En Passant

I have a suggestion for Labor. Abandon neoliberalism. Adopt a radical program like that which Chavez put forward. Tax the rich to improve the lives of the 2.2 million Australians in poverty and fix up the 17% gender gap. Use this money to negotiate a treaty with Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

That of course would just be the opening salvos of a radical program to fundamentally challenge the rule of capital.  It would involve nationalising the banks, mining companies and the other big battalions of capital and massively increase spending on public health, education, transport and social payments and develop a real program to address climate change.

That of course would just be the opening salvos of a radical program to fundamentally challenge the rule of capital.  It would involve nationalising the banks, mining companies, and other big battalions of capital and massively increase spending on public health, education, transport and social payments and develop a real program to address climate change.

Is there an alternative to the failure that is Labor? The need now for a revolutionary socialist workers’ party is great. But we cannot hurry history. Workers will have to learn the lessons of struggle and history, with input from the revolutionary left where we can to patiently explain the way forward and our view of the world.

Labor might be gone but the struggle continues.

Versions of reformism will seek simultaneously to express workers’ resistance to capitalism and to contain it within the framework of the system. But it underlines the necessity of building a revolutionary left that is part of this great movement sweeping Europe but maintains its own political identity.

I’ll miss Larvatus Prodeo and the cogent arguments it often gave for social democratic thought and policy. But for me the need to communicate socialist ideas to a wider audience continues and I can see no better way of doing that than through this blog and my activity as a member of Socialist Alternative.

Without a sizeable and significant group in society such as trade unions, or some of them at least, behind any left party in Australia, without significant class struggle and possibly without a star left winger already well known, it is unlikely at least in the short term that workers desire for a better world will find any outlet. Instead many workers will hold their nose and vote for the Coalition. Even many of those who vote Labor will be doing so while sniffing the smelling salts.

Labor’s neoliberalism is a shit sandwich. It is not the leader selling us the shit sandwich who is the problem. It is the shit sandwich.

Our task is to make the ideas of socialism more widely known, through our propaganda and most importantly though our actions in the campaigns and struggles of the day. This way we can show that the best and most consistent reformers are we revolutionaries.

This gives us the opportunity to put forward to those who are interested in fighting back the reasons why all the different struggles are linked and can only ultimately be won in any real and lasting sense through the overthrow of capitalism.

The complete bankruptcy of reformism in Spain is plain to see for many many workers. Without the dead hand of the union bureaucracy to crush their dreams and demands the spread of the fightback against neoliberalism into the workplaces is possible.

The Arab spring has spread to Spain and opened up the possibility of the Spanish working class entering on to the stage of history.

This feeling of powerlessness means that workers, for most of the time, don’t think that they could play an active role in transforming, or running, society. And this lack of confidence in their own ability means they look to parties such as Labour to change things for them.

The contradiction between the working class’s yearning for reforms and the inability of reformist parties to deliver them can be broken. A mass revolutionary party of the working class can offer an alternative to the economic reaction of the major and minor parties.