13th National Congress Resolution on the Manufacturing Industry

Vanguard 2012 p. 6

The manufacturing industry is an enormous, vital and essential component of a fully functioning modern state; it is embedded in every aspect of national identity and operation, economic, political, social & cultural.

The lack of or even the serious deterioration of a manufacturing base will undermine the national sovereignty of a nation, increase its dependence on foreign monopoly capitalism and almost certainly, over time, guarantee a third world level status.

Economically and industrially, manufacturing capacity is the life blood of any nation, it is central to the economic and political independence of Australia. Manufacturing is the conduit for every endeavour in building the nation, integral to the aspirations of all other sectors, service, construction, agribusiness, transport, medical and healthcare, food production, communications, mining and resources, housing, renewable energy, shipping, aviation etc. The fact that manufacturing is based on a great diversity of local small and medium owners means it is the least monopolised sector and therefore the least protected. If manufacturing is indeed virtually destroyed, the task of rebuilding it will be a truly Herculean one. For those like us, promoting the goal of an independent Australia, this is of grave concern.

The decline of Australian manufacturing is not an aberration, it is not an accident. Australian manufacturing’s accelerating decimation is systematic, targeted and absolutely deliberate. 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 long term condition of the traditional non-resource, non-agribusiness national economy of Australia is of minimal interest to world imperialism, which requires a subservient and stable government, highly efficient communications and transport systems (including ports), a minimum level of service industry capacity and the necessary skilled work force to go with it. And, in the case of the US, a highly trained and readily available military force totally embedded into their own military strategic thinking.

Likewise the national consumer market of Australia (which is shrinking) is a drop in the ocean on the radar of the globalised economy. The consumer market is of vital concern to national capitalism and the present level of decline is effecting even the biggest of the local manufacturers, suppliers and retailers with subsequent roll-on effects of growing unemployment, business slowdowns and closures.

A great fuss is made of the effect of the very high Australian dollar, but the decimation of Australian manufacturing predates this recent development by decades. Both Liberal and Labor governments have slavishly delivered up local manufacturing to be mauled by free trade agreements, deregulation, the wholesale removal of tariffs and protections. The so called ‘Level Playing field’ is endlessly promoted along with the exhortation for industry to embrace new technology and to be more innovative!

Two Australian manufacturers of steel walkway products, Weldlock & Web Forge, with workforces in several states, produce standard lengths of walkway which sell for $630. The same product landed from China sells for $117! They’re still waiting to hear just exactly how they can ‘innovate’ around this problem. It’s a sure bet that both of these companies will cease to be manufacturers and become importers and distributors.

Like a B grade movie the sorry plot rolls on to its inevitable ending. The Gillard government trumpets its concern for the ailing automotive industry which has always been high profile (and completely foreign owned), although in truth only a shadow of its former glory.

Gillard feigns concern for the plight of manufacturing, but completely ignores the myriad smaller concerns that are the actual backbone of the manufacturing industry. Small business is the single biggest employer in the country and manufacturing in all its guises is a central component of it. The Federal Minister for Manufacturing is not even in the inner caucus of cabinet! The Defence Department hands the contract for the new generation of army trucks to a German manufacturer over the locally developed and tested product. It’s hard to imagine any other developed nation allowing such a thing to occur. Unions are fighting to force the government to insist that the foreign owned mining companies source their manufactures in Australia, which should be a given.

Whenever Australians are surveyed re the plight of manufacturing they universally declare their support for the protection of Australian industry. This view remains embedded in the Australian psyche despite the headlong rush to consume cheap imported manufactures.

Australia is blessed with abundant natural resources, mostly and increasingly in foreign hands, and despite government exhortations to embrace ‘clever’ technologies, they offer no leadership, no encouragement, no incentive, and no plans to get value-adding industries into the big picture. Yet every day value-added manufactures are flooding into the country, everything from nuts and bolts to processed pork.

Resolution

That the CPA (M-L) recognises that the decimation of Australian manufacturing: -

• Is the direct & deliberate result of foreign imperialist domination of the country
• Is a national calamity that has the potential, if left unchecked to undermine the country’s position as a developed country, increase our dependency & decrease national sovereignty
• Requires our comrades to engage effectively and where ever practicable with all elements involved with Australian manufacturing, workers, employers, unions and communities in highlighting and exposing the true extent of the consequences of the onslaught on Australian manufacturing
• Requires our comrades to encourage debate and awareness of free trade agreements, tariffs and industry protection in the broader community.

13th National Congress Resolution - Nationalise Australia's Mining Industry

Vanguard 2012 p. 6

The mining industry is not being managed in the interests of the Australian people. Capitalism encourages the maximum extraction in the shortest possible time of non-renewable natural resources such as minerals, rare earths, oil and gas because the core motivation is capital accumulation and realisation of profits at the highest possible rate.

Capitalism prevents planned and sustainable mining.  One consequence of the boom in mining is the lopsided development of the economy, pushing up the value of the Australian dollar and sabotaging the international market for Australian manufactured products.  This has accelerated, to the decline of the manufacturing industry in Australia.

Mining provides opportunities for a handful of multinational and local capitalists to take massive super profits into private pockets, depriving the government and the community of funds for schools, health, community services, national infrastructure, and re-building an environmentally sustainable manufacturing industry.

Mining as a capitalist endeavour also conflicts with the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities for preservation of culturally significant sites, and threatens agricultural and pastoral communities.  Extraction of coal seam gas is in the hands of big monopolies and conflicts with farming communities and their use of land.

Much is made of the high wages on offer in the mining sector.  The other side of this is the conditions under which miners in remote regions work: continuous 12-hour shifts for extended periods, FIFO arrangements that disrupt family life at home and prevent community solidarity at the work camp, and growing automation of all processes.  High levels of anxiety and depression are common amongst FIFO workers. Mining monopolies return little to local mining communities. Importation of overseas workers is used to suppress local wages and conditions and to break down the solidarity and unity of the working class.

The big miners, both foreign and local, are such rabid plunderers of our natural resources that a corresponding extreme of aggressive political reaction is naturally embedded in their outlook. The complete reliance of mining capital on bank capital is the basis for their reactionary position. Bank capital has no connection with or loyalty to place or people.

Because of the political, economic and environmental importance of responding to unrestricted capitalist mining, some comrades will be tasked with assisting in the development of a scientific Marxist understanding of mining. Some areas for study and reflection are:

1.  Marx’s theory of ground rent and its application to mining

2.  The Australian context: the imposition of capitalism on pre-feudal ATSI systems of communal custodianship of land

3.  Land rights and mining

4.  Mining and other sectors of the economy

5.  Mining and the environment

6.  Foreign ownership and control of mining

7. The big back-down: from the RSPT to the MRRT

8.  A Marxist formulation of demands on the mining monopolies

9. States rights and royalties: why the Australian Constitution is flawed

10. Independence and socialism for a rational basis for managing mining

Resolution:

• The CPA (M-L) will work for the nationalisation of mining, and for the planned and sustainable extraction of natural resources used for accumulating funds to provide for the economic and social well-being of the Australian people.
• The super-profits of the major mining corporations must be taxed to the hilt!  They must be used to benefit the people and build sustainable national minerals processing, manufacturing and agricultural industries.
• The CPA (M-L) reaffirms its opposition to the mining and sale of uranium.
• The CPA (M-L) reaffirms its support for Aboriginal land rights.

Climate Change Doesn't Go Away

Vanguard September 2012 p. 9
Bill F.

While the passing of the Labor government’s Carbon Tax bill might have given the government so-called ‘clean air’ on this issue, the latest facts reveal that climate warming and associated extreme weather conditions are accelerating beyond earlier predictions.

James Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, published an article in the in the Washington Post in which he declared that “In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.

“This is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened. Our analysis shows it is no longer enough to say global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.

“Our new peer-reviewed study, published by the National Academy of Sciences, makes clear that while average global temperature has been steadily rising due to a warming climate, the extremes are actually becoming much more frequent and more intense worldwide.

“When we plotted the world’s changing temperatures on a bell curve, the extremes of unusually cool and, even more, the extremes of unusually hot are being altered so they are becoming both more common and more severe…

“Such events used to be exceedingly rare. Extremely hot temperatures covered about 0.1% to 0.2% of the globe in the base period of our study, from 1951 to 1980. In the past three decades, while the average temperature has slowly risen, the extremes have soared and now cover about 10% of the globe.”

Even though there a good initiatives being taken to transition to alternative, non-polluting sources of energy in countries such as Spain, China and even the United States, nothing is allowed to seriously impede the profit-driven expansion of the fossil fuel corporations.

This is because they stand at the core of modern imperialism, the richest and most powerful pillars of US imperialism, in particular. In their interests, the US employs a vast global military force and the CIA directs political and economic interference in sovereign countries, to seize or control oil and gas reserves. Imperialism has to go – it is choking humanity.

13th National Congress Resolution on Environment and Climate Change

Vanguard  September 2012 p. 9

The principal contradiction in Australian society is between US imperialism and the Australian people. This gives rise to struggles in all spheres of life, including the environmental sphere. Multinational corporations are driven to maximise profits at all costs, including the cost to the environment.

In the early stages of the 21^st Century, the damage to the environment as a result of multinational plunder has reached potentially catastrophic proportions, with 90% of the world’s climate scientists agreeing that human induced climate change and global warming is approaching the point of no return.

The majority of Australian people want an environmentally sustainable economy for current and future generations. It is the struggles and collective voice of the people that has forced the Australian government and more far-sighted sections of the imperialist rulers to introduce a price on carbon, and make concessions from time to time to grass-roots community groups struggling to live in an environmentally sustainable way. However the solutions promoted by governments and big business are restricted to the ‘god’ of the ‘free market’.

The Australian people are in myriad of community, industry and workplace struggles refusing to accept that the ‘free market’ is the death certificate for their children’s and grandchildren’s environmental future. The people know that without a sustainable environment, there is no economy, there is no human life. The people are on the march in their struggle for sustainability and a transition to a renewable energy economy, and will discard governments that fail them on effective action on climate change.

Resolution

• We support the many and rising 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 building of united struggle by workers, community groups, small business and farmers for environmental sustainability, and join with them to make the multinationals and big financial institutions pay for the transition to a renewable energy economy.
• We recognize 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.

Expose and defeat new spying powers

Vanguard September 2012 p. 10
Jim H.

Both Labor and Coalition supported the Intelligence Services Legislation Amendment Bill back in March this year. The Greens managed to stall it with a Senate review.

The Bill had been put forward because the ruling class demands a sharpening up of the powers of intelligence services, ASIO and the Defence Signals Directorate.

Along the way, a range of lawyers and human rights experts and activists have campaigned to block the move, correctly seeing this as a serious threat to the Australian people.

Despite everything, with the unity of Labor and the Coalition, the Bill was passed, largely on the quiet, on June 26.

The immediate purpose is to increase the power of the spy outfits to tap phones and the Internet.

It mirrors similar moves occurring in the United States where the Federal police have raided homes and arrested activists involved in movements opposed to austerity measures. This is no coincidence. After all, the rulers of that country have the decisive say over the Australian government.

In the first place, the reality of deepening economic crisis and a political dissatisfaction amongst the Australian people that threatens the possibility of transforming into more open rebellion scares the hell out of the big corporations that are presently in charge. Good examples are the big banks, mining companies and the Murdoch media empire. The owners of these big corporations know that if the people take them on in earnest they could be history.

The plan is to prepare both Labor and the Coalition to do their bidding through alternative strategies of deception, and combine this with the readiness of the big stick. This is the essence of a number of measures taken over recent years. The Intelligence Services Legislation Amendment Bill fits into the pattern.

The main justification given at the moment is that foreign spying needs to be improved because Australia faces new threats. Australia’s security is threatened by greater integration into US imperialist interfering and war mongering around the world. This has brought an increased risk. The best security would be to get out of this integration. It is service to US interest that is the problem.

The Bill centres on increasing unscrutinised foreign spying activity (loosely including any entity that is deemed to be linked to a foreign government or political organisation); across the board power to spy on people overseas. Australians who go overseas are to be more easily targeted. Provision is made for access to employment related information in secret. Greater clarification of immunity from Commonwealth and State criminal laws is provided for the protection of spies. The implication is that much of their activity is expected to be on Australian soil.

Some have suggested that the motivation is to silence the likes of Wikileaks and Julian Assange as an example. But the net is intended to be cast much wider than this. The Australian people remain the main target.

Independence and democratic rights

Activities geared to meddle in other countries are connected to US imperialist domination of Australia.

Maintaining this domination to both exploit Australia and use Australia as a stepping stone to penetrate the region more deeply and as a proxy for aggression elsewhere, is the goal. While this situation continues, efforts to gain greater independence and justice are hamstrung.

Opposition to greater powers for the spy organisations is defence of the democratic rights of the Australian people.

Defending these rights is important to ensuring that the Australian people are in the best position to not only defend past gains, but also to fight for and build a future Australia that’s truly in the hands of the people and for the people.

CCP to Aquino: Stop blaming calamity victims!

Vanguard September 2012 p. 11

The following statement was issued by the Communist Party of the Philippines following the devestating floods and landslides across the country.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) chided Benigno Aquino III for insisting on blaming the victims whom he called “hard-headed” for residing in areas prone to flooding and other calamities.

“Aquino is engaged in a blame game in an abject attempt to deflect criticism from his government’s gross failure to put into place the necessary infrastructure for disaster prevention and preparedness.”

“Over the past two days, Aquino has been going the rounds of evacuation centers dealing out bags of temporary relief to flood victims in a desperate effort to save face. Still, he could not suppress his contempt for the toiling masses when he bared his disgust at people who insist on holding on to their homes and property despite the dangers posed by the massive floods that swept their houses,” said the CPP.

“The large majority of the victims of the floods belong to the poorest sections of the Filipino people who reside near creeks and riverbanks and other flood prone areas, not out of choice, but out of desperation in the face of their grave socio-economic conditions, lack of employment, low income levels and the absence of affordable housing,” said the CPP.

“For two years now, the Aquino regime has failed to undertake the construction of canals and floodways long identified to be necessary to address the state of decay and insufficiency of the current flood control system in Metro Manila and other areas prone to floods,” pointed out the CPP.

“Since assuming power in 2010, Aquino has cancelled P1.9 billion worth of flood control projects purportedly because these were tainted with anomalies,” said the CPP. “Yet, the fact that no one has been charged for plunder or corruption arising from these contracts entered into by the previous government, and that not one of these projects have been revived, only prompts the people to think that Aquino and his minions are simply busy negotiating their own kickbacks from these contracts.”

In an earlier statement, the CPP also pointed out that the Aquino regime has failed to put into place the necessary protocols to “control the greed for water” of hydroelectric power companies which endanger the people’s lives and their livelihood in their practice of filling their dams to dangerous levels only to open the floodgates at the last minute.

The CPP further pointed out that the Aquino regime is too busy enticing foreign companies to carry out mining operations of denuded forests and has failed to put into place any big-scale reforestation project, especially in the Sierra Madre mountains in Luzon.

Meanwhile, the CPP scored the oil companies for deceiving the people when it announced yesterday that they would implement a price freeze amidst the great devastation. “This is plain hypocrisy, considering that they just raised oil prices last August 7, at the height of the torrential rains and floods, while people were busy confronting the floods.”

Olympic Games brought important lessons

Vanguard  September 2012 p. 11
Jim H.

The 2012 Olympics has come and gone. Millions witnessed incredible an achievements. They saw something of the possibility of human achievement based on hard work. They also saw the incredible advantage of working together as a team.

This side of the Olympic Games is important, deserves to be treasured. When these qualities are   applied to every-day life, the possibilities are incredible. Effort and teamwork are the ingredients for building a cooperative and socialist society. The Olympic Games can remind us of this.

Along with the positive, there is also a very dark side. This is that the Games have been commandeered by the biggest capitalist powers, which use them as a tool to push their selfish sectional interests. Over everything has been imposed a thoroughly corrupt Olympic Committee, closely tied to big business and living a life filled with constant junkets.

Staging of the event has become a multi-billion dollar. Making a quid becomes the main thing. It is an influence that corrupts all it touches. Too much is dependent on corporate sponsorship. With this the most sickening values of capitalism are peddled. Reflection on this side of the Olympic Games is also important.

Britain’s example is telling. This is one of the major imperialist powers. All previous efforts at corporatising the games were exceeded. Not only did the sponsors (mainly American and a few European monopolies) get exclusive rights in the venues, they were given considerable monopoly rights outside. Trade was restricted. Mouths were gagged. Even competitors had to agree to restrict on what they could say.

When Australian boxer Damien Hooper (above) came out with an Aboriginal T shirt, there a royal carry on. There was no such treatment of Coca Cola, McDonalds, Adidas and Nike. They were allowed to broadcast their messages far and wide.

The Games also provided the British ruling class and its servants a convenient circus to cover to step up its military preparedness against the British people.

It is the working class and working people around the world, including those of Britain, whole will carry the positive forward the positive aspects of the Olympics and discard the negative ones.

The lesson can serve to focus on the importance of grassroots sport and the need to ensure that it is properly resourced. It not enough that only the elite end gets attention. Sport at the grassroots brings people together promotes good health, builds communities and teaches organisation skills and the benefit of cooperation.