The great cause of Australian independence

Vanguard July 2012 p. 3

The Great Cause of Australian Independence is the title of a book written in 1977 by CPA(M-L) founding chairperson E.F. Hill (above).

It is on the web at http://marxists.org/history/erol/australia/hill-great-cause/index.htm .

Like any piece of political and ideological writing, it is a product of its time, yet the issues it raises have not substantially dated over the past three decades and still frame the key discussions about the future of our country and our class.

What is different today compared to three decades ago is that the struggle between the US and the USSR as the two main world superpowers no longer exists, that the US is beset with an ongoing economic crisis whilst striving to remain militarily all-powerful, and that China has entered the equation as a challenger to US global hegemony.

The implications for Australians fill the headlines.

The Gillard government champions US imperialist interests, egging it on to ever more confrontational postures in the international arena, whilst providing base facilities for it on Australian soil.

Some wiser heads attempt to modify Gillard’s stance, mindful of China’s role as our major trading partner.

Delivering the Whitlam Oration last month, former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser (below), who had ironically overthrown the Whitlam government in a constitutional coup because it had dared to assert some minor manifestations of independence from the Americans, called precisely for a more independent position in the context of the rivalry between China and the US.

“The choice for Australia to make,” he said, “is not for China or for the United States, but independence of mind to break with subservience to the United States.  Subservience has not and will not serve Australia’s interests.  It is indeed dangerous to our future.”

In relation to the US military build-up against China, he added: “We should be trying to lead the United States away from containment”.

Of course, what is missing from the newspaper headlines and from the very welcome comments of people like Malcolm Fraser is the perspective of the Australian working class.

That perspective embraces the knowledge that there cannot be any real independence in the era of imperialism that is not led by the working class and guaranteed by breaking the power of capital over the whole of society.

Hill’s book is a crystallisation of the working class perspective on the task that is still before us, the task defined by Fraser as “breaking with subservience to the United States”.

Of central importance to us today is to study Hill’s very clear and understandable analysis of the nature of the Australian state and of its principal components in the context of the domination of Australia by US imperialism.

And we urge comrades not just to study the teachings, but to master the methods so that we can make our contribution to the great cause of Australian independence and socialism.

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Further reading:

Malcolm Fraser -  The 2012 Whitlam Oration