En Passant

There will be a minority of workers and others who are being forced by the current Budget attacks to understand that if you don’t fight you lose and that striking is the best way to fight. If that is the case then it is our task to talk to that minority and show them by our arguments and activity that our vision for action now and for the future is the way to win the current fight and the ultimate goal, a truly democratic society in which production occurs to satisfy human need.

Stop work to stop the bosses’ Budget.

Let’s build the campaigns against the many rotten aspects of capitalism today. Let’s understand they are all linked and that ultimately it is only in the struggle against the system that its systemic repressions can be challenged and ultimately overcome. Workers have that power. The struggles today if they are strong and militant enough can roll back racism.

However since racism is integral to the rule of capital in Australia we cannot defeat it unless ultimately we defeat capitalism. In the struggle today lies the future.

Without a left-wing political or industrial focus some of the exploited, the forgotten and the marginalised have turned to nationalism and its twin, racism, as crutches for the loss of working class community and working class strength in action.

Our hope at the moment must be that the apparently growing number of strikes and other industrial disputes in Australia boil over into a generalised campaign for wage increases, social services and jobs.

Now Rudd has celebrated the end in July of Australia’s part in the invasion by calling the butchers of Iraq at a parade recently the Anzacs of today. He is right.

Ten percent pay rises for the filthy rich bosses, nothing for the low paid. That really does sum up the obscenity that is capitalism.

The defeat of the Australian cricket team shows that Australian capitalism and its products are not invincible. It is a lesson workers could well learn.