Big fight ahead!

Vanguard October 2013 p. 1
Alice M.

The recent parliamentary elections again proved to be a sideshow of illusions and distractions from the truth that the real power lays not in parliament, but in the boardrooms of the  biggest local and overseas corporations.

The election spin and vacuous performances have now been put back into the ruling class magicians’ box of tricks until the next time the circus of state and federal elections comes to town.   

The ruling class of monopoly capital uses all means, including parliament, to weaken and dissipate the people’s organised resistance to its attacks on workers’ and union rights, jobs and people’s livelihoods, with their policies of destruction of the environment and cuts to public education, public health and community services.

Monopoly owned parliament, the legal system and the media are the apparatuses which the ruling class uses to divert, rein in and suppress peoples’ resistance.

It is no coincidence that the demands and instructions issued by the core of the Australian ruling class, the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Mining and Minerals Council and the Murdoch press, throughout the election period, come at a time of an impending new wave of global capitalist crisis.

Foreign and local big business is making preparations to escalate its attacks on the working people even more. Plans are afoot to slash even more jobs, to cut wages and conditions,  to implement harsher cuts to public spending on community services, and to divert additional public funds to big business demands for more roads and ports.

Business Council demands to expand and increase the GST and shift even more of the burden of the economic crisis on to the people have not gone away.

Fight back to win

They understand that the only obstacle standing in the way of their plans is people’s mass resistance, especially the fight back by the organised, united working class.

Never satisfied, the ruling class of monopoly capital want to make the broader union movement more compliant to big business demands.  Preparations are being made to smash militant unions that have the capacity to inspire and mobilise the entire working class movement.  That’s why attacks on the most militant unions, like the CFMEU, are so ruthless.

That’s why the organised working class and its allies must make preparations of our own independently of parliamentary parties, building grass roots organisations and activism that unites and instils confidence in the fighting capacity of the working people, not just to resist monopoly capital attacks, but to fight for a better world.

New Labor – same old rut

For unions and organised workers to direct our energy and enthusiasm into re-building and re-electing the Labor Party will only leave the working class disarmed, disorganised and unprepared.  It is full of danger and will only make it easier for monopoly capital’s onslaught on the working people.   It will dissipate and weaken the organised labour movement and destroy the unity of the working class and the people.

History has repeatedly shown that tying the organised labour movement and the working class to the parliamentary interests of the Labor Party has only resulted in the gutting of the working class and the union movement. We only have to recall the Hawke-Crean-Kelty Accord, Fair Work/Workchoices Lite and most of the continuing oppressive laws of the ABCC – all delivered on behalf of the multinational corporations and international capital.

We must have our own independent fighting agenda that defends and advances the rights and interests of working people and builds a powerful mass movement that goes beyond the cretinism of parliamentary elections and parties, an agenda that offers a vision for a democratic, independent and socialist Australia.