En Passant

Something interesting happened over the weekend. Former Howard Government Minister and industrial relations thug Peter Reith got rolled in his campaign for the presidency of the Liberal Party. Current leader Tony Abbot urged him to stand and then betrayed him. Abbott showed his vote to Alan Stockdale, former Victorian Treasurer and Reith rival for the top job. In [...]

It may seem hard to believe, but it is fully within our means today to make the alternative energy dream a green reality. All the technologies exist. The engineering is relatively straightforward, especially when compared to the epic size of our oil-powered, automobile-based societies. The need is obvious. Unless we want to consign humanity to a broiling, toxic swamp called earth, alternative energy is an imperative.

The tricky part, however, is society and politics. How our society and economy is organized; how wealth and resources are generated and distributed; which institutions have a vested interest in the status quo; and how to create radically different forms of decision making are the major obstacles to greening the global economy.

This is a mutating economic crisis. This is a crisis whose weak link keeps shifting, and as a result, we need to see it in all its dynamism–the way in which it keeps mutating and generating new kinds of illnesses within the system, so while it looks like the last one has been cured, in fact, all they’ve done is move the damage somewhere else.

So what is all this talk about a battler’s buffer for the carbon tax? Small details like the actual carbon price and the amount of the compensation could be weeks away. But the Gillard Government’s approach is pretty clear. The carbon tax won’t cost us anything. In fact in terms of money 3 million Australians – [...]

The consequences for capitalism of universities as sausage factories may be too early to judge. But the creation of a skilled and intelligent workforce able to make critical judgements within capitalism must be undermined by a neoliberal agenda which treats students and staff as production factors on a factory line.

Upsize strikes to defend jobs, wages, public services and conditions.

The political climate of the first half of the twentieth century – wars and revolutions, general strikes and savage anti-worker laws, depressions and booms – made the period ripe for state “thought control”.

During that period escaping the censorship laws was incredibly difficult, with state and federal laws, Customs, Post and Attorney General Departments all getting into the act.

The coming together of the enthusiasm and the militancy of the movement of the squares with the power of the working class movement is the best way forward. The squares must play a part in escalating to strike action, and the workplaces need the direct, mass action that is on display in the squares.

It has to be said: you’ve got a better chance of compassion from the Gillard government if you’re a cow than if you’re a refugee. While conditions in Indonesia are considered too bad for cattle to be exported there, the Australian government has no qualms about the export of human beings to Malaysia, where even [...]

Democratic workers’ councils are an expression of the working class on the cusp of history; democratising society and organising production to satisfy human need. Only under such democratic arrangements – socialism – can we truly be free.