“March in March” must break through “community” mobilisation

DEMAND UNIONS FIGHT FOR:

A 30 HOUR WEEK WITH NO LOSS IN PAY
PUBLIC HOUSING AS AN OPTION FOR ALL
LIVABLE UNEMPLOYMENT, DISABILITY AND PENSION BENEFITS
PUBLIC OWNERSHIP OF THE BANKS
PUBLICLY PROVIDED HEALTH CARE
PUBLICLY PROVIDED EDUCATION
PUBLICLY OWNED ASSETS – ROADS, RAIL, PORTS, ELECTRICITY, WATER, GAS, TELECOMMUNICATIONS
AFFORDABLE AND RELIABLE PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Crisis after crisis besets Australia, and indeed the world. Here, we have very high unemployment, record numbers of homelessness, housing unaffordability, skyrocketing costs of living and the decimation of basic democratic rights. Privatised banks rake in unprecedented profits through blind rip offs through fees extracted from working people. Increasingly privatised health care and education are placing an unbearable burden upon the majority, who cannot afford private health care – or are robbed of service if they can. Refugees continue to be tortured by government policy, and most Aboriginal people face a daily struggle to survive. Canberra continues to back the US wherever it wages predatory imperialist wars or conducts regime change operations – from Libya to Syria to Ukraine to Eastern Europe to the South China Sea. Climate distortion is already dangerous, and is claiming lives through heatwaves, bushfires, floods, droughts, storms and cyclones. And this is just for starters.

As backward as the Turnbull Liberal government is, it is not the cause of these multiple crises on its own. Just as Obama and Clinton in the US prepared the path for Trump and Bannon, it was Rudd and Gillard here which paved the way for Abbott and Turnbull. And nor do the Greens provide any alternative, much less the disillusioned elements following the nationalist One Nation. All of the parliamentary parties are a component part of the capitalist system – the system of private production for private profit using social labour. No matter how many soothing words they offer, no element of the parliamentary gravy train is the least bit interested in fighting against the cause of the crisis afflicting working people – for they are part of it. The same goes for the honeyed phrases of top Union officials – some of whom make moving speeches decrying the ongoing assaults on workers. If these Union officials cared about the workers more than their overpaid positions, they would set about organising a broad scale fightback. They could do this for a start by calling meetings of members, and offering their meeting spaces for working people supportive of Unions, to organise various anti-capitalist campaigns.

The “March in March” organisers may have good intentions. However, their political strategy appears doomed before it is enacted. The top Union secretaries, the Labor Party, the Greens, NGOs and so on – will grasp any opportunity to promote themselves and simultaneously derail any serious class based fightback from beginning. “Community” mobilisations, consciously or unconsciously operating on a cross-class basis, strengthen the capitalist system rather than undermine it. Australians cannot be “united for a better government”. We are divided into classes, and unless we mobilise the working class, not the “people”, in a struggle for socialism, our efforts will only bolster well-paid bureaucrats. In the meantime, we must demand Unions lead the defence of working people.