A new stolen generation

Indigenous communities and families are reeling under the impact of a new stolen generation, as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are removed from their families in staggeringly high numbers writes John Lamb in Socialist Alternative. More than a third of the 39,600 children in “out-of-home care” nationally are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, even though they make up only 4.6 percent of the national child population.

Since the Northern Territory Intervention began in 2007, the rate of child removals in the NT has increased by 80 percent. In Queensland the number of children removed from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island families has increased by 42 percent since 2007. Nearly half of these children taken by the Department of Community Services have been placed with non-Indigenous foster families or carers. In the NT, nearly two-thirds of the children removed have been placed with non-Indigenous foster families.

In New South Wales, nearly one in 10 Aboriginal children have been removed from their families: of every 1000 children removed from their families in NSW, around 83 are Aboriginal. The trends and figures for elsewhere in Australia are similar. According to the latest report on child protection released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the national rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children placed in “out-of-home care” has increased from 41.3 to 55.1 per 1000 children. This contrasts sharply with the non-indigenous rate of 5.4 per 1000 children.

Giles challenged

Rather than acknowledge the horrendous impact of the Intervention and the removal of children, NT Country Liberal Party Chief Minister Adam Giles is committed to entrenching the worst aspects of it. His support for the “case-by-case” forced adoption of Aboriginal children is not surprising.

Federal opposition leader Tony Abbot has made clear his preparedness to pursue such a policy, as well as extending Intervention-like controls over all welfare recipients, especially for the long-term unemployed and welfare-dependent families. As was to be expected, Giles’s recent comments have been supported by apologists for the policies that created the stolen generations, such as reactionary media commentator Andrew Bolt.

Yolnu Elder Reverend Djiniyini Gondarra wrote an open letter to Giles on 16 May, in which he challenged the chief minister: “Mr Giles, you claim that only one child has been taken away and given up for adoption in the last 10 years. But the fact is, about 60 children are being taken away every month in the NT by child protection services. Children are being taken away from us at numbers not seen since the Stolen Generations.

“In the case of the Stolen Generations, as you do today, the policy of forced removal of children was justified as ‘in the best interest of the children’. 40 years after it ended, the nation acknowledged the deep wrong of such a policy and began a long-awaited healing process with our people. What you now propose to do is to tear open the bandages and cut us again.”

Gondarra and other elders and Aboriginal organisations have called for the return of family support services that have been run down or stopped completely by state or territory and federal governments. In particular, they have called for an increase in Aboriginal-managed family support services in all Aboriginal communities, along with the establishment of family group conferencing processes where there are concerns regarding child safety.

The practice of removing children in the NT and elsewhere has further dislocated and undermined Aboriginal communities, already under pressure from the historical impact of colonial occupation and acts of genocide. The result of this legacy and the current policies is reflected in myriad disturbing trends, particularly with children and youth. During the years 2007-11, suicide rates for Aboriginal youth 10 to 17 years of age doubled. Over the same period, Aboriginal youth accounted for 75 percent of all youth suicides in the NT. The suicide rates for Indigenous youth in the NT and Western Australia are presently the highest in the world. Young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are also over-represented in prison, with the rate of incarceration steadily increasing over recent years.

Fig leaf for racism

While the rationale for the NT intervention was as a measure to deal with child abuse, neglect, truancy and and other problems, this was a fig leaf for a thoroughly racist and paternalist policy. The plight of “at risk” Aboriginal children and the poverty-stricken communities in which they live was never going to improve under conditions where their rights were stripped, along with the imposition of a strict regime of apartheid-like social control.

Bo Spearim, a youth activist involved with the Brisbane Aboriginal Sovereign Embassy (BASE) explained to Red Flag: “We all know why the intervention was really put in place – it was because it came down to the government simply not wanting our people having control over our own destiny. That’s why they suspended the Racial Discrimination Act to have it introduced. They are against anything like us governing ourselves or self-determination … it all comes down to mining and money at the end of the day.

“[The NT intervention is] a trial run for what to put in place in other communities, places like Bankstown and rural areas of New South Wales and in cities and towns elsewhere. They are doing what they have done to our people for many years – take our rights. Gillard and Abbott just don’t get it … how these policies are hurting and stigmatising our people. They always stigmatise our people and show no respect, like when they talk about the rivers of grog.”

Activists from BASE have recently been involved in actions with community members demanding the Department of Community Services return children to their families or relatives. “We want our sovereign rights and a sovereign republic for all people … Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, wherever you come from, based on equal rights and justice for all.”

From July 2013 the programs run in the NT, Bankstown and elsewhere will result in compulsory income management being extended automatically to include anyone who is under 25 and exiting prison, as well as young people assessed by Centrelink as “unable to live at home” or who are on a “special benefit” due to homelessness. This will disproportionately impact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and contribute to more children being taken from their families.

The NT Intervention and its offshoots and the removal of children are fundamentally about breaking community connections, breaking ownership over traditional lands and breaking the resistance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. They are little more than dressed-up old style colonial racism.

It is disappointing to see some staff and students being sucked in to the ANU’s slash and burn forums and suggesting ways to implement the $51m worth of Gillard government cuts to the ANU over the next two years.

Over the last 3 decades there has as a consequence of the neoliberalisation of Universities by both major parties been a number of trends in higher education unleashed – underfunding, greater and greater reliance on the student ‘market’,  the proletarianisation of the academic workforce and the increasing precarity of employment.

Between 1995 and 2010 for example funding per student fell 23% in real terms. The uncapping of student places in 2012 without a concomitant increase in funding will see the per capita student underfunding accelerate.

The neoliberal philosophy of the Gillard government explains its most recent $2.3 bn of cuts (on top of a billion last year and a billion the year before). These massive cuts will be borne by staff and students.

The biggest ‘cost’ the University has is wages. This is and will be the focus of the neoliberals and bean counters in charge of the ANU. The ravaging of the School of Music last year and the current freeze on the recruitment of professional staff are but preludes to a massive attack on staff and conditions.

Higher education is built on the back of the unpaid labour of its staff. ‘Efficiency’ dividends will increase the unpaid working day for all staff. On top of that, ‘unprofitable’ courses will go, along with their staff. That was the logic of the School of Music attacks and if unchallenged that logic will spread across the university to destroy unit after unit and course after course. It is already happening in some areas of the University.

For students these changes will mean less unit and course choice, more students in remaining courses, increasing debt, worsening infrastructure, increasingly stressed and harried staff paying less attention to their needs and further training in the world of neoliberalism.

There are two ways to respond. One is to sit down with the butchers and discuss how best to cut higher education’s throat. The other is to fight against the cuts.

Sydney Uni strikers fight back

Last year at ANU we had a glimpse of a fightback. The response of staff, students and the community to the attacks on the School of Music showed the potential existed for a militant campaign mobilising thousands in defence of the School and the idea of higher education as a public good. That potential was not built and the defence of the School was as a consequence defeated.

On May Day this year 200 students and staff demonstrated against Labor’s neoliberal higher education cuts. We marched to Andrew Leigh’s office chanting slogans and wanting to continue the fight.

It is this idea of resistance, of fighting to defend our own interests, which 30 years of neoliberalism and union and Labor Party class collaboration have destroyed.

Our task has to be to rebuild that fighting spirit and action today on the campuses specifically but across workplaces more generally. If that doesn’t happen then the bleak future for higher education as a profit centre for business is assured.

As the BLF used to say: ‘If you don’t fight, you lose.’  The stark choice facing students and staff at Universities today is to fight to defend higher education or to surrender.

Brazil now

There is a common thread to the magnificent uprisings across the Middle East, the turmoil now gripping Turkey and the fight back in Brazil – opposition to neoliberalism and its brutal profit before people ideology have sparked revolutions and resistance around the globe.

Sean Purdy, a member of the Party of Socialism and Freedom (PSOL) and activist in the Free Fare movement in São Paulo, gives some background in Socialist Worker US to the escalating events in Brazil. Although written only a few days ago the mass demonstrations of hundreds of thousands across Brazil against neoliberal capitalism that have broken out occurred after this was written.

SÃO PAULO was a war zone the night of June 13 as riot police viciously attacked a peaceful demonstration of the Free Fare movement, which is protesting hikes in bus and subway fares.

Despite massive police repression and the intransigence of the city and state governments, there are have been four large demonstrations in the last two weeks by the Free Fare movement in São Paulo, South America’s largest city.

Polls show that a majority of residents support the demonstrations. Protests have spread to several other Brazilian cities that also face increases in public transit fares, and there have been demonstrations of solidarity organized or planned in several dozen cities in Europe and North America. Messages of solidarity have also been sent from the protestors in Taksim Square in Turkey.

Hundreds of videos and testimonies, from both demonstrators and the mainstream media, show that during the June 13 protest, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets indiscriminately at peaceful demonstrators, journalists and passersby. Dozens of demonstrators were injured, along with at least eight journalists, one of whom was blinded in one eye after being struck by a rubber bullet. Video footage posted on YouTube shows the scope of the violence.

The Free Fare movement, which is made up of high school and university students, trade unionists, and activists from a broad section of social movements–organized its first protest soon after bus and subway fares were increased by 6 percent on June 2.

The municipal government headed by Fernando Haddad of the Workers Party (PT) claims that the increases are below the rate of inflation, but many analysts have shown that over the last 20 years, the cost of public transit has increased well above inflation, making São Paulo the most expensive city for public transportation in Latin America.

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THE PROTESTS come at a time of growing dissatisfaction with the neoliberal politics of the two misnamed main parties in Brazil, the Brazilian Social Democratic Party and the PT. Activists have shown that the politics of these two supposed rivals are exactly the same: making Brazil safe for business while neglecting the massive social disparities and inequality in the country.

Politicians from both parties have condemned the Free Fare movement protests, as has the PT-led federal government. But many grassroots activists from the PT have participated in the demonstrations, along with militants from the Party of Socialism and Freedom.

At the same time as the protests against fare increases erupted, activists across the country have been demonstrating against preparations for next year’s World Cup in Brazil. Billions have been spent upgrading stadiums and thousands of people have been displaced from their homes in an effort that has boosted the profits of large companies and produced few benefits for the population.

News of the police assault on peaceful protesters spread around the world, prompting solidarity actions, including a reported 800-strong rally in New York City. In San Diego, dozens of Brazilians and their supporters gathered for a march and rally on June 16. “We are here to show we know what is going on, and that we support the people protesting,” said rally organizer Roberta Goulart.

Goulart and others also recognized how the protests against transit fare increases are connected to discontent about other issues, such as the Olympics construction and the government’s record of corruption. “We pay a lot of taxes, and it goes into the pockets of politicians, not for education and health care,” said Felipe Barbiere.

In Brazil, organizers are expecting tens of thousands, including large contingents of trade unionists and activists from the social movements, to participate in the next demonstration of the Free Fare movement in São Paulo. As the slogan of the movement put it: “If the fares increase, São Paulo will stop.”

Avery Wear contributed to this article.

Brazil explodes!

Happening NOW! More than 100,000 Brazilians hit the streets in eight major cities protesting against transport fare rises, political corruption, and poverty.
MUST SEE: http://vine.co/v/hBDQxuTxUbz

Resistance is the victory of the freedom of the people

Syria freedom forever writes:

More than two years after the beginning of the revolutionary processes, western medias have not ceased to repeat the same credo: after the dream, the nightmare for the populations of the Middle East and North Africa ; after the « Arab Spring »,  the Islamist Winter », (both terms that we refuse). Where are gone the « beautiful » and « pure » revolutions from the beginning, as we don’t stop repeating?

The situation is presented as catastrophic: Tunisia and Egypt are governed by Islamists, while the Syrian revolution would have become a civil war between Islamists and the Assad bloody regime. The propagation of such a discourse, underpinned of defeatism, advocates the withdrawal of activists fighting for democracy and social justice.

After being celebrated for their courage and determination in the struggle against their dictators, the people of the region are now described – in an elitist and misleading way – as unable or not ready for radical change. The thesis of “Arab-Muslim” exceptionalism, which supports that these areas are inherently unable to reach a democratic ideal, has returned very fast.

According to various situations, proposals have emerged to limit the revolutionary processes. In Syria, many attempts have been submitted to reach these objectives.

Geneva II or a new attempt to curve the revolutionary process

Firstly the Yemeni solution has been put numerous times on the table. The Geneva Conference II, which should normally take place next July, is one more attempt by all international imperialist forces, the United States and Europe on the one hand and Russia and China on the other, to maintain the structure of Syrian regime and include sectors of the Syrian opposition (National Council and the Syrian National Council in the lead) that are not representative of the Syrian revolutionary popular movement.

Geneva II is a repetition of the conference held in Geneva in June 2012 and all the other so called peace plan suggested by the UN including the the so called “peace plan for Syria” suggested by UN Peace envoy Lakhdar Ibrahimi. This plan calls for the formation of a transitional government, which holds the total responsibility of executive power to govern Syria until Presidential and legislative elections in 2014 under the auspices of the UN. During this period, the dictator Bashar al Assad would stay in function at the top of the State.

Yes, the blood of the Syrian people has sunk too much and yes the Syrian people want peace, but not a peace at any price and certainly not one decided by foreign powers in accordance with the Assad criminal regime and his loyal Iranian and Russian support and a section of the opportunist Syrian opposition, to the detriment of the interests of the Syrian people in their struggle for freedom and dignity!

Many demonstrations and protests in Syria have been held against the future Geneva 2 conference, and any agreement to maintain the structure of the regime. One of the slogans in the demonstrations of Friday, May 31 in Syria was “Geneva 2, there is a difference between fighting for freedom and who wants to improve the conditions of servitude (eternity)“, a direct message to those who want negotiations with the regime.

The people refuse outside maneouvres that would maintain the structure of the regime on other occasions as well: large demonstrations and numerous declarations reject the proposal of dialogue with the regime by the president at the time of the Syrian National Coalition, Moaz Khatib. During the demonstrations on February 8, placards proclaimed “we will only negotiate about the departure of the regime”.

This is why we have also since the beginning of the revolution criticize the National Co-ordination Body for Democratic attempts to seek a deal with some sectors of the regime, even the vice President Farouk al Shareh, for a so called peaceful transition that just like the other solutions would maintain the structure of the regime.

Geneva 2 and other so called solutions have only one objective: to prevent the radical change from below by the Syrian revolutionary people and limit the wind of revolt that could be extended with the fall of the Assad regime, especially to neighboring countries, as we can see in Turkey today, and the Gulf states, and the opening of a new resistance front in direction of the Syrian and Palestinian territories occupied by Israel.

As a revolutionary, we cannot but say that the worst solution is the remaining of this criminal regime.

The opportunism of the National Coalition

This is why we should not stay silent in front the failure of the opportunist and bourgeois National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, ready to betray the Syrian revolution to serve their political interests and of foreign countries.

Many demonstrations and criticisms have also been made inside the popular movement against the National Coallition, including very recently on June 4, 2013 a demonstration condemning their corruption in the Sukkari neighborhood in Aleppo.

Different popular forces have been also very critical of the National Coallition, including the Statement Issued by the Revolutionary Movement in Syria signed by the Syrian Revolution General Commission, Local Coordination Committees in Syria, Syrian Revolution Coordinators’ Union, Supreme Council for the Leadership of the Syrian Revolution (http://www.lccsyria.org/11445). It is notably said that “The revolutionary forces that have signed this statement will no longer bestow legitimacy upon any political body that subverts the revolution or fails to take into account the sacrifices of the Syrian people or adequately represent them. We consider this statement to be a final warning to the SC, for the Syrian people have spoken.”

The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary is right to criticize and condemn the criminal role played by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah in the killing of the Syrian people. Hezbollah criminal involvement has shown that no resistance program can be based on a sectarian identity and linked to authoritarian regimes such as Syria and Iran.

This said, the National Coalition should also criticize countries and groups playing a dangerous role in the Syrian Revolution. For example because of the support of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to the coalition, they have not condemned the objectives of these reactionary regimes. These latter want to transform the revolution into a sectarian war, out of fear that an extension of it would threaten their power and their interests. They are financing extremist Islamist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, which have a sectarian and reactionary ideology, and often try to reduce the role of the people’s committees, sometimes through violence.

Resistance to reactionary forces

Jabhat al Nusra has also been defended by the National Coallition, despite its nature and behavior threatening the Syrian revolutionary process.

On several occasions inside the country popular forces opposed Jabhat al Nusra and similar reactionary forces. In the city of Raqqa, which has been liberated from the forces of the regime since March, many popular demonstrations occurred against the authoritarian actions of Jabhat al Nusra in the city.

Few weeks ago, following the execution of three officers of the regime’s army regime by Jabhat al Nusra, local coordination committees and popular organizations organized a mass demonstration against this behavior (http://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/خرجت-جموع-الرقة-ونشطاء-المجتمع-المدني/), chanting notably “Not Sunni and Not Alawite, our revolution is for civil freedom”.

At the same moment protesters in Kafranbel demonstrated against Jabhat al Nusra acts, a banner said: « Executions in Raqqa, and lashing in Saraqib. Who’s given you legitimacy to rule the people???!! ».

Similar demonstrations took place with popular masses challenging this same kind of behavior as groups and in Aleppo, to Mayadin in Al-Quseir and other cities. In Hannano neighborhood in Aleppo, a demonstration was organized against the Sharia Council because of its behavior against the civil council, using notably arms to impose its decisions. (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=459758330771940&set=vb.262701267078822&type=2&theater ; ‫ب مساكن هنانو أعتصام أمام الهئية الشرعية فرع هنانو بسبب فرض قوة السلاح على مجلس المدينة_

‫البوم الصور)

The Sharia Council in Aleppo has also arrested journalists such as Chaaban Hassan, still in prison, or repressed many activists from coordination committees such as Abu Maryam and others from Bustan Qasr and other neighborhoods. On various occasions demonstrations were organized to protests against similar acts from the Sharia Council of Aleppo.

On June 7, 2013, in Aleppo province, Islamist activists in the Tariq al-Bab neighbourhood of Aleppo have taken down the Syrian revolution flags and threw them to the ground, putting in their place the flag of Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. Local civil activists voiced much anger against this act (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yhTTqKeIVo&feature=youtu.be)

Popular committees also deal with delinquent behavior and crime of armed groups that act as gangs rather than insurgents.

It should be said as well that Jabhat al Nusra has not hesitated to strike deals with the Assad regime, for example this latter is paying more than 150m Syrian lire [£1.4m] monthly to Jabhat al-Nusra to guarantee oil is kept pumping through two major oil pipelines in Banias and Latakia. Jabhat al Nusra fighters have also been involved other buisnesses such as wheat, archaeological relics, factory equipment, oil drilling and imaging machines, cars, spare parts and crude oil.

Is this the model of liberation the syrian revolutionary masses need ?

Definitely not !

The Power in the revolutionary masses

The liberation of the city of Raqqa has liberated even more energies and dynamism among the revolutionary masses.  The city is completely self managed by the people themselves who take care of absolutely all the services for the population of the city.

Popular organizations led by the youth have multiplied importantly, reaching more than 42 social movements (officially registered at the end of May since the liberation of the city in March), and as seen above, there has been various campaigns organized by the popular committees such as the “Syrian revolutionary flag represents me” where throughout the city the revolutionary flag was painted to oppose the islamists campaign of imposing the black Islamic flag. On the cultural level, a theatre play in the the city center was played moking Assad regime, and in the beginning of June, popular organizations organized a craftsmanship and art exposition.

In Aleppo, the first founding meeting for the coalition of youth revolution in Syria took place beginning of June. The meeting brought together a wide range of activists and coordinations committees, playing an effective role on the ground since the outbreak of the revolution in Syria. The conference was presented as a key step to represent the revolutionary youth of all sects (http://halabnews.com/news/27406).

This popular resistance and self development organization within Syrian society shows the revolutionary character of the movement struggling for freedom and dignity. All the foreign interventions, from Iran, Russia and Hezbollah on one side and Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the West on the other side, have not changed this situation until now.

The revolutionary masses, who outnumbered massively the salafists despite the medias solely focus on them, will continue the struggle until the fall of the regime and the realization of the objectives of the revolution.

Popular armed resistance

The use of chemical weapons against the revolutionaries and civilians demonstrates once again the brutality of the Syrian regime, and also the passivity of the great power that despite rhetoric condemnation of these acts will not move to provide the means of resistance to the forces of the Free Syrian Army that lacks everything, while the reactionary forces are massively funded by petrodollars from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf who want to turn this popular revolution into a sectarian war to prevent the wind of revolt reaches borders are.

The purely military victory has always been difficult, because of the structure of the army of the Syrian regime, built on sectarian, clientelist and tribal alliances and patronage while maintaining a very repressive and totalitarian system within the armed forces, making it difficult for mass defections, and Iranian and Russia material and financial support. This is why we have always maintained that we need to combine the armed popular resistance and the “peaceful” or civil (strikes and other actions) actions that will allow the overthrow of the regime. This is one way to help bridge the current asymmetry in favor of the regime and destabilize more.

The asymmetry will nevertheless be difficult to overcome militarily as long as the popular and democratic forces in the Free Syria Army are not supported materially and financially.

Our role as revolutionary

The role of the revolutionary is to be on the side and struggle with these popular organizations struggling for freedom and dignity and to radicalize as much as possible the popular movement towards progressive objectives, while fighting against opportunists and reactionary forces opposing popular class interests.

A banner in Homs expressed very well this feeling: The revolution is permanent against the regime and the cheap lackey opposition.

The Global Day of Solidarity with the Syrian Revolution for Dignity and Freedom organized in more than 40 countries in the world, including inside Syria, the Occupied Syrian Golan, and Palestine, is an example of this kind of internationalist support needed.

We do not deny the difficulties in Syria – and they are many – but knowing what position to take in the ongoing process – not finished, despite what some say – and struggle for the principles propagated by this revolution: freedom and dignity.

As Bertolt Brecht said: ” Who fights can lose, who doesn’t fight has already lost.”

Like all posts on this site comments (see the link under the heading) close after 7 days. Reactionaries, racists, anti-refugee xenophobes and other ne’er-do-wells can spread their filth elsewhere.

The following was drafted by radical left Marea Socialista (Socialist Tide), a tendency within the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) that Chávez led until his death. The statement–which lists Carlos Carcione, Stalin Pérez Borges, Juan García, Zuleika Matamoros, Gonzalo Gómez and Alexander Marín as coauthors–takes stock of the current situation. It can be read in Spanish at full length on the Aporrea.org website. It was translated into English byTodd Chretien and is reproduced here from Socialist Worker US in a condensed version.

To face reality squarely; not to seek the line of least resistance; to call things by their right names; to speak the truth to the masses, no matter how bitter it may be; not to fear obstacles; to be true in little things as in big ones; to base one’s program on the logic of the class struggle; to be bold when the hour for action arrives.
– Leon Trotsky, from The Transitional Program

A mass march and rally in 2006 in support of the Bolivarian process

A mass march and rally in 2006 in support of the Bolivarian process

I. Introduction

Two months after the death of Comandante Chávez, the rhythm of politics in Bolivarian Venezuela makes one’s head spin. Irreconcilable social forces are on the move and tending towards a clash. The moment for clarity has arrived.

Shortages, speculation and scarcity are the current tactics of an opposition which emerged stronger and with a more consolidated leadership in the wake of the [April presidential] elections [when former Chávez Vice President Nicolás Maduro won a razor-thin victory]. And this will surely grow larger by others joining with it. It is an opposition which has its own differences, but is presenting a united front when faced with the enormous opportunity that it feels has arrived to regain direct control of the government.

The political errors, the conciliatory attitude and the vacillating policies of the new government in failing to curb the opposition’s economic tactics–of which the decision to meet with Lorenzo Mendoza [who runs Empresas Polar, Venezuela's largest private company] is the latest example–breaths life into its political offensive. This can be seen in their claims of electoral fraud, which their emissaries have broadcast around the world. Meanwhile, these errors have also confused and politically disarmed the Bolivarian people. And President Obama’s refusal to recognize Maduro and his aggressive statements have added a dose of blackmail.

Once again, as in 2002 and the beginning of 2003, a dangerous game is unfolding in Bolivarian Venezuela, as well as within our own revolutionary process, which will play an important part in the destiny of Our America. But history never repeats itself. This time will be more difficult for us.

It will be more difficult this time because we must confront the perfidious attacks of a cynical and criminal opposition which constructs its popular appeal on a disingenuous discourse, claiming that it is seeking dialogue. Meanwhile, we must face up to the hard reality that the poorest people are suffering the most. Furthermore, we have delayed in building a new leadership, one that this time must necessarily be collective–a leadership capable of unleashing a colossal popular mobilization, one which can provide it with an orientation necessary to make the Change of Course that Chávez demanded [shortly before he died].

Without this Change of Course, the feeling that the government is adrift today will grow, and it can pave the way to collapse. There are moments which determine the survival of a dream. Whether or not we wish this to be the case, it is time to take steps against capital and the bureaucracy. If we fail, we will lose the gains we have achieved and, with these, this historic chapter of an emancipatory process will close.

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II. The Loss of Chávez and the Hole in the Political System of the Bolivarian Process

There has not yet been time to process the enormous demonstration of popular love and pain produced by Chávez’s funeral–one could almost say that there hasn’t even been time for the mourning to begin. And still less has there been the political willingness to seriously and profoundly debate the huge change in circumstances that the loss of the Comandante means for the Bolivarian Revolution. It is critical to do so. If we do not locate ourselves squarely inside the reality of this loss, we will remain disoriented.

Comandante Chávez’s leadership was constructed over the course of more than two decades of difficult social and political battle. Today, we must make clear the lessons we have learned.

1. Recognize the impact of losing Chávez. It is critical to evaluate from every dimension the impact caused by the absence of Comandante Chávez. If we do not understand that we are still facing a bourgeois state which guarantees the privileges of the local oligarchs, the transnational corporations and the bureaucracies that administer them, we will speed our own path to dissolving the revolutionary process.

Without Chávez, the roadmap he designed–the Constitution, the National Development Plans, the Enabling Laws [which empowered oppressed communities]–lost the motor which gave it life and dynamism. His style of Hyper-Leadership, which we have questioned elsewhere (we think correctly), in the absence of a collective leadership, had a positive side in that it was the axis upon which the brutal contradictions within Chavismo itself could be resolved. It was also able to defend a frankly gradual and “peaceful” emancipatory project. Chávez articulated, balanced and moderated tensions arising between various groups with aspirations for power who today have been left without an arbitrator.

2. The two pillars. Chávez was always conscious of the fact that his leadership was one pillar of the process; yet the other fundamental pillar was the Bolivarian people, both civilian and military. Perched upon a monumental peak of popular mobilization by the Bolivarian people, he attempted to direct a process of important and gradual reforms, emphasizing national independence and a more egalitarian distribution of oil profits (“a novel welfare state,” according to Javier Biardeau).

In order to pry open the tremendous social contradictions in the fight over the appropriation of those profits, he called forth popular mobilizations at certain points. And even though it is a fact that the prime mobilization by the heroic people when faced with the coup d’état in April of 2002 was spontaneous and without a central leadership, it is also true that the connection, the communion, between the leadership and the Bolivarian people made this mass expression in the streets possible.

3. Constituent Process. The Bolivarian Revolution is essentially a democratic revolution, a political revolution, distinct from the category of democratic revolution in the anti-feudal sense, as it was defined in classical Marxism.

A revolution still in process that has experienced two moments of crystallization: first, the convocation, debate, approval and signing of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic as an expression of the transformations that took place within the consciousness the poorest of the people, starting from the time of the Caracazo [the urban uprising against neoliberal policies in 1989] and the attempted insurrections on February 4 and November 27 of 1992. Second, both the popular rebellion in April of 2002 [which defeated the anti-Chávez coup] and the defeat of the bosses’ strike and the oil bosses lockout when the counterrevolution was defeated by direct action all along the line.

These moments of the “constituent process” [the process by which the revolution constitutes or creates itself] have brought the revolution to the crossroads of either, one, advancing towards anti-capitalist measures; or two, exhausting itself along the path of paralysis, which may open the door to the counter-reforms that the oligarchy is seeking.

The confiscation of the agency of the Bolivarian people–after their victories against the most counterrevolutionary wing of the light-skinned political oligarchy in 2002, 2003 and 2004–opened the way for the growth, development and agency of the state bureaucracy and its bastard child the Boli-bureaucracy. This [state and party] bureaucracy looks out for its own interests in order to secure and defend its own privileges, hidden from the eyes of the Bolivarian people. It identified as its primary obstacle this Constituent Power, the mobilized and engaged people.

We have witnessed the flowering of organizations of popular power, such as the first communal councils, a plethora of water, electrical and health technical councils, and, more recently, the work councils for employee control over basic industries. This list includes only some of the hundreds of organizations that are the germs of a new power, the power with which popular participation has achieved its highest expression.

Now all this has begun to be interrupted or converted into clientelist appendages, which only serve the will of those who head state institutions, or those who have risen to become bosses of powerful groups. They are attempting to hollow out the content of these popular organizations or to simply dismantle them. As Chávez himself said, the communes have hardly advanced at all.

A new trade union organization has failed to thrive, and one section of militant union leaders has adopted old bureaucratic methods. This has alienated them from working-class politics and converted them into a trade union bureaucracy which maintains its privileges based on direct or indirect participation in the administration of public enterprises and state institutions. One part of them has even switched sides.

4. Structural weaknesses. The revolutionary process initiated by the Caracazo marked the death of the bipartisan regime of the Punto Fijo pact. But the Fifth Republic [proclaimed in 1999 with the new constitution] could not construct a new party system.

The last attempt to do this, the PSUV, met with a great deal of enthusiasm and revolutionary militancy at its foundation at the end of 2007. Thousands of units with hundreds of members were organized, in which, at least for a brief time, there was space for debate, criticism and collective discussion, even though all of this was limited to the local area. At its Founding Congress, despite big bureaucratic limitations, the left wing of the party accounted for some 25 percent of the delegates and, in a party that represented millions of members, represented a radical current of at least several tens of thousands of militants.

But the limitations soon became clear. These meant that power within the party was taken over from above by the directors of the state institutions, and the restructuring and distribution of power was arranged between groups organized on a regional basis, leading to the dismantling of the local units and of any organic practices which had democratic features for the rank and file. Of course, having said all this, there were local and regional exceptions. Thus, less than six months after its foundation, the PSUV attracted no enthusiasm–it did not attract militants but, in fact, repelled them.

If the PSUV is to recapture the energy from the time of its founding, an internal revolution will be necessary to break with the vices, the deformations and clientelist degenerations it suffers today. One wing of the trade union and popular movement leadership also suffers from this process of state assimilation and depoliticization, greased by patronage methods and co-optation.
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III. The Policy of the Opposition: Refuse to Recognize the Election Results and Seek an Accelerated Exhaustion and Fall of the Government

The election showing of the Unity Council [the opposition umbrella] and its candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski on April 14 is the highest result yet for a tendency that has growing since 2006.

Since the fiasco of the attempted counterrevolutionary coup and the oil bosses’ lockout, there have been two fundamental lines of thought within the opposition. One, today a minority, but strongly influencing the opposition’s current tactics, maintains that they should prepare a new counterrevolutionary attempt and that the previous fiascos were caused only by errors committed in the preparation and development of such actions, and not because of the strength of the Bolivarian process. This faction gained predominance before the legislative elections in 2005 and carried out the election boycott. The other faction understood the power of Chávez’s leadership and decided upon an electoral strategy to recuperate, restructure and reconstruct the traditional clientelist bases they had during the Fourth Republic.

Their heavy defeat last October [when Chávez won re-election] opened a debate within the heart of the opposition. They reviewed their mistakes and corrected them, deepened their populist rhetoric, brazenly copied Chavista symbols, presented themselves as more united than ever in a single electoral ticket, and organized themselves under the banner of refusing to recognize Maduro’s triumph.

Denounce fraud, disavow the results and refuse to recognize Maduro. This is the unity slogan of the opposition. And with this, they have maintained a political offensive since the night of April 14. They understood the most essential thing in the new political moment, the absence of Chávez, who they could never defeat, is a golden opportunity for them to regain the government, and this is keeping them united.

However, all this alone could not have worked if it were not for the serious mistakes committed by the government acting without Chávez since he left for his last operation [in January 2013].

The opposition is using its economic capacity to worsen the shortages and speculation, and to raise the cost of living. They are using political campaigns and even leading struggles for just social demands in the face of which the government remains deaf, etc. These campaigns are allowing them to maintain the initiative and determine the political agenda of the country.

Meanwhile, Maduro’s government seeks to seduce a sector of the economic opposition by naming ministers with whom they are sympathetic, and by including them in working groups, allocating them access to foreign currency and granting economic concessions such as the recent official price increases of regulated staple goods. The last meeting, which included the Polar Group, is not only a serious political and economic mistake, but was also botched in terms of public relations.

Basing themselves on the unity they have achieved, the parties and leaders of the opposition retain various differences and nuances, but it is critical not to exaggerate these. Until they are broken apart by a powerful mobilization, they will remain united.

The government is wrong to continue trying to entice some of them in order to divide their forces. The debates within the opposition have only to do with what is an acceptable price to bring about the downfall of the government. They are preparing for many possibilities. They believe, as expressed by one of their most lucid analysts, that Chavismo without Chávez is prepared today to confront and defeat a coup, but it is not prepared to recover, nor to retain, its social base. This does not necessarily mean that they must hope for a recall election to get rid of Maduro. If the right conditions arise, history shows that there are many ways to change government without the necessity of a bloody coup d’état.

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IV. Unease and Disorientation in the Social Base of Chavismo

Both the election results and the measures taken by the government over the last three weeks have provoked an enormous unease among the Bolivarian people. The inability to resolve shortages, speculation and increases in the cost of living in a revolutionary manner have given rise to an extreme confusion and ill feeling in the popular social base of the revolutionary process.

The devaluation continued handing over dollars to the bourgeoisie. No sanctions have been taken against ineffective, and even corrupt, state organizations charged with controlling shortages and prices. Staple goods are not available at regulated prices in the supermarkets, but appear at temporary [and illegal] shops at triple their official price, or they are discovered about to cross the border in contraband operations. Bakeries don’t sell bread, pharmacies have no essential medicines such as antibiotics, etc. And inflation has doubled from the previous month and is almost four times higher compared to the same month last year. And there are interminable lines and many kilometers to cover to simply find essential goods.

Under these conditions there is a growing social sense of frustration which is feeding the confusion. Conditions exist for a tendency toward evaporation of support for the government. Turning around this tendency and recovering the confidence of the people is the primary task of the current leaders of the government and of the revolution. And this can only be done by means of revolutionary measures.

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V. How to Recover the Political Offensive and Construct the Leadership the Revolution Requires

On December 8, 2012, which turned out to be his last speech, Comandante Chávez demanded that whatever happened to him, elections should be convened and that our candidate would be Nicolás Maduro. A dizzying pace of political events swept along the explosive election campaign.

The Bolivarian people complied with Chávez’s request and made Maduro president. But this election did not resolve the fundamental problem facing the revolution after the loss of its leader: How to build the leadership of the Bolivarian process without the figure who was the central axis of its political system. It is necessary to say this clearly: Maduro is the elected president of the country, but neither he nor any of the Chavista leaders of the government are, nor can they be, Chávez; therefore, they cannot lead or govern as Chávez had done.

In order to stop the tendency towards disillusionment and frustration among the Bolivarian people and to seriously confront the cynical and criminal policy of the opposition, the following radical political actions are needed:

1. Unleash participatory mobilizations and the agency of the Bolivarian people in the Constituent Process. The government’s initiatives are lamentably being turned into a mere media spectacle. We are losing an enormous opportunity to unleash a powerful force which is today asleep, anesthetized and disoriented, the Bolivarian people. The launch of a real Constituent Process is crucial in areas such as workplaces and model productive units and should take up questions such as the commercialization of health, national sovereignty and other areas, such as credit, international trade, the National Development Plan and many others.

In this process, it is necessary to also actively incorporate military members of the Bolivarian people. It is a fact that, if there are no immediate possibilities of a counterrevolutionary coup against the government today, it is in great measure owing to the existence in the Armed Forces of the Bolivarian Nation a majority sector of Bolivarian commanders, Chavistas, anti-imperialists and, as our military compatriots like to say, socialists.

In order to unleash this process, we must use a powerful resource that can help orient us–that is, the last plan written directly by our Comandante Chávez at his typewriter, the “Constituent Process for the Elaboration of the Second Socialist Plan for National Development, 2013-2019.” This little-known document, which is today suppressed, stands next to the National Plan as a method of participatory democracy. We can bring the streets, the people, the workers, the youth, the indigenous, the revolutionary women, along with their national organizations to the government to debate and resolve this crisis and, together with the current leadership, construct a revolutionary path.

2. Initiate a great national debate about the urgent measures needed to confront the current shortages, speculation and increase in the cost of living. The first step in order to put the Constituent Power into action is the organization of a great national debate in each enterprise–private or state-run–in each institution, in every plaza, in each community, in each educational establishment, convened in assemblies where we can debate and decide on practical measures to resolve shortages, speculation and the increasing cost of living as well as income and salaries of families who live exclusively by their work.

A week of tens of thousands of such multitudinous assemblies could be organized, where proposals are made by the revolutionary forces, the party, the forces of the patriotic pole and other political and social platforms, giving them sufficient time for debate among the grassroots in the assemblies. This could be followed by a process for democratic decision-making and proposals.

With this type of active popular participation, we can bring a force to its feet which is capable of stopping the tendency toward demoralization and declining confidence that today predominates. Only then can we call the private sector to negotiate so that it understand that its assets will be at risk if it continues its economic attacks on the Bolivarian people.

3. Facilitate the building of a political instrument or instruments which can bring clarity to the path for the Bolivarian people and deepen Chávez’s legacy. It is not true, as some sectors of the party or government leadership say, that our people do not have revolutionary consciousness or that the 600,000 Chávez voters who voted for Capriles are ungrateful. The truth is that the bureaucratization of the party, maltreatment, the habit of giving orders, an obsession with minutia and administered militancy has left the Bolivarian people without a political orientation. We must unleash their political creativity, empower their militancy and listen to all the diverse voices, criticisms and proposals with respect.

A revolution such as ours cannot be, nor should it have, only one party. It is necessary to facilitate the creation of groups, political instruments and currents in order to invigorate the Constituent Process with proposals, debates and mobilizations. In order to accomplish this, we must guarantee that all means of communication–radio, television, electronic and print–give space for each revolutionary political current to freely debate and develop their ideas face to face with the workers.

4. Activate the revolutionary spirit of the Bolivarian People. Today, the anonymous protagonists of the Bolivarian Revolution, the people in struggle, are actors who can sense their role in history. These are the people who built the triumph of the Revolution together with Chávez, with enormous reserves of strength, devotion and heroism.

The people are inclined to go into motion. We must once again sound the call to battle. Revive their willingness to struggle. Inspire their historic responsibility. Understand and stimulate their revolutionary disposition. They, the protagonists of all these events, are disposed to fight, and a new generation is prepared to take over from those who tire. It is our duty to fulfill and deepen Chávez’s legacy, to aid the giant of the revolution to its feet: the Bolivarian People. This is the critical moment to unleash this colossal force. Now is the time. This is how we can save the revolution.

The first edition of Red Flag.

Ben Hillier, one of the editors of Red Flag spoke, as did a leading Socialist Alliance member in Canberra, Duroyan Fertl.

The message was pretty simple. We need a newspaper of the revolutionary left to challenge the lies of the bourgeois press, one that comes out regularly and deals with the issues of the day.

The rich are getting richer under capitalism in Australia.

Some of their newspapers promote this state of affairs directly – think the Australian Financial Review, The Australian when the editors have taken their meds, and the Age, Sydney Morning Herald and other ‘quality’ tabloids in the Fairfax stable.

Others, like the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun, reinforce the ideas of individualism – lose weight, watch the footy, enjoy the sales and cheap prices. They cover anything but the issues which might question capitalism and its reality or push the likes of anti-refugee racist messages to distract workers from that reality.

In a market where 90% of all the newsprint media is owned by the big 2 media companies News and Fairfax, the case for a socialist newspaper that challenges the dominant messages of the rich and powerful is overwhelming. But a socialist newspaper like Red Flag is more than just a collection of anti-capitalist articles and reports on the struggles against the beast.

It is also about helping build a revolutionary socialist organisation, giving members like me the ideas and arguments to explain the world through the day to day issues that we can more adequately address with a fortnightly. For example the first edition of Red Flag has as its front cover a photo of Bradley Manning and a headline screaming he is a hero. He is, as an article in the first edition explains.

Also in the first edition Tom Bramble debunks the myths about the leadership battle between Gillard and Rudd, pointing out the bleeding obvious that somehow seems to have escaped all the bourgeois commentators with their bourgeois thinking in the bourgeois press. As Tom suggests, Labor should, but won’t, abandon neoliberalism, tax the rich, lift restrictions on the right to strike, spend much more on public schools, abandon defence spending increases, grant same sex marriage rights, end mandatory detention and stand up for Julian Assange, to name a few.

Other articles deal with what Red Flag is about, the nature of a revolutionary paper (very interesting despite its seeming potential to cure insomnia), Labor’s latest $2.3 billion in cuts to higher education, Obama’s massive spying regime and an interview with a woman union delegate taking on and beating sexism in a workplace in Melbourne. Two important features cover the new stolen generations and what it will take to revive our union movement.

There is much, much more in this first edition of Red Flag, including workplace reports, prisons at railway stations, marriage equality,welfare control spreading to public housing and Turkey in revolt.

If you want to know what Socialist Alternative stands for, then the first edition of Red Flag is a must too. Our principles can be found at this link and in the first edition of the paper.

Red Flag, to be relevant, must be the paper of its readership, with lots of contributions from ordinary workers and members, a paper of debate and discussion.

Red Flag is the paper for all those who want to fight back against capitalism and its oppressions. It is the paper for all those who want a new world of democracy where production is organised to satisfy human need, not one where we work long hours so Gina Rinehart can treble her wealth to $17 billion while Labor throws about 90,000 single parents (90% of them women) onto Newstart and deeper poverty and 100,000 Australians are homeless while unoccupied homes and hotel, motel and rental vacancies are much much more than that.

Here is the link to subscribe to Red Flag. But a newspaper like this can’t survive and prosper without a political organisation behind it making the arguments day in and day out for that better world, for socialism.

If you like Red Flag, if you want to fight back against capitalism and all its rotten ideas and outcomes, then you should not just read this new paper of the revolutionary left in Australia, you should sell it. If you want to smash the system then join with hundreds of other committed revolutionaries fighting for a better world. Join Socialist Alternative.

Details of Socialist Alternative branch and other contacts can be found here.

Like all posts on this site comments (see the link under the heading) close after 7 days. Reactionaries, racists, anti-refugee xenophobes and other ne’er-do-wells can spread their filth elsewhere.

On Thursday Howard Sattler, a shock jock radio ‘personality’, asked Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister, if her hairdresser partner, Tim Mathieson, was gay. Evidently ‘everybody’ thinks he is. To clinch the argument Sattler pointed out ‘everyone’ knows male hairdressers are homosexual. Sattler has now been sacked but my guess is he will be snapped up by a competitor pretty soon.

Sattler is to MC a breakfast Liberal party fund raiser next month. Until they sack him. I wonder what is on the menu.

A few days ago a menu surfaced from a fund raiser in March for a Queensland Liberal National Party politician which offered Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail – small breasts, huge thighs and a big red box. The owner says it was an in-house joke not given to diners who paid up to $1000 to listen to shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey. To me that seems very convenient, especially since the politician in question condemned the menu 8 hours before the restaurant owner said it hadn’t been distributed. Even if the alibi is true I think Jeff Sparrow in Overland put the wider issue into focus when he wrote:

The real scandal lies not in the incident itself but in what it reveals: that in the twenty first century sexism remains an entirely everyday matter, something that ordinary women encounter with unfailing regularity. If some clown thought he could get away with sexualised humour directed at the most powerful woman in the country, what does that say about the treatment those without power or influence might expect?

This gutter ‘politics’ can predominate because working class struggle is at its lowest ebb in many many a year. Strikes today are about one percent of what they were in the late 60s and 70s. So shock jocks and nonsense instead of class politics and analysis command our attention. The neoliberal consensus means the two major parties have little difference so the odd, the strange and the ridiculous become the focus. Class is off the agenda; crass is on.

Speaking of everyday sexism, the Australian Defence Force is a bastion. There is an investigation at the moment into emails by serving personnel that demean and denigrate women in the service. Seventeen personnel have been stood down with up to 100 more under investigation. This is the latest in a long line of scandals.

But of course sexism in Australia is not systemic; women’s oppression is not part of the furniture of capitalism. No, not at all, just as racism in Australia isn’t systemic either.

A few weeks ago the bigots were frothing at the mouth about an asylum seeker being a murderer. He wasn’t, as the left pointed out and Interpol has today accepted, but never let the facts get in the way of a rabid racist policy and a slick seller of lies determined to whip up hysteria to win votes.

Meanwhile the Australian economy is slowing down; poverty has increased under Labor; one quarter of the children of single parents live in poverty; the gender pay gap under Gillard is now much higher than under John Howard in 2004; bosses continue to get more and more of the national income (apart from a slight downturn recently, as the economy worsens); the rich get richer; education changes are paraded as reforms; Universities have billions cut from their budgets.

Whoever wins the election on 14 September, and the odds are very very short it will be the Liberals, will be faced with an economy that might be moving to join much of the rest of the developed world in recession. Both major parties will adopt austerity. The difference is how much austerity, and how much we let them get away with. However our side hasn’t fought any major battles or had any major wins for a long long time and our trade union leadership fears its own shadows and its membership more than it fears the bosses. So we might get a few ad campaigns warning us how horrible Abbott is or will be but no industrial campaigns against him, or his precursor, Julia Gillard and Labor.

Meanwhile, overseas, Edward Snowden has revealed the fact the US monolith spies on everyone. Obama is Bush unleashed.

In Greece, after the government closed down the equivalent of the ABC, public broadcast workers have taken over their workplaces and are producing workers’ news.

The US has decided to increase support for its favoured groups among the Syrian rebels, with American talk about Assad using chemical weapons against his people being used as a cover for greater imperialist involvement in the struggle.

In Turkey the government is trying to smash the occupation of Taksim Square and has teargassed and beaten the occupiers and arrested hundreds but still they stay strong. Where is the general strike? It might be on its way with one union group striking and another meeting to consider it.

Like all posts on this site comments (see the link under the heading) close after 7 days.

But of course I knew it wasn’t distributed. Well, I now know it wasn’t distributed. I was there. And I wasn’t.

It was all just a joke between the owner and … the owner. So he spent this money on an expensive menu for a joke with himself. Of course. Hilarious. Well, he is like that… He enjoys his own company, obviously … Yeah, I know. Why didn’t he just tell himself his joke and have a quiet chuckle to himself?

Anyway, I am sorry for what I knew when I didn’t, but I now know when to know to apologise, when to know how to apologise and when to know what to apologise about. I know now that the knowing and its timing are important, and I only wish I had followed Donald Rumsfeld’s advice and known the unknown unknowns. Or where they known unknowns? Or maybe known knows. Nah, the menu was definitely an unknown unknown that I knew about at lunchtime but not at dinner time. So there.

It’s the when of knowing that the great Buddha of menus has revealed.

So I am unambiguously and thoroughly sorry for my sorry apology.

There, was that sincere and heartfelt enough?

And there are likely to be future indiscretions. I won’t be calling Hockey a fat pig anymore because he has had his cake hole stitched up. So I am sorry for not calling him a fat pig any more. Or is it I am not sorry for calling him a fat pig? Or I am sorry I won’t be able to call him a fat pig anymore?

Welcome to what passes for politics in Australia today. This nonsense avoids the real issue – the systemic sexism of Australian society, as is now being revealed clearly in the military where as AAP reports ‘Australia’s defence boss admits there are “systemic problems with culture inside the army” as another sex scandal engulfs the military.’

Boys with guns bring in to focus all that is wrong with our society. They are the distilled essence of racism and sexism because their role is to kill women and kids in foreign lands. To make them better able to do that the enemy is reduced to something less than human. Training them to kill women and children dehumanises them and in their eyes all ‘others’, including Australian women.

Australian politicians from the two major parties are the foot soldiers of capital. They too reflect all the inconsistencies of capitalist society but given the struggles against racism and women’s oppression that have been waged over the last 3 decades, the institutionalised racism and oppression are smoothed over with words, not actions. Of course we aren’t racists as we rejoice at the death of 60 asylum seekers. See how tough we are. Any votes for us in that eh?

Who cares about women and children from Afghanistan, or Sri Lanka, or wherever they are fleeing from? Certainly not the ‘feminists’ in this Labor government.

We are faced with a fast food political choice on 14 September – between a Maccas Labor Party and a KFC opposition. We won’t be able to survive long on either diet, and sometime soon after 14 September they’ll be force feeding us austerity. There will be no foie gras, just dead ducks all over the place.

There is an alternative to this battle of the fast food political behemoths. It is the revolutionary left, small, isolated from the class, but building gradually and gaining a toehold in the debates of society. Socialist Alternative is part of that revolutionary left. Check us out if you want a steady and healthy political diet of debate and discussion, of ideas and action, of making sense of this slaughterhouse world.

High literary drama if ever there was, writes Todd Chretien in Socialist Worker US: revolutionary ghosts, holy exorcisms and secret police! As David McNally points out in his book Monsters of the Market, the undead were a popular theme at the time. Just a few years prior, Charles Dickens had raised Jacob Marley from the grave to menace the decade’s poster child for misanthropic capital, Ebenezer Scrooge. If Dickens hoped his hooded executioner-in-waiting, the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, might frighten the archetypal capitalist into changing course so as to avoid damnation, the Manifesto aimed to rouse good Bob Cratchit and his kind to demand their rights to a well-heated workplace, paid vacations and free family medical coverage–and, eventually, to rise up and overthrow the Scrooge class entirely.

After several years of feverish activity aimed at assembling a (very small) army to carry forth their ideas, life itself appeared to validate Marx and Engels’ red-hot prose. The French government ordered the expulsion of Engels from Paris on January 29, 1848, for the crime of political agitation against King Louis Philippe. But Engels lasted longer than the royals. Rebellion exploded on February 23, stoked by brutal repression and economic crisis. The king abdicated, making a run for the border with a pocket full of stocks. Count one for the specters.

Fearing the spread of this contagion, in the first week of March, the Belgian authorities roughly arrested Karl Marx and his wife Jenny and booted them out of Brussels, where they had lived since being exiled from Paris in 1845. Count one for the exorcists.

The aim of this article is to help you read the Manifesto in its own historical terms. If you’ve kept up with my columns, you might think of it as a Greatest Hits album–Marx and Engels: The Paris, London, Brussels Sessions, 1844-48. Many of these songs are going to sound familiar.

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Preface

Marx and Engels were not modest. They believed that their ideas would quickly win a place in the proletarian movement; they even imagined that “Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers to be itself a Power.” (Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Volume 6. Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 481)

Alongside this bravado, the essay served a more direct purpose. The Central Authority (committee) of the Communist League commissioned them to write The Manifesto of the Communist Party based on the decisions adopted at its second conference in November 1847 in London. It was intended for use in study groups, lectures and debates within and around the existing radical organizations and currents of their day. Marx and Engels also hoped to serialize it in leftist newspapers so that it might influence broader audiences.

When you read it, you should imagine Marx and Engels trying to recruit you to the League.

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Chapter I: Bourgeois and Proletarians

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freemen and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. (CW, Vol. 6, p. 482)

Marx (who most likely wrote “>this section and the next himself) condenses nearly the whole of his theory of history into these two sentences, and they are among the most famous of his formulations. Hegel says ideas drive history. Others point to technology, the environment, human nature, religion or political and legal factors. President Obama believes “America remains the one indispensable nation.”

Marx proposes a very different motor force: the class struggle. The rise and fall of different civilizations is not guaranteed, but determined by the outcome of this struggle: revolution or common ruin. Marx asserts that capitalism has boiled down the class struggle “into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.” (CW, Vol. 6, p. 485)

The European “discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, the East Indian and Chinese markets, the colonization of America” (CW, Vol. 6, p. 485) all allowed capitalists to rake in the wealth built up by other societies and, thereby, scrape together the necessary liquidity to launch this new–and vastly more productive–method of exploitation. Meanwhile, their conquest of the modern state, which “is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie,” (CW, Vol. 6, p. 486) gave them a tool to defend their system. And once the bourgeoisie comes to power, it:

‘cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and therefore the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society…All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.’ (CW, Vol. 6, p. 487)

Money is the new royalty, and anyone who can accumulate it can dominate others. Marx expects this very transparency to speed the development of working-class consciousness. At the same time, the specific social relations that capitalism and its factory system were imposing in England and parts of Europe would race around the world, each year drawing more and more people into its web precisely because it is so rapacious:

‘Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that is conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the netherworld whom he has called up by his spells.’ (CW, Vol. 6, p. 489)

Here, Marx is not simply denouncing capital. He draws our attention to the wonders that have been created under its dominion. Today, we are more saturated with advertisement and consumerism than Marx could have imagined. Many people are rightly disgusted by the barrage of meaningless crap we are trained to desire from the day we are born. Speaking as a father of a 10-year-old girl, I say death to Disney!

Yet Marx wants us to understand that capitalism has also, in often sadistic and distorted ways, built up the very means of our liberation. Modern industry, communication, agriculture, medicine and transportation are not, in and of themselves, the problem. Instead, under capitalism, it appears that economic “powers of the netherworld” control us.

Indeed, commentators often speak of recessions, layoffs and free markets as if they were meteorological systems over which humans have no control. Adam Smith’s “hidden hand of the market” is not only invisible, it seems bent on destroying the planet. And since this hand appears to move without any coordination, without a brain, all its frenetic energy leads to a very peculiar form of crisis, one which “in all earlier epics would have seemed an absurdity–the epidemic of over production.” (CW, Vol. 6, p. 490)

We are living through one such epidemic right now. Millions of foreclosed and empty houses, millions of homeless. Collapsing infrastructure, mass unemployment of construction workers. Overcrowded schools, layoffs for teachers. A desperate need for solar energy development and the bankruptcy of Solyndra, driven out of business by competition from Chinese manufacturers.

However, if capital cannot coordinate the productive means it has brought into being in order to benefit humanity as a whole, Marx proposes another candidate that can:

‘Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lie, not any immediate results, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry and place the workers of different localities in contact with one another…This organization of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continuously being upset again by the competition between workers themselves. But it never rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier.’ (CW, Vol. 6, p. 493)

This struggle will eventually lead the working class to overthrow the bourgeoisie, answering the “revolution or common ruin” question in the affirmative. And this will lead to something unprecedented in human history:

‘All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.’ (CW, Vol. 6, p. 495)

This is bad news for the capitalists, but they can’t help but lay the basis for their own downfall. Their own greedy motives build up–in a chaotic and inhuman manner, to be sure–the economic means for providing all people with a decent living standard, even as they enrage workers by flaunting inequalities. As Marx writes: “What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own gravediggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” (CW, Vol. 6, p. 496)

Marx rages against the ruling class and wants you to as well. Slavery and war, sexism and exploitation. They reap the benefits while we do all the work. Bury them!

But didn’t Marx begin the Manifesto saying that victory wasn’t inevitable? Revolution or common ruin? I think Marx hasn’t quite yet settled this for himself. Or maybe this is simply a rhetorical flourish? However you take this, it is the case that he immediately skips from this passage to a discussion of how to go about organizing the revolution. He is not leaving the inevitable to chance.

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II. Proletarians and Communists

In the first part of this section, Marx lays out a strategy aimed at achieving two apparently contradictory goals: to not form a distinct Communist Party and to form a distinct Communist Party. Let’s see how this plays out:

‘In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mold the proletarian movement.’ (CW, Vol. 6, p. 496)

You might well ask, “But haven’t Marx and Engels spent the last two years intent on creating a ‘separate party?’ Isn’t that what the Communist League is all about? What about all the attacks on Kriege and the Liberals and Proudhon?” Confused? The next lines don’t help much:

‘The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.’ (CW, Vol. 6, p. 496)

“Okay,” you say. “So now Marx is saying the Communists are distinguished, are separate. And, the two things he mentions seem like precisely the sorts of things that make it very hard for revolutionaries to get a hearing among more conservative or apolitical workers. What the hell does this mean?”

First, Marx and Engels, as we have seen, had grown increasingly hostile to critical critics (remember Bruno Bauer and Co.) who believed their job was to simply proclaim the Truth and then wait for the rest of the world to come to them. This was elitism and sectarianism par excellence, and they wanted nothing to do with it.

Second, as Michael Löwy demonstrates in his wonderful book, The Theory of Revolution in the Young Karl Marx, Marx is here driving at an innovative idea. In short, this attempt to “be or not be” a separate party flows from the 3rd Thesis on Feuerbach where Marx points to “revolutionary practice” as the key to solving the riddle of “who educates the educator.”

In the Manifesto, Marx is saying that it is not a question of isolated individuals; rather, a layer or a part of the working class, formed as a party or parties, must simultaneously educate its less radical members while also learning from the general struggle against exploitation and oppression. This is the dialectic of revolutionary working-class politics, as opposed to individual action.

Suffice it to say, this is easier said than done. Merging with the “proletarians as a whole,” who are subject to the pressure of bourgeois ideology–as we would say today, sexism, racism, homophobia, nationalism, etc.–while simultaneously standing up for socialist principles gets you into lots of arguments.

To slightly paraphrase the 11th Thesis on Feuerbach, “Sectarians have only pointed out the bad ideas in workers’ heads; the point, however, is to change those ideas by organizing from the inside of the ‘various stages of development’ of concrete working-class struggles in order to strengthen those fights, right up to the point of revolutionary confrontations with capital.”

Or as Marx puts it with greater panache:

‘The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.’ (CW, Vol. 6, p. 497)

I think you can clearly see what he is getting at. However, it also has to be said that Marx and Engels were still relative novices when it comes to practical organizing, and I think there is a certain ambiguity in these lines.

While Marx and Engels felt confident that the Communist League was the only German organization up to snuff, they were at great pains not to alienate themselves from the left wing of the English Chartists. In fact, as they acknowledge in the Manifesto, left-wing Chartists were, in fact, forming a separate group called the Fraternal Democrats, which aimed to pull the broader movement to the left. This provoked some criticism as they were accused of fomenting dissention and division within the Chartists as a whole. At the same time, Marx and Engels were setting up a group called the Democratic Association to unite revolutionaries from various nations who were members of larger groups.

So in more general terms, are the Communists a separate party, like the League, or merely the “most advanced and resolute section” or bigger working-class or democratic organizations, like the Fraternal Democrats inside the Chartists? Or does it depend on the context? It’s hard to say, and that’s precisely the point. It’s always hard to get this right, and if the Manifesto doesn’t provide a complete blueprint, it is because there is no complete blueprint–only a general method which must be adapted to concrete conditions.

Moving on through this section, Marx sarcastically disposes of conservative fears that communism will abolish private property, liberate women and wipe out national boundaries. “Precisely so; that is just what we intend,” he retorts. (CW, Vol. 6, p. 500)

Changing tacks, Marx elaborates the general pattern he believes proletarian revolutions will follow:

‘We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working classes to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.’ (CW, Vol. 6, p. 504)

This is one of those paragraphs where you have to practically yell, “Slow down!” It is so packed with big ideas that you can easily miss both the insights it contains and some of the questions it leaves unanswered.

A revolution is not simply a change of government. It is replacing the rule of one class with that of another. The form this will take when the working class wins “the battle of democracy” is not elaborated in great detail, but it seems clear that Marx expects this will come about by some combination of insurrectionary and democratic (electoral) means. The old, rigid state structures tied to the aristocracy will have to be overthrown by force, and then, perhaps, some sort of democratic process can open up where the working class can achieve “political supremacy.”

Marx then argues–and this is important–that not everything will change the day after the revolution. Instead, a new process of reforms will begin, whereby the capitalists lose their economic power “by degrees.” Some things ought to be done immediately, like abolishing the right of inheritance, instituting a “heavy progressive” income tax, nationalizing the banks, the means of communication and transportation, and providing free universal education. (CW, Vol. 6, p. 505)

With “just” these reforms, can you imagine how loudly the American ruling class would scream? We can’t even get the health insurance companies under control! Yet this would still leave an enormous scope for private property that would only gradually be socialized as the working class becomes more and more capable of running society without managers and without competition.

Only then, would real human history begin, and:

‘In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.’ (CW, Vol. 6, p. 506)

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III. Socialist and Communist Literature

In the previous section, Marx argues that Communists should not set up “separate parties opposed to other working-class parties.” Yet in this next section, Marx–with Engels joining back in–ridicules radical opponents, calling them “reactionary,” “conservative,” “feudal” and even “bourgeois!”

What is going on here? Doesn’t this sound like setting up “principles of their own” and directly opposing other working-class parties or political trends? Not according to Marx and Engels. Simply put, they do not consider their opponents to be part of the working-class movement. Instead, they represent the ideologies of other classes that are attempting to influence workers.

In some instances, this is actually pretty easy to understand. This was especially true in the 1840s as competing factions of the rising bourgeoisie and the declining feudal aristocracy appealed to workers in a sort of “enemy of my enemy is my friend” politics:

‘The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian alms bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as soon as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.’ (CW, Vol. 6, p. 507)

There are also trends which arise from within classes which are themselves victims of capitalism, such as small farmers or small business owners. Marx and Engels give them credit for rightly criticizing aspects of capitalism such as “the misery of the proletariat, anarchy in production [and]…industrial war of extermination between nations.” (CW, Vol. 6, p. 509) Yet, like Proudhon, these authors want to retreat to a pre-capitalist economy, in place of looking to a working-class revolution. Marx and Engels assert that these critics “desire the existing state of society minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat.” (CW, Vol. 6, p. 513)

In Marx and Engels’ opinion, there can be no question of compromise with these ideas. They are not mistaken views which have arisen from inside working-class reality and struggle. They are alien ideas, originating from outside the working class.

The Manifesto does pay tribute to a trend of thought associated with utopian communists like Count Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier and Robert Owen. While these thinkers rejected revolution, they did not want to retreat to earlier economic forms. Instead, they aimed to establish communist utopias based on complete equality–in Fourier’s case, even extreme gender equality. Marx and Engels criticize their schemes, but argue that much can be learned from their radical visions of the future, including the:

‘abolition of the distinction between town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of industries for the account of private individuals, and of the wage system, for the proclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the functions of the State into a mere superintendence of production.’ (CW, Vol. 6, p. 516)

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IV. Position of the Communists to Other Opposition Parties

Marx, who finished off the final section of the Manifesto while Engels was in Paris, concludes by listing movements he considers to be the Communists’ natural allies, while reminding us that “they never cease, for a single instant, to instill into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat.” (CW, Vol. 6, p. 519):

‘In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against existing social and political order things. In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time. Finally, they labor everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.’ (CW, Vol. 6, p. 519)

Again, Marx is emphasizing the double move we reviewed in Section II: unite with the broadest possible movement to fight for democracy and for concrete reforms, while simultaneously preparing workers to fight for their own liberation and the complete abolition of private property and capitalism.

This tension is present within the Manifesto, but this is the clearest statement of ideas and the most explicit guide to action that Marx and Engels had yet produced.

It represents the crystallization of their research and practical activity, merged with the experience of the best-organized movements of radical workers in Europe at the time. With it, they aimed to win over a layer of thousands of radical workers and intellectuals. All of this in an atmosphere of growing social tension and rising expectations of revolutionary confrontations with Europe’s old order. Burning all bridges to his academic past, Marx goes all in at the end:

‘The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at the Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.’

WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

Over the following decades, this call to action would become the most important declaration of principles for the rapidly expanding, and increasingly international, socialist movement. The Manifesto introduced hundreds of thousands to the basic ideas of revolutionary socialism, and it continues to do so today. So don’t wait for Jacob Marley to rattle his chains in your attic–pick up a copy today and get to work.