-Pacific.
Free Trade, TPP
Fair Trade between countries must be based on
mutual benefit and mutual respect, not imperialist domination. The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership
Agreement is all about an unequal
partnership between countries in the Asia-Pacific region and the dominant
power, the United States. It is all about facilitating the penetration of
powerful US corporations into markets across the region. They seek to do this
by sweeping aside local laws and protections that benefit the people. The CPA (M-L) supports all
struggles of the people to expose and reject the TPPA, as it betrays the
interests of the Australian people and the interests of the people in the
Asia-Pacific region.
Manufacturing
The
manufacturing industry in Australia is being decimated. The globalised economy
being foisted upon the people of the world by imperialism sets an agenda for
plunder on an unprecedented world scale, driven by the escalating rivalry
between the US, China, Europe, Japan and Russia. It has ignited a desperate
frenzy to seize and control the resources and markets of lesser nations such as
Australia. The CPA (M-L) supports all struggles by manufacturing workers, unions, employers and
communities in opposing the foreign takeovers and the systematic running down
of Australia’s industrial base.
Leading role of the Working Class
Based
on our analyses of classes and class contradictions in Australia, the CPA (M-L)
is of the view that the principal contradiction in Australia’s class struggle
is between US economic and political domination and the overwhelming majority
of the people, with the working class as the leading class in the
anti-imperialist struggle for an independent, democratic and socialist
Australia. When mobilised and infused with the far-sighted, revolutionary class
consciousness and struggle it is the only class that has the capacity and power
to liberate itself and the people from the exploitation and brutality of
international monopoly capital (imperialism).
Environment and Climate
Change
The CPA (M-L)
supports the many struggles of the Australian people for environmental
sustainability, led by the indigenous people’s struggle against the destruction
of their lands by rapacious mining multinationals. We support the struggles of
workers, community groups, small business and farmers for environmental
sustainability, and to make the multinationals pay for the transition to a
renewable energy economy. We recognise that the united struggle of the people
can make short term advances to reduce pollution and protect the environment.
However, it is only by winning an independent Australia under the leadership of
the working class that the people can ensure an environmentally sustainable
country.
Education
The CPA (M-L)
supports education workers in resisting the neo-liberal push to further
privatise education. We support the
vision of a public education system designed to meet the holistic needs of
students to develop as empowered and ethical citizens. Instead of importing failed ideas from the
imperialist heartland where education systems are performing badly, the education
system should provide teachers with sufficient time and support for
collaborative practises such as peer classroom observation, lesson preparation
teams, and school-based research groups. Public education workers are the key
to building a united campaign with parents, students, the public sector and the
wider community.
China
The emergence and
consolidation of private capitalist accumulation from the exploitation of
workers and peasants, and the export of capital, mean that previous certainties
about socialism in China are now obsolete. Our view is that forces working for
the further entrenchment of capitalism in China have the upper hand in the
Communist Party of China. The CPA (M-L) notes the significant growth of Chinese
investment in the Australian economy, and will always put the interests of the
Australian working class at the forefront of our activities and demands. The
CPA (M-L) will base its response to international affairs on the basis of
Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.
Treaty, Land Rights
The CPA (M-L)
believes that there can be no genuine reconciliation between the ATSI peoples
and the rest of the Australian people without a Treaty acknowledging ATSI
people’s prior ownership of this country, and that the invasion of ATSI lands
was essentially accomplished by force and violence. The Treaty must acknowledge
ATSI communities’ rights to self-determination on the basis of real and lasting
Land Rights.
The current
Australian Constitution is out-dated and must be replaced by an
anti-imperialist, democratic and republican Constitution that includes a Bill
of Rights defining and enshrining the rights and liberties of all Australians.
Indigenous
struggle
For more than 40,000 years, Aboriginal people were the sole
custodians of the land and all its natural wealth, which they respected and
protected for future generations. It was this relationship to the country and
protection of the natural environment by the Aboriginal people that the
colonisers and imperialists have been trying to wipe out with the successive
government policies (Labor and Liberal) that serve the foreign and local mining
monopolies and multinationals.
The present struggles against the racist
Intervention and seizure of their mineral rich lands by mining monopolies are
not deterring Aboriginal communities from continuing the fight. They have wide
support from many Australians.
Income Management
Labor’s extension of
the welfare quarantining, Basics Card approach to people who need dignity and
self-empowerment comes at the same time as Liberal Joe Hockey’s call to “end
the era of entitlement” which attacks the same poor and marginalised
communities from yet another direction. It shows that between social democracy
and outright conservatism there is only service to the rich, and punishment for
the poor.
Asylum seekers, Refugees
Asylum seekers and refugees hoping to settle
in Australia are mainly escaping wars of aggression and occupation, poverty and
oppression created by the brutality of imperialism. They should be treated
humanely and decently. No asylum seeker should be locked up in prison camp
conditions, off-shore or in Australia, but instead be provided with proper
housing and support in Australia while their position is being considered. There is no real solution to the global
plight of refugees whilst the world and its people continue to be plundered and
exploited by capitalism and imperialism.
Nationalisation
The issue of nationalisation
raises the prospect of socialism. It demonstrates the fact that the capitalist
class is not essential to society functioning and producing; in Engels’ words
it “proves itself a superfluous class”. The CPA (M-L) supports the revolutionary
nationalisation of key industries, such
as gas, water, electricity, telecommunications, banking and mineral resources to benefit the people, to raise
living standards, to create secure, sustainable and non-polluting jobs. In
continuing the revolutionary transition to socialism, it is essential that the
working class exercises control over the pace and extent of change through
participatory democracy – at the workplace level, in the communities, in the
government.
Trade unions
Unions express the collective power of workers in the
ceaseless struggle to gain and defend the best terms and conditions within the
capitalist system of exploitation. Trade union struggles in themselves do not
challenge the fundamental economic, social and political system of capitalism. Nevertheless, unions are extremely
important centres of workers’ resistance and a rallying point for wider
sections of the people.
Big business employs the full force of the state –
governments, legal system, media, and ultimately the police and army. Against
this, fighting trade unions rely on empowering workers in the workplace, and
forging solidarity across the trade union movement and community.
Parliament, elections
Parliamentary
democracy enshrines the sacred freedoms of the capitalist class – to own the
means of production, land and resources, to trade freely, to exploit and sack
workers, and to enforce their class rule by a legal system ultimately supported
by armed forces and other elements of the state apparatus. Parliament is a
“talking shop” which monitors and tinkers with the engine of capitalism. The
driving seat is occupied by unelected people; monopoly owners and shareholders
of key industries, banking and financial executives, and high officials of the
public service, police, armed forces and other bureaucrats, who ensure the
continuity of the system, regardless of elections.
Socialist democracy
The CPA (M-L)’s conception of socialism is based on
fundamental principles:
The working class controls a completely new state
apparatus – a workers’ army, police, courts and other institutions of state,
including the administrative bureaucracy.
There is a centrally planned economy with long-term
development goals to meet the needs of the people.
There is sectoral and representational democracy in
national, regional and local assemblies – to frame policies, and to implement
and monitor them.
There is vigorous and deep-seated participatory
democracy in workplaces and communities.
The role of the revolutionary party/parties is to
guide and empower the masses in achieving these goals, continuing the
revolutionary process of transforming society to liberate the full potential of
all people.
Women
Women’s rights under
capitalism are subject to the law of uneven development, with some improvements
made, then a move backwards. This vulnerability of women, and particularly of
working women, will never be entirely eradicated under capitalism. Over the
last decade, women have started to go backwards again in their quest for
equality with men.
Imperialism is dictating
that Australian workers must have their wages lowered and their rights in the
workplace reduced. All workers are under attack, but women are additionally
vulnerable.
There is no alternative
solution in the pursuit of equality for women, outside of the creation of an
independent and socialist Australia.
Banks
The
big four banks in Australia; ANZ, Westpac, NAB and the Commonwealth effectively
monopolise the Australian banking system.
With
the deregulation of the finance sector from 1979-84, the government’s responsibility
for the supply of money and of interest rates was taken away. The Reserve Bank
is now independent of government control, and the private banks act
independently of Reserve Bank decisions on official interest rates. This has
facilitated the free flow of speculative capital and loans from the world’s
wealthiest institutions.
Banks
should serve the working people, small farmers and producers, not profiteers
and parasites.
Nationalise
the banks!
Multiculturalism
Migrant
workers have always stood at the centre of Australia’s working class struggles
and activism, going back to the days of Eureka Stockade.
In
Australia today, migrant and refugee workers predominate in the unskilled and
semi-skilled jobs with the harshest conditions and lowest wages, such as meat
processing and storage, warehousing, process work, and cleaning. Many are
involved in workplace struggles for job security, better wages and conditions
and union rights.
The
CPA (M-L) works to unite the great majority of Australian people from all cultural,
racial and religious backgrounds in the struggle against multinational
corporations’ domination of Australia and for anti-imperialist independence and
socialism.
International
Movement
The CPA (M-L) stands for
the unity of the world’s working class and supports the struggles of the
oppressed nations and peoples. We reject
the phony “patriotism” of the capitalist class which is simply a mask for that
class’s betrayal of national interests and its continued acceptance of control
by imperialism. We uphold
anti-imperialist national sentiment which is, at heart, proletarian
internationalism under the conditions of workers’ existence in a client state
of imperialism.
Left
forces in Australia
The CPA (M-L) is striving
to apply the principles of Marxism-Leninism to Australian conditions. It takes
its theoretical guidance from the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao
Zedong and our founding Chairperson, Ted Hill. It seeks truth from facts. It
relies on collective analysis to discern the principal and secondary
contradictions in situations and social and political issues, and applies
democratic centralism in formulating the strategies and tactics that arise from
this.
The CPA (M-L) regards
reformism, revisionism and sectarianism as the most harmful trends in the
working class movement.
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