Financialisation: fictitious capital and its real impact

 

Financialisation: fictitious capital and its real impact

Written by: Nick G. on 24 April 2026

 

A new Party publication addresses the political economy of finance capital. 

Marx analysed the growing separation of capital from the productive economy, calling such investments “fictitious capital”.  Lenin analysed finance capital’s control over industrial capital and the export of capital as one of the characteristics of imperialism. The separation of finance capital from production in the imperialist era has seen a massive growth in fictitious capital in the new financial arenas of derivatives and cryptocurrencies. The publication analyses this and the damaging impact of finance capital in Australian conditions in respect of interest rates, housing and the privatised water market. It concludes that only independence and socialism will break the hold of imperialist finance capital.

The publication is available as a pdf here: Financialisation+2.pdf

Imperialism's "Global Supply Chains" Exposed

 Written by: Ned K. on 24 April 2026

 

(Source: www.freepik.com)

The closing of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran has exposed for millions of working people around the world to see the fragility of "globalization" and "global supply chains". US imperialism's Trump's decision to attack Iran militarily has been a case of lifting a rock only to drop it in their own feet.

Albanese stupidly but predictably became one of Trump's first cheer leaders when the US war machine started its war on Iran. It wasn't long before he was jet setting to other countries to try and shore up alternative energy and fertiliser supplies to keep the squeaky wheels of capitalism in Australia. 

Closure of oil refineries in Australia over the last 30 years were part of the de-industrialisation of Australia by imperialism. One government after another assured the Australian people that "free trade" and "global supply chains" would more than compensate for the destruction of whole industries including oil refining in Australia.

The actions of one relatively small country, Iran, supported by its people, in blocking the Strait of Hormuz has shown the fragility of the imperialist "world economy" and caused increased hardship to millions of people across the globe.

The Albanese Government is now looking to use taxpayers' money to lure multinational oil barons to build new oil refineries in Australia as well as expand the capacity of the two remaining ones in Australia.

This is unlikely to occur as the biggest oil corporations Exxon Mobil and Chevron are frantically doing deals with African countries to seize their oil reserves both on and off - shore.

The tactic of blocking the Strait of Hormuz by Iran has also shown how dependent on fossil fuels countries like Australia are, despite all the talk about moving rapidly to a green energy future.

For millions of Australian people, the US war on Iran and the Albanese Government's tamely applauding it, has them thinking it's time for Australia to establish economic, political and military independence from foreign powers, especially USA.

A Tale of Two Imperialisms

Written by: Nick G. on 23 April 2026

 

It’s a story of two imperialisms. One, trying to stave off its decline, threatens to obliterate a nation’s bridges and power plants; the other, still rising, builds ports and infrastructure.

But their aims are the same – to secure for themselves control over spheres of influence within which to extract raw materials, secure markets for their commodities, and to invest capital in the exploitation of the labour-power of the workers of other countries.

Within the broader Left, it is now quite acceptable to talk of imperialism and to label the United States as an imperialist power.  It currently sits astride the globe like a colossus, demanding that all accept its hegemony, even as its feet of clay can no longer keep it standing as the king of the castle.

Chinese social-imperialism

Yet the question is not so clear in the case of the rising power, the one we label Chinese social-imperialism, because it claims to be socialist but is in reality imperialist. The term originated with Lenin during the First Great Slaughter when many European socialist parties sided with their own ruling class against the workers of other counries.

Our assessment is rejected by some who genuinely believe that China, despite the capitalist path followed since the deforms of Deng Xiaoping, remains socialist and is not imperialist. Others have their doubts about China, but argue that its rivalry with the United States has an anti-hegemonic character and is therefore welcome and to be supported. 

It is obvious to all that the approaches of the two rival powers to global affairs are quite different. The US has long had economic dominance and its gun has closely followed its dollar. The other has massive amounts of capital to invest and does not yet need to blast the doors to its investments open: they are opened from the inside by local elites keen to seek alternatives to the terms sand conditions applied to economic development by the US imperialist overlords.

Starting from a much lower base than the US, the Chinese are building a formidable force of arms, outstripping the US in nuclear-armed submarine production and in the new domains of cybernetics and space.

Chinese ports, but not in China

A prime example of Chinese expansion is its acquisition of ports in foreign countries. 

A list of some of the major ports includes Hambantota in Sri Lanka, Gwadar in Pakistan, Piraeus in Greece, and the Port of Djibouti in Africa. Not as large or as strategically important as these is the 99-year lease it has on the port of Darwin.

Of probably greater strategic and commercial importance is the expansion of the Peruvian port of Chancay. It has been built by China’s state-owned shipping company COSCO and the Peruvian, and now Argentinian, company Volcan. 

In 2019, COSCO acquired a 60% interest in the Port of Chancay from the mining company Volcan, in which Anglo-Swiss mining giant Glencore had a stake, purchasing 23% of Volcan in 2017 for $734 million. In 2024, Glencore sold its stake in Volcan to Argentinian businessman José Luis Manzano’s private equity firm Integra Capital.

The scale of the Chancay project is enormous.  It has been rebuilt as a major deep-water port with advanced technology and capable of servicing the world’s largest container vessels with an expected transfer of 6 million containers per year. It is planned to link Chancay by rail with Brazil’s Atlantic coast to facilitate export of raw materials needed by Chinese industries.

As a project financed by private capital, Chancay has aroused controversy by the Chinese partners’ insistence on Peru not having regulatory oversight of the port’s operations.

Drawing upon Article 60 of Peru’s Constitution, which safeguards freedom of private enterprise, COSCO took out an amparo, a case for constitutional protection, which was upheld by Peruvian courts in a decision on January 29 this year. The court ordered the national transport infrastructure regulator, Ositrán, to refrain from exercising its supervisory, regulatory, inspection, and sanctioning powers over the terminal’s operations. 

US anxiety disorder

Not surprisingly, this has caused a certain amount of anxious pants-wetting in US circles.

Much of this has been led by R. Evan Ellis, a research professor of Latin American studies at the Strategic Studies Institute, United States Army War College.

In November 2024, he wrote: “From a military perspective, Chancay would be particularly useful as a large capacity deepwater port that could receive the largest PLA Navy warships and submarines. Its distance from the United States is sufficiently far to partially shield it from attacks by military forces coming from the Continental United States, while still allowing PLA Navy forces launched from there to influence the US West Coast.”

Following the amparo ruling, he upped the ante, writing on February 25, 2026 in The Diplomat that “in time of war, the Port of Chancay could be used to resupply Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) warships operating in the Eastern Pacific, presenting a direct threat to the U.S. homeland…”

Some in the US have even speculated that Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuela’s Maduro was prompted by concerns about China’s expanding influence through Chancay, and that it was designed as a message to Latin American governments to cut ties with China, coming the day after Maduro had met with a Chinese government representative.

The imperialist and expansionist growth of China’s overseas interests are reason enough for US imperialism to plan for war with China, a war that will inflame our region and inevitably cause the US empire loyalists in the Australian government to throw in our lot with the US.

In a second article, we will review other Chinese ports mentioned earlier, as well as looking at the strange case of the port of Darwin, a Chinese-operated port adjacent an expanding US military presence in the Top End.

 

 

Australia’s 2026 Defence Strategy: Last gasp of US empire loyalists?

Written by: Nick G. on 23 April 2026

 

The recently released 2026 Australian National Defence Strategy continues the government’s blind acceptance of the US imperialist stranglehold on Australia at a time when that viewpoint is being increasingly rejected in favour of a more independent and peaceful foreign policy.

It is sometimes said that the erratic and bizarre behaviour of US President Donald Trump means that Australia can no longe rely on protection from its major strategic partner.

But the US-Australia “alliance” has never been about Australia’s protection, but about our being forced to accept the domination of our country by US imperialism.

Even so, the breadth and extent to which the relationship with the US is now being questioned is very welcome, and the Defence Strategy, which seeks to strengthen that relationship, may well be the last time that such an obsequious political and military “strategy” will be able to be foisted on the public.

It is not just that a stronger emerging Left is challenging the Albanese-Marles-Wong triumvirate. Led by Retired Admiral Chris Barrie, the former head of the Australian Defence Force, and Ian Dunlop, a former senior international oil and gas executive and ex-chair of the Australian Coal Association, the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group slammed the Strategy. In an op ed piece in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age, the pair said: “The fragility of fossil fuel supply lines and our reliance on them is now obvious, yet the newly released defence strategy downplays the strategic consequences of Australia’s fossil fuel dependence. The strategy fails to fully recognise how Australia’s expanding coal and gas exports are perpetuating a cycle of fossil fuel addiction, undermining our long-term security and claims to regional leadership.”

On the same day, in the Canberra Times, they said “The document is not a genuine strategy, but a short-term tactical response to current events that flinches from the strategic clarity required in a profoundly altered security environment.”

In fairness to the authors of the Strategy, the words “climate” and “climate change” are mentioned seven times, but with no commitment to any plan of action that would address the concerns raised by Barrie and Dunlop.

But they were not alone.

Kym Bergmann, editor of the online Asia Pacific Defence Reporter, attended the talk by Richard Marles, the Minister of Defence, at the National Press Club following the launch of the National Defence Strategy.

He described the presentation by Marles as “frankly appalling. Insulting, short-sighted and full of stupid mistakes, and most seriously of all, demonstrated an utter lack of recognition, let alone acceptance, that one of the major causes of global instability is the behaviour of the United States.”

In response to a journalist’s question about the continuing operation of the so-called international rules-based order, Marles said that you only have to fly low over the waters separating Indonesia from Australia to see its operation in the acceptance by Indonesian fishermen of the need to stay on their own side of the “border”.  It was a response that left the audience gasping at Marle’s stupidity: Indonesian fishermen regularly move into Australian waters in search of rapidly depleting fish stocks.  

As for referring to the kidnapping of one nation’s President by the armed forces of another, the sinking of boats and ships in international waters, the provision of arms for Zionism’s genocidal war against Palestinians, threats to take Greenland by force, and demands that Canada cease to exist except as a part of the United States, let alone the bombing of Iran and the threat to destroy it as a civilisation…no, Marles could see none of this.

Under his signature, the Defence Strategy declares, “The United States is our closest ally and principal strategic partner. Our Alliance contributes to the peace and stability of the region… Any effective balance of military power in the Indo-Pacific will require the continued presence and role of the United States… Australia’s force posture cooperation with the United States will continue to be a key pillar of our Alliance. It supports Australia’s ability to deter and respond, strengthens the credibility and resilience of the United States’ force posture in the region and supports collective deterrence efforts.”

Like a flagellant monk begging for more of the lash, Marles wants even greater subservience to his imperialist masters.

But across the nation, there is the growing rumble of stomachs being turned by such a sickening and servile display.

Those rumblings will become louder as the servility deepens.

There is little chance of a change in direction from the major parties. They try to outdo themselves in displays of Empire loyalty.

We are well-positioned to win more of our people to the demand for anti-imperialist independence and socialism.

 

Japan: the South-West foreign policy, 2026

Written by: (Contributed) on 21 April 2026

 

The three island chains of US military control

A Pentagon military plan to strengthen the top end of the First Island Chain has included increased reliance upon Japan. The present Takaichi government appears only too willing to oblige; couched in misleading diplomatic terminology; however, the new South-West foreign policy has a wider arc of influence than merely islands south-west of key strategic military facilities, which serve 'US interests'. The foreign policy position has, moreover, raised questions for Australia, as Japan's military partner in the Indo-Pacific region.

A major diplomatic statement from Japan, issued in early April, drew attention to it developing a South West foreign policy toward strategic islands, as it increasingly has become a front-line for the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) toward China. (1) In recent years the Pentagon has reverted to previous Cold War regional defence and security provision with Island Chain Theory; it has subsequently been revamped to serve 'US interests' with the onset of the present Cold War, and expanded into the Indian Ocean with fourth and fifth chains centred on Diego Garcia. (2) The Indian Ocean intelligence facility is
directly linked to similar Australian-based facilities at Pine Gap, Central Australia.  

The US-Japan alliance has also been upgraded in the present Cold War to a 'global alliance'. (3) It marked the culmination of US diplomatic moves to shift Japan away from a pacifist constitution imposed immediately after the Second World War, toward a fully-fledged military power to serve 'US interests'. The moves have been accompanied by Japan's defence budget doubling during the past decade, to $77.8 billion by 2024. (4)

The position of the Takaichi government has been one of total compliance; a recent diplomatic statement issued from Tokyo announced their intentions to push for policies of 'a normal country capable of war'. (5) The issue of the 're-interpretation' of Japan's pacifist constitution, however, has proved highly contentious, amongst other countries and inside Japan itself. While the moves have been supported by other US allies, they have raised serious concerns in some Asian countries previously occupied by Imperial Japan, and also some Japanese people who fear the problems associated with militarism.

Source: Global Times

And Taiwan, and its precarious defence and security provision, has conspicuously formed part of the US-led agenda for Japan; assessments have noted that 'Taiwan is moving towards the centre of world affairs', and a regional flash-point. (6) Tokyo-Taipei diplomacy is close.

It is not difficult to calculate the extent to which the Pentagon have pushed Cold War agendas during the recent period. During the period between 1991 and 2016, Taiwan initiated about 42,000 investment projects in China; in fact, it was central to China's rise to prominence. (7) Since 2016, however, most Taiwanese businesses have relocated their China operations to other ASEAN countries, in compliance with US-led directives. (8)

The East China Sea and Miyko Strait have now also been assessed as sensitive for the wider First Island Chain, which include small islands and other outcrops which have become highly strategic. Runways are under construction on Mage Island, for example, whereas missile defence batteries and surface to air missile units have been placed elsewhere. (9)   

Japan has also stationed military personnel on some islands; defence officials have verified that 'more than 10,000 Japanese military personnel are in the south-west, but several hundred each on at least four other islands'. (10) It is as if the Takaichi government has followed similar examples of policies pursued by pre-war and wartime Imperial Japan, common during the fascist period while pursuing their own far-right political agendas.

The Takaichi government has also been keen to push for the military upgrading of Japan's defence and security provision; it has followed initiatives over a decade ago for Japan to nationalise about 280 remote islands as part of military planning, despite sovereignty of some of the landmasses being contested. (11) The 'new' foreign policy has a long history.

What the recent diplomatic statement did not divulge, furthermore, was the arc from US military facilities to the islands south-west of Japan also swings northerly to the Kuril Islands and Sea of Okhotsk, which mark the beginning of the First Island Chain. (12) It has become highly sensitive in recent years with the thawing of Arctic waters, exposing sea passages north of Russia from the Chuckchi Sea and away from southerly routes. (13) The recent high-level diplomatic discourse and disagreements about Greenland are best assessed in the context. The vast landmass forms part of the access and egress into Arctic waters.

While the US has continued to fortify their First Island Chain, with military upgrading of military facilities in Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines, to restrict China's access and egress into the wider Indo-Pacific region, the northerly route, for the Pentagon, has become extremely problematic. It is largely beyond normal bounds for any direct US military involvement apart from regular spy flights from satellite systems.

These developments, with the militarisation of Japan and rapid deployment facilities, have far-reaching implications for Australia which is bound by various diplomatic agreements with Tokyo. The US-led IPS, for example, rests upon the so-called 'Quad', which has been planned to contain and encircle in China, together with other diplomatic considerations between Tokyo and Canberra. Compliance, by all concerned, remains the order of the day.

It is not idle speculation, therefore, to note that Australia could be drawn into 'real-war scenarios' by the Takaichi government eagerly following directives from the White House concerning Taiwan, or elsewhere in any one of several serious regional flashpoints:
                                        
  We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     Japan races to fortify island chain, Australian, 1 April 2026.
2.     Websites: Island Chain Theory.
3.     The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
4.     Australian, op.cit., 1 April 2026.
5.     Bracing for the fallout as Japan's Iron Lady shows some mettle, Australian, 6 February 2026.
6.     Australian, op.cit., 1 April 2026.
7.     Ibid.
8.     Ibid.
9.     Ibid.
10.   Ibid.
11.   Japan to nationalise 280 islands, The Age, 10 January 2014; and, Japan puts disputed islands on school curriculum, The Age, 13 January 2014.
12.   See: Map of the World, Peters Projection, Actual Size.
13.   Ibid.

 

War, austerity, and the cold chill of capitalist crisis

 antiWritten by: (Contributed) on 21 April 2026

 

Two separate statements issued in the past couple of weeks underline the depth of the crisis that bourgeois governments face. The first came from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its increased demand for austerity as the world heads toward global recession. The second came from the Australian government and its announcement of increasing military spending.

The Australian government announcement was accompanied by muted calls by Treasurer, Jim Chalmers that, in the face of a looming recession, there might be some ‘assistance’ in the coming budget. He was also seeking to appease the IMF assuring his financial masters that restraint will be the order of the day and cuts will be made where necessary.

The IMF calls for austerity. All capitalist governments have shown a preparedness to cut social spending but all are rapidly pumping more into their respective armed forces. It is entirely illogical, but then any claim to logic that capitalist governments have is, at best, a mystery.

The latest IMF report shows just how close the global economy is to recession. IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva, indicated that global economic growth will further shrink to a point perilously close to two per cent. Austerity was demanded. This has serious ramifications for the working class, already saddled with rising prices, lowering real wages and now the added pressure from the US war on Iran and the inevitable oil crisis.

The Georgieva call for spending cuts was made in the lead up to the Australian Federal Budget. She made it clear that the Australia should avoid ‘untargeted’ cost-of-living relief spending. Inflation is likely to rise in the coming months and recession is no longer a potential threat but is being spoken of as an almost inevitable consequence of the war against Iran.

Economic growth in Australia is now predicted to slow to just 2 per cent this year and fall to 1.7 per cent in 2027. Treasurer Chalmers continues to downplay these figures. Chalmers has pledged to juggle both the demands of the IMF and the necessity of not cutting too viciously in the budget. A dangerous hire-wire act. The government has indicated it is navigating a ‘narrow path’ to avoid recession while managing a ‘weakened’ economy. We shall all have to wait and see, but there is little room for optimism.

Chalmers, like all Treasurers, does his best to deflect from the crisis that capital lives with. While the war in Iran certainly exacerbates the immediate problems facing global capitalism, the real problems lie in the fragility of the capitalist system itself and the crisis that haunts capital; the tendency for a fall in the global rate of profit.

This crisis drove the capitalist world to globalise. It didn’t resolve the problem. The backlash to economic nationalism and trade war politics has not solved the problem. Things get worse and imperialist war looms as a last throw of the dice to save a sclerotic economic system.

Chalmers said Treasury was still working through the consequences of the conflict for the Australian economy, ‘which are already serious and could become severe.’ Indeed, it could!

Economists knit their brows and wring their hands. The Australian government announced that spending for the military was to skyrocket. There is a madness to all this, but economic downturn, capitalist crisis and the striving for military ascendancy are hardly rational endeavours.

By 2033, fully three per cent of the Australian GDP will go to the military. The ALP government never tires of making proclamations to the effect that a rise in military spending somehow boosts the economy. There is a twisted logic that tries to equate a militarisation of society with economic and industrial policy. This is seen in the boast that the AUKUS outlay of hundreds of billions of dollars will lead to thousands of jobs. This is a ludicrously expensive job creation scheme and especially so when people cannot get decent housing or healthcare. The spending on those quite possibly mythical submarines would effectively resolve all social issues that face Australia and its working class. But no; the new boost in spending can only make things worse.

The ‘new guns before butter’ economic plans will see military spending reach $887 billion dollars by 2035-36. The industrial ‘benefit’ will come from shipbuilding, the manufacture of drones and the technology required to make Australia a worthwhile target in the event of war.

Our economic ‘masters’ have decreed that the private superannuation sector will be tapped in order to find the cash for the new $53 billion military spending just announced. Those same super funds are at least officially used to fund major ‘nation-building’ projects and large-scale expenditures.

The lurch into arms spending and arms manufacture is not a uniquely Australian phenomenon but is a central component of capitalist economies as the very system crumbles before their eyes.

Most recent figures indicate that 50 per cent of all countries are increasing their military spending. Forty per cent of nations are now spending 2 per cent or more of GDP on their respective military budgets.

The extra spending on the military capacities of all countries is a drain on all economies but is good for the business of the war profiteers and the arms traders and manufacturers. The top 100 arms manufacturers have doubled sales in the past two decades. Profits are up. Business is booming. While this has gone on unchecked, the already strained economies of capitalist nation-states become more fragile. Social spending has been slashed, debt has risen and global inflation has been steadily climbing.

Against this backdrop, the IMF, as the banker for global capitalism, stands more than a little exposed. It routinely calls for austerity when governments frame budgets and offers mealy-mouthed calls for restraint when speaking of military expenditure. The best it seems to be able to offer is a declaration that governments need to ‘carefully coordinate’ military spending with monetary policy.

This allows for the Australian government to allow the militarisation of the economy as a direct benefit for the national economy. This is a ‘careful’ coordination indeed. The premise is to spend big, offer lucrative contracts to private capitalist enterprises, sell the materiel overseas in order to make profits while prolonging the suffering of the world’s working class. Central to the thinking of bourgeois governments is the requirement to serve imperialist demands and find a suitable scapegoat to blame for failure of the economy at any given moment.

Capitalism shudders and staggers toward the abyss. As it staggers, it threatens the lives of all on the planet. 

Comrade Hugo Throssell

 Written by: Allan M. on 19 April 2026

 

This year we remember Comrade Hugo Throssell, who fought at Gallipoli in 1915 and fought the rest of his life for freedom of the working class and an end to wars.

Hugo Throssell VC fought and risked his life countless times in the bloody Gallipoli campaign of 1915. A WA farmer, Throssell, like many Australian men, signed up to fight for Australia at the outset of World War One. Fighting with WA’s 10th Light Horse Regiment, he immediately found himself in the midst of the inter-imperialist brutality. 

Landing in Gallipoli for Winston Churchill’s blood-soaked gamble for a scrap of land, he took part in the tragic charge of the Nek. While Throssell survived, nearly a third of the regiment were killed by machine gun fire in what he called the ‘fool charge’, a shocking loss of life in a battle that the soldiers desperately tried to call off. Later, he fought in the battle for Hill 60, and while being seriously wounded, he managed to rally his men to take and hold a trench-line near the summit. Fighting and bleeding on this hill far from home, he was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions. Throssell would eventually recover from the wounds and illness caused by this battle and continue serving until 1919. He went to war with his brother but he came home alone, carrying significant physical and mental injuries.

Throssell’s battles after the war get nearly no attention in Australian popular history, but his fights for his mates when he came home deserve just as much praise. Throssell said the war, seeing his mates chewed up by gunfire on a spit of dirt on the other side of the world, seeing Australians killed and maimed on the whims of British generals, made him a socialist. His wife, Katharine Susannah Prichard, was a founding member of the Communist Party of Australia, and together they fought for an end to imperialist conflict and the creation of a peaceful and prosperous society. In WA, Throssell was commonly found supporting unemployed and striking workers, and speaking at socialist events alongside his wife. Famously, the VC winner said in Northam, WA that the only way to end wars was to end the capitalist system which drives imperialist conflict.

Tragically, after surviving the horrors of the First World War, Throssell fell victim to capitalism at home. Being outspoken in the cause for socialism and peace, he found himself isolated and excluded from many areas of employment by WA capitalists. During the Great Depression, this led to extreme hardship for him and his family. To end this hardship, Throssell thought his best chance would be to provide his wife with a war widow’s pension so that she could continue to provide for their child. One week after Armistice Day in 1933, Throssell ended his own life.

On Anzac Day, we remember Comrade Throssell’s statement: that the only way to celebrate peace is to do things which make for peace.

We reject the shameless war-mongering of politicians who invoke the name of dead Australians to promote more war. In our times, with genocidal imperialist violence being supported by the Australian government, we continue Comrade Throssell’s fight for peace and socialism.

Peace can only come with the defeat of capitalism. No war but class war.